Joseph Rowntree: what the York entrepreneur was really like

GENERATIONS of British children have grown up enjoying Smarties and Polo mints (the mint with the hole in the middle), and many of us are partial to Kit Kat and Black Magic.

Since the late 1980s these well-loved sweets and chocolates have been Nestlé products, but historically they were all Rowntree’s.

Smarties had been manufactured by Rowntree & Co. Ltd since 1937. Polo mints were first produced at the Rowntree factory in York in 1948. Kit Kat was first launched in September 1935 under the name Rowntree’s Chocolate Crisp. Two years later, it was renamed Kit Kat Chocolate Crisp and at the end of the Second World war it became simply Kit Kat.

Black Magic chocolates were created by Rowntree’s in 1933. Fruit Pastilles and Jelly Tots are, of course, still sold under the Rowntree brand name. For decades the name dominated the city of York. As Nick Smith, executive director of The Rowntree Society told me: “It’s very hard to go anywhere in York without coming across a Rowntree connection.”

What do we know about Joseph Rowntree? In his book Joseph Rowntree, author Chris Titley relates the events of Joseph’s childhood and early manhood. He was born in 1836 and spent his early years living above his father’s grocery shop in Pavement (the building that now houses Pizza Hut). After a seven-year apprenticeship in his father’s shop, Joseph went to London to gain more experience of the retail business.

While in London, Joseph was reunited with Julia Seebohm who he had first met when she was a student at The Friends School in Castlegate and frequent visitor to the Rowntree family in York. They were married and returned to live in the Top House in Bootham, but Julia subsequently died (possibly of meningitis) shortly after giving birth to their daughter Lilley.

Joseph re-married in 1866, this time to Julia’s cousin Emma Antoinette Seebohm. And in 1869 tragedy struck again when Lilley died of scarlet fever. As Joseph and Antoinette’s family grew, the Rowntrees moved across the road to rent no.19 (now no.49) Bootham.

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In 1869, Joseph took money out of the Pavement business and invested it in the riverside chocolate works at Tanner’s Moat, owned and managed by his brother Henry Isaac. Throughout the 1870s, however, the company struggled. What rescued the business came in the form of a French confectioner, Claude Gaget, who visited Henry and Joseph in 1879 with samples of pastilles and fruit gums. According to Nick Smith, “it was fruit pastilles that really made the business take off”. From 1883, Joseph took over the running of the Rowntree business on the untimely death of his brother Henry Isaac.

In 1892, Joseph bought 29 acres of land off Haxby Road and a new factory was built. By 1898 all production was at the Haxby Road site where the offices were the first area of the new plant to be lit by electricity.

What sort of a man was Joseph Rowntree? Well, he was a hard worker and continued to have an office at the Haxby Road plant until shortly before he died. He had remarkable energy and was enterprising in obtaining information from various quarters to help develop his business. He had a good sense of humour, people liked him and he was able to move easily in different social circles. He could reach out to people with differing views and was a natural conciliator.

As a child he’d been visibly shocked by witnessing first-hand the ravages of the Irish Potato Famine which he saw when he accompanied his father on a business trip to Ireland. Joseph was genuinely interested in the welfare of his employees and was concerned to rectify what he called the ‘social ills’ of poverty. He lived a modest lifestyle in accordance with his Quaker faith and he was a regular member of the York Meeting. He was a political radical and founded the Liberal Association in York but never engaged in national politics.

Above all, he was concerned for the welfare of his employees and in this he was ahead of his time. He set up a library for company workers. He opened two savings banks for them and in 1904, two years before the state pension was introduced, Joseph set about launching a company pension scheme. He also introduced out-of-hours social activities for his employees such as singing classes, angling societies, football teams and book appreciation circles.

Apart from the Rowntree Park and the Yearsley Swimming Baths, Joseph Rowntree inspired the building of the Rowntree Theatre and in 1901 purchased a 150,000-acre estate at Earswick. Here he presided over the Village Trust (1901) to oversee development of New Earswick which was to include a community centre – the Folk Hall – and a primary school.

Joseph Rowntree also set up three trusts in 1904 which are still active today. And a further trust was formed in 1968 to address housing issues.

This year is the centenary of Joseph Rowntree’s death, and to commemorate this anniversary the executive director of The Rowntree Society, Nick Smith, is inviting York residents and any others who may be interested, to arrange events in order to commemorate and make known the legacy of Joseph Rowntree to a wider public. Further details can be found on the website at https://www.rowntreesociety.org.uk

David Wilson is a Community Writer with The Press