Many Years At Works

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31239, 10 December 1966, Page 25

Many Years At Works

v t 'ATESSRS R. B. Stammers i and F. C. White have t been on the staff of Borthi wicks’ Canterbury works at s Belfast for almost 50 years. i Mr White, who first joined i the staff as an office boy at t the end of 1917 and is now in - the pelts department, rememi bers an occasion about a 1 month before the end of :. World War I when there r was a false alarm that an s armistice had been signed. He J was sent off from the office to get the fireman to sound - the whistle. The whistle was r sounded and all the works i staff put down tools and ! headed off home to begin celei brations. Too late it was discovered that there had been

a mistake and Mr White remembers the firm’s travelling engineer, Mr George Croll, vainly trying to stop the men. There was no work that day. Mr Stammers started at Belfast at the beginning of the same year as Mr White not long after the works had been completed. His father was a bricklayer while the works was being built and continued on afterwards in the same capacity. The junior Stammers for a few years worked in one of the departments of the works in the killing season and then with his father in the long slack season. Subsequently he joined his father full time and took over from him doing bricklaying and plastering when his father left the works 35 years ago. Mr Stammers remembers that one of the first jobs that he was engaged on was the extension of the killing board. Today he says that the works must be about three times the size they were when he joined the company and there must be three times as many men employed there—whereas there are now some 750 he says that there were probably no more than 200 when he first started. He also has his stories of the early days. One of these concerns an occasion a num-

ber of years ago when two well dressed young men green feathers in their hats etc.—were espied near the door of the fellmongery. When his attention was drawn to them the head of the fellmongery remarked: “If those two fellows think they are going to get a job here then they have got another think coming.” Mr Stammers thinks that the two visitors were Messrs Algernon and Pat Borthwick. Messrs White and Stammers have memories o< many men—some colourful personalities over theif many years at Belfast Among them wap an All Black of earlier days—Pat Ward, a solo butcher at the works. Mr F. J. S. Margetts came from the Coleridge power station to join Borthwicks in 1915 when the works were still under construction. The contract for the whole of the electrical installation had been let to the National Electric and Engineering Company and he was engaged by Borthwicks as their electrician in charge and he remained in this capacity for 36 years. Mr Margetts thinks that the works may have been the first to take power from the Coleridge supply.