FORTY MILLION POPPIES

Taranaki Daily News, 16 January 1934, Page 8

FORTY MILLION POPPIES

MADE IN BRITAIN IN 1933 WORK OF EX-SOLDIERS. SYMBOL OF NATION’S GRIEF. There is romance behind -the poppy everyone wears on Armistice Day the romance of grave hurts overcome and usefulness erising out of disablement, said a writer in the Daily Telegraph, London, a few days before Armistice Day. In a small brick factory overlooking the river at Richmond 363 seriously disabled ex-servicemen work all the year round making those poppies which have become the symbol of a nation’s grief. Men with one arm or one leg,, men with both an. arm and a leg missing, and men with no legs-have been taught the art of making poppies and weaving them into wreaths of beautiful design. . Forty million flowers and 35,000 wreaths were made this year, and 330,000 sellers volunteered their services. So important is this work of making poppies, with its employment of so many disabled men, that the organisers of the Earl Haig Appeal Fund regard it as equal in importance to the money raised by the sale of flowers. When the factory was started eleven years ago at Bermondsey, five men worked in two small rooms, but after two or three years. the public demand grew to such an extent that a factory had to be built at Richmond. Last year, after the warehouse at King’s Cross caught fire, the hundred extra men engaged to replace the damaged poppies were kept on. Beside making the poppies, these men manufacture the trays from which they are sold and the boxes for despatching. The writer says: “I visited the appeal fund showrooms in South Street, Mayfair, and as I looked at the cunninglymade poppies and the intricate wreaths which covered the walls, I found it hard to believe that such exquisite workmanship could come from men whose average disability is 77 per cent. Although poppies are the predominant feature of every design, great efforts have been made to achieve variety with the use of leaves and com and the gilding and silvering of laurels. People all over the country have sent leaves to the factory, where they are preserved by a special process-and woven into many forms. This year a poppy will be sold with a suction cap which can be fastened beside the names on small memorials in offices and factories. This poppy bears the war service ribbon and a card on which can be written the. dead soldier’s name. Another, made to fit on car radiators, will be sold by garages and motor showrooms all over the country.”

A group of men were employed at the factory in making the wreaths which the King and Prince of Wales were to lay on the Cenotaph on Armistice Day. This is regarded as a great privilege, and infinite pains are taken in the weaving of the giant poppies and laurel leaves which go to make the. Royal wreaths.

The Field of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey had so caught the public imagination that, in response to many demands, similar fields were to be laid out this year in many parts cf the country.