More from Anne Bradford's archive

Royal Enfield's Redditch, Britain factory circa 1950s.

 Author Anne Bradford collected the memories of more than 80 Royal Enfield factory workers for her 1996 book "Royal Enfield, The Story of the Company and the People Who Made It Great: 1851-1969." 

Not all of those memories fit into the book. Fortunately, the author left an archive of the entire contributions she gathered, including the parts omitted from the book, so historians can get a broader view of life at Royal Enfield factories in Redditch, Britain. 

In the book, Bradford described Redditch before Royal Enfield as having had "a sprinkling of dark,  satanic mills." 

Royal Enfield workers would operate in brighter, safer surrounds, eventually in a brand new factory, but industrial danger was unavoidable. 

Gilbert Hunt worked at Royal Enfield from 1922-1933. His contribution was considerably shortened for the book, but he was a colorful storyteller who didn't balk at the macabre.

He is only one of several contributors who mention the danger of getting caught up in the long leather belts that carried motion to the machine tools. There was disease, too. Tuberculosis was at least suspected.

And then there was the danger posed by the product itself. Hunt recalls that Royal Enfield executive Major Smith was driving an experimental machine that had a steering wheel in the sidecar and no handlebars on the motorcycle. He lost control at the bottom of Bates Hill and rolled three times, suffering a broken nose.

But Hunt ends with admiration: "The last time I saw him he must have been in his seventies and he was riding a 692cc Constellation, still going to work."

"Dolly" worked at the factory from 1928-1953. Trimmed from the book was a story she told about hearing that there is a picture of her in one of the magazines. If  you spot it, she says, look for the string holding her shoes on; oil on the factory floor spoiled shoes, so the girls wore their oldest pair.

Left out of the book, too, is her comment that "I worked there for 25 years in all and I enjoyed very minute of it."

Author Branford notes from the start of the book that many of her contributors cautioned that their recollections of so long ago may be inexact.

Her concern for accuracy is apparent. For instance, Bradford writes that Harry Hughes, who worked for Royal Enfield from 1921-1969, passed away before there was a chance to check over with him the contents of his 1994 contribution.

But there's no doubt he did accurately remember being laid off just six months before his 50th year of service -- missing out on the customary gold watch.

John Latter (1926-1939) didn't rave about working at Royal Enfield. He complained of how hard it was to be paid on the piece work system. He found the rates set so unjust in one department that he and a co-worker pooled their earnings to even things out.

Another problem was cuts in hours. Fed up with not working full time at Royal Enfield, Latter sought a job at the Austin factory -- only to discover that Austin and Enfield had an agreement not to hire away each other's workers.

A sympathetic executive at Royal Enfield gave him a note to let Austin know it was OK to hire him.

Bert Wedgebury (1928-1967) considered the bicycle assembly department -- the "Chain Wheel Gang" -- the mainstay of the factory.  The motorcycle business had ups and downs, but there was always demand for bicycles. Not that it paid particularly well, but he liked his co-workers.

In particular there were the women who worked in the adjacent department, lacing bicycle wheels. They used to "get a whistle" when they walked past. He asked an especially nice one, named Beatrice, for a date. She didn't show up the first time, so he asked again. They later married.

Wartime service interrupted Wedgebury's employment, but in 1941 Royal Enfield pulled him back for months of "essential service" -- testing motorcycles made for the army.

The push was on to get them out the door, so the hours were long and conditions hard. Testing each bike meant nine miles on the road, even in the dark, with only the shuttered blackout headlight for illumination.

Eddie Wright (1925 to closure) remembered how the war finally changed some pay scales at Royal Enfield. Competing factories had government contracts and could pay more, so Royal Enfield had to compete for workers. Even within the Redditch factory, and between Redditch and other Royal Enfield factories, workers doing government work were paid substantially more for the same tasks.

Wright's tasks, at the end, sadly included closing and decommissioning the works.

Jack Normandale (1940-1961) gave Anne Bradford an extensive description of the underground factory at Westwood, near Bath. Employed at Redditch, he and his wife volunteered for the cave factory in 1942, during World War II.

Left out of the book is his description of the benefits of moving to Westwood: Royal Enfield paid for the move, and provided a three-bedroom bungalow. Black-out curtains had been fitted, and mats provided, along with color wash for the interior walls, and a supply of coal in the bunker. The bungalow across the street had a better garden, so he angled to get it instead.

Also not in the book is that the couple worked 60 hours a week, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. six days a week, with a Saturday afternoon off once a month. For him there was one evening a week on Home Guard practice (running across a field with a bayonet) and then a Home Guard parade on Sunday morning.

I hope he found time to enjoy his garden!

Contributor Vic Bott described the post-war enthusiasm. But at Royal Enfield there was aggravation with materials shortages.

He was instrumental in creating a production line; no longer would one man assemble an entire bike. This made him unpopular with the workers, at least at first.

Bott also created Royal Enfield's displays for the Earls Court motorcycle shows, sometimes involving moving parts that made the motorcycles on the stand seem to run.

The big stands at the show were Triumph, AJS, BSA, Norton, and Royal Enfield and, of course there, was competition between them.

Bott fondly remembered the year Royal Enfield was a sensation, with the introduction of the swinging arm rear suspension. "We knew it was good but we didn't realize that it was going to be the success that it was."

Bott had a cut-away demonstration bike riding on rollers to simulate a rough road, with the swinging arm taking it in stride. Show goers wondered "how do they do it?"

Left out of the book, too, was Bott's description of how little Prince Charles almost didn't get the specially painted and equipped child's bicycle the factory planned to present to his father, the Duke of Edinburgh, at the show. Just before the show Bott caught a man making off with the bicycle, and called security.

Edna Kinchin joined Royal Enfield in 1935, at the age of 14, starting "like all the new office girls" in the Post Room. This involved picking up the mail and taking mail around the factory and to other factories in town. "I suppose I was cheaper than the postage."

Her description of wartime fashions is interesting ("we put gravy browning on our legs" -- there were no nylons) but this didn't make the book.

As it would be expected, contributions from executives or influential designers were less likely to be omitted from the book than the recollections of others. But one omission was designer Reg Thomas's memory of an incident at the Earls Court Show:

"I can vouch for Roger's tale of the dealer from Scotland falling into the floral display, I was at the show that evening and remember it well!"

Told by Roger Boss (1950-1967) it is a wonderful story, omitted from the book, about the Royal Enfield dealer who became inebriated at the Earls Court Show, finally ending up in the floral arrangements at another booth.

Discovering he had a train ticket to Edinburgh in his wallet, the Royal Enfield executives present loaded him into a taxi, took him to his hotel, packed for him, got him to the train, and bribed a guard to keep an eye on him.

"A few days later Enfield received a letter of thanks from him."

One other omission I think I can explain from my own research. Reg Thomas said "I do remember having one showdown with Vic (Mountford) after he became managing director."

I've blogged about that incident here.

We'll dig more into more omissions from Anne Bradford's book in my next blog item.

Anne Bradford's magnificent outtakes

The proud factory of Royal Enfield in Redditch, Britain.

  Author Anne Bradford's outstanding 1996 book "Royal Enfield, The Story of the Company and the People Who Made It Great: 1851-1969" is largely a collection of contributions from people who worked at the Royal Enfield factories in Redditch, England before the firm went out of business there. 

It's an outstanding history of the early days of Royal Enfield, and it is listed for sale on Amazon and as available on Kindle. 

The interviews, edited by Ray Knight, are precious and revealing; but that is not all there is, the book explains: 

"In order to produce a book at reasonable cost, Ray Knight has had to carry out some vigorous editing. A copy of all interviews in their entirety have been lodged at the Redditch Library and in the archives of the Royal Enfield Owners Club." 

In these archives we learn what had to be left out. In all, editor Ray Knight did a fine job of keeping contributors on subject. But some of the left-out material is eye opening.

You should read the book to know the full story of Royal Enfield in Redditch. But, below, I'll offer some bits that were trimmed out in hope that these small additions broaden the story for you.

At 16, Redditch lad Vic Bott and some pals abandoned their protected factory apprenticeships to enlist for World War I. He served in the trenches of the Western Front from 1916 to 1918 in "wet, mud and desolation."

When peace came, in 1918, it found the young men with "no jobs and no skills and we were thrown into a mass of (now unemployed) munition workers whose generous pay and skill created  a 'them and us' situation."

As a result, "the 1920s, were vicious," Bott said.

Royal Enfield took on as many former soldiers as it could, including a grateful Bott, but this inevitably meant lay-offs for everyone when business was slow.

"In the whole history of the factory, the worst trouble came during the 1926 General Strike..."

"Out of a workforce of about 260, 90 to 100 people refused to strike and most of these were ex-servicemen. When we walked into work we had to go through a crowd of pickets on the gate, all booing and shouting and calling us 'blacklegs.'* This caused a lot of bitterness on both sides, which continued for many years and sometimes marred an otherwise happy and friendly atmosphere."

The British Legion, a charity for former soldiers, helped. Bott proudly states that, in Redditch, it did so under the leaderships of the father and sons who managed Royal Enfield.

Royal Enfield managing director R.W. Smith provided a lodge for meetings. Son Frank Walker "Major" Smith was president of the British Legion in Redditch. Major's younger brother Gilbert was treasurer, and the youngest, Stanley, was chairman.

There were better times to come.

Bott remembers assembly and testing departments supervisor Fred Bicknell, who was so esteemed they called him "Mr. Royal Enfield." He competed in trial events, contributing to the brand's reputation.

Bicknell returned from one event where he had spent too long having to change a rear wheel.  He devised the clever split rear fender that gets out of the way of removing the rear wheel by loosening only two nuts. You don't even have to entirely remove the two nuts!

Clever swinging rear fender eases access to rear wheel.

Ray Knight edited this out of the book (probably rather than have to explain how the fender works) but now I know to thank Fred Bicknell every time the design eases maintenance of my 1999 Royal Enfield Bullet!

A high proportion of women were workers in Redditch factories, Bott said. The firms had started as light industry -- making needles and fish hooks -- so  there was a local tradition of women on the shop floors.

He claims that at Royal Enfield the women factory workers in overalls earned more than the better dressed women in the offices, who had shorter hours and more comfortable conditions.

Bott is a fountain of information, all of it fascinating, and much of which had to be left out of the book. He talks about how hard it was to work at a piece work rate, where a difficult job done carefully might pay less than an easy one done quickly.

Work started at 8 a.m. and you had better not be late; they locked the gate and docked your pay.

There was an unofficial tea break at 10 in the morning and lunch was noon-1 p.m. When, around 1922, the factory got a tin shed as a lunch room, factory workers and staff sat in separate areas -- not because of social distinctions, but only because the factory workers' clothes were typically greasy.

The then new factory was in the countryside; you could go for a stroll, or play soccer, cricket or tennis on a field provided for workers (today a company would certainly utilize that space for a parking lot, I suppose).

There was no afternoon break. Work ended at 5:30, but you'd stay for overtime if you were allowed.

Bott is quoted as saying that Royal Enfield made its own sidecars in those days, out of "American" white wood. In the book this is changed to "Armenian" white wood. I'd guess the archival version may be more accurate than the published version in this one case.

As always in memoirs, it's important to keep in mind that some memories from long ago may be inaccurate or were hearsay to start. While most trims were made to save space in the book, some archived cuts might also have been made because the information could not be confirmed.

We'll look at more deleted gems in my next blog item.

*Various sources explain that "blacklegs" was not a racial term. It's used in the same sense "scabs" is used in the United States. One origin suggested is that men who meant to disguise that they were working with coal would roll up their pant legs to keep them clean, but the coal-black skin of their legs would give them away.

Great ad for an only so-so motorcycle

What can you say about a little old motorcycle?

 About the most thorough Craigslist ad for a vintage motorcycle I have ever seen, sadly, is not for a Royal Enfield. Although the motorcycle kind of looks like one. 

Zap Leather and Cycle in Paynesville, Minn., has done a complete restoration of a 1953 Indian Brave motorcycle, rendering it better than it would originally have been. At that time U.S. Indian motorcycles were made in England, but by Brockhouse, not by Royal Enfield. 

Royal Enfield began rebadging some of its models as Indians in 1955, to give Indian dealers something to sell. But that is a different story. 

This particular 1953 Indian Brave is advertised for sale with a sterling example of how to write a Craigslist ad. The seller leaves out nothing you'd ever need to know. Here's what I like about the ad. 

The ad opens with the basic information. Matching numbers (it gives the actual numbers and shows photos). "Clean title in my name," is noted, and the asking price is named. Mileage, of course, is not given, as the speedometer is a replacement.

Ad show photos of the actual engine and frame numbers.

Next comes:

A complete list of engine work performed.

A complete list of gearbox and clutch work performed.

A complete list of charging system and electrical system work performed.

A list of work done on the carburetor.

A complete list of work done on frame and chassis.

A list of work done on wheels and tires. (Tires are claimed to have the same tread pattern as the originals.)

Plus lists of work done to the Final Drive, Front End and Front Suspension, Gas Tank, Instruments, and Lighting.

Then we get a description of the Engine Break-In procedure followed and what gasoline is required.

Then comes a Full Disclosure: the bike has been on display in the shop and has picked up some minor scuffing and a scratch on the rear fender.

"I didn't post a photo (of the scratch) because the detail didn't show up well. Any prospective buyers may request photos and I'll email several close-ups," the seller advises.

Then comes a Synopsis explaining the restoration philosophy (modern upgrades, original appearance), and the source of OEM parts used. It also tells where to see a YouTube video of the motorcycle.

So, a very complete, informative and honest seeming advertisement. But what is really impressive is what follows all the good stuff above.

Not a beauty, not a hero, not a racer, but Indian Brave is still interesting.

First, there is a justification for paying an admittedly high asking price for an originally plain Jane economy motorcycle that never won a war or, probably, even a race.

"Manufactured by Brockhouse in England, who became partners in the USA Indian Motocycle Company in 1949. No Expense Spared, Fully Restored. Engine Upgraded, Much Improved Vintage Classic.

"This bike shifts on the LEFT SIDE and the rear brake lever is on the RIGHT SIDE. The engine is a 248cc flathead (side valve), with three-speed transmission. Complete Frame-off Restoration by Zap Cycle, Paynesville Minnesota using modern upgrades.

"Looks very original, very vintage, but the engine upgrades will greatly lessen the oil leaks that were common with the Indian Brave."

But you haven't seen anything yet, because the ad CONTINUES, with a detailed history of the Indian Motocycle Company during the Brockhouse Brave era, then a detailed account of why OEM parts are still available for this 72-year-old motorcycle, and a mechanical description of the motorcycle.

Unit construction, but motor is a flathead with kickstart on the left side.

Finally, there is an excerpt of period magazine review of the Brave, which is very critical.

"The kickstarter proved awkward to use, being on the left, and the test machine jumped out of second gear whenever the revs were increased. Furthermore, top gear was not easy to select. There was a vibration period from the engine at 54 mph, but the machine would cruise comfortably at 50 mph. The lighting switch caused frequent panics though, by making intermittent contact, whilst the thief-proof steering lock was easily picked with a bent wire! Braking performance was average, until the rivets securing the rear brake torque arm sheared after 600 miles. On a bumpy road, insufficient clearance caused the exhaust system to shed its silencer! As for oil leaks, these occurred from the timing chest and the tappet cover."

And all this was when the thing was brand new! Why include a negative review in an ad?

"I found the road test very interesting," the seller writes. "The bike is a fascinating example of the motorcycles available 70 years ago."

He's right. You take the bad with the good in purchasing a vintage motorcycle, and the bad often makes the best telling.

Altogether, this advertisement deserves an award for mining the fascinating elements behind a seemingly inconsequential motorcycle.

At the time of the ad the motorcycle could be seen at Zap Leather and Cycle/Zap Cycle, 920 W. Main St., Paynesville Minn. Phone is 1-800-294-4208..