Echoes of Empire: Colonial Histories in Narberth Museum

 

Pair of wooden sugar tongs, inscribed Miss J. Williams. These unusual treen tongs are made of bentwood (objects made by wetting wood by either soaking or steaming and bent into shape). There is a heart on the top of the chip carved handle, implying the tongs were given as a love token. There are two glass panels, one with Miss J. Williams’ name. The item was donated to the museum from the collection of the former Museum of the Home in Pembroke. Sugar was a valuable commodity in overseas colonisation and was a major economic driver in the enslavement of African people in the Americas. Sugar had been traded in the 15th and 16th centuries by Spain and Portugal, and the growing demand created the plantation economy, becoming largely responsible for the expansion of Europe’s transatlantic trade in Africans in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Consumerism rose through the consumption of sweet foods and sweetened drinks such as tea and coffee. In 1700 there was an annual influx of 17000 enslaved people from Africa to North and South America and by 1810 that rate had more than tripled. During the 1800s three out of ten enslaved people transported to the Caribbean were brought to work on enslaved labour sugar plantations. About 4.5 million Africans were enslaved in the Caribbean (47% of the 10 million enslaved peoples of Africa brought to the Americas). Many more (around 2 million) had died on the slaving ships on the Middle Passage across the Atlantic Ocean. The enslaved labour sugar plantation system also saw an environmental impact on these lands as forests were cleared to make room for the sugar beet plants. After 1834 (the Slavery Abolition Act was passed in the UK in 1833) British plantation owners used a mix of indentured and free Black labourers. 

Unknown creator

 

"Tobacco tin with a hinged lid, measuring circa 11cm x 8cm x 2.5cm. The graphic states ""This mixture is manufactured entirely from Empire Grown Tobaccos."" It depicts a white overseer, or manager, on a tobacco plantation while in the background black workers are picking the crop. Churchman's was founded by William Churchman in 1790. The original shop, which sold pipe tobacco, was located at Hyde Park Corner in Ipswich. 

In 1888 William Alfred (later Sir William) and Arthur Charles Churchman, grandsons of the founder, succeeded their father, Henry, in the business. By 1890 the company also produced ""white cigarettes"", and six years later produced 20,000 cigarettes an hour. To counter the aggressive American invasion to the British cigarette market W.D. & H.O. Wills, John Player & Sons, Lambert & Butler, Hignett Brothers (with their associated firms) and Stephen Mitchell & Son, with six other firms, joined forces to found the Imperial Tobacco Company, Ltd., in 1901. Churchman joined the recently formed company the following year. Churchman’s closed in 1992. The trade and consumption of tobacco is strongly linked to the transatlantic trade in Africans. By the mid-17th century, tobacco was established as one of the main goods used by the Portuguese, Dutch, French and English to buy enslaved people on the African coast. Tobacco was grown in some North American colonies, mainly in Virginia, Maryland and North Virginia to supply the English market. While initially cultivated by indentured servants, by the second half of the 1600s planters began replacing their workforce with enslaved Africans. Now dependent on enslavement in order to be commercially viable, soaring American tobacco exports created a constant demand for more enslaved labour. For those who fell victim to Europe’s transatlantic trade in Africans, life on an American tobacco plantation was one of relentless, back breaking work, brutal punishments, fear, malnutrition, disease, and often, an early death. "  

WA and AC Churchman Limited, Ipswich and Norwich, tobacco manufacturers

 

This large cup and saucer were used as an advertising piece for Narberth Merchant Thomas Lewis. It was donated by Bridget Lee-Davies (1915 - 2009), a long-time supporter of Narberth Museum. This set was made by Burgess and Leigh potteries, who were manufacturers of earthenware. Burgess and Leigh, founded under the name of Hulme and Booth, occupied the Central Pottery in Burslem, Staffordshire from 1862 to 1867. In 1867 they took the earthenware department of Hill Pottery and in 1899 moved to the Middleport Works, a seven-oven factory by the Trent and Mersey Canal. During the 20th century they became known as ‘Burleigh’ and renowned ceramicist Charlotte Rhead worked for the company between 1926 and 1931. The stamp to the rear of these objects classes them as ‘Semi Porcelain’ and they are part of the company’s Erie blue design. They bear what is known as the printed globe mark with ‘Burslem’ stamped beneath, which, according to Geoffrey Godden’s Encyclopaedia of British Pottery and Porcelain Marks (1964) was in use between 1906 and 1912. 

An advertisement on The Welshman Almanac from December 1909 stated, “Thomas Lewis, Tea & Coffee Merchant, High Street, Narberth – Our Teas and Coffees retain their Popularity ‘Drinke and Enjoye them’.” Tea rose in importance with the Temperance Movement in the 19th century and items such as this show the importance of tea and cocoa in the anti-alcohol stance. In 1882 tea-loving Prime Minister William Gladstone told Parliament “The domestic use of tea as a powerful champion able to encounter alcoholic drink in a fair field and throw it a fair fight.” The Dutch started to import tea in the 16th century – it spread from there to western Europe but remained a drink for the wealthy. Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II, made it fashionable in the UK. The East India Company seized on this and began to import tea into Britain, shipping it from Java. The East India Company (founded in 1600 and who had begun using and transporting enslaved people in Asia and the Atlantic in the early 1600s) had the monopoly on all trade from the East. When tea came into Britain, their ships transported it and by the 18th century tea had replaced spices and silk as their most important cargo. 

By 1760 they were carrying 4.5 million tons a year into Britain. It had a high tax due in part to smuggling and tea was often adulterated with substances such as sheep dung to give it the necessary colour. William Pitt the Younger reduced the tax on tea in the 1784 Commutation Act, acting on advice of Richard Twining of Twining’s Tea Company (who were importing through the East India Company who had gained control of large parts of the Indian sub-continent where they initiated the beginnings of the British Raj and Hong Kong) making legal tea affordable. The trade in tea helped to strengthen and promote British Imperialism in Asia. Increase in popularity was also in a major part to sugar. Increase in sugar consumption led to more tea and increased the enslavement of African people multi-fold in the West Indies. By 1760s the annual duties on sugar imports were enough to maintain all the ships in the navy – a navy that helped to secure British dominance overseas. So, the increase of trading in enslaved people grew. Due to the increase in plantation agriculture, tea drinking also changed the economy and ecology of areas of India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka).  

Burgess and Leigh, Staffordshire

 

"Wooden handled hammer used in James Williams’ Bonded Stores for corking bottles or barrels. The hammer has compressed rubber pads on either ends of the cylindrical head. It was donated by Bridget Lee-Davies (1915-2009), a long-time supporter of Narberth Museum. The ‘Bond’ was built for James Williams (Narberth) Beer and Wine Merchants (established 1830) in around 1896 and was used for storing and blending spirits. Whisky was shipped from Glasgow to Cardigan and then brought to the stores. Brandy, port and sherry came from Europe. Kegs were hoisted to the first floor and left to mature. Water for blending was drawn from a tap in Church Street. When ready, the contents were poured into a trough that led to the downstairs area and into a blending tank. Everything was held in the stores ‘in bond’ until it was bottled. No duty was paid until the alcohol left the building. Twice-weekly visits were made by the Customs and Excise officer to assess the spirits and duty owed. Security was naturally tight – two keys were required to unlock the large wooden doors, one held by the Customs officer, the other by the Store Manager. The bonded stores closed following the company’s move to the edge of town. The building was in use until the 1990s as a warehouse and in 2012, after a major restoration project, was re-opened as a home for Narberth Museum. 

The rubber component of this corking hammer shows a link to raw materials made available through the continued expansion of the British Empire. Rubber has a long connection to colonization. By the 1800s, with the huge world demand for rubber, Britain decided to grow plants in its tropical colonies. In 1873 Henry Wickham, a British planter living in South America, was hired to take seeds out of Amazonia to send back to Britain. Of the 70000 seeds taken only 12500 survived. Seedlings from British greenhouses were transplanted to British colonial plantations in Southeast Asia. By the 1890s 740,000 acres of rubber trees grew in Sri Lanka and Malaysia. Belgian administration of the Congo took place from the 1870s to the 1920s and was first led by Sir Henry Morton Stanley who explored under the sponsorship of King Leopold II of Belgium. Leopold extracted ivory, rubber, and minerals in the upper Congo basin for sale on the world market, formally acquiring rights to the Congo territory at the Conference of Berlin in 1885 and made the land his private property. On May 29, 1885, the king named his new colony the Congo Free State. The state would eventually include an area now held by the Democratic Republic of Congo. Leopold’s reign in the Congo eventually earned infamy due to the increasingly brutal mistreatment of the indigenous peoples. 

In the Congo Free State, colonists brutalized the local population into producing rubber, for which the spread of cars and development of rubber tires created a growing international market. From 1885–1908, millions of Congolese died as a consequence of exploitation and disease. Failure to meet the rubber collection quotas was punishable by death. The Abir Congo Company (founded as the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company) also exploited natural rubber in the Congo Free State. The company was founded with British and Belgian capital and was based in Belgium.”

Unknown creator

 

"This box is the Princess Mary Gift Box. It is a brass tin that would have contained a variety of gifts. It was intended to be distributed to all members of the armed forces of the British Empire in 1914, following the outbreak of the First World War. The tins, designed by Stanley Davenport Adshead and Stanley C. Ramsey, were decorated with an embossed image of Mary in profile surrounded by a laurel leaf, with her ‘M’ monograph either side. The photo for the embossed image was taken at the studio of Mr E. Brooks of Buckingham Palace Road. The words ‘Imperium Britannicum’ (The British Empire) are at the top, with a sword and scabbard either side and at the bottom are the words ‘Christmas 1914’ flanked by bows of battleships on a heavy sea. In the corners are the names of the Allies – Belgium, Japan, Montenegro and Servia, with France and Russia either side. The contents varied depending on whom they were being sent. The standard gift ow (also known as the smoker’s gift) contained 20 cigarettes in yellow monogrammed paper, an ounce of pipe tobacco, a pipe, a Christmas card and a photograph of Princess Mary. It was supposed to contain a tinder lighter but due to shortage of these, they were often substituted with other gifts and those in the navy received a bullet pencil (a silver tipped pencil in a case made from a spent .303 cartridge from UK firing ranges and marked with an M). 

A non-smokers gift, produced at a ratio of 1 for every 28 smokers’ gifts (non-smokers made up around 4% of the British forces) contained a packet of acid tablets, a khaki writing case, paper and pencil. Sikh troops received sweets and spices and nurses received chocolate instead of tobacco. Boxes were manufactured by Barclay & Fry, Barringer, Wallis & Manners and Hudson & Scott. Both tobacco and chocolate have definite links to the British Empire’s history. The trade and consumption of tobacco is strongly linked to the transatlantic trade in Africans. Tobacco was one of the first tropical products to fuel colonial trade and by the mid-17th century, tobacco was established as one of the main goods used by the Portuguese, Dutch, French and English to buy enslaved people on the African coast. Tobacco was grown in some North American colonies, mainly in Virginia, Maryland and North Virginia to supply the English market. While initially cultivated by indentured servants, by the second half of the 1600s planters began replacing their workforce with enslaved Africans. Now dependent on enslavement in order to be commercially viable, soaring American tobacco exports created a constant demand for more enslaved labour. 

For those who fell victim to Europe’s transatlantic trade in Africans, life on an American tobacco plantation was one of relentless, back breaking work, brutal punishments, fear, malnutrition, disease, and often, an early death. Chocolate entered Britain in the mid-17th century, first as a luxury drink. It was introduced through Spanish colonial trade, with Spain controlling major cacao-producing regions in Central and South America and South East Asia. By the 1660s, chocolate houses (similar to coffeehouses) were popular among elites in London. As Britain expanded its empire, it sought to secure its own sources of cacao rather than depend on Spanish colonies. The British captured Jamaica in 1655, gaining access to one of the Caribbean’s largest cacao producers. British merchants gradually built a supply chain linking Caribbean cacoa plantations, transatlantic shipping and factories in Britain. Chocolate’s connection to the empire cannot be separated from the transatlantic trade in Africans. Cacao plantations in the Caribbean (Jamaica, Trinidad, Grenada, and later British Guiana) relied heavily on enslaved African labour. After abolition of slavery (1833–38), many plantations struggled. The Industrial Revolution transformed chocolate from a luxury into a mass-market product. Industrial chocolate required cheap, steady supplies of cacao—which pushed Britain to expand its colonial sourcing. After Caribbean production declined, Britain turned to West Africa, with the key region of the Gold Coast (Ghana). British colonial authorities encouraged cacao farming in the late 19th century.”  

Stanley Davenport Adshead, Stanley C Ramsey (designers)

 

This light green glass bottle bears the label “Pure West Indian Lime Juice imported by Crosse and Blackwell. By special appointment to the Queen, Emperor of the French and King of the Belgians.” Crosse and Blackwell was originally established in London as Jackson’s, a colonial produce business, in 1706. It was acquired by Edmund Crosse and Thomas Blackwell in 1830. The Company secured a royal warrant in 1837. The mention of the Emperor of the French dates the bottle between 1852 and 1870, during the reign of Napoleon III (Charles-Louis Napoleon Bonaparte). The King of the Belgians at this time was Leopold II and he is notoriously linked to some of the worst European excess of imperialism carried out in Africa. Belgian administration of the Congo took place from the 1870s to the 1920s and was first led by Sir Henry Morton Stanley who explored under the sponsorship of King Leopold II of Belgium. Leopold extracted ivory, rubber, and minerals in the upper Congo basin for sale on the world market, formally acquiring rights to the Congo territory at the Conference of Berlin in 1885 and made the land his private property. On May 29, 1885, the king named his new colony the Congo Free State. The state would eventually include an area now held by the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Leopold’s reign in the Congo eventually earned infamy due to the increasingly brutal mistreatment of the indigenous peoples. 

In the Congo Free State, colonists brutalized the local population into producing rubber, for which the spread of cars and development of rubber tires created a growing international market. The Force Publique, Leopold’s private mercenary army, imposed extreme acts of violence on those who did not meet the rubber quota including the amputation of hands (including the hands of children), taking of hostages, widespread killings and the burning of villages. From 1885–1908, millions of Congolese died as a consequence of exploitation and disease. In 1908, the Belgian government officially annexed the Congo Free State, transforming it into a formal colony known as the Belgian Congo. Leopold received significant financial compensation from the Belgian state for his "prized possession".  

Crosse & Blackwell

 

The picture shows a group of adults and children at Narberth Carnival celebrating the Winter Olympic Games held in Canada. Many are dressed in costumes and some have their faces painted. Very little is known of the early carnivals in Narberth. Early reference is made in a local newspaper, Pembroke County Guardian of 1906. It is known to be the oldest carnival in Pembrokeshire. It appears that the procession ended at the castle where judging took place. The Carnival continues to run as part of Narberth Civic Week, held in July. The face painting in the photograph reflects the cultural norms and understanding of that era and includes face painting practices now recognised as culturally insensitive and inappropriate. Some of the children have blackface. The origins of this practice date can date back to 18th century European theatrical performances, although it became a phenomenon in America post-Civil War (1861- 1865). 

The performances of white players with blackened faces wearing clothing that mimicked and mocked enslaved Africans on Southern plantations, characterizing them as lazy, ignorant, superstitious, hypersexual and prone to thievery and cowardice, were racially derisive and forced stereotypes that many white people came to accept. It continued to became popular in early 20th century culture, from Al Jolson through to Shirley Temple. In the UK the Black and White Minstrel Show ran for twenty years from 1958 and was seen by anti-racist groups such as the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination (founded 1964) as being both racist and perpetuating racial stereotypes. However, the blackening of faces in the UK has not always been associated with racial stereotyping such as the Rebecca Rioters (1839-1843) who operated around Narberth and used to blacken their faces to avoid identification and some forms of folk dancing which are historically linked to chimney sweeping.

Unknown creator

 

This cotton loin cloth is part of a collection donated to the museum by Ralph Gaches that also includes a green cotton cap (NARB: 1990: 143) and a cribbage board made from a Dutch mess tin (NARB: 1990: 26). Ralph Gaches served in the RAF and was a prisoner of war of the Japanese from the fall of Singapore in February 1942 until the Japanese surrender in August 1945. He was transferred to a hospital in Singapore before returning home in November 1945. He spent his time as a POW at Bandoeng in Java, later lived in Burry Port and died in 1988. The cribbage board belonged to an Australian POW in the same camp and is made of wood and the metal from a Dutch mess tin. This prisoner is reported to have died of beriberi and dysentery on one of the Sumatran railroad camps. Australia had been a collection of British colonies between 1788 to 1901 when the six separate colonies federated to form the Commonwealth of Australia, becoming a self-governing nation within the British Empire. 

Singapore was one of the British Empire’s most important naval bases in the Far East. Britain had established a base there in the interwar years, following the termination of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1923. The base formed a major part of the British interwar defence planning for this region of the Empire. Singapore had been established as a trading post in 1819, was part of the Straits Settlement between 1826 and 1942 along with Penang and Malacca and later becoming a Crown Colony between 1946 and 1959. Imperial cotton would have come from India or Egypt.  

Unknown creator

 

This watercolour portrait of Colonel Mathias by H. Carl Schiller was painted in 1855, signed and dated by the artist. Schiller taught as Drawing Master at Hull College (established 1836) from 1841 and advertised himself as a Portrait and Miniature Painter, offering private lessons in landscape, figure and perspective drawing as well as painting in oils and watercolours. He had work shown in the V&A and his work is now in their collections. His daughter, Madeline (1843 – 1911) was a well-respected pianist. The Mathias family lived in Gloyne, near Narberth. Mathias was a Colonel in the army at the time of the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857. 

The Sepoy Mutiny was a significant uprising against British rule in India that led to the demise of the British East India Company and to direct control of the sub-continent by the British Government, a period known as the Raj. The historian W. Dalrymple describes the thousands of revenge hangings and murders as "probably the bloodiest episode in the entire history of British colonialism." In 1877, Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India, and British rule continued until independence was gained in 1947, a movement that drew much inspiration from the mutiny almost a century before.  

H. Carl Schiller

 

A double-ended glass baby feeder with teat attached to one end. Top is embossed with the words "Meritor Dandy Feeder. Maw. Barnet". On the sides of bottle are displayed "Half Ounces" & "Tea Spoons" in graduated measuring scales. With industrialisation, working mothers had less time to breastfeed their babies as regularly as in previous years and many could not afford wet nurses. Prior to 1894, baby bottles were often known as the ‘murder bottle’ and had an unhygienic hose attachment, which led to many unexplained baby deaths. These designs were revised and in 1894 the first ‘banana’ shaped feeder, the Allenburys’ feeder, was marketed. The ‘Meritor Dandy’ Miniature Feeder dates from the early 1910s. The bottle is made from clear moulded glass. It has a flat base to keep it stable. It is banana shaped and fits into one hand, allowing the other hand to support the baby. At one end of the bottle there is a hole for pouring in the feeding mixture. To prevent it from pouring out, a metal cap is put on after filling but this is missing from this item. At the other end a similar hole, covered by a rubber teat, lets the baby suck out the feed. The teat regulates the flow of liquid into the baby’s mouth, ensuring it does not choke. S. Maw and Sons (S. Maw Son & Sons after circa 1918) were a medical instrument manufacturer based in Aldersgate, London. 

The company dates from 1814. Solomon Maw took over in 1835. Meritor was a trade name for a wide variety of medical goods supplied by the firm. The rubber component of this corking hammer shows a link to raw materials made available through the continued expansion of the British Empire. Rubber has a long connection to colonization. By the 1800s, with the huge world demand for rubber, Britain decided to grow plants in its tropical colonies. In 1873 Henry Wickham, a British planter living in South America, was hired to take seeds out of Amazonia to send back to Britain. Of the 70000 seeds taken only 12500 survived. Seedlings from British greenhouses were transplanted to British colonial plantations in Southeast Asia. By the 1890s 740,000 acres of rubber trees grew in Sri Lanka and Malaysia. In Africa Belgian administration of the Congo took place from the 1870s to the 1920s and was first led by Sir Henry Morton Stanley who explored under the sponsorship of King Leopold II of Belgium. Leopold extracted ivory, rubber, and minerals in the upper Congo basin for sale on the world market, formally acquiring rights to the Congo territory at the Conference of Berlin in 1885 and made the land his private property. 

On May 29, 1885, the king named his new colony the Congo Free State. The state would eventually include an area now held by the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Leopold’s reign in the Congo eventually earned infamy due to the increasingly brutal mistreatment of the indigenous peoples. In the Congo Free State, colonists brutalized the local population into producing rubber, for which the spread of cars and development of rubber tires created a growing international market. From 1885–1908, millions of Congolese died as a consequence of exploitation and disease. Failure to meet the rubber collection quotas was punishable by death. The Abir Congo Company (founded as the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company) also exploited natural rubber in the Congo Free State. The company was founded with British and Belgian capital and was based in Belgium.  

S. Maw

 

Cardboard tube which originally held saccharin tablets. This is labelled 'Standard Strength' and 'Order Dec. 1st, 1942.' It was donated to the museum in 1994. Saccharin is a non-nutritive artificial sweetener that is known for being over 300 times sweeter than sucrose, or refined sugar. It was first discovered in 1879 by chemist Constantin Fahlberg, working on coal tar derivatives at The Johns Hopkins University. In 1884 Fahlberg applied for patents in several countries, describing methods of producing this substance that he named saccharin. Saccharin derives its name from the word "saccharine", meaning "sugary”. Its use became widespread during WWI with the sugar shortages due to the difficulty of importing sugar from the colonised Caribbean islands and the British Saccharin Company was founded in 1917. During WWII, the British government, in collaboration with the British Saccharin Company, produced saccharin to address the sugar shortage and these were commonly sold by chemists. Britain was reliant on importing foods. 

When World War II started in 1939, the country was annually importing 70 percent of its foodstuffs, including 50 percent of its meat, about 70 percent of its cheese, sugar, cereals, and fats, and almost 80 percent of its fruits. With many of these countries that exported foods being occupied and also with the threat of German U-boats across the Atlantic, rationing was introduced in January 1940 with sugar rationing being introduced in July 1942. Newspapers articles during the war years report that many people were fined for selling cut-rate saccharin. One report form 1941 records that the public were advised to carry their own sugar or saccharin to teashops and catering establishments due to the sugar allowances which were restricted to cooking. By 1942 Labour MP Will Thorne was asking Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food about the shortage of saccharin tablets which were “so valuable to thousands of householders” but was advised that there were no shortages and production at this time was about 25 times pre-war output. 

In 1942 it was reported that “Utility” soft drinks would be sweetened with 75 tons of saccharin compared to the 40 -50,000 tons of sugar normally used. The Ministry of Food controlled the maximum wholesale and retail prices of saccharin tablets and this continued from 1942 to 1949. Sugar rationing lasted until September 1953. Its popularity further increased during the 1960s and 1970s among dieters.  

Unknown creator

 

Gas protection container for a baby from WWII. It constitutes a metal frame supporting a container of waterproofed (rubberised) canvas material with a celluloid window. A rubber concertina pipe extends at side which would have been pushed back and forth to pump air into the mask that terminates in gas mask style breather. With the baby inside the mask, an adult could start to use the hand pump. The gas mask is impressed 3U AVON. It was donated to the museum in 1991. In 1938, the British Government gave everyone, including babies, gas masks to protect them in case the Germans dropped poison gas bombs on Britain. Under legislation enacted in 1939, it was an offence not to carry your gas mask at all times and anyone found to be in breach of this would be liable to a fine. These gas masks were for children up to two years old. Parents placed their baby inside the mask so that the head was inside the steel helmet and the baby could see through the visor. Then they wrapped the canvas part around the baby’s body with the straps fastened under its bottom like a nappy, and its legs dangling free below. The canvas had a rubber coating to stop gas seeping through the material, and the straps were tied securely so that the mask was airtight. There is would have been asbestos filter on the side of the mask to absorb poisonous gases. 

The Avon Rubber Company, founded in 1885 in Wiltshire, England, specialised in rubber products ranging from tyres and industrial goods to protective equipment. During WW2, Avon became a major supplier of gas masks for both civilians and the military. Today, under the name Avon Protection, the company continues to manufacture advanced respiratory and ballistic protection for armed forces and emergency services worldwide. This gas mask has two links to colonialism: rubber and asbestos. Asbestos mining saw rapid global expansion during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Colonial powers, recognising the mineral’s industrial potential, established vast mining operations in their overseas territories worldwide. Colonial exploitation fuelled the asbestos industry’s growth. British firms controlled mines in South Africa and Canada, ensuring a steady flow of the mineral to factories in England. French companies exploited deposits in New Caledonia, while Belgian interests tapped into resources in the Congo. The mineral’s fire-resistant and insulating properties made it highly valuable for industrial applications. These nations made huge profits from the extraction and exportation of asbestos. Canada, a British dominion, became the world’s largest asbestos exporter by 1920, with significant operations in Quebec. Russia, South Africa, and Australia also emerged as major producers during this period. 

The economic advantages fuelled further colonial expansion and industrial growth in the imperial centres. These imperial powers extracted vast quantities of the mineral from their colonies, using cheap or forced labour from indigenous populations, often with little regard for workers’ safety or environmental impacts, leading to long-term consequences for workers and communities. Colonial powers often suppressed information about health risk dangers to maintain their industrial advantage. As demand grew, new mines opened in various parts of the world, including Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Brazil. World War II significantly increased global asbestos consumption with military demand for fire-resistant materials. Shipyards, aircraft factories and other defence industries relied heavily on asbestos for insulation and fireproofing. It wasn’t until 1999 that the United Kingdom prohibited the import, supply, and use of asbestos. Rubber has a long connection to colonization. 

By the 1800s, with the huge world demand for rubber, Britain decided to grow plants in its tropical colonies. In 1873 Henry Wickham, a British planter living in South America, was hired to take seeds out of Amazonia to send back to Britain. Of the 70000 seeds taken only 12500 survived. Seedlings from British greenhouses were transplanted to British colonial plantations in Southeast Asia. By the 1890s 740,000 acres of rubber trees grew in Sri Lanka and Malaysia. Belgian administration of the Congo took place from the 1870s to the 1920s and was first led by Sir Henry Morton Stanley who explored under the sponsorship of King Leopold II of Belgium. Leopold extracted ivory, rubber, and minerals in the upper Congo basin for sale on the world market, formally acquiring rights to the Congo territory at the Conference of Berlin in 1885 and made the land his private property. 

On May 29, 1885, the king named his new colony the Congo Free State. The state would eventually include an area now held by the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Leopold’s reign in the Congo eventually earned infamy due to the increasingly brutal mistreatment of the indigenous peoples. In the Congo Free State, colonists brutalized the local population into producing rubber, for which the spread of cars and development of rubber tires created a growing international market. From 1885–1908, millions of Congolese died as a consequence of exploitation and disease. Failure to meet the rubber collection quotas was punishable by death. The Abir Congo Company (founded as the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company) also exploited natural rubber in the Congo Free State. The company was founded with British and Belgian capital and was based in Belgium.  

AVON

 

This bottle is embossed COFFEE & CHICORY EXTRACT on one side and J. LYONS & CO LTD, LONDON on the other. This was donated to the museum in 2013. J. Lyons & Co. was founded at the end of the nineteenth century by Joseph Lyons and two of his brothers-in-law. At its peak, the company was responsible for corner house tea shops, a popular restaurant chain), a number of hotels and a range of product lines in food manufacturing. Lyons led the market with the development of a brand-new coffee and chicory essence. This bottle dates from the 1920's, when coffee extract provided an economical way for ordinary people to drink coffee. Lyon’s Coffee and Chicory Extract, a liquid coffee essence, was introduced in 1921. Before the invention of vacuum sealing, conventional ground coffee would lose up to 65% of its flavour within 24 hours. Liquid coffee and chicory essence could be kept much longer after opening. In manufacturing the coffee beans and roasted chicory root were pulverised into a powder and held in a container whilst steam is forced through. The resulting liquid was then drawn off. The mixture was then heated under vacuum to reduce it to a concentrated liquid essence which was then sweetened. The name was changed to ‘Bev’ in 1930. 

The advent of instant coffee (the first Nescafe was introduced by Nestle in 1938) inevitably made these extracts largely redundant. During WWII the Ministry of Food decided that coffee essence was a necessity as a morale booster. However, when Belgium and France were invaded, the supply of chicory was interrupted. Dr Edwin Hughes, a senior chemist at Lyons, discovered that artichokes were similar in composition to chicory. Covent Garden buyers purchased as many artichokes as possible which were dried under laboratory supervision in the hop-field kilns in Kent, before being pulverised and added to the preparation of coffee extract. This transformed Bev into a best seller. Weith the end of rationing, coffee essence sales declined. These essences are still used today in baking. In the circa 1930s J. Lyons and Co also printed a book entitled “60 recipes for flavouring with Lyns Coffee and Chicory Extract”. 

The transatlantic trade in Africans played a critical role in shaping the existing coffee industry. In the 1700s coffee began to make its mark on Britain. Coffee houses appeared in England in around 1650 and by 1675 there were over 3000 coffee houses in England. Demand for coffee overlapped with the increasing demand for sugar. Tobacco fuelled the slave trade and established the “triangle trade” where the journey from Europe to Africa carried manufactured goods, and the journey from Africa to the Caribbean and America carried enslaved Africans to the growing plantations in the New World. From such locations as Jamaica, coffee was transported back into the U.K. By 1660, this arrangement was formalized when the Royal African Company was founded to trade along the western coast of Africa. Colonizers established vast coffee plantations in Brazil, the Caribbean and parts of Central America, where coffee production became integral to the new economy. 

Enslaved people on coffee plantations endured brutal conditions. The exploitive legacy of coffee is still reflected in the modern treatment of exploited African and Latin American coffee farmers, many of whom are descendants of historically enslaved people.  

Unknown creator

 

This antique race-type board game, dating from the early days of manned flight, would have originally been boxed, with three coloured aeroplanes on stands and wooden shaker with bone dice (all missing). It comprises a screen-printed cardboard board game, with central fold. The title, "Aeroplane Race Round the British Empire", is at the top and the board features illustrated images of cites and countries of the British Empire, including Honk Kong, Melbourne, New Zealand, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Egypt, Cape Town, Malta, West Indies, Ottawa, Gibraltar and London, showing the expanse of the Empire. There are 100 spaces, with a number of forfeits en-route to the end, including running out of petrol, motor break down, a gale or colliding with another aeroplane as well as a number of bonuses such as fair weather or good wind. British Manufacture is printed to the bottom of the board. The game reflects idealised images of British overseas possessions and project a sense of order in the Empire when it was felt that innovations such as telegraph, radio and aeroplane would strengthen links across the colonies. Glevum Games was the principal trade name used by a firm established in Gloucester in 1894 by Harry Owen Roberts and his younger brother John Owen Roberts. Roberts Brothers manufactured a vast range of products at their factory in Upton Street, Gloucester. 

The factory was built in 1902 and provided a state-of-the-art workplace for the workforce of up to about 700 employees. Government inspectors referred other employers to the factory to see how they could improve working conditions for their employees. The company became known for its range of games and was the largest maker of games in the British Empire. Glevum Games was taken over by Chad Valley in 1954, but remained in business until 1956 when the factory was closed. The British Empire emerged in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through overseas trade, settlement, and rivalry with other European powers, expanding first in North America and the Caribbean and later in Asia via the East India Company. During the eighteenth-century Britain became the world’s leading imperial power, building a global trading system closely tied to the enslavement and exploitation of Indigenous peoples, and winning decisive victories over France, though the loss of the American colonies forced a shift in focus toward India and the wider world. In the nineteenth century, industrialisation underpinned rapid expansion, with Britain establishing control over India, large parts of Africa, and territories in Asia and the Pacific, promoting ideas of free trade and a “civilising mission” while ruling diverse peoples through unequal and often coercive systems. 

The people colonised by the British had British laws and customs imposed upon them, lost their ability to govern themselves and were, in many cases, violently oppressed. Taxes on colonised people were often high and the British brutally exploited natural resources for their own financial gain. The British Empire stripped many colonies and indigenous peoples of their land, languages and vibrant cultures, and along with harsh conditions and disease, saw decline in Indigenous populations, (e.g. the Aboriginal population had declined by 90% by the 1920s). There was opposition to the transatlantic slave trade in Britain during the 1700s and 1800s. This came from members of parliament, like William Wilberforce, as well as religious organisations, such as the Quakers. Olaudah Equiano, a formerly-enslaved man who settled in London, campaigned against slavery and published an autobiography detailing his experiences of enslavement. 

At its height after the First World War, the empire governed roughly a quarter of the world’s population, ruling over 10 million square miles of territory and controlling 400 million people. By the time of the British Empire Exhibition of 1924, Britain controlled a worldwide empire which covered a fifth of the land in the world but the economic strain of two world wars and the rise of nationalist movements led to rapid decolonisation after 1945, most notably with Indian independence in 1947. The empire formally gave way to the Commonwealth, leaving a complex legacy that includes the global spread of the English language and British institutions alongside deep social, political, and economic inequalities in former colonies. 

Roberts Brothers

 

A Christmas card dating from 1989. The postcard shows a modern drawing of the Tabernacle Chapel on Tabernacle Lane off St James’s Street (also colloquially known as Sheep Street, due to the livestock that used to be offered for sale here from pens arranged along the pavement). There is a reproduction of a letter originally written in 1858 by DR Maurice Phillips, offering himself as a candidate for “the important work of a Missionary to the heathen.” Tabernacle Congregational Chapel was built in1858 to replace the original chapel built in 1815. Originally the chapel was Wesleyan Methodist but by 1890 the chapel had become Congregationalist, and later passed to the United Reformed Church. It is a grade II listed building. Maurice Phillips was born in Llanboidy, Carmarthenshire on 11 April 1839. 

Following studying at Bedford College, he commenced his ministerial career at Siloa Church, Aberdare and left for Madras in 1861. From 1862 he worked for the London Missionary Society in Salem, Coimbatore and from 1891 in Madras. He retired from missionary work in 1908, returning to Britian. He had married Mary Jane Lechler in 1864 (died 1867) and in 1875 married Mary Collier. They had two daughters. He died in Southport in 1910. In his obituary in the Western Mail (30 August 1810) it was noted that in India “his name was a household word among those who were engaged in the same work as himself”. Regarding the funeral service, the Western Mail (31 August 1910) noted “He brought into the work [of a missionary] the warmth and passion and the great enthusiasm characteristic of the emotional Welsh temperament. He was endowed with special gifts, intellectual and enthusiastic…which enabled him to understand the character of the Hindu religion.” He wrote extensively on India’s religions. In his book The Teaching of the Vedas (1894) he concluded that “the development of religious thought in India has been uniformly downward, and not upward – deterioration, and not evolution.” Christian missionaries were taught to believe that Hinduism was a religion of idolatry, polytheism and superstition and that there was no place for Hindus in heaven, and so were sent out to educate the indigenous populations in Christianity. 

A pamphlet “Wanted: Intercessory Missionaries for India.“ (The Welsh Mission Press, Shylet) stated that it was seeking to “turn men ‘from idols to serve the living God.’” And the Indian Missionary Manual (1889) quoted Alexander Duff (1806 – 1878), a Scottish missionary in India who wrote “In that vast realm (India0 is the most stupendous fortress and citadel of ancient error and idolatry now in the world…It is defended by three hundred and thirty millions of gods and goddesses – the personations of evils – of types and forms to be paralleled only by the spirits of Pandemonium. Within are congregated two hundred and fifty millions of huma captives, the willing victims of the most egregious ‘falsities and lies’ that have ever been hatched by the Prince of Darkness – pantheisms and atheisms, transcendental idealisms and grovelling materialisms, rationalisms and legends, and all devouring credulities…” In their evangelical fervour for conversion to what they felt was the one true faith - and despite the more positive impacts they had with regards cultural exchange and educational and medical practices - Christian missionaries played their part in attempting to subjugate the cultural identities of indigenous populations, promote cultural imperialism and impose Western values and practices at the expense of indigenous cultures.  

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