by Lynn Russell
The cocoa liquor was then transported to the Melangeur Block at the southeastern corner of the factory site, between the railway lines and the Wigginton Road. There the cocoa liquor was mixed with sugar, vanilla and some of the cocoa butter, and ‘conched’ – stirred continuously to allow the volatiles, the vinegary acids contained within the chocolate liquor, to rise to the surface and evaporate, creating a distinctive, sharply acidic smell that cut the rich aroma of chocolate over that corner of the factory. The longer the chocolate was conched, the smoother and better tasting it was. The chocolate for the Black Magic assortments was conched for two days – ‘two long days’ according to the advertising copy – allowing almost all of the volatiles to evaporate and leaving a rich, high-quality chocolate behind.
The Melangeur Block produced a continual assault on the senses. Pushed by men dripping with sweat in the hot, humid atmosphere, steel containers like the ‘coal tubs’ used in coal mines rumbled across the floor between the ranks of huge, clanking machines, their paddles moving endlessly to and fro as they conched the chocolate. Some found the constant heavy aroma of chocolate in the air – so rich that it was tasted as much as smelled – enticing, but others thought it was overpowering and a few found it nauseating. Still others failed to notice it at all, as if their sense of smell had been so overwhelmed that it had simply ceased to function.
The hot liquid chocolate produced in the Melangeur Block was sent to all the different departments, including the Cream Block where the chocolate assortments were made, and the Cake Block (chocolate blocks were known as ‘cake’) in the centre of the factory site, near the offices, where chocolate bars like Aeros and Kit Kats were produced. Originally the liquid chocolate was carried in huge tubs, but later it was pumped under pressure through a network of insulated pipes, like some strange forerunner of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Another network of pipes running throughout the factory, like the steam heating pipes that run beneath the streets of Manhattan, carried steam generated by the boiler house to provide heat for melting the chocolate and for various other processes; it also warmed the radiators throughout the factory. There was even enough spare capacity to heat the water in the Yearsley swimming pool on the far side of the Haxby Road via a pipe laid beneath the road. It was supplied as a goodwill gesture, with the City of York only being charged a nominal sum for it.
Eileen’s mother, Doris, had worked at Rowntree’s on the night shift, making munitions throughout the war, and with her father away fighting for his country, Eileen’s granddad used to look after her while her mum was at work or sleeping during the day. After Arthur came home, Doris stopped work and in late 1946 she gave birth to a son, a little brother for Eileen, but he lived for only five hours before he died:
Mum lost three children altogether. I was the firstborn, then she had a stillbirth, and on the night of the York Blitz in April 1942 she lost a baby boy as well, and then there was the little one after the war. She should never have had children really. She had a very rare blood group, Rhesus B Negative, which I and the rest of my family have all got, but they didn’t know what it was then. Rhesus Negative wasn’t discovered until 1948 and she was already gone then. When you have a child now, you are given an injection straight away to prevent antibodies that would damage the next baby, and I’ve been lucky because I’ve never made any antibodies anyway, but it cost my mum three children. My little brother was only two and a half pounds when he was born, but he was lovely, and I don’t know if my mum ever really recovered from the shock of losing him. I don’t think Dad did either. It was the only time I ever saw my father cry, and I’ve never, ever seen a man cry like that again. He was absolutely heartbroken. My mum died two years later, in January 1948, when I was only twelve. Had she been living today, the doctors would almost certainly have saved her life. She probably had toxicaemia and pre-eclampsia, but she shouldn’t have died. Had she been sent to hospital earlier, she would probably have survived. It hit my dad hard; in fact, I think losing my mum hit him even harder than losing his eyesight.
As soon as St Dunstan’s heard about Doris’s death, one of their visitors, ‘a big, tall lady’ called Miss Pierce, came and took Eileen out with her for two days, just to get her away from the house and spare her at least some of the upset and sadness. ‘Miss Pierce took me round with her to all the houses she was visiting,’ Eileen says, ‘and we went for a drive out into the country in her car and she took me for tea and cake, both of which were very big treats for me, indeed for anyone at the end of the war, but that was the sort of thing St Dunstan’s did. They didn’t just care for the blind people, they looked after their families too.’
When Eileen’s mum died, the family were living at Tang Hall, on Carter Avenue, about a mile east of the city centre, and it was quite a distance from the factory, so they needed to make it easier for her dad to get to work. ‘My auntie, Dad’s youngest sister, stepped in then and even gave up her own job to come and live with us and help out,’ Eileen says, ‘but we just had to move, there was no two ways about it, we had to get him nearer to the factory. He couldn’t have got to work otherwise, because he couldn’t go on the bus on his own.’ So in May of that year they moved to Tennyson Avenue, just off Burton Stone Lane, a few hundred yards west of the factory, on the far side of the mainline railway tracks.
About a year later, Arthur remarried. He met Eileen’s future stepmother, Alice, at Dunollie, the Cocoa Works Rest Home established by Rowntree’s in Scarborough. At the end of the war, the Rowntree’s Board of Directors had a substantial sum left over from the wartime hardship fund they had established for employees on National Service and their families, and from which Eileen’s family had benefited. Rather than simply distributing it through the profit-sharing scheme, the directors opted to use the remaining money to establish a rest home instead, where employees in need of convalescence from illness or injury, or who had undergone a period of stress or a bereavement, could apply to have two weeks’ rest and recuperation at no cost to themselves, well away from their work and family commitments.
Dunollie, a large detached house set in two acres of grounds on Filey Road, near the South Cliff in Scarborough, was purchased and converted to provide accommodation for thirty-three people, including the staff. It had spectacular views towards the castle and out over the harbour, and was lavishly appointed, with a stone-pillared entrance opening onto a beautiful oak-panelled hall with a minstrels’ gallery. There were marble fireplaces, intricate plasterwork, a library, a billiards room with cedarwood panelling and twenty-five bedrooms. The aim was that Dunollie should have ‘the atmosphere of a guest house rather than a convalescent home, and accommodate employees of either sex and of any age’. In line with that description, just like the holidaymakers in the town’s boarding houses, residents of Dunollie were banished from the house during the day and had to go for a walk round the Italian Gardens, or stroll along the promenade or the pier until late afternoon.
Although some of the residents were convalescing or in mourning, others had simply gone there for a rest and, freed from the grinding routine of their daily work, many were more than ready for a bit of fun. Eileen’s friends Sue and Maggie went to Dunollie to recuperate after they had both been ill. It was Mischief Night while they were there, a once-strong northern tradition that involved playing pranks on people the night before Bonfire Night, but which has now largely fallen into disuse as the American Halloween has taken over kids’ imaginations. Sue and Maggie had exchanged a bit of banter with two men who were also staying at Dunollie, and when the men went off to the pub, Sue and her friend borrowed a needle and thread from the nurse, went up to the men’s room and sewed up the cuffs of their pyjama jackets and trousers. After the men had come back from the pub, well refreshed, Sue and Maggie listened outside their door, stifling their laughter as they heard the commotion when the men discovered the trick that had been played on them. An hour or so later, when the men’s loud snores showed that they had fallen into a drunken sleep, Sue an
d Maggie tiptoed back into their room and, while the men slept on in blissful ignorance, the two women swapped over the two sets of false teeth that were steeping in glasses on the bedside tables. When they came down in the morning, both of them had put in the wrong false teeth and spent most of breakfast grumbling to each other about how ‘My teeth just don’t seem quite right somehow.’ Although they eventually realized their mistake, they assumed it was their own drunken error from the night before, and never discovered the trick Sue and Maggie had played on them.
However, resting employees were not supposed to enjoy themselves too much while in Scarborough. There was an eleven o’clock curfew at night to stop those who had been enjoying their own brand of recuperation in Scarborough’s pubs from staying out too late and disturbing the other occupants of the house.
Rowntree’s had also sent Eileen’s dad to Dunollie to help him recover after suffering some kind of nervous breakdown in the aftermath of Doris’s death. While he was staying at Dunollie he met Alice, who also worked at Rowntree’s making Smarties, though Arthur had never met her there; with so many thousands of employees, it was impossible to get to know more than a tiny proportion of the people who worked at the factory. Alice had had complications following an operation and had been sent to Dunollie to recuperate, and the two of them got talking and spent most of the rest of their time there together. They kept in touch after they came back to York, and Alice then began coming round to the house regularly to take Arthur out for a drink. Eventually, a year or so later, they got married.
‘She was younger than Dad,’ Eileen says, ‘lovely and very kind, and we all got on with her really well. She was only twenty-seven when they married, nine years younger than him, and she took on a blind man with a fourteen-year-old stroppy daughter – which I was in those days – and she was good for him, there’s no doubt about that. He was not an easy man to live with, I think, but Alice was a wonderful wife to him. She absolutely adored him and was totally devoted to him.’
After the marriage, Alice stopped working at Rowntree’s, because she felt she wanted to take care of Arthur and be free to take him to work in the mornings and to bring him back at night. She used to walk with him along the street and up onto the railway bridge every morning, where one of his mates from work would meet them and take Arthur in to work. Alice would then go back up to the bridge at 5.30 p.m. and meet him again after his day’s work.
Despite his disability, Eileen’s dad continued to do all the things he used to do when he could see. Before the war he used to enter the walking races at the Rowntree’s sports days and races run by the local working men’s club. ‘When he came back blind,’ Eileen says, ‘we all thought that he would never be able to race-walk again, but Dad had a very different opinion about that. Every Whit Monday the club organized a big walking race called “The Clarence Walk”, held through the streets of York, and after the war, they had a trophy made, a really nice one about eighteen inches high, and named it “The Arthur Morgan Trophy” in his honour, never imagining that he would ever race for it.’
However, despite his blindness and the continuing pain from his war wounds, Arthur was determined that he was going to enter the 1950 race and he began training in secret. His plan was to start from the bottom of Malton Road and walk all the way to the Hopgrove (near what is now the York outer ring road) and back, about the same distance as the actual race. Eileen’s Uncle Bill – Arthur’s brother-in-law – was to ride shotgun, pedalling his bike alongside. When Eileen saw them getting ready to go out, she ran to get her own bike out of the back yard. ‘Can I come too?’ she said as she wheeled it into the street.
Her dad’s expression showed that he did not think much of the idea. ‘You won’t be able to keep up,’ he said.
‘I will, I will. Ple-e-e-ease,’ she said, as she saw him wavering.
‘All right then, but if you fall behind, you’ll have to go straight home.’
She watched, puzzled, as Bill fastened a dog collar tight around the bicep of her father’s right arm and clipped a lead to it. He then mounted his bike, holding the other end of the lead in his hand. They set off up the street, an odd procession with Arthur striding out, Bill riding alongside him, and Eileen bringing up the rear, her legs pedalling furiously to keep up with them. They made unsteady progress at first, with Arthur veering from left to right, stumbling into the gutter at one point, and at another almost bumping into the bike, as Bill issued a stream of commands – ‘Left a bit … Now come right a little … You’re too close to the kerb …’ – but gradually they grew more confident in each other, and by the time they were halfway to the Hopgrove, Bill, still acting as navigator, did not need to say a word or even glance in Arthur’s direction. Still holding the dog lead, Bill concentrated on steering a straight line with his bike, while Arthur focused on the pressure of the lead on his bicep. If he felt it beginning to go taut, he knew he was walking too much to the left, and if he felt it slacken, he knew he was going too much to the right, and that was how he kept on track and could keep to a dead straight course, even while walking flat out.
Although her legs were aching long before they reached the Hopgrove and turned for the homeward leg, Eileen did not utter a word of complaint and she kept pedalling along behind them all the way back. She was stiff as a board when she got up for school the next morning, but when they got ready to go out again that night, she was once more sitting on her bike, ready to follow them.
As far as possible, Eileen’s father did his training for the race in secret and did not hand in his entry form until the last possible moment. As usual the local bookmakers were taking bets on the race. Off-course bookmaking was illegal then, but the police usually overlooked it. If you asked anyone around the town in those days, they would almost certainly be able to point out the nearest bookies to you, usually in a backstreet building with frosted glass windows or the blinds pulled down, a pall of cigarette smoke hanging over it and a surprisingly large number of men coming and going through its door.
Despite Arthur’s attempts to keep his training regime secret, word inevitably began to get around. Neighbours saw him setting off and coming back, dripping with sweat, an hour or so later, and put two and two together, and after he handed in his entry form at the club, the secretary was telling everyone he knew. When people heard Arthur was entering the race, they began putting bets on him to win. At first the bookies offered generous odds against him, perhaps scarcely believing that people would be stupid enough to risk their money by betting on a blind man with a patched-up kneecap from a war wound, and certain in any case that he could not win. However, so many punters took the odds, including large numbers of Arthur’s workmates at Rowntree’s, that the bookies stood to lose a fortune if Arthur won – he even had a big bet on himself – so they set out to do everything they could to stop him winning.
The race took place over a six-mile course through the streets of York, starting at the working men’s club, passing along Clarence Street, Gillygate and Bootham, and finishing at the old Clifton Hospital. The streets along the course were absolutely packed with people, and Eileen can still remember the deafening noise of them shouting and cheering. Among the crowd were judges making sure that the walkers were all heeling and toeing, and that none of them were cheating by breaking into a run. There were also a few of the bookies’ henchmen scattered through the crowd, who shouted, howled and whistled whenever her father came within range, trying to put him off and disrupt his communications with his brother-in-law. When that failed, they jostled Bill on his bike, causing him to swerve dangerously close to Arthur and nearly sending him over the handlebars at one point – but Arthur kept striding on, steadily moving clear of the field. In desperation, the bookies’ men even got someone to let a dog loose in front of Arthur, in the hope that he would fall over it, but although he stumbled, he recovered himself and kept going. Despite everything they did to try to stop him, he eventually won the race by a distance. ‘I was cheering and shouting myself h
oarse as I saw him coming towards the finish line,’ Eileen says. ‘But he just walked in, as if it was all part and parcel of the day, a bit of a stroll to work up an appetite for lunch. Now we’ve got the Paralympics and all that, so we’re used to disabled people doing things,’ she says, ‘but in his day it was a novelty; disabled people just didn’t do that sort of thing then. When he won the Clarence Walk, his own walk for the Morgan Cup, it even made the Daily Mirror – my son still has the photograph that the Mirror took of the three of us: my dad, Uncle Bill on the bike and me on my little pushbike next to them.’
Eileen’s dad was not the only big winner that day. There was a well-known man around York called Joe Miller, who owned a number of fish and chip shops. He was a big gambler, too. After the race, he came into the changing room, walked up to Eileen’s dad and pressed a note into his hand and said, ‘Have a drink with me and from now on every time you do that, that’s what you’ll get.’ Arthur thought it must be a ten-shilling note or something, but when he showed it to Bill, he said, ‘Do you know what he’s just given you? That’s a twenty-pound note you’ve got there.’ Twenty pounds was an absolute fortune then, the equivalent of well over £500 today. However, Arthur didn’t keep the money; together with his own winnings from the bookmakers and his prize money from the race, he donated it to St Dunstan’s in gratitude for all the help they had given him. In addition, all the proceeds from the concert held at the working men’s club that night were given to St Dunstan’s. Eileen was not there; at fourteen years old she was too young to be allowed in the club, even on such a special night for her father, and while he celebrated with Alice, Bill and his friends, Eileen was at home with her grandmother as usual.