My Working Life at Moss Bank
HOME
My Family
Our Families
Keogh Family History
My Working Life
My Sporting Life
Norway
Holidays
World Travels
Birthdays
The day I started....
The office boy years.......
Moss Bank Village............
Now for some REAL work.....
The start of study to become a Manager......
Excitng times making chemicals...........
Progress........
CRODA Days..
People............
I left school at the age of 14 ready to embark on my "adult" working life (I had my 15th birthday 4 days later on 25 December 1960).
Before we left Fisher Moore school, Mrs Vickers (the Careers Officer for Widnes school leavers) asked us all what we wanted to do when we left school - the easy option we decided at the time was to "work in an office"........... so many of us asked for office jobs.
After a failed interview at McKechnie Brothers Chemicals in Ditton Road I attended for an interview at Bowmans Chemicals in Gorsey Lane, Moss Bank and to my relief I was offered the job of "office boy" at a wage of £3-5s-0d a week ( £3.25p in "new" money) - 44 years 11 months and 2 weeks later I retired as Works Manager of the Moss Bank site to take up my new career as a part time pensioner............ and that's a story in itself !!
At the moment (1 April 2005) I am starting a temporary, part time position as Clerical Administrator with Halton Borough Council in the Governors Support Department at Grosvenor House in Runcorn and looking forward to the challenges of a totally different working lifestyle, environment and group of work colleagues - outside the chemical industry!.
On the 9th January 1961, I reported to the offices at Moss Bank to start my job as the new office boy at Bowmans Chemicals at Moss Bank. I was nervous and excited at the same time but was made welcome by the staff. I was taking over the position from Graham Beesley who was moving up into the commercial side of the business and so I began my induction and introduction to the world of international commerce and the chemical industry. The office boy was a very important role as I later found - he was the centre of the organisation as he was involved, to some degree, in all the aspects of the business (apart from "making" the products which was to come later for me....)
I was interviewed and later offered the job by John Bibby who was the Sales Office Manager and a long serving employee having (like me)started at Bowmans from school as his first job - he worked for the company until his retirement in 1986. ( I still meet with Tom Reid and several of the Moss Bankers occasionally for a "reunion"beer and a chat about old times and memories of people we worked with over the years).
As a measure of the high esteem with which people relate with the Moss Bank works, we had a centenary reunion in 2005 and met up with many people who worked there when I started in 1961 - they were happy to travel some long distances to meet up for a few hours with colleagues who they would not have seen in 30 or 40 years - it was a memorable night.
I was quickly thrown into the deep end of learning the ropes of the many duties that the office boy undertook. Looking back I think it was probably the most complex and wide ranging job on the site while being at the "bottom of the ladder" in terms of recognition. It was this variety and involvement in the many administrative operations of the company that was most enjoyable - and during the times when I was not busy with office duties, I would go into the factory, especially with the Yard Labourers (who offloaded raw material and moved all the chemicals around the site, loaded wagons and generally did a variety of other jobs - like me in the office) and while I was dressed in shirt and tie would grab a sack truck at times and "give a hand" to offload wagons into the storage area with "the lads". Winter months would find them "working" in the cooperage with Ted O'Niell and Bill Dixon, where there was always a "roaring fire" and a billy-can of tea being kept warm, or up in the boilerhouse above the Lancashire Boilers where it was always warm. The Yard Foreman (Tommy Murray) would tell the lads to go there when thay had a "break" and he always knew where to find them when needed - it was a very easy going and very friendly and civilised way of working - and this was reflected throughout the whole factory and set the tone of my working life at Moss Bank for the next 44+ years............................
Once I had settled into the routine of my working day I began to learn many things in the shadow of Graham Beesley and the other staff, particularly the women in the General Office and the Secretarial Department. The excitemenet of learning new things drove me on each day and the convivial atmosphere in the factory made going to work a pleasure each day. I learned many skills which I took pride in doing well and are still with me to this day - even though the technology has changed. I learned to "photocopy" on the wet copier where you took a negative "picture" and then developed it into a positive in developing solution and then hang it to dry - took ages to do one page.........the Gestetner copier was like working a printing press - and what a dirty job when it went wrong.
As the mail boy my job was to collect the mail from the General Post Office every morning, deliver parcels to the Post office (or Tanhouse Lane Railway station) during the day, take the cheques and cash to the National Provincial Bank in the afternoon, run errands down the main street for the office staff, sort out, pack and stamp all the outgoing mail each day and take it to the Post Office on my way home. The Post Office was at the bottom end of town whereas I lived at the top end and only five minutes (by bike) from Gorsey Lane. So my work involved a lot of travel using the "company bike" (bought new for me to carry out my duties) which was a butchers bike with a carrier on the front into which was placed a large wicker basket to carry my post bag, parcels, shopping etc...... .
"My first company vehicle"
If I had too many parcels to carry on my bike I got taken in the company van (a green Morris 8 Van) by "old" Lou Smith, the mechanic and garage man ("young" Lou, his son, also worked at Bowmans in the Fitting Shop as a Maintenance Fitter - hence the "old"). This was a great job in the summer but not so good in the winter when having to cycle in the pouring rain (or snow), against the wind, uphill along Tanhouse Lane and over Lugsdale Bridge, with a carrier full of parcels which had to be kept dry or the paper wrapping disintegrated along with the label and stamps!! It needed some ingenuity to get round that so I kept in touch with old Lou on a daily basis on my "factory tour" and when the weather was bad he would many a time make some "excuse" that he had to go into Widnes in the van - so I would go along with him....
In 1961 there were still houses and families living in "Moss Bank village". They had a local shop (Hatrick's) which catered for many of the needs of the residents, a local pub (The Golden Bowl), a train service that ran through Tanhouse Lane Sation on the southern loop line to St Helens and a bus service that was frequent to serve the "non-car" commuters to the works and home again. There were still working farms in Gorsey Lane and one of my jobs on a regular basis was to walk up the road to Johnson Lane and collect the rents from the cottages I knew as Heaton and Bodens farm. Millington's and Johnson's farms were still in operation then and there were no other factories to the north of the Bowmans site. The shop was used by me on a daily basis to buy the newspapers and cigarettes for the company directors on a daily basis. Jim Hatrick also had a cabin on the corner of Tanhouse Lane and Moss Bank Road from where he served the daily needs of the Pilkington Sullivan workers who passed it to go into the works each day. He was a hard working man who worked long hours every day while his wife (forgotten her name) keept things going in the shop until he returned from his early morning stint in the cabin. I got to know the Hatricks quite well as I was a valued customer for them. It was a sda day when the remaining villagers were re-housed and the old streets demolished. That left the Golden Bowl and the shop in Moss Bank which kept going for a few more years until the Hatricks retired and teh pub closed through lack of business. The workers at Moss Bank did their best to keep the custom at the pub up as they would "sneak" out along the ICI wall along the railway line from the factory for a quick pint in the afternoon - especially on hot summer days when I sometimes joined them...... despite my young years. Eventually there were no residents or facilities, the old farmers retired and no one took up the business of farming and the Moss Bank area started to develop as an industrial area based on the chemical industry. Sadly the area is now reverting to being green fields as the chemical industry is also dying out down there.......how sad to see most of that industry disappear for good. At one point there were about 280 people worked at Bowmans, several hundred at Pilkington Sullivan works and about 150 at Fisons works with several other smaller businesses in the area - almost all gone now.
After 21/2 years as the Office Boy I was told I would have to move on into a job as I "can't be an office boy forever". I was given two options by Harold Ireland to go into the Maintenance Department as an apprentice fitter and study at technical college or on the Research Pilot Plant as an operator. As I didn't want to go to college and study (had enough of school I thought!) so I opted for the easy option as a plant operator, so being the last in a long line of Office Boys at Moss Bank.
Note of intest - I think that the next "office junior" was a girl - Elaine Dodd - who lived down the road from me. Elaine eventually married Eddie Fleming who was the R&D Chemist in the labs at Moss Bank and Eddie did all the lab development work on the Sodium Heptonate process which I started my plant life working on........... That what I call keeping it in the family.............. Eddie and I meet up still for lunches with Tom Reid (Sales Director and MD at Moss Bank) Peter Beattie and Ray Wong (R&D Chemists in the Research Lab. during the early/mid 1960's) and on one occassion recently we were joined by Brian Welsby (see below)
So I transferred to the plant (a collection of drums, a 100 gallon open top reactor tank and a centrifuge - that was it...........). The one operator (Joe Martin) was doing plant trials making Sodium GlucoHeptonate on a process that was using Sodium Cyanide (the stuff that kills you quickly if you ingest it!!). The plant building was very basic, open to the elements on the front and quite shabby (untidy). I was quite thrilled at this new challenge and also the huge pay increase from £5.10.0 a week to £8.0.0 a week.
I did my first week "training" with Joe and got the necessary "safety training" using the cyanide which involved holding your breath while you opened the drum and tipped the 50 lbs of cyanide solids into the reactor tank while holding onto the small step ladder. Then deposit the drum outside, depending on which way the wind was blowing so the fine particles didn't enter your mouth or nose!! Quite scary when I think back to how things are today......... So at the end of the first week Joe tells me he is going on a weeks holiday and I was to operate the plant on my own.......thrown in the deep end or what? Maybe that was the event that set me up for the challenges that faced me in the ensuing years?? Well I managed with the help of one of the Solvent Operators in the adjacent plant, Billy Ogburn, who was there to support me that week and I continued this link with him for decades at Moss Bank in many guises until he retired not many years ago.
Apart from the cyanide addition it was pretty easy work, as we produced very little material, and I enjoyed the work, the relaxed attitude to work and the very different working environment from my office job.
After several months, and the improving situation with the work in increasing production, Joe and I were asked by Brian Welsby (the Research Director) if we wanted to go to Technical College to do a qualification in City and Guilds for Chemical Plant Operation. My initial response was no, (for the reason I turned down the maintenance apprenticeship), but old head Joe pointed out that we would get a day off with pay to attend college and persuaded me to go along with him. SO in September 1963 we started on the four year QCO course at Widnes Technical College and I soon found an interest in chemical manufacturing that was the start of my life time career in the industry at Moss Bank.
This interest in chemistry and particularly the manufacturing process industry saw me embark on 11 years of part time study at Widnes and St Helens colleges where I gained a Distinction in my City and Guilds QCO course which led me to study ONC and HNC Chemistry and then to go on to study for membership of the Institution of Works Managers when I became eventually a member of the British Institue of Management.
The main products at Moss Bank were Lactic Acid and Lactates for which we were world leaders having developed (in the mid/late 1950's by Tom Reid and Peter Beattie) a solvent purification process to produce a commercial food quality product which became the main use of the product.
Lactic was originally a technical product used in teh Leather tanning industry and the other plant at Moss Bank was an Oils Plant which manufactured emulsifyable Sulphated Fish and Whale oils for lubricating leather as well as other chemicals for the industry. The Bowman's archer symbol was well known in leather processing countries worldwide as a sign of high quality products.
During this time the "shabby" Pilot Plant became an important and growing facility with expansion and improvements happening yearly. The Sodium Glucoheptonate process became a full production plant, built behind the Pilot Plant building, and was ironically the last of the processes to operate at Moss Bank before it closed in 2005. In the meantime we developed and manufactured many products on what became the Special Products Plant. Some of the memorable ones were Nickel Napthalene Sulphonate (using Oleum from which Sulphur trioxide gas often escaped and evacuated the building!!), a top secret product known as XXX-44 (difficult to make and VERY expensive), 5-Sulpho Salicylic Acid (SSA), Maleic Acid, Hydroxy Ethyl Lactamide, Strontium Lactate (who wanted that one?), Heptono-Lactone, Lactide and Poly Vinyl Behenate to name but a few.
The one product we made which had a short, spectacular but infamous life cycle was "GL5". This was a mixture of Sodium Lactate (a product we manufactured from the Lactic Acid plant) and Urea which as a liquid was used to spray onto snow and ice on football pitches to make them "playable during the winter months". The product was used on Naughton Park pitch during the severe winter of 1963 (I think this was the year of the big freeze) when all sporting fixtures were cancelled due to the snow and freezing conditions for many weeks. After the application it worked a treat and Widnes was the only football club to hold matches during that time. (I think Everton also used it at Goodison Park?). HOWEVER - after a period of time it killed the grass on the pitch and Naughton Park became a mud bath - older football fans in Widnes can still remember the name GL5!! It's name still lives on in memories........
During the early years of working on the Pilot Plant I was invloved at times in working in the R&D Lab where I made friends of Peter Beattie, Eddie Fleming and Ray Wong. I was also good friends with another chemist, Peter Quinn, who was a Moss Banker and whose mother, Mary, and father, Joe, also worked at Moss Bank at a later time. I remember Peter Quinn working on some quite novel projects to make Cystein from chicken feathers and Oxalic Acid from sawdust (in a frying pan over a bunsen burner). These were in the days of M H M Arnold who was a well know "character" in the chemical industry (and in Moss Bank) in the sixties
From the mid sixties the plant growth meant that the supervision and technical input improved and the facility was managed by Eric Newall, Chief Chemist and gentleman. He was an "old fashioned" gent of mild manners and significant knowledge who was a great influence in my learning and I was my first "boss" in the plant. As it became more of a production unbit than a research facility it began to operate as a "miniature plant" and started to be operated as a financial resource - so we had to do costings and profit/loss monthly reports etc... This gave me an early insight into organising manufacture and monitoring costs etc...... Eric also gave me two poieces of advise that stayed with me through my working life..... "Most things you do in life are 10% knowledge and 90% common sense" and "When you make a mistake - own up and face the consequences and learn from it"
And so the Pilot Plant grew into a small, multipurpose production plant over several years and I was there as it grew and was part of the success of many products that came from it. Also I grew with the plant as I learnt more and became more involved under the guidance of Eric and others. I progressed from Operator to Senior Operator to Plant Supervisor and eventually Assistant Plant Manager under Dave Caldwell (ex Vine Chemicals who was the first "proper" Plant Manager). Dave left after 3 years by which time we were responsible for managing the SPP, the Sulphonated Oils Plant (which I had some experience on earlier) and the "newly expanded" Sodium Heptonate Plant.
In 1968 Bowmans had developed a production process for making Malic Acid -the first in the world (the R&D work was done by Ray Wong -.......... note how I workEd with and still see the people who were instrumental in the development of all Bowmans products!!) and Bowmans had fought off a take-over bid by Burmah Oil and was subsequently bought by Croda Chemicals of Goole. This was the start of my working life at Croda and the the almost 38 years of service with them.
So when Dave left Moss Bank there was no other manager on site with the knowledge and experience of the 3 plants and after some "negotiation" on salary with Fred Dyer he promoted me to Plant Manager at the tender age of 26 - he commented that it was unkown for someone so young to have such responsibility - I took that as a compliment. I knew they had little choice and thanks to Dave I started on the same salary that he left on and Fred was a "little dissapointed" not to give me the job at a lower salary..............
So that was the start of my senior management career which included becoming Plant Manager of the Lactic Acid plant, Production Administrator, Assistant Works Manager and eventually Works Manager in 1990 until it's closure in 2005 - sadly this was the Centenary of Bowmans Chemicals incorporation in 1905...........that's life!
Apart from Eric there were several people who were influential during my early years in plant work - Michael Henry Miller Arnold (MD and champion of the Special Products Plant in the early/mid sixties), Fred Dyer (Production Director) who encouraged me to continue my education at college in order to progress into management, Dave Caldwell (Plant Manager) who taught me lots and left with some good advice when he returned to Vine Chemicals after 3 years at Moss Bank. John Bibby and Tom Reid were the main Sales Office people along with Charlie Appleton (Sales Rep) with who I had some ineretsting games of table tennis in the coming years. Harold Ireland was the works accountant (my immediate boss) and Bob Williams was the buyer. I had daily contact with all the Directors as I travelled the office block doing many different tasks and apart from MHM Arnold there was Derek Mather (Finance Director and Secretary - I still see Derek occasionally around Widnes or St Helens), Albert Clark (Works Director), Bill Bellamy (Sales Director) and Cliff Childs (Research Director). The early days of my working at Moss Bank were filled with so many people and as Office Boy I got to meet and work with them all in some capacity - especially the female office staff who really looked after the young new starter. On my first day I met with Mrs Connor and Mrs Coady who both lived in Barnes Road and who worked as the office cleaners. Lou SMith and his dad (Lou Snr.) also lived in Barnes Road.