The Quality Street Girls, page 32
In May 1988 a dawn raid was launched on their shares by the Jacob Suchard company (now part of Kraft). Suchard wanted to buy up the Yorkshire-based firm, and in the end they put in an offer of £1.7 billion. Then along came Nestlé who had been saving up to make an acquisition just like this.
Since Nestlé took over the business in July 1988, they have invested over £500 million in the confectionery businesses they acquired from the Rowntree Mackintosh take over. They have even chosen to base their international sweet inventing centre in Yorkshire so that their brightest sweet makers from all over the world can benefit from the knowledge that has been handed down through generation after generation of Yorkshire workers since those first days in the back-room kitchen of a young bride, Violet Mackintosh.
Q&A with Penny Thorpe
What is your role at the Quality Street factory and how did you get the job?
I’ve been the Historian and Archivist for the Quality Street factory for the last ten years. It’s really a dream job, and I got it by sheer luck. I spent six years working in public libraries and some bookshops (because I love books), but then decided that I really wanted to train to be an archivist because I love history as well.
I was volunteering at the York Minster Archive as my first step towards becoming an archivist, and I took a part-time office job at the local chocolate factory to pay the bills. The chocolate factory was the old Rowntree factory in York (a sister factory to the Quality Street one in Halifax) and they turned out to be looking for a temporary archivist to spend six months tidying up their historical archive.
One of the recruiting managers heard that I knew about archival work and asked me to help her write the job description. I told her that I’d be happy to help, but just so long as she knew that I would probably be applying for the job. The hiring manager said: “Why don’t you just take the job?” She hired me almost on the spot and we became great friends.
What fascinates you most about the company’s history?
I love the stories of the people who worked in our factories over the years. I love the stories of those early pioneers of chocolate in the late Victorian era who were trying to invent new sweets using primitive machinery while wrestling with an angry donkey in the factory at the same time (that’s a true story, but it’s one for another day).
I love the stories of the factories in the 1930s when they were a hive of social activity; everyone was a member of a factory sports team or an amateur dramatic society, or a flower arranging club. In one famous chocolate factory, the employees all had access to their own vegetable allotments on company land, and the young people would spend their evenings playing board games and listening to records in the factory youth club.
I love the stories of the wartime employees too. From the accounts I’ve read it sounds like they were all having to juggle shifts at the factory with war work, while finding innovative ways to swipe a contraband chocolate bar or two when rationing and war shortages meant that they couldn’t satisfy their sweet tooth unless they got crafty.
Why did you choose to set the book in the 30s?
The 1930s are my absolute favourite decade. I love reading about life then, but I wouldn’t want to go back there; most women weren’t allowed to keep their jobs after they were married, men were paid more than women as standard, and financially it was rarely possible to be a single mum. We’ve come such a long way since those days, and I wanted to write about 1930s factory life in a way that celebrated the many, many wonderful things about it, but that didn’t rose-tint it. Some of the characters in my story find friendship in the factory, others find jobs that they’re really good at which help to build their self-esteem, and one in particular gets a taste of financial freedom that helps her to bear a difficult situation at home. The book ends with a character who thinks she has found the happiest ending that she can get, but as a woman in the twenty-first century all I see is the injustice of her situation and feel heartbroken for her.
What or who was the inspiration behind Reenie? She’s quite a character!
Strangely enough she just appeared on the page fully formed the first moment I sat down to write. I’d been offered a once-in-a-lifetime chance by an editor at HarperCollins Publishers to submit a synopsis for a novel and some sample chapters, but the opportunity came completely out of the blue, and I didn’t have anything prepared; I had to write it all in a weekend! I sat down at the keyboard and found myself typing ‘There was a clamour outside The White Bear, and Reenie didn’t like the look of what she saw.’ I don’t know why I wrote it because I’m usually the type to plan writing projects in detail, not dash them off in a flash of inspiration, but all of a sudden Irene Calder and her horse Ruffian were as vivid to me as anyone I’d ever met. I had an idea of a girl who was so practical, enthusiastic and friendly, that it always got her into trouble. I think a lot of the inspiration for Reenie must have come from my grandmother, Mary, who also used to go around determined to be friendly to everyone, and usually ended up in a farcically funny situation.
The factory girls in the novel have quite a few rules and regulations to contend with – was it like that for the real factory girls?
Yes, although I’ve taken some liberties and changed the rules a bit to fit in with the theme of the story. One of the things that astonishes me most about working life back in the 1930s is just how many rules there were. I’ve got a copy of the rule book for the Quality Street factory’s sister factory (Rowntree’s in York) and it’s so long! Employees weren’t allowed to have sweepstakes, and female workers had to leave on the day they got married. Married women were allowed back to work on a seasonal contract, but they were kept segregated from the unmarried girls. It seems such a strange thing to do, but it was ostensibly to ration jobs in a time of high-unemployment. By preventing married women from working, businesses believed that they were helping to effectively ration jobs to one per household so that each household would have one breadwinner; single women would be able to support themselves, and married women would be supported by their husbands.
Working at the factory was something all the workers seem very proud of. What was it about the factory that made it so special?
As a chocolate historian I meet lots of retired factory workers who want to reminisce with me about their working life, and I love hearing their stories. One thing that stands out is how much everyone seems to have enjoyed their work and been proud of it. I had the honour of meeting a retired chocolate worker on her 100th birthday this summer; she had started working in a chocolate factory in 1932 when she was 14 and she asked me if she could have her old job back. She said that she might be a hundred years old, but she’d come back tomorrow if the factory would take her. When I asked her what it was that she loved so much about the job she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. I’m unsure and I could take a lot of guesses at why workers loved their jobs in the sweet factories, but I suppose you had to be there.
Quality Street is a Christmas favourite – how has it become such a part of everyone’s Christmas?
Right from the start at Quality Street’s first Christmas back in 1936, the brand was sold as something to celebrate with. I think it did well for a lot of reasons, but the one thing that really stands out in the advertising is its burst of colour. The original tins had two strips of tissue paper bunting that ran round the inside of the tin so that when you opened it you saw a little explosion of pink and purple. The sweets themselves were designed to be as many different shapes as possible, and were wrapped in a variety of different types of wrappers, like twist wraps, foils, and paper bands. Every wrapper felt and sounded different to open, and the smell of chocolate and toffee that burst from the tin when you opened it made a tin of Quality Street a feast for all five senses. What could be better for Christmas?
What is your favourite real-life Quality Street fact?
When Quality Street was first created the packaging was stamped with ‘By Appointment to H. M. Queen Alexandra’. However, Queen Alexandra had been dead for more than a decade at that point, and it wasn’t until the tins of sweets were hitting the shops that one of the managers at the toffee factory thought to ask one of his colleagues if they definitely still had permission to use the royal warrant. His colleague said, ‘Don’t ask me, I just make the tins’. And another colleague said, ‘Don’t you know? I just assumed that you were the one that had got permission!’ Memos (which have been kept in the company archive all this time) flew around among the directors until one of them suggested that they get in touch with Buckingham Palace and ask them if they were still willing to allow the company to use the royal warrant. Sir Harold Mackintosh, head of the firm, heard about this and said, ‘Don’t go asking the Palace! What if they say no? We’d have to make new tins! Just act casual, maybe no one will notice.’ Years later they were awarded the royal warrant to H. M. Queen Elizabeth II, and the business holds the warrant to this day, but I just love the idea of all those directors back in 1936 getting themselves into a tiswas over it, and trying to hide like naughty schoolboys hoping no one would catch them out.
Which Quality Street chocolate is the most popular?
I think it’s the purple one at the moment, but it varies from generation to generation. That’s why the Quality Street assortment is always evolving; as consumer’s tastes change the assortment changes to match it and has done for the last 80 years. A good example of this is the purple sweet; when you unwrap it and look at the chocolate you can see that it’s moulded in the shape of a Brazil nut shell. This is because the nut in the middle used to be a Brazil nut, however, hazelnuts are generally more popular these days, so the nut was changed to a hazelnut some time after the second World War. I’m not convinced that people really buy Quality Street for their favourites anymore, I think Quality Street has a kind of magic all of its own that transports people back to past Christmases, just for a moment, and that’s what we’re all looking for. I think it’s the smell of the chocolates and wrappers when you first open the lid; that intense, heady combination, that can take you back, just for a second, to places and times that are otherwise gone for good.
About the Author
Penny Thorpe lives in Yorkshire where she has been the company archivist and historian for her local chocolate factory for more than a decade. She’s worked in libraries, bookshops, offices, a Swiss school, a racecourse, a barber’s shop, a church, and a police station (to name but a few).
Penny is a recognised expert in her field, but still isn’t quite sure how that happened. She has written about the history of confectionery for years and regularly appears on television and radio to talk about the history of Yorkshire, chocolate, coffee, Quakers and food.
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Penny Thorpe, The Quality Street Girls
