When Peter Hill (great-grandson of the company’s founder) returned to the Sunspel factory recently, he brought in an old minute book. This is where the company recorded what took place in management meetings, what decisions were reached, as well as keeping copies of correspondence.
It gives a fascinating flavour of the day to day goings on in a moderate sized British company 90 or so years ago – and there’s a certain poignancy, looking back after all these years, to see what was then routine now become just a fragment from a vanished world.
Look at this page (below), for example. It’s just an ordinary day in June 1918. We read about the issue of a ‘recreation room for Women Workers’. The decision on that one was ‘to let the matter lie on the table’. A nice bit of procrastination, although at a time of war and relative austerity, side-stepping the issue rather than saying no might have been a shrewd step. And then they do make a decision, deciding to donate £25 to a fund for men returning from the Great War.
Here’s a letter on the subject of the miner’s strike. It’s fairly clear what the management’s view of the strike is – not least because within days of a strike they’d have to stop production. But in fact they declare their willingness to close down the factory immediately in the interests of the nation, in order to preserve supplies of the coal – ‘if the other hosiery manufacturers will do so’, that is. Seems only prudent to add that.
Another letter gives an insight into some sort of dispute with a London distributor to China. Just look at the marvellous language: ‘firms who are importuning us for goods’ and ‘We shall be glad if you will pass this letter to your friends in Hong Kong’.
It’s a distant era now and it can seem quaint. But so will our language and practices, seen from some future perspective.
Anyway, the good news is that Sunspel is still here. Now, about that recreation room for women workers…