Biscuit Girls

by Hunter Davies

  Allen Carr is photographed giving out gold watches for long service, seven ladies having achieved more than forty years. There were two pages of recent marriages – twenty-five women workers having got married. Most of them seemed to be working in the chocolate department. None of the bridegrooms’ jobs are listed, which indicates the woman had married out, i.e., to non-Carr’s workers – the days of internal romances, which Eric Wallace had enjoyed, perhaps being fewer or perhaps more discreet.

  A detailed account of how the wages department operated reveals there were 1,300 workers in 1964, so numbers had dropped since the 1950s. They were using thirty-four different clocks for clocking in. Piecework was still being done.

  There were two unusual features, which one might not have expected in a works magazine. A long article by the export manager recounts his meeting in Germany 1945 with Dr Konrad Adenauer, later the German chancellor, then leader of the Catholic Democrat Party in Westphalia.

  Equally historic, at least in the realms of pop music history, is a first-person description of the Beatles concert at the Lonsdale cinema in Carlisle on 21 November 1963. First-hand printed reports of a Beatles concert by a young fan were unusual at this stage, but she is not named. Presumably it was one of the younger cracker packers on her evening off.

  That handsome, fun-filled, fact-packed issue of the Topper Off which appeared in February 1964 is therefore not just of interest to Carr’s staff and biscuit historians but with the Adenauer story and the early Beatles concert it covered by chance some interesting political and social events of the day.

  Alas, it also turned out to be the last issue of Topper Off. They were not aware of it, or at least there is no editorial reference in the magazine to the dramatic event that happened in early 1964.

  Carr’s of Carlisle had been taken over. The family had sold out their remaining shares and given up the reins, which had been handed down through the generations since Jonathan Dodgson Carr began it all in 1831.

  The big bad wolf who had appeared and gobbled them up was not a rival biscuit firm, which might have been expected, but a financial entrepreneur and maverick gobbler up of companies – Jimmy Goldsmith. His company Cavenham Foods was now the new owner of Carr’s of Carlisle.

  His fantasy, so it appeared to the business community at the time, was to buy as many biscuit companies as he could. According to Ian Carr, who was one of the Carr’s directors at the time, Goldsmith wanted to buy Associated Biscuits, which comprised Huntley & Palmers, Peek Frean and Jacob’s. He would then have only United Biscuits, the other main group, to contend with.

  Goldsmith was of Anglo-French origin, born in 1933, educated at Eton, a gambler and womaniser, who ran off at the age of twenty with a seventeen-year-old Bolivian tin heiress. He ended up getting married three times. ‘When a man marries his mistress, he creates a vacancy,’ so he famously said. His children include Zak Goldsmith, the Tory MP, and Jemima Khan, the writer and socialite.

  From the 1960s onwards, Jimmy Goldsmith was voraciously buying up companies in the food business, including Bovril, immediately selling off their South American interests. He was feared as an asset stripper, who had no real interest or knowledge of the food business, least of all biscuits, but the Carr’s board, worried about rising costs and narrower margins, decided to sell when Mr Goldsmith made a handsome cash offer for all the shares.

  It marked the end of the Carr family connection with Carr’s biscuits. Carr’s Flour Mills, still going strong, which J.D. himself had set up, had split from the biscuit factory back in 1908 and become an independent company, though still, in 1964, with members of the Carr family on the board and holding minority shares.

  Mr Goldsmith promised that he would keep Carr’s of Carlisle in full operation. Which not everyone believed.

  Chapter 9

  Jean

  When Jean, who had grown up in Liverpool, married a Carlisle soldier and had come to live in the town, started at Carr’s in April 1971, Jimmy Goldsmith and Cavenham Foods had been running the factory for seven years.

  Despite the fears and rumours, no closures had taken place, nothing much had changed and things ticked over much as they had done in 1964. Workers and local people still called it Carr’s and the name still appeared on their famous water biscuits.

  Until she came to Carlisle, Jean had never heard of Carr’s. In Liverpool the two biscuit factories everyone had heard of were Crawford’s and Jacob’s, where many of her friends worked. Crawford’s, the one that called itself the world’s oldest biscuit maker, had opened a Liverpool factory in 1860. Jacob’s, originally from Ireland, had opened their Liverpool factory in 1914.

  Jean’s first impression of Carr’s was of a lovely smell – and also the noise, but she doesn’t remember being overwhelmed by the size of the factory, like most Carlisle born-and-bred workers. She had worked in large establishments before, with lots of people, though never in a factory with machinery, hence being struck by the noise.

  ‘I don’t remember getting lost. We were shown around for the first few days till you got used to the place.’

  Jean’s first job at Carr’s was on Lifeboat biscuits, standing at a bench with six other girls, taking the biscuits out of a very big tin and putting twelve at a time into a smaller tin, then closing the lid.

  ‘If you didn’t cut your fingers on the tins then you cut them on the paper packing. The biscuits were thick and hard as rock.’

  There was no conveyor belt bringing the Lifeboat biscuits in or out. Barrowmen and barrow boys were still bringing in the big tins filled with biscuits and taking away the little tins.

  Jean was then moved on to what was known as D Line, where shortcake biscuits did come on a conveyor belt, direct from the oven, before being packed in tins. Eight girls, plus a charge hand, stood either side of the belt and changed places at intervals to give their shoulders and arms a rest. One of them always had to keep an eye on the biscuits in case they fell off, as the conveyor belt was on a slope from the ovens. There was also one man working in their team, or at least assisting, a machine operator who made sure the belt was operating properly.

  Jean had chosen to work the evening shift, from six to ten, as her three children were still quite young, aged from five to fourteen. Her husband Jack, after a day lorry driving, looked after them when he came home.

  ‘As he came in, I left, leaving his tea ready for him. For the next eleven years I hardly saw him, except at weekends.’

  By the time Jean started, the workers were not allowed to take their overalls out of the factory at all, which was what Ivy had done. It was feared they might pick up nasty infections from the street or buses or in their own homes. Instead, each was given their own locker at work. The factory was now doing the washing. When she started, the overalls – as they always called them, though in fact they were more like a long housecoat, buttons at the front, down to the knees – had been made of nylon, but very soon they were upgraded to linen, which the girls liked much better.

  After a year working at Carr’s, Jean began to hear rumours of a takeover, or merger, something dramatic was said to be in the offing. All the other girls told her about the fears they had had eight years earlier when Cavenham had arrived out of the blue, and how it had been so sudden. Their worries came mainly afterwards, wondering what it all meant, if some workers would be laid off, but in the end, things had settled down.

  Now there were rumours of another takeover, which might well turn out to be more dramatic than the last one.

  ‘The main worry of course was that we would be closed and all put out of work, but luckily it didn’t happen. In fact I have a memory that we were given a bonus, from Cavenham presumably, because they had made a good profit on the sale.’

  The new owners were United Biscuits, who took over in 1972. They had closed several factories, mainly in Scotland, but at least they were long experienced in the biscuit world and had by now built a large portfolio of well-known biscuit companies, including McVitie’s, McFarl
ane Lang, Crawford’s, McDonald’s, Kemps and also KP Nuts. Around the time of the Carr’s takeover, United Biscuits were employing 25,000 workers, with biscuit factories in London, Liverpool. Manchester, Glasgow, Ashby de la Zouch, Halifax, Aberdeenshire, Grimsby and now Carlisle. They were turning over £150 million a year and operating in eight countries, aside from the UK.

  Life and work at Carr’s continued as before, with most locals and workers still calling the factory and the biscuits by their old name, even though the McVitie’s sign soon started to appear on the factory walls, along with the name Carr’s, and the proud boast that it was the birthplace of biscuits.

  ‘We were told Carr’s was kept going because the Table Water Biscuits were so successful. They couldn’t be made anywhere else because of the water we used. I don’t know whether that was true or not, but we believed it.’

  Another theory was that the good industrial relations at Carr’s, with no strikes in recent decades, had been the deciding factor in keeping the Carr’s factory working. But the main reason was probably simple finances – the factory was running at a profit, the site was organised and big enough to expand when needed, so why close it?

  After ten years working at Carr’s, Jean applied to be a charge hand. She had heard there was a vacancy and it would mean £1 more a week. She was interviewed but turned down. ‘It was given to a girl who had been at Carr’s longer than me. A year later, I applied again and this time got it. I then discovered I could have had it first time. They had made a mistake – she had not been there longer.’

  When Jean became a charge hand, promoted to the pink overall, she managed at the same time to change her hours, moving to an early morning shift, from six in the morning till two in the afternoon.

  As a charge hand, she organised the break times for the other girls, kept a list of the work done by each girl, how much had been packed, and also kept an eye out for any faults or problems with the biscuits.

  ‘I was on Table Water for a long time and you had to make sure the edges were not burned. If that started happening, you didn’t pack them, just let them continue on the belt and they fell off into a bin. If it was happening a lot, you would go and tell the foreman in charge of the oven, show him the burned ones. He would eff and blind, curse you right, left and centre.

  ‘When I first started at Carr’s, I went there and back on the bus each day, but when I went on to the morning shift, six to two, I had to start very early in the morning, so I shared a taxi with four other girls. It was quite expensive, but saved us a lot of time on very dark, cold mornings and was a lot nicer.

  ‘But I still got the bus home at two, at the end of my shift. That was always a mad rush, with so many people clocking off at the same time. You had to queue and fight to get on the bus, so often I would just walk into town, do some shopping, and then get the bus home from the town hall. Not on a Friday, though, the centre of Carlisle was always pandemonium on a Friday – and of course even worse on a Saturday, with all the country people coming in. It still is.’

  By the time Jean became a charge hand, the grade of supervisor – one rung up from charge hand – had been abolished. Next up in the hierarchy was the manager class, but she rarely saw any managers.

  On the morning shift, her girls were allowed a ten-minute tea break around 7.45. If times were slack, as in winter, they might all go together, otherwise they went in relays. It had been agreed with the union that charge hands could decide the order. At eleven o’clock they had breakfast, for which they were allowed thirty minutes. Then there was another tea break around 1 p.m. of ten minutes. The welcoming hooter for the end of their shift sounded loud and clear at two o’clock.

  ‘I never got away exactly at two, more like 2.15 as each charge hand had to show her notes to the next charge hand and tell her what had happened on that shift.’

  Being on the Table Water room, which was downstairs, was probably her favourite, as it was cooler. Working upstairs always seemed to be hotter.

  ‘The one I didn’t like was the cheese biscuits. This was upstairs and we only had a half wall dividing us from the bakehouse ovens – so all the heat rose up. They did provide us with fans, and also lemonade with ice in buckets. But it was still awful, over 80 degrees. You sweated for the whole shift.’

  Despite the tropical heat of the cheese biscuits, she found the noise bearable. In fact she can’t remember any of the workplaces she worked in where the noise of machines totally drowned out conversations. Even in the noisiest places, they always managed to chatter away while working.

  ‘That’s what I liked best about the job – talking to the lasses. We never stopped. That’s what you did all day long. Sometimes of course you had to shout to be heard.’

  The chat was rarely anything intimate or confessional, but general family talk, about boyfriends or husbands, going over the scraps of their ordinary family life, children, clothes, TV programmes, holidays.

  Jean had passed the Eleven Plus and for two years in Liverpool had been at a grammar school, but not for a moment did she feel intellectually superior or that the repetitive work of packing biscuits was beneath her.

  ‘It didn’t bother me, the actual work. I was never bored. The pleasure was in that chat with the lasses. That kept me going every day. When I became a charge hand, I liked the minor responsibility.

  ‘I suppose I could have had an office job, but it was too late for that really when I joined Carr’s, not at my age. Anyway, I was proud of Carr’s and proud of being a charge hand.’

  What she did not enjoy quite as much as she had hoped was Carlisle itself. Coming from Liverpool she had found some cultural and economic shocks.

  ‘Almost the first day I arrived in 1955 I was walking down Botchergate with Jack and we came to Timpson’s, the shoe shop, same as the one we had in Liverpool.

  ‘I was looking in the window and I realised a pair in the window was the same pair as I had on that day, which I had bought in Timpson’s in Liverpool just a week earlier. The price in the window was twenty-one shillings eleven pence – yet I had paid only nineteen shillings eleven pence in Liverpool for exactly the same shoes.

  ‘I turned to Jack and said, “Look at that, how do you live in this damn city with prices like that?” He wasn’t aware of the difference.

  ‘Then I began to notice that all foods and clothes were more expensive than in Liverpool. Jack had no idea what I was on about. Or any interest. It was just normal to him.

  ‘It’s still much the same – ordinary things in Carlisle are more expensive than Liverpool. And new fashions didn’t come as quickly into the Carlisle shops.

  ‘I used to think it was because of the transport. You know, we had the docks in Liverpool while here things had to come all the way by lorry, which put up the prices. But I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s probably more like lack of competition. We had loads of supermarkets in Liverpool, cheap ones and expensive ones, long before Carlisle. For a long time Carlisle only had Marks & Spencer, which is not cheap. They have more supermarkets now, but still don’t have many cheap shops or stalls, not like Liverpool.

  ‘I honestly don’t know how many of the ordinary working people in Carlisle survive. The wages are still lower here than elsewhere, yet prices are higher. I realised that the day I started at Carr’s on £3 a week, compared with £15 at Vernons. I know that was because I very good at my job and got bonuses, but even so, ordinary jobs in Liverpool, like packing biscuits at Crawford’s, were paid better than doing the same sort of thing at Carr’s.’

  So perhaps that was another reason why Carr’s survived during the two takeovers – cheaper labour.

  Jean also missed the theatres, dance halls, clubs and cinemas of Liverpool. Carlisle’s only theatre Her Majesty’s, where once Charlie Chaplin had performed, closed in 1963. It was turned into a bingo hall then demolished in 1979 to make way for a car park. By the 1980s, there were half as many cinemas as there had been when Ivy was a girl.

  ‘Something else I not
iced in the 1950s when I first arrived – the lack of Teddy boys. In Liverpool they were everywhere. They looked frightening but they weren’t really.

  ‘When Jack and I were first courting in Liverpool, we saw this group of Teddy boys in their tight trousers at a street corner. I shouted over to them, “Did your mother pour you into them or did she sew you in?” Jack took my hand and said, “Be careful, they might knock you one.” I said, “Don’t be daft. I know them. I went to school with some of them.”

  ‘“We won’t touch her,” said the leader of the Teds, “but if you touch her, we’ll touch you.”’

  Jean was also struck by an apparent lack of friendliness and openness among Carlisle folks, as opposed to the normal Scouser.

  ‘In my neighbourhood in West Derby, all the doors seemed to be open all the time. If I went to visit a friend, I could go straight in. The locals here seemed standoffish, closed in, as if they don’t want to be friendly. I have of course made some very good friends, and still have them, but generally I’d say the locals are not very forthcoming. They keep themselves to themselves. I don’t know why.

  ‘Even a few miles out, they seem friendlier. For example, last week I had to go for physio at Wigton, instead of the Carlisle hospital, and immediately they all called me by my first name. They never did that at the Carlisle hospital.’

  Other visitors to Carlisle over the centuries have commented on the outward suspiciousness and buttoned-up nature of many of the natives – which has often been put down to Carlisle’s history, being a Border town, living in fear of the Scots or the Border Reivers arriving, so best stay indoors, give nothing away, say nowt.

  Even the locals have been aware of it. In a Carlisle newspaper, the Citizen, on 14 May 1830, there was a very cynical, scathing description of the local character.