APRIL 1959
H O U S E M A G A Z I N E OF J. SAINSBTJRY LTD
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Two New Directors On April 3rd, Mr . Simon Sainsbury, second son of Mr . Alan, was appointed a Director of the Company. Mr. Simon first came to Blackfriars in 1956, having previously qualified as a Chartered Accountant. After initial training he worked in the Personnel Department and as Assistant Secretary of the Company. In his new capacity he will be responsible to Mr. R. J. for the daily functioning of the Personnel Department and Training Centre. Mr. Simon will also continue to work closely with Mr. R. J. and Mr. Turner on general administrative and financial matters affecting both the branches and headquarters.
On the same day Mr. W. M. Justice was appointed a Director of the Company. He started with J.S. at the age of 16 in 1930 and after a period of training in a number of the office departments was transferred to the Meat Departments in 1931, rising to the position of Buyer in 1936. After service in the Forces he returned to Blackfriars in 1946 and took up duties as Personal Assistant to Mr. F . W. Salisbury. Since 1951 he has been concerned with the daily functioning of the Poultry and Fresh Meat Sections of the business, for which he will now be responsible, in the former case to Mr. Alan and in the latter to Mr. Salisbury.
SERIES NO. A61
C o n t e n t s
2 New Directors
3 Four New Branches
4 Hoxton
8 Big and Little Theatre
10 Milled to Fit
15 Money for Breakfast
19 Trophy for us all!
2 0 Socials and Dances
2 2 Personal Items
2 3 Staff News
24- National Service News
2 4 ? What
OUR COVER: Saturday morning in Hoxton Street Market.
2
Four New Branches Building operations are well advanced on four of the sites for new branches which the firm is developing. Our pictures show the street frontages of the new shops.
Walsall • The firm began trading in Walsall in 1936
when we bought the Thorogood shops in the Midlands. Our branch there closed in 1957
because we were unable to renew the lease and we are expecting to open a new counter-service
branch in premises which we have acquired at 47/49 Park Street, Walsall, after the holiday season.
4 Southgate Conversion of the existing building is well advanced at 80)82 Chase Side.
•» The branch will open in the autumn.
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Richmond The new self-service shop in Richmond
at 44/45 George Street is well advanced and we hope to open in the summer.
4 George Street Croydon The main structure of this branch, which will be a self-service one, is almost complete. Opening day will be later this year. The branch will occupy part of the parade shown under construction in our picture.
Up and down in
HOXTON In Hoxton flats are going up and houses are coming down so we took a camera down there, where we've had a branch since 1883. In Hoxton Street changes are beginning to show in new shops, new flats. Bright new buildings and spidery scaffolds appear above the tiles and slates of the old housetops.
Till the last century green fields separated Shoreditch from the crowded City of London and the "Liberty of Hoxton" (it was Hocheston in the Domesday Book) was a little further off. You got into the High Street by going down Curtain Road, where James Burbage built the first theatre in England. Shakespeare worked there. The theatre was a wooden structure in a field and Curtain Road probably a muddy track. But theatres weren't legal in London City and as there's nothing like banning a play to get a full house the track eventually became a road.
Hoxton started to grow in the early 1800s, when City warehouses and offices began to take up more space and drove some residents out of their already congested dwellings. In 1801 there were 128,833 people resident inside the boundaries of the City. There was a gradual move out which speeded up in the second half of the century. By 1891 the resident population of the City had sunk to 37,000. As a matter of interest the resident population in 1951 was 5,268 and in the same year an estimated 400,000 people went to work in the City in the daytime. (If you think the traffic is worse lately you're probably right; currently the working population is 650,000 excluding civil servants.)
When Hoxton expanded it didn't provide a lot of space for its newcomers. They hadn't been used to it in the City and they squeezed into small houses too tightly for health or comfort. Conditions were so bad that Shoreditch Borough by force of circumstance became one of the pioneers of council building and planned drainage schemes.
The district became a centre of the furniture trade early in its existence and is still full of tradesmen and small factories, who make everything from "Contemporary" to Tudor.
Our firm started trading in Hoxton Street in 1883 at No. 183. This shop is now part of an outfitters. It was for a couple of years one of Frank Staples' shops. He was one of the two sons of Benjamin Staples and brother of Mrs. J. J. Sainsbury. He had made several starts in business and this was his last in England. He went to Australia in the middle eighties and became a successful hotel proprietor in Sydney. We gave up this shop in 1894 and opened up at 180 on the other side of the street in a shop which had been a cheesemongers for some years. In 1900 we began trading at both 180 and 182, but in the twenties the shop at 182 became a branch of Boots. It was destroyed by bombing in 1940.
Our shop in Hoxton Street carries on the firm's traditions in a changing world. The whole of London's East End is going through a long overdue reconstruction in which we shall play our part. Before it vanishes we have recorded a little of its colour and vivid life.
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173 | \ A I LO 173
H0U5E OF FASHION
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Down Hoxton Street the market is in full swing on Saturday mornings. Trade is fast and furious in the shops and on the stalls. You can breakfast on fish and chips and shop till lunchtime or after and still not explore all the street has to offer. By evening trade will have died down till next week's pay day comes round.
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MR. P .MURRAY MR. R. R. COOPE:
Manager at Hoxton is MR. A. w. M O R G A N , who joined the firm in 1920 and was first made a manager at Edmonton in 1940. He has been at Hoxton since 1947.
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MRS.P.JOSELIN MISSS.BRINDLE MR. G. HOWARD MISS W. M. HILL MR. J. BOLTON
J.S. PEOPLE AT H O X T O N
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Mrs. Sarah Lane, who ran the Britannia single-handed
from 1849 to 1899.
The Britannia Theatre as it used to be. Its annual benefit night went on from six till midnight, when the actors used to be given legs of lamb and pairs of shoes by their admirers.
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/ra Aldridge, the negro actor who appeared in the part of Aaron in Titus Andronicus in 1852.
Aldridge had a mixed reception in Britain where he, like Paul Robeson, appeared in Othello. Like
Robeson, he was received with acclaim in Russia.
A handbill for the Britannia in 1880.
In 1891 Ada Reeve, who was then 16, played a part in The Old Bogie of the Sea at the Britannia Theatre in Hoxton Street. The proprietress, Mrs. Sarah Haycraft Lane, who was then 80 years old, appeared in the show as a sort of Fairy Godmother. In her corsets, velvet dress and auburn wig she made a deep impression on Ada who says, "She did not look a day over fifty."
Mrs. Lane was well known in the theatre world and in Hoxton where, it is said, she was so popular that she could go alone where policemen would venture only in couples. She inherited the theatre from her husband who died in 1849 and she managed it till she died in 1899. It was at the "Brit" that Sweeny Todd the Barber Fiend of Fleet Street was first performed in 1842 and there, too, that the negro actor Aldridge played in Titus Andronicus in 1852.
The great annual event at the "Brit" was the benefit night, which used to open at six o'clock with a drama and continue with singers, dancers,
Prints and photographs are from the Mander and Mitchesen Collection.
Miss Ellen Pollock, the daughter of Benjamin Pollock. She carried on the model theatre business at the little shop at 73 Hoxton Street which had originally belonged to her grandfather, John Redington.
acrobats, comedians, and intervals for stupendous refreshment when great platters of pies, saveloys and fried fish were carried round followed by waiters with portable zinc bars strapped to their chests. The bars had one container for ale and one for porter and taps at their base.
Penny Plain Twopence Coloured Not far from the "Bri t" used to be the shop of Benjamin Pollock, whose name has been identified with the model theatre ever since Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his essay "Penny Plain, Twopence Coloured" in 1884. The model theatre grew out of the portrait prints of actors that were sold in 18th century print shops. Early in the 19th century printmakers began to print several portraits on one sheet of paper and before long were producing sheets which included whole casts.
Eventually they made tiny replicas of the sets and a stage and proscenium which could be pasted on cardboard, cut out and used to present a
Hoxton Street is rich in t h e a t r i c a l memories. The old Br i tannia T h e a t r e and Pollock's shop d isappeared in the raids of the last w a r but they are warmly remembered by many t h e a t r e lovers.
The lady on the sofa is Ismenefrom "Blackbeard the Pirate" and the dancers are from "Lord Darnley" both popular sheets from The Pollock repertoire.
miniature show. They were often very elaborate, highly coloured and glittering with tinsel. The black and white sheets sold at a penny, for twopence you got a hand-coloured version.
The little shop at 73 Hoxton Street was opened about 1850 by John Redington, who was a printer, bookbinder, stationer and tobacconist. He sold model theatre sheets at first as a retail agent but later he acquired the plates of J. K. Green (who claimed to have originated the idea of the model theatre) and republished them. His daughter Louise married a young furrier, Benjamin Pollock, and when Redington died in 1876, Pollock took over the business.
Stevenson's article did the shop a lot of good and brought model theatre enthusiasts from all over the world to Hoxton Street. Benjamin died in 1937 but Louise carried on there until the last German war. She died in 1944 very much liked in the district and with a wealth of friends in the theatrical profession.
9
If
Milling flour today is a process so complicated that a flow chart of a mill is useful only to an expert. But in spite of this the modern miller is, in principle, doing just the same thing as an Egyptian baker did 6,000 years ago when he ground wheat on a stone slab and sieved it—he is separating the flour from the offal.
There are about 30,000 varieties of wheat. The ones that are commercially useful belong to two groups. Triticum vulgare that yields the kind of flour used in making bread, cakes and biscuits, and a hard wheat, triticum durum, that is used to make macaroni, spaghetti and the other kinds of pasta. Soil and climate decide which of these kinds does best in a particular place. In general the hard kind grows well in Mediterranean and Asiatic countries.
which partly explains why the Chinese eat noodles and the Italians eat spaghetti.
Triticum vulgare grows well in temperate cli-. mates and yields a flour rich in gluten. This is the protein of wheat, a sticky, rubbery substance in its pure form, and it is this which makes spongy and light the white bread we eat in Britain.
There are a lot of variations in these two kinds of wheat and a miller's job in Britain, where we import a great deal of our wheat, is to select, test and blend wheats to produce flours suitable for the many products of commercial baking. The flour sold in a J.S. branch is a general purpose one for homemade pastry, cakes, biscuits or bread. Part of the attraction of this sort of home cooking is in its difference from shop-bought products. But
10
flour for large-scale baking must be "tailored" to yield a consistent product with qualities the housewife has come to expect when she buys a packet of biscuits or a loaf of bread.
Milling grew out of the use of primitive pestles and mortars. The grain was first pounded to get rid of the husk and then rubbed with a flattened stone (a quern) on a flat stone slab to mill it into flour. The first big step forward in milling was made when full rotary movement of a quern pivoted centrally on the lower millstone was introduced.
The Romans, for whom wheat and political power were often identical, developed rotary milling by animal power. Their soldiers carried small portable hand mills wherever the legions
Chelsea Flour Mills look out across
the Thames just above Bat tersea
Bridge in t h e shadow of Lots Road
Power-Stat ion. Upriver to the mills
come barges laden wi th grain brought
to London's docks in ocean-going
transport . The picture below
shows the suction pipe drawing
w h e a t up into t h e storage silos.
A barge brings between 150 and
200 tons of grain on each journey
and the pipe unloads it a t the ra te
of 25 tons an hour
Milled to Fit
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;J| These roller mills break down the grain into flour. After
R o l l e r M i l l s each "break" the resulting mixture of bran and endosperm
went. It was a Roman who raised the first recorded cry against leavened bread. The writer PUny said in his Natural History, "people who live on fermented bread have weaker bodies inasmuch as in old days outstanding wholesomeness was ascribed to wheat the heavier it was."
Flour mills which used water and wind power developed in Europe with the gradual rise in population but the principle remained the same. A quern rotated on a nether millstone. Until 1850 all flour milling in Britain was done this way though the industrial progress of the preceding 100 years had brought improvements in ways of driving the mills, cooling the stones, which could develop
is carried back over the system of pipes to be sieved.
damaging heat, and adjusting the surfaces more precisely.
What was called "low milling" with stones in close contact gave a reasonably good white flour from English wheat with its soft inside (endosperm) and toughish bran coat, but overgrinding of poor-quality wheat could result in a poor flour which made a soggy bread. Hard wheats also yield a dark bran laden flour if so ground. This type of flour has a short life since it contains the oil from the wheat and soon turns rancid. On the Continent, where the hard wheats were grown, "high milling" developed. The grains were just broken at first and then gradually, as the bran was
12
... p—jJi_J—jfc=™ L5 f t
Tfe's "tree" of pipes is a tiny part of the miles long maze of pipes which carry bran and flour through the mill.
Below is the wheat going through the "first break" in a roller mill with specially designed cutting surfaces on the rollers. The husk is first sliced apart from the endosperm here. On the sample board above are the sifted results of the first break after separation in a plansifter. You can
see how at this stage some fine flour is produced as well as coarser particles. The coarse particles go through the
roller mills until all the endosperm has been reduced to flour and the bran has been sifted out.
sifted put, the millstones were brought closer together. This produced a fine white flour of better keeping properties.
The roller mill grew out of this "high milling." The rather violent stone grinding was replaced by a gentler grinding between metal rollers in which the grain is gradually reduced to finer particles and the impurities gradually removed by sieving after each passage over the rollers. Metal rollers are capable of much finer adjustment and temperature control than stones and can be given cutting surfaces adapted to their function.
In the "first break" the grain is shorn open by sharp edges of one roller while held in the flutes of
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a more slowly moving roller. Part of the endosperm is cut away from the outer husk. The rolls are adjusted to ensure that the endosperm part is smaller than the husk so, when sieved, separation is easier. The shearing and sieving process goes on until most of the endosperm is separate from the bran.
By sifting and grading the results of the rolling process nearly all the bran can be removed from the endosperm which is now in the form of coarse particles. This is turned into flour by grinding it between smooth rollers. Bran particles are removed by passing the flour through plan-sifters with silk sieves. The flours from the different plansifters are then grouped together to give grades suitable for the purposes for which the baker wants to use them.
Plansifters Each of these machines contains 72 sieves; large rectangular trays with fine wire mesh bottoms for coarse particles and silk or nylon for flour. The whole body of the plansifter is slung on canes from the ceiling and is moving rapidly on a tiny circular path, which explains the slight fuzziness of the moving parts in our picture.
14
For Breakfast To a small American town the aus tere
diet rules of a religious sect
brought fortunes in dollars and a
new breakfast habit to millions of families iW^W
Over the past 50 years more and more and more people have eaten more and more breakfast cereals toasted, flaked, shredded, shot out of guns, sugared, malted or honeyed. And now the trade has found an historian. Gerald Carson's book on the growth and origins of the trade in processed cereals is entertaining, informative and very readable.*
To the English reader the most surprising thing about the breakfast-food story may be its origins among the religious sects of mid-nineteenth century America. The United States has always been richly provided with new religions and new sects of old ones. Its original settlers were largely dissenting Christians and they were followed by more groups of political and religious nonconformists in search of a freedom they were denied in Europe. Their estimable desire for freedom all too often led them into bigotry and intolerance of a different kind but, since the land was large, dissenters among dissenters could always find room a little further out towards the west. As time and argument splintered the original sects there grew up many varieties of belief—some short-lived, others more robust. And their prophets were not always without honour in their own time and place. Many made rash claims, but many were able to shape their inspiration to the needs of the times.
The Second Advent of Jesus Christ is an event which has frequently moved prophets to announce a definite day for it. The year A.D. 1,000 was once a popular date. When a New York farmer, William Miller, decided that chapters eight and nine of the Book of Daniel meant the return of
* The Cornflake Crusade. Gerald Carson. Gollancz, 21s.
• •
Christ in 1843 he gathered an enthusiastic body of support in the state of New York. His followers gave up making plans for any other future than their Ascension in home-made cambric robes. On the appointed day they climbed hilltops which their literal faith told them would be nearer heaven and, clapping hands as they shouted "Hallelujah," they waited. The next day found them still waiting and Mr. Miller doing revised calculations, which fixed the day more precisely in the following year. Their second disappointment made havoc of the movement but left a band of toughened believers. Some eventually became leaders of the Seventh Day Adventists, whose headquarters were in the small Michigan town of Battle Creek.
The followers of this church kept the Sabbath on Saturday. They also took over many of the ideas of Dr. Sylvester Graham (b. 1794, d. 1851), an American food-reformer who disapproved of white flour, meat, coffee and alcohol. It was as a result of the preoccupation with diet among Seventh Day Adventists that the modern packaged breakfast cereal was evolved. The Adventists were practical American folk as well as visionaries. If they were to prosper they would have to do so through example and teaching. If illness of body and soul could be traced to tobacco, alcohol and butcher's meat then they must demonstrate that man can become better by adopting a vegetarian
15
diet. In 1866 they opened the Western Health Reform Institute at Battle Creek.
It is worth while looking round at this point for reasons other than religious which would account for the Adventist support of vegetarianism. They were only one of many vegetarian groups at the time and perhaps Mr. Carson's description of the contents of a Middle West store accounts for some of the support. He says, "They stocked beef in brine. The rafters were hung with hams and shoulders of smoked meats. There was pork in the meat box, salt mackerel by the barrel. Hogsheads of New Orleans or Porto Rican molasses lay on a stout cradle. Condiments, spices, pepper and mustard were bought in large bulk packages and the dried codfish lay in stiff piles like lumber. Saleratus, the old word for baking soda, came in kegs." He quotes one of the Kellogg family who moved to Michigan in 1834, "Our morning meal was almost invariably hot pancakes with bacon fat and molasses; our dinner was, in part, of pork cooked in some of the various ways—fried, baked or boiled." This inadequate diet created illness and since medical services, like life in these communities, were primitive, painful and often enough lethal there was a distrust of doctoring. Advocates of health through "correct living" found a willing uncritical audience. People were ready to try anything that looked likely to save them from stomach and other aches.
The digestive tract which came in for such rough handling ranked very high in these religious dietetics, the basis of which had been revealed to Sister Ellen G. White in a vision about sunset on June 6th, 1863, at Otsego, Michigan. Sister White had been a Millerite Adventist since she was a young girl and after the disappointments of the two mistimed Advents she saw visions. She became a fundamentalist preacher and, it is said, she could be heard a mile away when she spoke at camp meetings. Her husband was a powerful preacher, too. Between them they travelled the Mid-West and rose to leadership of their sect. So when Sister White, in a trance, announced that the Seventh Day Adventists were to eat only two meals a day, were to eschew meat and rely for nourishment on fruits, vegetables and graham breadf and water her words carried weight. The revelation tallied pretty closely with current "health diets," and at the Western Health Reform Institute it was put to the test.
Unhappily for the Whites they knew little about dietetics and less about medicine. The Institute wasn't a success at first. But, they set about providing it with the means of success. All
t Graham bread was a generic description for wholemeal bread.
the large Kellogg family were members of their church. The father made brooms, the boys sold them. Their brightest boy, John Harvey Kellogg, was chosen by the Whites to be trained as a doctor and establish The Health Reform Institute as a power in the dieting world (and, of course, a spiritual beacon of the Adventist faith). He went off to New York to train and lived on graham biscuits, coconuts and potatoes. In 1875 he graduated. In 1878 he changed the name of the Health Reform Institute to the Battle Creek Sanitarium and invented his first health food, a sort of toasted mixture of oatmeal, cornmeal and wheat, which he called Granula. He was sued by a Dr. Jackson who was already marketing a similar product under the same name. Dr. Kellogg renamed his food Granola and went ahead.
The Sanitarium nourished and grew. He was a good administrator and a skilful and deft surgeon, whose scars were the neatest in the country. He kept in constant touch with new developments in medical science, travelling to Europe to visit the universities of Paris, Vienna and Edinburgh. He got along well with everyone except Sister White, whose fundamentalist faith was outraged by the doctor's tendency to interpret his patients disorders in medical rather than spiritual terms.
From the early days of his connexion with the Sanitarium Dr. Kellogg had run a bakery there to produce the health foods eaten on the premises, and as the fame of the regime grew so there grew a demand for the "dyspeptic crackers" and coffee substitutes the bakery turned out. The Adventist missionaries spreading abroad news of the second coming also spread word of the Sanitarium's work. The doctor soon owned a little group of companies producing health-foods. In fact, he was so busy that he took a young brother on as book-keeper to keep his affairs in order. This was W. K. Kellogg whose signature appears on the Kellogg packeted cereals. The Doctor had always pushed his young brother around and continued to do so at the "San," He used to ride his bicycle round the front lawn while brother William trotted round after him taking dictation.
The origins of flaked breakfast cereal are shrouded in a little mystery and some counter claims. Doctor Kellogg told enquirers that the idea and the method were revealed to him in a dream. Brother William claimed later that he carried out the experimental work. The first wheat flakes made their debut at a Seventh Day Adventist conference at Battle Creek in 1895. They were flakes of wheat because that was the local grain and in any case the equipment available wasn't strong enough to flatten out corn or rice. They weren't very appetising but at least they were a big advance on the existing ways of preparing cereals.
16
By 1900 the Sanitarium Health Food Co. had a plant working 24 hours a day turning out "Granose," as the flaked food was called. Battle Creek began to boom as a foodtown and as details of the technique leaked out scores of small companies started production. Most of them failed or were swallowed up by the larger producers but in the years around 1900 an astonishing number of products were marketed. Malta Vita, Cero-Fruta, Norka, Mapl-Flakes, Food of Eden, Force, Shredded Wheat, Elijah's Manna are some of their names—there were many others. The last-named of these products was the first venture into the cornflake trade by C. W. Post.
Mr. Post was an ex-patient of the Sanitarium. He turned up at Battle Creek in 1891 greatly emaciated and after a few months discharged himself and took to eating. His time at the "San" had convinced him that the health food business was a worthwhile one. In 1895 he marketed in a small but vigorous way Postum Cereal Food Coffee. His next product was Grape Nuts and in 1906, when his business was flourishing as a result of his pushing salesmanship, he put Elijah's Manna on the market. It was a delicious toasted cornflake but its title raised cries of protest from the devout of America. In Britain the name was illegal anyway. Post was puzzled but flexible. He rechristened the flakes Post Toasties—and they went like a bomb.
In the first decade of this century the American housewife decided that leisure was something everyone should have and she was prepared to take a lot of trouble to get it. The packaged breakfast food was one of the early results of this attitude. It is surprising that the Kelloggs with all
their knowledge and invention in processing cereals nearly got left standing in the cornflake race. The Doctor was perhaps preoccupied with medicine. He was certainly over-cautious about money, of which he made a lot but in a rather haphazard way. William Kellogg once commented drily, "My brother is the best disorganiser in the world."
William Kellogg was well aware of the opportunity to make a fortune out of breakfast cereal. He enviously watched C. W. Post, the colourful ex-invalid who had gone into business like an action painter in full fury, who bought property in Texas and rode out to barbecues in a ten-gallon hat, black cowboy boots, silver spurs and a maroon shirt. It "wasn't the way William wanted to live but he did feel, now that he'd reached his forties, he'd like to get out from under his big brother's thumb. Partly because he was an able organiser and partly from habit he'd become the Sanitarium's dogsbody. He tried to leave but the place burnt down and he had to stay to raise funds for rebuilding. He tried to persuade the Doctor to market his cornflakes but the Doctor was sensitive about advertising. It had already landed him in trouble with the American Medical Association.
In 1905 Mr. C. D. Bolin, a St. Louis insurance man, came to the "San" as a patient, ate their cornflakes and wouldn't rest until he had made them available for all. William needed no convincing but the Doctor couldn't see it their way. In the end they worked out a compromise. Bolin raised the money to start and they bought from Dr. Kellogg the right to make the flakes. The patents were not valid but after all the flakes were his invention and it seemed fair that he should
17
become the largest stockholder in the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company which began work in 1906. It was sadly typical of the Doctor that his caution over money led him once more into loss. He distributed part of his stock among the Sanitarium staff doctors in lieu of salary increases. He then left for Europe.
When he got back he found that William had moved in smartly on the stock he had distributed. He had bought it up bit by bit from the "San" doctors and now, holding a majority of stock, he made himself president of the new company. He was 45 when he began this career as an independent business man. Pride in his newly won freedom is reflected in his enormous signature, "W. K. Kellogg," printed on the first packets of Kellogg's cornflakes.
The next few years saw the company fighting a hard and energetic battle for a rich market. William followed C. W. Post's example and advertised heavily. He took on a sales manager from Shredded Wheat since, as he admitted, he knew hardly anything about the grocery business. He embarked on a long series of law suits to try to appropriate to his company the words "Toasted Corn Flakes" and, though he failed in law, he did manage to identify the idea of the product and the Kellogg name in the public mind. He got into all sorts of tangles with his brother who opened new companies and renamed old ones so that wholesalers, retailers and consumers hardly knew who was producing what. By 1911 William had bought out his brother's remaining interests in the cornflake company, and, says Mr. Carson, "Later, when he found himself able for the first time to write a cheque for a million dollars, he said that he had never wanted or expected to be rich, but that other people had made him rich by trying to push him around."
As the years went on, however, William took to
pushing around on his own account. When vitamins became a factor in food marketing the Doctor started to make and sell a vitaminised granular food called Pep. It began to do well enough for William to talk to his son John L . Kellogg about it. John L., who thought he'd heard the name Pep before, set the firm's lawyers searching for a registration. They found that one had been made in 1915 by a New York candy manufacturer called Surbrug. They were a little surprised by his answer when they asked him if he wanted to sell. He said he'd like to and had in fact been negotiating with a man called Kellogg of Battle Creek. Mr. Surbrug was asking 7,500 dollars for the name. The Doctor had stuck at 5,000. William's lawyers quickly did a deal for him at Surbrug's figure and put the Doctor out of the Pep business. Once William had a legal right to the name he put on the market a granulated cereal called Pep which eventually became a popular whole-wheat flake.
The Kellogg fortune grew with the years and William as he grew old and blind gave more and more of it away. He survived into our time retiring and returning to work like a prima donna till in 1951 he died aged ninety-one years and seven months. The Doctor, who had died in 1943, had lived three months longer and had displayed enough energy at ninety-one to wear out a team of reporters and cameramen as he cycled tirelessly round the lawn.
Most of William's fortune went to the Kellogg Foundation. It is one of the vast American endowments which ranks with the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. Its many projects cover the whole field of health and welfare and its activities in the U.S.A. and abroad are conducted through seven divisions—Dentistry, Education, Medicine and Public Health, Hospitals, Nursing, Agriculture and an International Division.
Last Month's Cover Photograph Some of our photographer readers were interested to know how our cover photograph was taken last month. We asked Roy Hole, partner of Mr. Maillard, to tell us how he took it.
He writes:— The exposure for this type of shot has two things to be considered. Firstly it must be exposed
correctly for the illuminated window, and at the same time the exposure must be sufficiently long for the traffic to travel across the limits of the picture.
Bearing in mind that the shop lighting is far more intense than that of the traffic, the negative is made by exposing only when the cars are passing, and capping the lens during traffic lulls.
Using an Ilford H.P.3 Pan. film at a lens stop of F.16 the exposure required for the shop was 90 seconds, which was made by giving nine exposures of 10 seconds each, during traffic runs.
The camera must be used on a firm tripod to avoid shake, etc., as passing vehicles can cause quite a draught!
Moving pedestrians can be ignored—they are silhouetted against the shop lights, and do not, therefore, photograph.
Do not include cars with headlights on, should there be a bend in the road they will certainly shine into the lens at some point and fog your film.
AND DO NOT STAND IN THE ROAD.
18
Trophy FOR US AL The recent award to J.S. of a marketing trophy by the Poultry Association of Great Britain for outstanding work in the marketing of poultry or eggs during the past three years provides public recognition of the efforts which have been made to foster popular demand for "broiler" chicken. The trophy is a perpetual one, to be held for one year and our name will be the first to appear on it.
Behind the award lies an interesting story of trading co-operation between the many people who have been either producing or selling chicken during the past few years. First, all the sales staff at our branches who have been so enthusiastic in pressing forward the sale of this new product, thus aiding a revolution in eating habits. Secondly the many producers and producing groups who have forged ahead so vigorously with new methods of rearing and processing. Nor must we forget our advertising consultants, whose extra "punch" has so helped the demand for a product which only a few years ago was widely regarded as a luxury. Today it is already accepted by millions as an equal alternative to the Sunday joint.
Sometimes it seems hardly possible that the exciting story of our connection with mass-produced chicken, grown intensively under scientific management, began only six years ago.
Maybe our success has been partially due to this early appreciation of the potential market. The future may see a greater degree of competition than has been met during the past few years.
Comparisons are often made between the consumption of chicken meat in America and that so far achieved here. There are, however, essential differences—for example, this country can grow grass 12 months in the year (which the Americans cannot). Moreover American red meat prices are to some extent held up by a Government policy which prohibits imports of beef from some of the world's largest producers. Selling broilers is therefore tougher in Britain than in the States!
There must have been many occasions in the past when some observers, having seen the expansion in sales which had already been achieved, doubted whether further increases were possible. But other, braver souls are still saying: "We haven't really started!"
Currently the firm is engaged in a pilot scheme designed to discover the likely extent of public demand for frying chicken. This method of chicken cookery is as yet relatively unknown in this country. Half a chicken makes a fairly generous meal for three people and can provide quite acceptable portions for four; at prices in the region of 4s. for half a bird it presents good value and is of particular appeal to households where a quickly prepared meal is an attraction; the time spent in cooking is only about 20 minutes. Many experts believe the flavour is more attractive than roast chicken. Some are bold enough to prophesy that ultimately we shall be selling more chicken cut up than whole. What is your guess ?
19
Leicester girls on the right sang for their supper at the Empire Hotel when the section held a dinner and
dance last January. Above, more guests at the same dance having a lively time.
At Berkhamsted's dance on St. Valentine's night at the King's Arms contingents
from several branches turned up. Mrs. Hedges in the centre above, with Mr. and Mrs. Benson of
Berkhamsted, presented the prizes-
Barnet One of the tables at Barnet's very popular Alexandra Palace dance on February 25th.
Kenninghall Some of the visitors to Kenninghall'sgay St. Valentine's night dance at the King's Head, Diss.
Derby Derby's Darts Team who won the Midland's Area Championship on March 11th. The team was: B. Helliwell, D. Potter, S. Whiting, C. Holland, W. McGonigal. Holding the cup is Mr. D. Gorham, Manager of Derby.
Bournemouth Winning team of twenty entered in Bournemouth's inter-shop Darts Competition. L. to r., D. Whittall, D. Cole (capt.), I. Sutton, J. Ryall. They defeated Southbourne 'C team in the finals of this knockout.
21
Guest of Honour Remembering Diana the heifer,
which won the Supreme Championships at the Edinburgh and Smithfield Fat Stock Shows last December,
Strathspey Farmers' Club invited as guest of honour Mr. Charles
Edward, manager of the firm's farm at Kinermony, Banffshire. Having
an after-dinner chat with Mr. Edward (right) and Mr.
D. Mackenzie (centre), who bred Diana, is Mr. T. G. Robertson, president of the Strathspey Farmers' Club.
'Y' Section (Cricklewood) won the Mid-Week cup when they defeated 'D' Section (Finchley) 5-1. Mr. Simon Sainsbury presented the cup to G. Sey, captain of'Y'. On the left are the victors. From left to right: N. Cutts, T. Wilson, F. Cowey, G. Sey, D. Hobbs, R. Clarke, J. Vincent. Kneeling: T. Dowling, G. Wilson, K. Harris, P. Reilly. 'Y' Section have since emerged top of the Griffin Thursday League with 9 wins and 3 draws out of 12 games played.
Big Fish Twenty pounds four ounces is what this turbot weighed when Victor Plows of our branch at 3 London Road, Brighton, caught it when fishing at Hove. The fish is a record catch for the South Coast and fed the Plows family of six with some over.
'Brighton Evening Argus' picture.
'J I 4.3
fcpp
Easter Wedding Cake Mr. H. Robson of Blackfriar's Canteen Staff with a wedding cake he decorated for the Easter wedding of the daughter of Mrs. McCarthy ofJ.S. Works Department. The unusual decoration on top was wholly made by hand by Mr. Robson.
22
World Champion Amateur Ballroom Dancer, Peter Eggleton and his partner. Miss Gradewell, were entertained by his colleagues at Brand & Co. where he works now. Some of our readers will remember Mr. Eggleton, who worked for several years in the Factory Costing Office.
D o w n M e m o r y L a n e A J.S. branch that closed down on February 28th was Blackheath. Our picture shows the branch when the manager was Mr. J. Lamb now superintendent.
Staff News Transfers and Promotions Manage r s
s. A. T O M A L I N from Northampton to Leicester
B. G O R H A M from Leicester to Derby
E. H . RAMSDEN from Derby to Coventry
Assis tant M a n a g e r s j . H . GOULBOURNE from P.A. to Mr. Walter
to 1/4 Ealing for Self-service training from Weybridge to Drury Lane for Self-service training from Walton to Weybridge from Twickenham to 57b Kingston from 57b Kingston to 97 Kingston from 97 Kingston to Chelsea from 250 Kentish Town to Boreham Wood
G. N . H I L L
R. REED
R. SALMON
A. W O P S H O T T
T. D R A N S F I E L D
R. JESSUP
Head Butche r R. L . BARRETT
We are very pleased to record the following promotions:
To Assistant Manager j . j . B E C K W I T H Hemel Hempstead
C. CHARTERIS J. E . H A Y F I E L D K. I N W A R D F . K N I G H T S C. S U M M E R T O N R. J . W I C K E N S
To Head B u t c h e r G. A . BOWYER
Tolworth Hemel Hempstead Chelmsford Cambridge Walton 87 Balham
16 Ilford
from 16 Ilford to East Ham
Marr iages (BETWEEN MEMBERS OF J . S . STAFF) Mr. H. Collison and Miss M. Kavanagh, both of Paddington, who were married on March 14th, 1959.
Obituaries We regret to record the deaths of the following colleagues: L. R. MILLER, who joined the firm in September 1908 at Blackheath. He was appointed a manager in 1914 when he took charge of Southall. He subsequently managed 130 Ealing, and, on his return from mobilisation in 1919, Boscombe. In 1921 he was appointed to Bournemouth which he managed for 11 years before moving to North West London where before his retirement in 1946 he was in charge of 357 Harrow and Kenton. He died on February 22nd. M I S S M. NEAL, who joined the staff of the Factory in 1941. She worked in the Staff Services Department and prior to her retirement in 1951 was Supervisor of the Linen Room. She died on February 23rd.
23
News f rom our Nat iona l Servicemen S. J. BAKER, Kenton. Cyprus (Army). Is stationed at a camp between Kyrenia and the Troodos Mountains and about seven miles from Nicosia. At the moment his work deals with rations and supplies. He does not find it particularly interesting, but is making the best of it. He tells us that the peace settlement has made a considerable difference to service life in Cyprus. I. R. DOZIN, Putney. Aldershot (Army). Seems to have settled down quite well during his first few months in uniform. Apparently, during the first day of his arrival at Aldershot he was kitted up with long woolly pants and a greatcoat at least two sizes too big. He found it a little less amusing the next morning when he had to get up at 5.30 a.m. He hopes to be trained to become a hospital cook and expects, by then, to get better food than he is getting now. D. J. ELLIS, 14/15 Leytonstone. Lyneham, Wilts. He is in the Equipment Section, has been very busy and expects to be even busier now that Bristol Britannias are coming to his station. The section with which he deals is working on spares for Comets and Britannias. He tells us that he did not realise until he went to Lyneham, how many thousands of parts are needed for the servicing of an aircraft. C. NOBLE, Head Office. Cyprus (Army). Has recently started work as a pay clerk with a signal regiment just
outside Nicosia. Finds that he is able to visit more places of entertainment now that the restrictions have been lifted, and during the coming summer he intends visiting various parts of the island. T. A. RANKIN, Oxford. Bridgnorth (R.A.F.). He is on an eight-week training course and expects to return to Hereford for a further 12-week course. He hopes to be able to continue with his trade of Butcher. R. J. WILKINSON, Winchester. Aldershot (Army). Has recently passed a nursing examination at the Cambridge Military Hospital, Aldershot, and is receiving a slight increase in pay as a result. He finds his work in the R.A.M.C. very interesting, but is looking forward to his release at the end of the year.
Welcome back t o : A. HUNT resumed January 26th, 1959, at East Sheen, after a period in the R.A.S.C. stationed at Aden and Bahrain. P . SARRATT returned March 16th, 1959, at Walling-ton. He was in the Royal Horse Artillery in Germany. R. BARLOW resumed March 16th, 1959, at Potters Bar. His two years in the Royal Air Force were spent at Andover. R. McKINLAY resumed March 16th, 1959, at Coventry, after service in the Royal Air Force. J. ELDERGILL returned April 13th, 1959, at 158 Catford. He was in the A.C.C. and most of his service life was spent in Germany.
Can you identify the object in the picture below ? For the first correct identification to be opened "J.S. Journal'* offers a prize of a
• £1-0-0 Premium Bond Entries should be sent to "J.S. Journal," Stamford
_ _ . __ A _ House, London, S.E.I, marked " }WhaC and must " M # \ I arrive not later than May 8th, 1959.
? What Not an easy one last
month to judge by entries. No it wasn't chitterlings
or casings. It was a red cabbage cut through and
wrapped. First entry to be opened and to identify it positively for what it is was sent in by J. Wishart
of J.S. Sampling Room at Stamford House.
To him goes a £ 1 . 0 . 0 Premium Bond and our
best wishes. And thanks, too, for our entry
from Denmark.
If you can write a letter you can probably write an article or a story for J.S. Journal. There are no limitations on subject matter though we suggest that writers should stick to personal observation or experience for their material. For contributions from J.S. staff we pay at the rate of £2-2-0 for every 750 words published. For photographs by members of the staff we pay 10/6 for each print published.
Send your manuscripts or your photographs to: The Editor, J.S. Journal, Stamford House, Stamford Street, London, S.E.I
K.J.L., Hopton Street, S.E.I
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Manager at Hoxton is MR. A. w. MORGAN, who joined the firm in 1920 and was first made a manager at Edmonton in 1940. He has been at Hoxton since 1947.
M R . P . M U R R A Y MR. R.R. COOPER MRS. P. JOSELIN MISS S. B R I N D L E
J.S- PEOPLE AT HOXTON MISS W. M. H I L L MR. J. B O L T O N
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Milling flour today is a process so complicated that a flow chart of a mill is useful only to an expert. But in spite of this the modern miller is, in principle, doing just the same thing as an Egyptian baker did 6,000 years ago when he ground wheat on a stone slab and sieved it—he is separating the flour from the offal.
There are about 30,000 varieties of wheat. The ones that are commercially useful belong to two groups. Triticum vulgare that yields the kind of flour used in making bread, cakes and biscuits, and a hard wheat, triticum durum, that is used to make macaroni, spaghetti and the other kinds of pasta. Soil and climate decide which of these kinds does best in a particular place. In general the hard kind grows well in Mediterranean and Asiatic countries,
which partly explains why the Chinese eat noodles and the Italians eat spaghetti.
Triticum vulgare grows well in temperate climates and yields a flour rich in gluten. This is the protein of wheat, a sticky, rubbery substance in its pure form, and it is this which makes spongy and light the white bread we eat in Britain.
There are a lot of variations in these two kinds of wheat and a miller's job in Britain, where we import a great deal of our wheat, is to select, test and blend wheats to produce flours suitable for the many products of commercial baking. The flour sold in a J.S. branch is a general purpose one for homemade pastry, cakes, biscuits or bread. Part of the attraction of this sort of home cooking is in its difference from shop-bought products. But
10
flour for large-scale baking must be "tailored" to yield a consistent product with qualities the housewife has come to expect when she buys a packet of biscuits or a loaf of bread.
Milling grew out of the use of primitive pestles and mortars. The grain was first pounded to get rid of the husk and then rubbed with a flattened stone (a quern) on a flat stone slab to mill it into flour. The first big step forward in milling was made when full rotary movement of a quern pivoted centrally on the lower millstone was introduced.
The Romans, for whom wheat and political power were often identical, developed rotary milling by animal power. Their soldiers carried small portable hand mills wherever the legions
C h e l s e a Flour Mills look o u t a c r o s s
t h e T h a m e s j u s t a b o v e B a t t e r s e a
B r i d g e in t h e s h a d o w o f Lots Road
P o w e r - S t a t i o n . Upriver t o t h e mi l l s
c o m e b a r g e s l a d e n w i t h g r a i n b r o u g h t
t o London ' s d o c k s in o c e a n - g o i n g
t r a n s p o r t . T h e p i c t u r e b e l o w
s h o w s t h e s u c t i o n p i p e d r a w i n g
w h e a t u p i n t o t h e s t o r a g e s i l o s .
A b a r g e b r i n g s b e t w e e n 150 a n d
2 0 0 t o n s o f g r a i n on e a c h j o u r n e y
a n d t h e p i p e u n l o a d s it a t t h e r a t e
o f 25 t o n s a n hour
Milled
to Fit
m
: • : : . : - • . • • . • • : : : .
•pEIY
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JTrase roller mills break down the grain into flour. After R o l l e r m i l l s each "break" the resulting mixture of bran and endosperm
is carried back over the system of pipes to be sieved.
went. It was a Roman who raised the first recorded cry against leavened bread. The writer Pliny said in his Natural History, "people who live on fermented bread have weaker bodies inasmuch as in old days outstanding wholesomeness was ascribed to wheat the heavier it was."
Flour mills which used water and wind power developed in Europe with the gradual rise in population but the principle remained the same. A quern rotated on a nether millstone. Until 1850 all flour milling in Britain was done this way though the industrial progress of the preceding 100 years had brought improvements in ways of driving the mills, cooling the stones, which could develop
damaging heat, and adjusting the surfaces more precisely.
What was called "low milling" with stones in close contact gave a reasonably good white flour from English wheat with its soft inside (endosperm) and toughish bran coat, but overgrinding of poor-quality wheat could result in a poor flour which made a soggy bread. Hard wheats also yield a dark bran laden flour if so ground. This type of flour has a short life since it contains the oil from the wheat and soon turns rancid. On the Continent, where the hard wheats were grown, "high milling" developed. The grains were just broken at first and then gradually, as the bran was
12
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m L^a
This "tree" of pipes is a tiny part of the miles long maze of pipes which carry bran and flow through the mill.
Below is the wheat going through the "first break" in a roller mill with specially designed cutting surfaces on the rollers. The husk is first sliced apart from the endosperm here. On the sample board above are the sifted results of the first break after separation in a plansifter. You can
see how at this stage some fine flour is produced as well as coarser particles. The coarse particles go through the
roller mills until all the endosperm has been reduced to flour and the bran has been sifted out.
sifted put, the millstones were brought closer together. This produced a fine white flour of better keeping properties.
The roller mill grew out of this "high milling." The rather violent stone grinding was replaced by a gentler grinding between metal rollers in which the grain is gradually reduced to finer particles and the impurities gradually removed by sieving after each passage over the rollers. Metal rollers are capable of much finer adjustment and temperature control than stones and can be given cutting surfaces adapted to their function.
In the "first break" the grain is shorn open by sharp edges of one roller while held in the flutes of
