The Sweethearts

by Lynn Russell

  The de-skilling of women’s work, the redundancies and the progressive loss of the ‘family feeling’ that had once so distinguished Rowntree’s from other factories, inevitably brought in their wake a much faster staff turnover. It had ceased to be a family business for the Rowntrees long ago, and was now no longer the family business of any members of Florence’s family either. Only one of her three children, Malcolm, worked at the factory; he spent twenty-five years there, before taking redundancy and starting a minibus company. Her eldest daughter, Carol, now retired herself, was a teacher; her younger daughter is a teaching assistant and Florence herself is perfectly content that her own time at Rowntree’s is in the past. ‘I don’t know that I’d like to go back there now,’ she says. ‘I think we definitely had the best days of Rowntree’s, but they were happy times and I’ve great memories of it. The friends I had at work I’m still friends with now, or those that are left anyway. I go to keep-fit with them at the bowls club at New Earswick on Tuesday mornings – I can’t do it all now, but I do what I can – and I go to Movement to Music on Thursday afternoons. It’s nothing serious, just a bit of fun, but then like we say, “We don’t come for gold medals, we just come for fun.”’ They even did a performance in their leotards on the Rose Lawn in front of the Rowntree’s factory once, bringing back memories of those long-ago days, when in her green tabard and navy-blue knickers, and her face burning from embarrassment, Florence and her young workmates had done their Greek dancing class while derogatory comments from all the male Rowntree’s workers within range echoed in her ears. When Florence’s Movement to Music class of retirees performed there, it was such a burning hot day that they had medical staff standing by in case any of the women collapsed from the heat! ‘We were doing it to a record on a record player,’ Florence says, ‘and it was so hot that the record warped in the heat and the music was speeding up and slowing down so badly that we had to stop, though by then we were laughing so much we couldn’t do it anyway.’

  Florence is eighty-nine now, and was still riding her pushbike when she was eighty-two, but her children eventually persuaded her to stop because there was too much heavy traffic on the roads and she had had one too many near misses with lorries thundering past. ‘I used to go to line dancing, too, until I was eighty-eight,’ she says, ‘but I’ve given that up as well now, though I hope I live a little bit longer. Arthur used to tell me I’d live to a hundred and I used to say, “No, you’ll outlive me, but I’ll tell you what, if you go before me, I’ll be a merry widow!”’

  * * *

  Madge finished her long career at Rowntree’s working as an examiner, checking the quality of the work as it was coming off the end of the production line, and she kept doing it until 1978, when she had to retire because she had reached the compulsory retirement age of sixty. Even with seven years’ absence from the factory while her three daughters were babies, she had still worked at Rowntree’s for a total of thirty-nine years and was not ready to go at all, but that company rule was unbreakable. Many of her generation were just as upset to be retiring. ‘I didn’t want to leave at all,’ Dot Edwards says, ‘a lot of us didn’t, but you had no choice, you had to retire when you got to sixty. I was really upset to go and I really missed the atmosphere and the friendliness and everything. There was a bit of bitchiness, like you always find in a crowd of women, but not a lot. It was a real family place; all the families used to work there.’ Of Madge’s three daughters, Fay only worked at Rowntree’s as a holiday job, but the youngest, Lynne, worked there and met her future husband at the factory. Her other daughter, Hazel, opted not to go to Rowntree’s and instead began her working life at York’s other chocolate company, Terry’s.

  By the time Madge retired, Bill’s health had not been good for a few years – he smoked and drank heavily, which cannot have helped – and finally, after he had gone into Killingbeck Hospital for an operation, the surgeon took Madge to one side and said to her, ‘I’m afraid there’s nothing more we can do for him.’ When Madge told Bill that, he said, ‘Well, I might as well be at home then,’ and discharged himself from hospital. So Madge took him home and looked after him until he died. She was no longer young herself and it was hard physical work caring for him – ‘I used to lift him out of bed onto the commode,’ she says, ‘and then lift him back in again, and do everything for him’ – but somehow she coped. Although the doctors had said that Bill had only months to live, in fact he lasted for over two years after that, before eventually dying at the age of sixty-five. Madge says:

  I’m not religious or anything. I don’t believe in God, but I do think that there’s something there, and I do believe in fate. Everything’s planned out for you somehow. As my husband was dying, I could hear him muttering, ‘Let me in. Let me in. I ain’t a Roman Catholic, I’m Church of England.’ So he was having trouble getting through those gates. Anyway, eventually they must have let him through. It was real windy outside, it was rattling the windows and whistling round the chimney, and my husband was making this awful noise with his breathing, so I went into the other bedroom, just to get a bit of rest. When I woke up, the wind had dropped and, as I lay there, everything was so quiet that I knew he must have gone. I went and had a look at him and then I went into Lynne, who was staying with me at the time. I woke her up and told her, ‘Your dad’s gone.’

  In the stillness of the night, the two women went downstairs and sat together at the kitchen table, talking quietly. They had a glass of sherry to steady their nerves, and during those peaceful moments they shared many memories, some good and some not so good. After perhaps half an hour, Madge drained the last of her sherry and then she went back upstairs and laid out his body herself, the last task she would ever have to perform for him. She washed and shaved him and combed his hair, then dressed him in his best suit, shirt and tie, and polished his shoes and put them on his feet. By that time dawn was breaking and she sent Lynne to telephone the doctor and the undertaker. There were few mourners at the funeral other than Madge and her daughters.

  It had been anything but an easy life for Madge with Bill, but she made up her mind to make up for it as much as she could in the years she had left, and in her words, ‘I’ve had a life since he’s been gone and I’ve had a real good time.’ She went to Spain for a holiday and liked it so much that she went back again and again, and in the end she decided to live there permanently. At first she just tested the waters by renting a caravan for a month, on a site between Alicante and Benidorm with about fifty people already living there. They were all British and she found them such a good group of people and enjoyed the lifestyle so much that she bought a mobile home of her own and began living there all the year round.

  She was already eighty years old when she bought the mobile home, but she remained in Spain for another eight years and loved every minute of it. It is testament to her strength of character – not to mention her physical fitness and strength – that she embraced such an adventure at that late stage in her life. There was a social club nearby where she would go dancing and join in the karaoke sessions and, she says, ‘I used to like getting dressed up and acting daft.’ After all the years of hard work, at home and at Rowntree’s, those years in Spain were truly happy and carefree for Madge. She made many good friends and at one time she even thought that true love had come knocking at her door, when she began seeing a man who was British but had been living in Spain since his previous relationship had ended acrimoniously.

  Madge was very happy with him, so much so that she thought she would be spending the rest of her days with him, but that came to a sudden end when they returned to England together on a visit. Madge went to see her daughters in York, while he went to his home town, ostensibly to see his sons. On the day they were due to fly back to Spain together, her daughter Hazel received a note from the man – he did not even have the guts to tell Madge himself, or to write to her direct – saying that he would not be going back to Spain with her as he had moved in again with his previous partner.
Madge’s tone as she tells the story today reflects the bafflement she felt then and still feels now.

  Despite that blow, she was still loving her life in Spain, but then, aged eighty-eight, she suffered a bout of food poisoning. She got up in the middle of the night and went to the bathroom, but after washing her hands, as she turned to reach for the towel, she fainted and fell back, cracking her head against the edge of the washbasin. The next thing she knew she was lying on the floor. She managed to get back into bed, but when she woke in the morning she found the pillow was saturated with blood from where she had split her scalp open. A friend took her to the doctor to get the wound stitched, but the incident made her realize how vulnerable she would be if she had another accident or her health started to fail. After thinking hard about it, she decided that the time had come for her to go home and, not without some sadness, for her years in Spain had been some of the happiest of her long life, she sold her mobile home and moved back to York.

  Madge now lives in sheltered housing on the outskirts of the city in a flat bought for her by her three daughters, who all live nearby. Among her possessions is the carriage clock she won in the schools baking competition eighty years ago. It is still keeping perfect time, although it no longer has pride of place on the mantelpiece in her pristine flat, and has been relegated to a table beside an armchair.

  Even in her nineties, Madge remains fiercely independent, full of energy, humour and a zest for life. She has always had perfect eyesight and never had to wear glasses, and although she is now facing an operation for cataracts, she’s coping with that with her customary jaunty optimism. Apart from her twice-weekly keep-fit sessions in the communal area, she busies herself walking to the local shops, and even sometimes picks up items for less active neighbours who are ten and twenty years her junior.

  She has lived two full lives, one before and another after her husband’s death, and has managed to pack enough experiences into the second one to fill another three or four lifetimes on top; she is an inspiration to everyone she meets. She loved every minute of her long career at Rowntree’s, and the friends she made there, even though with each passing year, fewer and fewer are left. Even now, aged ninety-four, she is still insisting, ‘I enjoyed every hour of my time at Rowntree’s and I’d go back there today, if only they’d have me!’

  Rowntree’s Timeline

  1725 Mary Tuke opens a grocer’s shop in Walmgate, York.

  1822 Joseph Rowntree Senior opens a grocer’s shop at 28 Pavement, York.

  1862 Henry Rowntree buys the Tukes’ cocoa business.

  1864 Henry Rowntree opens a factory at Tanners Moat.

  1869 Joseph Rowntree Junior joins the business to save it from bankruptcy.

  1881 Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles are launched.

  1893 Rowntree’s Fruit Gums are launched.

  1887 Elect Cocoa is launched.

  1889 Joseph Rowntree Junior’s son Seebohm joins the business.

  1890 Construction work begins on the Haxby Road factory.

  1901 Seebohm Rowntree publishes a study of poverty in York. Joseph Rowntree buys a 150-acre estate as the site for a model village, New Earswick.

  1909 Yearsley swimming pool is completed and presented by Rowntree’s to the City of York.

  1923 Joseph Rowntree steps down as chairman and is succeeded by Seebohm.

  1925 Joseph Rowntree dies.

  1933 Black Magic chocolates are launched.

  1935 Chocolate Crisp is launched. Joseph Rowntree Theatre opens.

  1936 Dairy Box is launched.

  1937 Chocolate Beans are renamed Smarties and relaunched. Chocolate Crisp is renamed Kit Kat.

  1941 George Harris becomes the first non-Rowntree family member to be chairman.

  1942 The old Tanners Moat factory is destroyed in the great German air raid on York.

  1948 POLO mints are launched.

  1952 George Harris is forced to step down as chairman.

  1954 Seebohm Rowntree dies.

  1962 After Eight mints are launched.

  1969 Rowntree’s merges with Mackintosh to form Rowntree-Mackintosh.

  1976 Yorkie bar is launched.

  1988 Nestlé launches a successful takeover bid for Rowntree-Mackintosh. The company is renamed Nestlé-Rowntree.

  2006 Nestlé-Rowntree announces the loss of 645 jobs as production of Smarties and Black Magic is moved abroad. Kit Kat and POLO mints continue to be produced in York.

  2008 Rowntree name is dropped and the company is renamed Nestlé Confectionery (UK).

  2012 150th anniversary celebrations of the founding of Rowntree’s.

  Acknowledgements

  Our greatest and most heartfelt thanks go to the remarkable and inspiring women who shared their stories with us in the course of researching this book. Our thanks not only to the five ‘principal characters’ – Madge Burrow, Florence Davies, Eileen Kelly, Dorothy Pipes and Maureen Hayfield – but to the many other women who worked at Rowntree’s, and to their sons, daughters, nephews, nieces and friends who made contact with us on their behalf. Our sincere thanks to Caroline and Alistair Appleby, Joan and Phil Barnes, Gwen Barrass, Mick Beard, Maureen Blashill, Joyce Burnett, Carol Mackenzie, Marjorie Chapman, Sharon Cowell, Dorothy Edwards, Cherrill Frensham, Shirley Goodyear, Brenda Gray, Marjorie Harrison, Ann Hartley, Sheila Hawksby, Mr Horwell, Sarah James, Lisa Kennedy, Joan Martin, Sue Mizzi, Chris Moorey, Marjorie Parsons, Audrey Peace, Elsie Lilian Scaife, Dorothy Stokes, Mrs Storrs, Madge and Liz Tillett, Hazel Tooth, Muriel Warwick, Kath Webster, Beryl and Denis Woodcock, and to those who preferred to remain anonymous, with our sincere apologies to anyone we may have inadvertently missed.

  We are also indebted to the following for their help and advice: Emma Robertson, author of The Romance of the Cocoa Bean and founder of the website www.cocoareworks.co.uk; Beckie Senior, Sam Spencer, Helen Askham and the staff of York’s Chocolate Story; Sophie Jewett of the York Cocoa House; David Brooks of the Dean Court Hotel in York; Professor Gweno Williams of York St John University; Graham Relton of the Yorkshire Film Archive; Bridget Morris of The Rowntree Society; the staff of the New Earswick Folk Hall; Bernard Drury of the Nestlé Rowntree Bowling Club; Mike Race of the York Oral History Society; the staff of the Fountains Learning Centre, York St John University; York Central Library; the York Castle Museum and the Library and the Borthwick Institute at the University of York; The Press, York; BBC Radio York; Steve Cook and David Swinburne of the Royal Literary Fund; and above all to Alex Hutchinson, Heritage Assistant at Nestlé’s York factory, whose knowledge of the old Rowntree’s factory, its personalities and production methods was invaluable, and to her colleagues James Maxton, Corporate Communications Manager, and Sally Pain, Head of Corporate Communications.

  Our thanks also to Mark Lucas and Alice Saunders at Lucas Alexander Whitley, and at HarperCollins, our gratitude to Iain MacGregor, Jamie Joseph and Holly Kyte in the editorial team, Sarah Patel in publicity, and all those in production and design who worked on the book.

  Copyright

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

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  First published by Harper 2013

  FIRST EDITION

  © Lynn Russell and Neil Hanson 2013

  Cover design: © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2013

  Cover photograph of women © Popperfoto/Getty Images.

  Cover design: The “Rowntree’s” name and image is reproduced with the kind permission of Société des Produits Nestlé S.A.

  A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

  The authors assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

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