by Lynn Russell
‘I’ve never been to a dentist before,’ Madge said.
‘Then it’s high time you went,’ the woman said. ‘But don’t be alarmed. It’s perfectly routine and quite pain-free.’
The two girls were separated and Madge was led into another, larger room, where three people, two men and one woman, were waiting. All wore white lab coats, giving them the air of doctors or scientists, and each carried a stopwatch and a clipboard. They were industrial psychologists, whose role was to study working methods and identify the most suitable new recruits for any given task. Industrial psychology was a still-novel quasi-science much admired by Seebohm Rowntree, who had succeeded his father as chairman of the company, and its stated aims were not just to use scientific methods to increase efficiency, but to produce a ‘correspondingly higher standard of comfort and welfare for the workers’ and eliminate ‘all the unhappiness caused by what is popularly called putting the round peg in the square hole’. Laudable though those aims may have been in theory, their practical application via ‘time and motion’ studies almost invariably led to employees being required to do more work, more quickly, for little or no more reward, and the individuals with their stopwatches and clipboards soon became hated figures.
To help them assess potential employees, the industrial psychologists devised home-spun tests and pieces of ‘home-made’ apparatus, including colour-recognition tests and a formboard like the child’s toy in which different shapes have to be matched to the right holes on a wooden board, enabling them to ‘weed out those girls who are unlikely to become efficient packers’. It was to remain the yardstick by which Rowntree’s graded potential production line employees for thirty years.
Madge was to be the latest new recruit to be graded by these methods. The leader of the group, a man with dark hair flecked with grey and a small goatee beard, explained each test to Madge and then one of his assistants placed the equipment in front of her. ‘These tests are to assess your aptitude for the different kinds of work you might be doing here,’ he said. ‘Please complete them accurately and as quickly as you can. The first test is to place these wooden shapes into the correct spaces in the formboard. Some of the shapes are incorrect, either because they are the wrong size or because they are damaged, and those you should place on one side. Now if you are ready? But please do not begin until I tell you to.’
His assistants then placed a wooden board with different-shaped indentations in front of her and a tray containing the wooden shapes to her right, and a moment later the man with the goatee said ‘Go’ and clicked his stopwatch. As Madge began sorting the shapes and fitting them into the recesses on the board, she could see from the corner of her eye that they were watching her intently and making occasional notes on their clipboards, but she did her best to ignore that and carried on sorting the shapes. She tried one in a couple of different places before consigning it to the reject pile, but eventually she filled the last recess and heard the faint metallic click as they stopped their watches in unison. She glanced at their faces, but their expressions remained impassive as they compared their notes and figures, making it impossible for her to read how well or badly she had done.
The next test involved sorting items by colour, which she did by posting different coloured cards into the correct matching boxes, and then she had to fit shaped pieces of wood into a square frame. There were a series of other tests, including a paper with puzzles to solve and a set of mathematical problems that again made Madge feel as if she had been transported back to the school classroom. They also took her temperature and measured how warm her hands were, something she might have found alarming had one of her sisters not told her that they did this because you could not go into chocolate piping – hand-piping designs onto the top of individual chocolates using an icing bag – if your hands were too warm, because it made the chocolate go white as it cooled.
Finally she was asked to pack some dummy chocolates into a box while once more they timed her with stopwatches. ‘The chocolates are actually made of plaster of Paris, so I advise you not to taste them,’ the leader of the group said, permitting himself a small smile, though the expressions on his companions’ faces showed it was a joke that had grown whiskers from constant repetition. ‘Pack them in exactly the same order as the box on your left, and once more, please do not begin until I tell you to.’ His assistants then placed a full chocolate box on her left, an empty one in front of her and set down a wooden tray containing the plaster ‘chocolates’ on her right. Madge sat studying the layout of the full box, her hands poised over the dummy chocolates until she heard the word ‘Go’ and the faint click from their stopwatches, then scrambled to pack the chocolates into the individual frilled paper cups inside the box as quickly as she could.
When she had completed all the tests, the three of them conferred briefly, their impassive faces still giving Madge no hint of how well or badly she had done. The woman added something to the notes she had been making on Madge’s form and then ushered her back into the corridor. Mrs Sullivan was waiting for her, and having studied the form – Madge herself was not permitted to see it – she gave a brief smile and said, ‘Congratulations. Subject to a satisfactory medical, you have been passed as suitable for employment at Rowntree’s.’
Madge felt no elation or excitement at that, only relief that she would not have to go home and tell her parents that, uniquely among the members of her very large family, she would not be working at the factory. Whether because Madge’s hands were too warm, or because she hadn’t shown enough dexterity and speed when posting shapes on the formboard, or simply because it was the only place where they were currently short-staffed, Mrs Sullivan told her that, providing her medical examination did not reveal any unexpected problems, she would be assigned to work in the Card Box Mill, where they made the boxes for the Rowntree’s chocolate assortments and made and printed the packaging for all the company’s brands.
She then led Madge along the corridor to a suite of rooms with a sign reading ‘Occupational Health Department’, and left her in the care of a nurse. The rooms were light and airy, with a strong background smell of carbolic disinfectant. Madge was first seen by an optician, a man in his thirties wearing horn-rimmed spectacles and a spotted bowtie, who shone a light into her eyes and then had her read a series of letters of diminishing size from a chart on the wall. She rattled them off right down to the end of the bottom line, and would have told him the manufacturer’s name in tiny print at the bottom had he not held up a hand and said, ‘Thank you, Miss Fisher, your eyesight is marvellous.’
She returned to the nurse, who scrutinized Madge with the air of a horse dealer assessing a filly, and then rattled off a series of questions. ‘Ever had any serious medical complaints? Ever been in hospital? Ever suffered fits, blackouts or seizures? Any of your family suffer from TB? Any family history of mental illness? Do you suffer from ringworm or any other skin complaint?’ As Madge replied ‘No’ to each question, the nurse made a note on the pad in front of her. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘take off your dress so I can examine you. If you’ve got any skin complaints, then we’ll have to treat them before you can begin work.’
Madge hesitated, embarrassed, but then took off her outer clothes and stood there in her underwear, acutely aware of how old, patched and mended it was. ‘Hold out your hands,’ the nurse said. ‘And now turn them over so I can see the other side.’ She also checked Madge’s back, neck and legs for signs of any skin conditions, felt the glands in her neck and parted the hair on her scalp. ‘Just checking for nits,’ she said. ‘All right, no problems there. Now I just need to measure your height and weigh you.’
Madge stood in front of the wooden measure fixed to the wall while the nurse checked her height. When Madge stood on the scales, she saw the nurse frown as she adjusted the weights until the scale was in balance, and then read the figure. ‘Seven stone four,’ she said. ‘A bit light for your height. You need to put a bit of weight on.’
‘Why’s that?
’ Madge asked.
‘Because if you’re too thin, you’re more likely to be ill. That means you’re more likely to be off work and that costs Rowntree’s money.’
‘Not me,’ Madge said. ‘I’m never ill.’
‘Just the same,’ the nurse said. ‘Tell your mam that I said you need a bit more weight on your bones. Now, get dressed, and then you just need to see the dentist and you’re done. It’s the next room down the corridor from this one. Just knock and walk in.’
The dentist had a fully equipped surgery and Madge looked around with interest, tinged with more than a little fear. She might never have been to the dentist herself, but she’d heard enough scare stories from people who had to be very nervous about it. The dentist bustled in, all brisk efficiency. ‘Now, let’s have a look at those teeth of yours, shall we, Miss Fisher?’ he said, steering her into the leather chair and then pressing a foot pedal to recline it. ‘All right, open wide.’
She felt herself go rigid as he leaned over her with a dental mirror in one hand and a thin steel probe in the other. ‘Just relax,’ he said. ‘I promise you, I’ve done this before and I’m not going to hurt you.’ She was grateful for his attempt to put her at ease, though it did little to soothe her nerves. He fell silent as he began to probe her teeth. Madge had just begun to relax a little when she felt a stab of pain as he tested one of her back teeth. A few moments later, she yelped at another twinge from the opposite side of her mouth.
The dentist checked the last few teeth, then brought the chair upright again. ‘I’m afraid those two teeth are going to have to come out,’ he said.
Madge felt the blood drain from her face at the thought. ‘But it’s the first time I’ve ever had teeth out,’ she said, with a tremor in her voice. ‘In fact it’s the first time I’ve ever been to a dentist.’
‘From the state of your teeth, I rather thought it was,’ he said. ‘But don’t worry. We’ll give you an anaesthetic – some gas – and you won’t feel a thing.’ He gave her a brief professional smile that did little to reassure her. He then asked her when she’d last eaten, and luckily – if that was really the word, Madge thought, as she peered over his shoulder at the frightening-looking steel implements in the sterile cabinets behind him – she’d been too nervous to eat breakfast before she left the house that morning. The dentist studied her pale, frightened face for a moment. ‘Do any of your family work here?’
She nodded. ‘My father, three brothers and six sisters.’
He smiled. ‘Then I’m sure we can spare one of them from their work for half an hour. I’ll send word for one of your sisters to come and sit with you.’
The dental nurse took her back out to the waiting room and sent for Madge’s sister Rose, the next in age to her, to come from the Card Box Mill. Rose arrived ten minutes later, glad of any interruption to the monotonous routine of the working day, and sat with Madge, making nervous small talk until it was time for her to go back into the surgery.
The nurse helped Madge into a white gown and settled her back in the chair. She felt like a very small child as two men loomed over her, the dentist behind her and a red-faced anaesthetist with the ruptured veins of a heavy drinker in front of her. He wheeled a metal stand with two tall gas bottles over to the chair and checked the gauges and settings. ‘Is that laughing gas?’ Madge asked, half frightened and half intrigued.
‘No,’ he said. ‘This one puts you completely to sleep.’ He unhooked the mask with a flexible hose attached to it and placed it over her nose and mouth, then told her, ‘Now, just close your eyes and breathe deeply.’ The mask was cold and hard and smelled of rubber, and it also had a slightly acrid tang, like the cupboard under the kitchen sink at home where Madge’s mum kept the bleach and lye soap. She heard a faint hissing sound and took a tentative breath and then another, her palms prickling with a nervous sweat. The gas felt cold in her nose and mouth and a feeling of dizziness and nausea crept over her. She couldn’t remember anything after that.
Rose had stayed in the waiting room, but she could see the blurred movements of the dentist through the frosted glass, and heard the murmured conversation of the two men and then the gruesome, grinding sounds as the steel forceps gripped and twisted Madge’s teeth and pulled them out one by one. Madge herself saw and heard none of that, and remembered nothing else until she came round a few minutes later. As she regained consciousness, still half drugged by the gas, she began shouting for her sister and saying, ‘I remember, Rose. I remember.’
At the sound of her sister’s voice, Rose jumped up, knocked on the door and without waiting for an answer, pushed it open and ran in. ‘What do you remember, Madge?’ she said, squeezing her sister’s hand.
In her gas-fuelled dreams, Madge had been seeing herself as a piece of confectionery on the Rowntree’s production line. ‘I was coming down this chute,’ she said. ‘And I saw you at the end of the chute waiting for me.’ She tried to sit up but was still very groggy. Her mouth tasted foul and as she probed with her tongue, she felt the soft fleshy cavities in her gums where the two teeth had been removed. The dental nurse had meanwhile steered Rose back to the waiting room while the dentist made a final check of Madge’s mouth.
‘Everything’s fine,’ he said. ‘They’ll heal up perfectly well, but don’t eat or drink anything until teatime and, tempting though it is, don’t keep testing the cavities with your tongue, because if you do, they’ll start bleeding again. And Miss Fisher? If you don’t want to be coming back to see me again, you need to take better care of those teeth. Brush them twice a day, morning and night, and don’t eat so many toffees.’
‘I don’t eat toffees,’ Madge protested.
‘Well, chocolates then, or gums, or whatever sweets you do eat.’ He paused, studying her face. ‘All right now? Then let’s see if we can get you back on your feet and into the waiting room. You may be a little unsteady at first, but the nurse will help you.’
Later, Madge would look back on her first taste of dentistry with relief that the experience had not been worse, because the stories circulating around the factory about the company dentist cast serious doubts over his competence. One of her fellow workers, Muriel, recalls that ‘After a visit to have a tooth removed, it put me off going to any dentist for life, as he broke it so many times and even then left a bit of tooth stuck in my gum,’ necessitating several visits to a different dentist to repair the damage. Others suffered even more at his hands. One girl, Marjorie Chapman, had to have five teeth out before she could start work at Rowntree’s. As she went under the anaesthetic, the last thing she remembers seeing was ‘a tram going by with all the faces looking at me’. The extraction was a prolonged, messy and very bloody affair, and Marjorie ended up having to be taken to hospital to have her gums stitched. ‘It was rough,’ she says. ‘My mouth was dreadful and I was only fourteen. It was about eight weeks before I could start work and the dentist got in terrible trouble over it.’
With Rose walking alongside them, the nurse steered Madge back to the waiting room and then, after she’d had a few more minutes to recover, took her out to the main office area, where Mrs Sullivan was still sitting at her desk. She peered at Madge over her glasses, then turned to Rose. ‘Your sister seems fine now,’ she said. ‘So you’d better be getting back to work, hadn’t you?’
Rose gave a reluctant nod, squeezed Madge’s hand and walked off down the corridor as Mrs Sullivan turned her attention to Madge’s form. She made another note on it, then nodded to herself and added her signature at the bottom.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘You’ll start in the Card Box Mill tomorrow morning at 7.30 a.m. prompt. Your pay will be eleven shillings a week for a forty-four hour week.’ She took a printed booklet from her desk drawer and handed it to Madge. ‘This is a copy of the Works Rules and Regulations. We expect you to read it, know the rules and abide by them at all times. Any breach of them will be treated as a matter for disciplinary action.’
She paused and gave Madge a questioning look,
making sure the message had been received. ‘Now, you’ll need two white turbans and two overalls with no pockets in them. We don’t supply them, you have to provide your own, but if you’ve no money and can’t afford them, we have an arrangement with the stores in town. You can get them there and we’ll deduct the money from your wages, a shilling a week, until you’ve paid for them. You’ll need to wear stockings and flat shoes, no high heels, no sandals and no jewellery other than wedding rings.’ She paused again. ‘Though you’ll not have one of those just yet, will you? No make-up and no perfume allowed, no pins or small objects of any kind, and no food to be brought into the working areas. You’ll need money for a drink at break time, and a little “sailor bag” to hang around your neck to keep your money in. There’s a ten-minute morning break and you get an hour at dinnertime. If you’re not going home for your dinner, you can buy a meal in the Dining Block – the food is good and it’s cheap, too. Any questions? No? Then we’ll see you tomorrow at 7.30 a.m. sharp. Don’t be late or you’ll be locked out and lose your morning’s pay. Report to the timekeeper’s office just inside the main doors and someone will meet you there and take you over to the Card Box Mill.’
As Madge turned into Rose Street on her way home, with the metallic taste of blood in her mouth, she saw her mother on the step, still chatting to her neighbour. ‘Well?’ she said, as Madge walked up to her.
‘I’ve had two teeth out,’ Madge said, opening her mouth to show her mother her sore and bleeding gums.
