Preface

This story covers one hundred and fifty years from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. It is the story of a remarkable family and of a remarkable firm and is typical of many similar family businesses which have contrib­uted greatly to the financial strength and prestige of Britain.

Colonel A. D. Pass, O.B.E., D.L., who retired from the Chairmanship in 1960, and is still a member of the Board, is the great-grandson of 'Capper Pass F, Founder of the firm, and there is amongst employees generally a number of second and third-generation men.

Although Capper Pass & Son Ltd has grown greatly since its early beginnings— about £3 ½ million is now employed in the business—it has never lost the character of a family business in which a friendly, personal relationship is maintained between employ­ees and management and there has been no industrial trouble, worth the name, during a century and a half.

Practically no names are mentioned in this story, although there has been a succes­sion of extremely able metallurgists, chemists, engineers and foremen, who have pro­vided the imagination, the scientific knowledge, and the leadership to build up and maintain this successful enterprise.

Relatively unknown in wider financial and commercial circles, the name of Capper Pass is nevertheless respected by non-ferrous metal men throughout the world and im­mediately conjures up a picture of ingenious, viable processes, continuous research and technical development, and the production of the purest metals from the most complex ores and residues.

At the Annual General Meeting, held in Bristol in October 1962, in my Chairman's Statement I paid a tribute to the 'famous and hospitable City of Bristol' where Capper Pass virtually started his little backyard business and where we maintained our head office for around one hundred and fifty years.

I also said that the emergence of a new type of smelter, and the economies of inte­gration at that date, were leading to the transfer of smelting and our other major activi­ties from Bristol to Melton, on the north bank of the Humber, where thirty years ago we had begun to establish a new, modern plant which has now grown so big and versatile that it can effectively undertake most of our work.

This, then, seems a good time in which to publish a brief history of a firm and a family of which we are very proud, as a record for our suppliers, our customers, our employees and posterity.

FRASER OF LONSDALE

Chairman

Black Country Background

The roots of the Pass family do not lie in Bristol, where they built up the metal-smelting concern which bears their name. Their background, and the origins of their business activity, must be sought in Staffordshire. More precisely they lie in Walsall, perched high on its hill overlooking the Black Country.

South Staffordshire early became famous as a pioneering industrial district. Its main energies have always lain in the production of such light metal goods as nails, locks, tools, and miscellaneous ironmongery. The work was done, from an early period, in many small forges and backyard workshops. Places of manufacture were scattered, and com­munities grew up haphazardly, less in clearly defined towns and villages than in small settlements built all over a sprawling area of primitive, unplanned industry.

The town of Walsall was soon prominent in the Black Country's industrial life. Being a borough, and a close-knit town with a market, a large mediaeval church, and an old grammar school, it had a certain lead over the other industrial communities of the region; it was, for many years, a larger and more important place than Birmingham. It early developed a special interest and expertise in the manufacture of saddler's iron­mongery and of the buckles used in the eighteenth century on knee breeches and shoes. The buckles, in view of the Pass family's activities, are of special interest. For they were apt to be of tin, brightly polished or else plated with silver. In an age of horse transport, and at a time when people secured their footwear not by strings or laces but by buckles, Walsall's prosperity seemed firmly based, and the town attained a population of over ten thousand in the first census of 1801. By that time, however, there were the beginnings of uncertainty and decline. Though nailmaking and Sadler's ironmongery were still reason­ably prosperous, the trade in locks and buckles was described as 'indifferent'. The local historians show that there were two main causes of the trouble. One of these, the high prices of copper, brass and tin, was due to the Napoleonic war. The other, more perman­ently devastating factor lay in the realm of fashion. For shoelaces had now taken the place of buckles, long trousers had become fashionable instead of breeches buckled just below the knee, and Wellington boots, with neither laces nor buckles, became more and more popular as the new century progressed. The army had abandoned shoe buckles, with disastrous results for Walsall. An effort was, indeed, made to stem the tide of taste, for we hear how in 1792 the playwright Sheridan (as MP for Stafford) presented a petition to that arbiter of taste, his close friend the Prince of Wales, expressing Walsall's consternation at the new patronage of 'shoestrings and slippers'. The obliging Prinny bade his court cronies to go back to buckles. But the collapse of the buckle trade soon continued, and many workers in Walsall were driven into dire distress or forced to learn new trades. Such was the position in 1801, the year when we first hear in Walsall of a man named Capper Pass.

The Pass family may have been of Huguenot origin; what is more certain is that the branch with whom we are concerned was settled in Staffordshire about the middle of the eighteenth century. It was there, probably between 1770 and 1780, but at a place and on a date that cannot now be certainly established, that William Pass married Mary Capper. The Cappers, some of whom are said to have been Quakers, were living by 1700 near Rugely. It may have been there that the Pass-Capper wedding took place. What also seems certain is that the Pass family were Nonconformists, and that their religious allegiance determined the choice of name for the son who was born, before 1782 when his mother died in Walsall, to William and Mary Pass. For it was, from fairly early times, a common practice among Nonconformists (particularly among Quakers) not to give their children a first name of any obviously religious type, but merely to give them as a first name the surname of the mother. Capper Pass is such a name, and it must be this Capper Pass, the only man of his surname or Christian name in Walsall, who appears in the detailed Census Schedule of 1801. His address is given as Woods Yard, an alleyway or passage which led off New Street (first called Fieldgate) not far south of the church and in the highest, most central part of old Walsall. His occupation is given as Victualler'; in other words a purveyor of drink who may also have had more solid provisions in his stock in trade.

This first Capper Pass was perhaps one of those who had been obliged, by depression in the bucklemaking industry, to change his trade, returning to work on metals as soon as he could set up in a place more durably promising than Walsall. Victualling might thus have been a temporary standby. At all events, any man who lived at Walsall had metal-working (particularly in tin and the plating of tin) in his blood. Almost all Capper Pass's neighbours in Woods Yard pursued the callings normal in the town There were several bucklemakers, a chapemaker, a whitesmith, a plater, a snaffler, a snaffle filer, and a hook

filer—to say nothing of a butcher and a brushmaker. Woods Yard was typical of many other side streets in this busy town of backyard workshops. But economic conditions were still precarious. Thomas Pearce, who was one of Walsall's census enumerators in 1801, and who wrote the town's history in 1813, speaks then of bad days for the buckle trade. If a man could see better chances elsewhere he was well advised to go, and it seems that Capper Pass lost little time in seeking his fortune outside Walsall. His marriage, to Ann Perkins, is said to have occurred in 1802. In November 1803 his eldest daughter Harriet was baptised in St Philip's Church (now the cathedral) in Bir­mingham. This town was for some years the place where Capper Pass I worked. Another daughter named Jane was born there in 1803 and the second Capper Pass in 1806. The baptisms of these two are not entered in the St Philip's register, but it seems likely that the family continued for a time to live in that part of Birmingham. But in the Levy Book (i.e. for the Poor Rate) for Birmingham in 1807 to 1809 the name of Pass appears against a property in Lancaster Street in St Mary's Quarter. The property, with a rate­able value of £24 a year, was among the higher valued premises in the Street, though rated less than those which included furnaces and other larger items of industrial plant. There are indications, in the precise way in which Pass's name is entered in the rate book against a property previously owned by one Joseph Walton, that he was at this time just coming into occupation. The Triennial Directory of 1808 makes it clear that the prem­ises concerned were No 22 Lancaster Street, and Capper Pass is given as a 'refiner of metals and brass caster in general'. The Levy Book ofi8iotoi8i3 still shows him as the occupant of the same premises, no doubt with his workshop in the backyard, and the Directory of 1812 gives him as 'refiner and dealer in metals'. But in 1815 his name no longer appears in the Birmingham directories and by 1820 he had certainly moved again, to the city where his family's fortune was to be made. For in that year he appears, in the church rate books, as the occupant of two small properties in the industrial parish of St Philip's, Bristol.

Early Days in Bristol

Sixty years before the first Bristol reference to Capper Pass the city itself had been the second largest in the country, a prosperous port, commercial centre, and manufacturing town. By 1820 it had been overhauled by Birmingham, and by several other towns in the Midlands and North, and for various reasons it experienced a depression and a posi­tion of relatively less importance. Yet it remained a commercial and industrial centre of note and it was easily the largest town in the West of England. We do not know the exact date of the first Capper Pass's migration from Birmingham to Bristol, though some time about 1815 seems likely. Nor are his precise reasons known, but he presum­ably felt that for him at all events Bristol offered a wider range of trade and brighter hopes. His beginnings in Bristol were, however, minute, the scene of his activity being no more than the tiny backyard, with its workshops, of the type already familiar to him in the Walsall-Birmingham area.

The church rate books of St Philip's parish in Bristol make no reference to Capper Pass in 1815. But in 1820 the next ones show that William Perkins (perhaps a relative of Mrs Pass) and Capper Pass jointly occupied a property in 'The Marsh' which belonged to Perkins. Capper Pass was also the sole occupant of a property owned by one S. Litson. The two properties, being among the humblest in that part of Bristol, had a rateable value of £5. The district itself, lying along the Avon (by that time converted into the non-tidal floating harbour), and extending along the Feeder Canal, had long main­tained an industrial character. It had easy access, by river or land carriage, to fuel sup­plies from the Kingswood coalpits just east of Bristol. The gasworks, whence supplies of coke could be obtained, had been established in the St Philip's area in 1819. The district contained a mixture of potteries, glass furnaces and foundries; of the last named some were of considerable size. But Capper Pass's little establishment was not among these larger industrial concerns. In 1826 his name appears again in the church rate books as the tenant of property (probably the same as before, but under new ownership) be­longing to a man named Skidmore. In 1837 the Bristol Poll Books list him, against the Marsh Buildings address, and as a voter for Berkeley, the Liberal candidate, and for the banker John Philip Miles. Then in 1839, just before the move to Bedminster and the present site, the Borough Rating Assessments give important details of Capper Pass as the tenant of a property in Marsh Buildings. These buildings are shown, towards the bottom of Avon Street and at right angles to it, in Ashmead's great Bristol map of 1828. They were a poor row of cottages with backyards. They have long been demolished; their site is in 1963 covered by some large mid-Victorian industrial buildings. The houses, in 1839, were rated low. One only, and that the property occupied by Capper Pass, is valued higher (£16 gross and £14 net) than the others. The reason for these better figures was clearly that it was classified as a 'dwelling house and manufactory*. It was here, no doubt, in a backyard workshop, that Capper Pass, described in the Bristol directories from 1836 onwards as a 'metal refiner and dealer, near gas works, Avon Street', carried on his small-scale business. His furnace and methods were, perhaps, no more sophisticated than the apparatus later shown in Mr Alfred Pass's bookplate. That bookplate is in itself of no small charm, with its contrasting vignettes of the humble smelter, at his tiny furnace, and the dream castle of his imagination and ambition. It throws a pleasing human light on the aspirations and attitudes of mind of a man who did, in fact, see much of his ambition fulfilled.

The 1830`s were also important for the history of the Pass family. In August of 1836 the second Capper Pass married Hannah Coole, born in Bristol but then of Long Ashton just outside it on the Somerset side. In July of 1837 Alfred Capper Pass, the controller of the firm's fortunes for over thirty years from 1870, was born. His birth­place is given as Avon Street, St Philip's, and the occupation of his father (Capper Pass II) is given as 'metal refiner'. It may have been about now that the first Capper Pass either died or handed over the business to his son, but unfortunately the date of his death remains unknown. The St Philip's church registers do not mention the point, and if, as seems likely, he was a Nonconformist, he may have been buried at one of the numerous chapels of the area. It was certainly his son, Capper Pass II, who made the important move from Marsh Buildings to the Bedminster site.

3 The Bedminster Move

If Capper Pass II wished to expand his little business his move, in 1840, to Bedminster can easily be understood. That district of southern Bristol, its northern portion only taken into the city in 1835, was beginning by now to become more industrialised and to expand. But the process had not yet gone far, and Bedminster, with its pastures and stream valleys, contained more empty ground than the riverside stretch of St Philip's parish. The Bristol and Exeter Railway, though now projected, had not yet cut its way through the semi-rural meadowlands between Windmill Hill and the New Cut. Along with a good choice of sites there were ample coal supplies available, with no more than a short cartage haul, from the mines in Bedminster itself. Capper Pass does not seem to have foreseen how soon most of the district would become a densely populated, closely built area, or how his chosen site, despite expansion from time to time, would duly be­come too cramped for the activities built up by him and later by his son. Immediately speaking a move to Bedminster was tactically promising.

So in 1840 Capper Pass II bought a plot of ground not far from Paul Street in Bed­minster. This street was a continuation of Mill Lane whose name came from the water mill down by the Malago brook, at this point subdivided into several small channels. The site itself lay a little north of Paul Street, being bounded on one side by a branch of the stream (whose water would be useful for cooling) and on another by the narrow, newly built Coronation Street. Ashmead's map of 1828 shows the site as void ground amid open fields, but it was soon to be hemmed in by streets of houses and other buildings. It measured only 103 feet by 81 feet. But it was clearly more spacious than the backyard

at Marsh Buildings. A narrow strip of ground along the stream was at once added to make a haulage way for carts coming to and from the main road.

By the terms of his new purchase Capper Pass II was to build 'at least one good and substantial messuage or dwelling house'. This house, in the late Regency style still normal in Bristol in the 1840*85 survives as part of the firm's offices. At first, however, it was Capper Pass II's own home and two of his daughters were born there. Later, when he had moved from industrial Bedminster (not, in mid-Victorian times, a very savoury area and devoid of metalled roads, street cleaning, and public lighting) to the residential respectability of various Redland addresses, the house was long occupied by George Tapp the resident foreman. By August 1841 the house had been built. The Census Schedule and the Poll Book of that year show that in the meantime Capper Pass (described in the Poll Book as a chemist) lived not in St Philip's but close to his new place of business in the newly built Richmond Terrace. This row of houses was well sited a little way up the slope of Windmill Hill, commanding what was then a pleasant view across open country­side, towards the Gorge and the fine terraces of Clifton. It was away from the coalpits and was said to be 'the cleanest rank of houses in Bedminster'. The Poll Books also show that then and in later elections Capper Pass II cast his vote for the Liberals.

His house apart, Capper Pass also built what the deeds mention as 'a lofty chimney with furnaces and workshops'. More ground was also taken in, at the same time, to the south of the ground first bought. Early smelting was thus carried on upon the site so acquired in the first Bedminster year. We shall see that these operations, most probably, lay largely in the recovery, from such goods as Sheffield plate and gold-plated objects, of silver and gold; lead, copper, and other metals came later as the site and the plant in­creased.

We get a glimpse of these early Bedminster days from the reminiscences of Mr Tom Cable, an employee of the firm for many years from 1887 and still alive in 1963. His father was works watchman, and his mother-in-law worked as a maidservant for Capper Pass II, most probably early in the 1850*3 when he still lived in the works. Joe Stroud, an older colleague of Mr Cable, started work as far back as 1853. Only six employees were there at the time, and as Stroud was entered as the seventh he was given a ticket, marked 'No. 7', which he carried in his pocket. The time of Stroud's entry seems to have been one of great expansion both in the scale and range of Capper Pass's activities. For by a purchase of extra ground in 1852 the site was more than doubled in a northward direction. It now filled most of the long, narrow strip of land between Coronation Street and the eastern channel of the Malago. On its northern side the site was, and is, hemmed in by the Malago itself where that brook bends at right-angles and flows directly towards East Street. It was on part of the land bought in 1852 that the first blast furnace was built; the largest smelting operation now envisaged would have called for the em­ployment of more men, of whom Stroud was one. The number employed certainly re­mained higher after 1853. The name of Pass's Yard gave way, so we find from the Bristol Directories of 1855 onwards, to the grander sounding title of metal works, while from about 1866 onwards the firm's designation became Capper Pass and Son. For by this time an important phase in the technical and business history of the concern had taken place: Alfred Pass had become much more closely associated with the firm's management. As we have seen, he had been born in 1837, and we know from a family letter that in 1845 was at a private boarding school at the village of Norton St Philip near Bath. No certain particulars are known about the rest of his education. He is said, in the 1850*85 to have learned chemistry from some teacher in Bristol, but it is not fully clear where or how he obtained his technical instruction. But as he approached thirty he was ready to take over more of the work. His father had now moved from the works to the newly built Aberdeen Terrace just off Whiteladies Road; he was there, and at two other Redland addresses, in the last years of his life. He was, by now, the prosperous, bewhiskered mid-Victorian businessman of his surviving photograph: he had clearly come far since the backyard days in St Philip's. He died on I4th September 1870. The newspaper notice of his death says that he had long been ill, and it seems likely that he had for some time left much of the firm's day-to-day management to his son.

Tradition has it that Alfred Pass once told his father that 'we must know what we are doing', and that his learning scientific chemistry was in pursuit of that aim. His increased prominence in the firm's activities certainly made for a technical proficiency greater than had been in evidence during the earliest years at Bedminster: even so, there was still a good deal about the work that was haphazard and based on inadequate knowledge. But to an increasing degree Alfred Pass saw to it that raw materials were assayed. Initially, and certainly from as far back as 1864, this work was done (with very variable results) by outside firms, but in a few more years, from about 1870 and a little before the time when Alfred Pass gained complete control of the firm on his father's death, an assayer named Read was actually employed in the works. The earliest assay books still in the firm's possession date from 1867 and from then onwards were kept regularly. The first of these books is in Alfred Pass's hand, except for a spell of a few days at the time of his father's death and funeral. From them, and from still older records in a notebook called the Business Experiments Book, as well as from some oral traditions stretching back as far as 1845, we can gather something of the technical operations of Capper Pass's in these early Bedminster years.

About 1845, very soon after the move from St Philip's, the work done seems largely to have lain in the desilvering of unwanted or damaged Sheffield plate, the silver so obtained thus being recovered for sale. The scaling of gilt buttons, and the melting down of such small, utilitarian gold objects as keys and seals was also undertaken. It may well be that similar work had been done in the St Philip's backyard; these recovery operations were thus, perhaps, a link with the elder Capper Pass's activities in Birming­ham, and included the stripping of plated iron and brass as well as copper. In 1857, how­ever, the firm's operations on its enlarged site lay mainly in the treatment of lead ores and residues, and of copper ores and secondaries. The metal so recovered was sold, not always at a profit and often for small gains. The picture is that of a business only marginally The

profitable, with no assured source of revenue and with technical knowledge of a some­what primitive and haphazard kind.

From 1857 onwards is the period covered by the Business Experiments Book. There seems, by now, to have been no more work on the recovery of gold and silver, but scrap brass and scrap zinc came fairly prominently into the varied list of metals that were treated. The main search, for about ten years, was for some operation which would yield steadily profitable results. It was in 1866, with the refining of solder and the production, in commercial quantities, of what was later called tin alloy, that the time of probing and experiment ended in success.

Work had, however, been done by 1866 on several other metals. Various coppery materials, of low content and troublesome to work because of their high lead admixture, were smelted in 1857 and during the 186o's. A hampering factor, in all these operations, lay in the variable results given by the various outside assaying firms to whom Capper Pass's sent samples. The theoretical basis of the firm's operations (as with many other British industrial concerns at that time) seems to have been sketchy and backward, a process of trial, and of frequent error, being almost inevitable rather than work based on theoretical calculation or scientific research. Copper slags from other smelters were im­portant among these materials. Some of the ores and residues smelted at this time were heated in a reverbatory furnace, but they were mostly fed into the blast furnace which in those days only worked twelve hours a day, the nights being available for emergency repairs. In 1870, as we find from two working lists, the furnace was tended by an engine-man (at 4^ a day), a boilerman and a tapping man (at 3^ 6d each), a furnaceman (the feeder) who got $s, and two slag men at 35. During meals the materials were pushed up in wheelbarrows and dumped near the furnaces for subsequent feeding in by hand. The feeding process was continuous, some men not normally on furnace work being brought up while the furnacemen were eating. Fuel, available from the Bedminster collieries or else, in the case of coke, from the Ashton Vale Iron Company not far away, was cheap, and the short distances involved made its transport inexpensive.

Coal ranged, between 1865 and 1870, from 6s to 6s 6d ton, being cheaper still in the i88o's when the larger scale of Capper Pass's operations made it possible to buy it in greater bulk. Coke never cost more, at this period, than the 15^ paid per ton in 1870. But in the 188o's the prices, from various local sources of supply, were lower still. With the blast furnace established as the chief means for initial smelting, the reverbatory was only used for the final production of metallic copper from the resulting matter. But it seems, from the somewhat scattered evidence available in Business Notes, that the quality of the ingot copper eventually produced was far from consistent or adequately pure, and that copper smelting was never a really profitable activity.

The treatment of lead ores and lead residues seems also to have been decidedly 'mar­ginal', with unreliable financial results. At first, in the 1850*8 various Cornish lead ores were bought for smelting. But their quality varied greatly. For this reason, and because lead mining in Cornwall was by this time in decline. Capper Pass soon turned to such secondary materials as lead ashes, lead sulphate, scrap lead, leaded paper from tea chests, and zinc slag. Here too, the reverbatory was used at first, but as a larger output was re­quired, and could readily be sold, the blast furnace took over. The smelting of lead, by various processes and with different sources for the raw material, continued for some years after Alfred Pass took over from his father, and we shall see how he made use of waste material from the ancient Mendip workings. The de-silvering of lead was also being undertaken both before and after 1870. But the amounts extracted were very small (only 3| ounces per ton of lead in 1873) an d the operation could have yielded little if any profit. Cobalt and nickel were also extracted in this early period, in small amounts, but for high prices when these were compared to those fetched by copper and lead.

More significant for the firm's future prosperity were the early experiments with tin. From as far back as 1858 consignments of solder ashes were bought from a meat-preserv­ing firm in Ireland, and work was later done on mixed tin and silver material, and on hard head (a compound of tin, arsenic and iron) from Cornwall. But in these early days Capper Pass's had no real idea on how such tin-bearing materials should be treated, and results were far below what they could have been. Another material seen as a possible source of tin was the pan scum which came from softening tinny lead in the lead-refining furnace. Once it appeared that the tin so obtained was suited to solder making the amount so treated increased. This increase came after the important discovery of 1866.

The first production of clean, satisfactory tin alloy, or solder, seems to have occurred in September 1866. The initial process was the smelting of pewter and solder ashes in the lead reverbatory. This was done so as to avoid volatilising and the loss of nearly half the residue's metal content; it seems likely that this good result was largely due to the use, as flux, of a little soda ash. The actual refining is best described in the words of the Business Experiments Book: 'The metal produced from the above was drained as usual in the furnace and then treated as follows: melted in a pot containing about five tons, until a rim had solidified all round the pot. By watching until the right time arrived, and repeatedly pouring sample bars into a mould, It ultimately came to a certain definite quality of metal, very fluid and clean at a very low temperature and uniformly the same. When this quality was reached, it was rapidly ladled out into pigs, and a quantity of thick stuff of very in­ferior quality remained at the bottom and side of the pot.' The earliest assays of the firm's tinning metal or fine solder are dated 1868 and 1869, and were both by outside assayers. The tin content was given, for the two years, as 60.9 per cent and 59.78 per cent, the antimony content of the finished metal being only one per cent. It was, however, made clear, for instance in correspondence of 1877, that Capper Pass and Son did not guaran­tee a tin content as high as 60 per cent in the solder they now regularly produced.

With the first refining of tin alloy, and its establishment as the firm's main product for sale, the early Bristol period may fitly be closed. It is very clear, both from technical and personal events in Capper Pass and Son's history, that the years from 1866 to 1870 were of crucial importance. For they saw the discovery of the product which would, for the rest of the century and beyond it, be the firm's commercial mainstay. The change of the firm's title came in that same year, 1866. In the next four years came the long last illness and death of Capper Pass II, and the rise to partial and then complete control of his son Alfred, who would guide the concern's fortunes through a long spell of gather­ing and then consistent well-being.
Steady Prosperity

The years from 1870 to 1905 were those when control of the firm rested in the competent hands of Alfred Capper Pass. They ended with his retirement and last illness, and with his death in the early autumn of 1905.

The firm's commercial mainstay throughout this perid of over thirty years was the production, from residues bought cheaply, of tin alloy or solder, and the sale of the finished product at varying but favourable prices. Some work, however, was done on other metals, and the first few years after 1870 saw a continuance of somewhat experi­mental work on copper, lead, and nickel and also the trial of various mixtures which could possibly yield a satisfactory brand of solder. The same years were marked by an im­portant increase in the area of the works, and from now onwards one gets fuller, and more humanly interesting, information both on the principals of Capper Pass and Son and on conditions within their works and in the Bedminster neighbourhood in which those works lay.

The Business Experiments Book shows that copper slags and regulus, of varying content, were still being assayed between 18 70 and 18 73, while ingot copper was assayed at various dates in 1874. Lead, however, was a metal of more lasting concern in Alfred Pass's time. The materials treated are of interest as well as the not very profitable end product. Hard ashes were still smelted: so too, from about 1871 onwards, were type ashes which also contained tin and antimony as well as lead. This material, which was only one of those now exploited for tin—antimony—lead residues, was known as 'Ger­man Arsenal Stuff', being surplus war material, either German or captured French, which came onto the scrap market in large quantities after the end of the Franco-Prussian war. As both shrapnel and rifle bullets were in those days made of antimonial lead, the melting of this material would produce antimonial lead ash, while the artillery shells of the period were coated with lead alloy which contained good quantities of tin. From about the same time Alfred Pass, who seems to have had a keen Interest in the history of metallurgy and in truly ancient precedents, started to use considerable loads of raw material from the dumps lying near the Mendip lead workings. Some of these, as is well-known, go back to Roman or even to pre-Roman times, and Alfred Pass, with his interest in such matters, had a large collection of Roman mining relics from the Mendips. He would stock up during the winter, at a time when the Somerset farmers had little other work for their men and cart horses. He mainly bought his material In the form of slimes, a relatively concentrated material, with a lead content up to 60 per cent, which had already been produced on the spot, by mineral dressings with water, from various slags and tailings lying near the workings. Work on these materials went on at Bed-minster for over ten years, and did not stop till well on in the 188o's. In 1871 lead ashes were being smelted in the blast furnace, and this process now became increasingly profit­able, though smaller in scale than the processes necessary for the production of solder. In 1875, f° r instance, lead ashes, lead slimes from the Mendips, and lead cupels were smelted along with Cornish tin slags, a small amount of copper slag, and calcined irony material, irony lumps, and tin lumps. The Cornish tin slags still contained appreciable amounts of tin, whose recovery was found profitable. Lead sulphate, from the alkali works, semi-liquid and acid, was also among the materials still smelted in Capper Pass's works for the extraction of lead.

Before 1872 it had been treated in the reverbatory, but from then onwards the blast furnace, having a larger throughput, took over the work. There was also, in this same decade, a little desilverising of lead, but not, apparently after 1873; the profit, with only 3 J ounces of silver per ton, must have been hardly worth the trouble taken.

It was, however, the production of solder that became more and more dominant In the Capper Pass works after the discovery of 1866, and after Alfred Pass had taken over the business. In the first few years of his regime there were still some experiments to find the most suitable furnace charge. In 1871, for instance, a mixture is given as follows:

2 barrows of pewter ashes agglomerated with soda ash 2 barrows of pewter ashes crude 2 barrows of lead pan scum 2 barrows of pewter slags 2 barrows of hard head

The quantity of coke used in the smelting was determined at the discretion of the furnaceman. Solder ashes would also be used in some other charges, and in others again :he proportion of hard head would be higher. From about 1874, as production of solder apidly rising, tin ashes were also used, and it seems to have been about this time that the blast furnace (except at weekends) was worked twenty-four hours a day instead of twelve. Rough tin slag from Cornwall was used in the next year, and about the same time we first hear of the use in the mixture of slap from the local tanneries, one of which was, and is, a next-door neighbour to the works. This slap was a residue which came from the use of lime to remove hair and animal fat. It consisted of slaked lime mixed up with the hairs and fat. Not unnaturally the stench was appalling, but its unpleasantness was well counterbalanced by its usefulness in sealing furnace doors and blocking up the cracks in flues. In such cases it was slapped on, and in actual smelting it was found that it would usefully bind fine residues together. Its use, for many years from these pioneering days of the 18703, well shows how apt were the Passes in making use of materials which could be had cheaply (or for nothing) from near at hand and for low costs in cartage.

By about 1878 the solder charge had become firmly settled, and for solder making at all events the period of trial and experiment was over. Tin ashes and solder were melted with Cornish tin slag and hard head, the tin slag providing a flux for carrying off iron and lime oxide, and the hard head yielding arsenic to make speiss with reduced iron. Scrap tin-plate cuttings would be used as a reducing agent, and to combine with sulphur. The furnaces themselves, and the methods of making solder, changed little for another fifty years.

As the scale of the firm's operations increased it clearly became necessary to enlarge the works. An important extension was in 1875, when the site was nearly doubled by the purchase of most of the ground between Coronation Road and the branch of the Malago which still served the mill. Coronation Street, which would otherwise have cut into the works, was taken in at the same time, but its breadth at the bottom, where it joined Paul Street, is still represented by the main entrance to the present works. The ancient St Catherine's Mill, which still ground corn by water power, was demolished in a few more years, and that particular branch of the Malago was filled in. Another expansion of the works was made possible when in 1882 a plot of land was bought between this western branch of the Malago and East Street: it was the first of Alfred Pass's important exten­sions which took the works much closer to the main thoroughfare of Bedminster. The plot in question had been used as a skinner's yard, but was known as the piggery. Its name, and various details which come from Mr Cable's memoirs and from other sources, well show how rustic, and partly agricultural, were large tracts of Bedminster in these last years before the coming of the tobacco factories. Just beyond the skinner's yard, at the bottom of a humble street known as Margaret Place, some ramshackle old stables were the chosen sleeping place of a motley group of hawkers with their ponies and don­keys, while in East Street there was still little traffic but coal carts and farmers' waggons drawn by oxen. Till 1875 t ' ie northern end of the ground between the works and the Malago was still an open field, known as the farm, and daily used for the assembly and milking of cows from neighbouring pastures. This ground was used, once bought by Alfred Pass, for the storage of lead ashes whose weight for a time depressed the soil so hat the ashes stood isolated in a great pool of water. The stockpiling of increasing quantities of ores and residues also caused the buying, in 1883, of over three acres of gro und in the Malago Field which lay between the Malago, Albert Road (now Shene Road) and a road and some gardens to the north. The strip of ground then bought had been a brick and tile yard and was about 500 feet long; though it was separate from the works it was convenient for its purpose and an easy carting distance from the main scene of operation. Apart from the technical details of the raw materials used, and of the smelt­ing methods employed, one begins, from now onwards, to get a clearer picture of in­dustrial life within the Capper Pass works. It seems, in many ways, a very different world from that of today.

The employees, in these late Victorian years, seem to have been more numerous than they are now. Their basic rate of pay, though very low by modern standards, was higher than that paid in the brickyards, by the local iron foundry, or by J. S. Fry's. More labour­ing and mechanical operations were then done by hand, and Mr Bowden, another retired employee still living in 1963, was told by his father that in the years about 1900 there j e 'more people about' than in more recent years. Great physical strength was clearly needed for many of the jobs that were done; tradition has it that Mr Alfred Pass only required, in his employees, that they should 'fear God and lift a hundredweight'. There was no canteen in those days; meals were eaten on the job and cans of tea were warmed up on the pots of molten metal. Many of the men must have lived, in those days of no bicycles or motor-buses, in Bedminster itself. But one hears of one country-loving em­ployee, Billy Parsons by name, who continued to make his home at Chew Magna, walking in every day across the windy heights of Dundry and always punctual, by rising at 3.30 am and leaving home at four, for the six o'clock start. Another man walked in, a somewhat shorter distance but a long climb home, from Dundry itself.

Another thing that comes clearer in these last two Victorian decades is the person-

jr, shrewd, efficient, paternal and benevolent, of Alfred Capper Pass. He was promi­nent, among the local industrialists of his time, for his intellectual stature. This intellec­tual eminence, in a man whose formal education seems not to have been very extensive, appeared both in his metallurgical ability and in his wide range of cultural pursuits, biology, archaeology, and history all being among his interests. He was specially keen on the history of pre-Roman man in Britain, and conducted the first excavations at Sil- bury Hill in Wiltshire. Till 1894 the firm was entirely his own, and although one hears more of others of importance in its running, it was very much a 'one man business' even after, in 1894, it became a limited company.

We have seen how from 1878 or thereabouts the pattern of the firm's activities be­came fixed, in main essentials, for the best part of forty years. But in the obtaining of pos­sibly fruitful materials Mr Pass is still seen to have made use both of his innate intellec­tual curiosity and of his shrewd realisation that something could be got from seemingly unpromising sources. From about 1878 material known as 'Greek Fume' or 'Greek matte' was smelted, with considerable difficulty but apparently with success for the production of nickel (whose price rose about this time) as well as lead. It also, perhaps, yielded good quantities of silver. The story runs that the material was bought cheap from a Greek merchant, and that when results were unexpectedly good Alfred Pass sent his supplier a handsome, and presumably an unexpected, Christmas present. But the wily Greek, after making his deductions, shipped no more of the material. The fume itself may possibly have come from the ancient slag dumps of the silver-lead workings in the Laurium peninsula in Attica, the mines being those whose silver had financed the Athe­nian navy and the great days of Imperial Athens. Another, more certain reference to an ancient source of supply comes about the same time. For Alfred Pass heard of the great slag dumps round the worked-out Cyprus copper mines whose ore, in Ptolemaic times, had been important for the Hellenistic world. So he had samples sent. But he found, from assays and from written sources, that the copper content of these residues was low, the original ore having been many times smelted by cheap slave labour at a time when Cyprus, before the fuller development of Spanish sources under the Roman Empire almost monopolised the copper supplies of antiquity.

Nearer home was the black slag, still containing a worthwhile amount of tin but reckoned worthless in South Wales and used as ballast by an old bargemaster who came over to ship iron sheets and plates made in the Ashton rolling mills. As ballast it cost him nothing, but Alfred Pass thought it well worth his while to pay a shilling a ton for the supposedly useless slag, sending down his horses and carts to clear the barge quickly as it lay in Bathurst Basin awaiting its iron loading. How great a profit arose from those shillings per ton is not disclosed!

Throughout the last twenty years of the century Alfred Pass remained firmly in day-to-day control of activities at Bedminster. Other men, however, appear by now in positions of considerable importance; their recruitment, in some cases, was due to some degree of family relationship with the Passes. The first of these was Alfred Trapnell, a man whose earlier career had been one of adventure in various parts of the world, and who returned to Bristol and there married Miss Lydia Pass, a sister of Alfred. He became the second man, after Alfred Pass himself, in the management of the firm, and ranked as a co-partner when it became a limited company in 1894. His nephew H. C. Trapnell, was the company's solicitor by 1883 and signed documents in that capacity. H. C. TrapnelFs wife had been a Miss Badock, of a family well known in Bristol social and educational circles, and her youngest brother Stanley (later Sir Stanley Badock) joined Capper Pass and Son about 1885 as a young man straight from Clifton College. It appears, from the early calendars of the university college, that he attended evening classes there (presumably in chemistry) during the session of 1884-1885. Mr Badock was entered for work on the technical side and is said, by Mr Cable, to have been more inter­ested in fumes, gases, and acids than in actual metals.

Like the Passes and Trapnells he always lived in the Redland-Clifton area, and Mr Cable also recalls that about the turn of the century he rode 'the highest penny-farthing in Bristol'. Another late nineteenth century recruit, for work on the commercial and office side, was Mr Crosby Warren, first encountered by Alfred Pass when both of them were in Egypt on a holiday trip.

The firm's own records throw little light on this period of Alfred Pass's direction of its affairs. The Business Experiments Book stops at 1880, and it is said that Alfred Pass destroyed many records and papers when he left Bristol to live as a country gentleman in Dorset. But something can be gleaned from various other sources, among them the Bristol directories of the time, and Mr Cable's memoirs. The directories show how in the i Syo's Alfred Pass moved from a house in Redland Park, just off Whiteladies Road and opposite the terrace house where his father had died, to a large individual house. This, perhaps specially built for its new and now prosperous occupant, was in Upper Belgrave Road, whose houses, in a situation still much prized, directly overlook Bristol's noble open expanse of the Downs. We find, by the same time, that the Alfred Trapnells were living near at hand in Belgrave Terrace, and the Passes and Trapnells for some time remained near in residence as in relationship, for at the opening of the 1890*8 they were actually next-door neighbours. But by 1892 Alfred Pass, at the height of his prosperity, had moved to his final Bristol address, across the Downs to 'The Holmes' in the select residential suburb of Stoke Bishop. By 1895 he was one of the Bristol magistrates, a prominent and respected citizen. In some eighty years, and in a manner common among energetic, self-reliant Victorian industrialists, the family had certainly moved far since its arrival in Bristol.

It is interesting to look briefly at some of Alfred Pass's activities, not of a strictly business character though linked to his business and to the life of the part of Bristol in which he operated.

We find, for instance, that he was a benefactor to the Bristol General Hospital, this being the one of the two hospitals in the city, which served the Bedminster area. In 1886, when the new church of St Michael was being built on the slopes of Windmill Hill just above the works, Alfred Pass gave the ground on which the church was to be erected. The area, on the slopes of Windmill Hill, was one in which he had considerable property interests, for he had, in 1878 and immediately afterwards, been responsible for the de­velopment of Algiers Street, Gwilliam Street, Vivian Street, and Fraser Street whose name derived from Mrs Pass's maiden name. In 1901, when its permanent nave was consecrated and when the furnishing of the church was completed, he gave a set of choir stalls in memory of his father and mother; when the church was accidentally gutted in 1926 they were replaced by his son, Mr Douglas Pass.

Of special interest, and logically connected with the nature of his business, is the record of what Alfred Pass did for Bristol's University College in its earliest days. He was by no means the only Bristol industrialist who aided the College in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century, but what he did contribute put him well in the front of its early benefactors. The fact that in those days the College was a small and desperately struggling institution made the interest of Alfred Pass and other friends of all the more value.

The University College was founded in 1876. It is in 1883, not long after the firm of Capper Pass and Son had entered on its long period of steady prosperity, that we find Alfred Pass a member of the short-lived University College Club which was started to create for the little College an organised body of local supporters. From 1886 till his death Alfred Pass appears as an annual subscriber to the Sustentation Fund which was a mainstay of the College's finances. In 1886-1887 he was actually a day student of the College; in what subject he studied the list does not say. More notable than his annual subscriptions were his large occasional donations. In 1887 he gave £100 to a special fund, and in 1890 another £100 for the building of a new medical wing. Those sums may seem small now, but they were of much more value than the same sums would be today, and on each occasion the donations which equalled or exceeded those of Alfred Pass were a mere handful. The same was true when in 1896 he gave £250 to a special fund. By now, for seven years from 1895, till in 1902 he resigned for reasons of declining health, Alfred Pass was on the College Council, and during these years he established in the College a Capper Pass Scholarship in Metallurgical Research. On his death he left the College a substantial legacy. It was therefore very fitting that when in 1909 the College advanced to the status of a fully chartered University Mr Douglas Pass asked that his own large benefaction to the University should be used for the endowment of the chair of chemistry which is still known as the Alfred Capper Pass Professorship.

From Mr Cable's memoirs we get some intimate glimpses of Alfred Pass, the patern­ally benevolent employer. He was, it appears, a temperance advocate, so he handed round, to every man, copies of The British Workman^ a paper whose columns inveighed against strong drink. At Christmas his generosity to his employees was on a lavish scale. A new shirt was given to each employee of a year's standing or more, the shirts concerned being of an excellent lasting quality as some were still being worn over twenty years after Alfred Pass's death. Presents were handed out, by Mrs Pass and Mrs Trapnell, to the workmen's wives and children of school age. Old women living near the works, whether or not their menfolk had worked for Capper Pass's, would get two woollen garments. A charming touch lies in what we hear of some Christmas proceedings at Alfred Pass's own home. The Bedminster Salvation Army Band would come up to the house, sing a few carols, partake of a hearty lunch, and then play and sing again in the hall before they went home, the richer in their collecting box by a good donation. Another feature of winter life in Bedminster was the frequency of Malago floods, with ground floors awash In the humble little houses near the works. On such occasions, in 1883, for instance, and 1889, each house In Paul Street would get two sacks of coal from Mr Pass to help in the task of drying out. It was all a far cry from the wider attentions of the modern welfare state. Till 1894 the business of Capper Pass and Son was the property of Alfred Pass, with Alfred Trapnell described as a limited partner. In practice Alfred Pass was dominant and almost solely responsible for what occurred. His business methods, along with the paternal benevolence we have already noted, seem to have been very much those of the somewhat high-handed, individualistic Victorian industrialist, brooking no interference from outside and least of all from the State or municipal bureaucracy. His dealings with the tax-gatherers throw brusquely amusing light on this aspect of his business life. For in September 1895, a year after the firm had become a limited company, but at a time when Alfred Pass's personal control was still little affected, he sent an income tax return to the local Surveyor of Taxes. The figures required are set out in the simplest form. The profits for the year 1895-1896, allowing for £167 11s 4d spent on charities and £398 13 1d paid out in income tax, amounted in all to £11,875 5s 9d The net profits for 1893 had been £5,899 8s 5d andfor 1892 (a moiety of the two years 1891 and 1892)£16,032 8s 1d. Very much to the point is the brief accompanying letter. For the Surveyor was told that 'No accounts are published, and we do not care to issue copies of them', but that overleaf he would find the statement of figures which showed how much the amount due (at the low taxation rate of those days) was arrived at. Almost exactly similar expressions are used in the five following years, the letter being handwritten by Mr Crosby Warren and signed by him or by Alfred Pass himself. The net profits, in these years of the 1890*8, ranged from £5,899 8s5d (an unusually low figure) in 1893 to £25, 954 18s 5d in 1897. In the last two years, the status of the concern having changed by now, Alfred Pass is described as sole director.

Alfred Pass expressed the opinion, towards the end of his working career, that the concern he had inherited and developed would collapse at his death. For this reason, along with the steadily good results which came from producing solder, not much was done in his later years by way of experiments or the pioneering of new processes. But in 1894, not many years before Alfred Pass retired to live as a country gentleman in the lovely countryside of west Dorset, the firm's structure was changed so that it became a limited company. The papers show that the share capital, ordinary, preference, and debenture combined, amounted to £ 120,000. Of this the great bulk was held by Alfred Pass himself; it was laid down that he was to carry on the business as manager, either solely or jointly with persons of his own choice. Alfred Trapnell was the only other really considerable shareholder, with smaller holdings in the hands of Messrs Crosby Warren, Stanley Badcock, and a few others. The price paid by the new company for the purchase of the business and all its assets was £150,320. From now onwards, though at first in a very sketchy form, the company's minute books are available to give rather more evidence for its story than is at hand for the years of Alfred Pass's absolute ownership. The period, as one can tell from the profit figures accepted without demur by the tax gatherers, was a prosperous one, with good profits and high dividends. In 1896 the ordinary shares yielded 25 per cent. In the next two years, with profits for those two years of over £87,000 and a large sum added to general reserves, the dividend was doubled.

With the business expanding, the 1890's saw important site extensions and enlarge­ments of plant. Margaret Place, at all times a humble and unimpressive little street but with its houses bearing such pleasantly floral names as Camellia, Dahlia and Hyacinth Cottages, was gradually absorbed into the company's main site. These plots of ground, along with the site of Margaret Gardens, were cleared and became the main part of the acquisitions which brought the company's territory close to the houses along the south­ern side of East Street; a few properties were later bought in East Street itself. The last rural relics in the close neighbourhood of the works had by now been swept away, and the site, by 1900, was very nearly as large as it is today. The ground so added to the older factory was used for the erection of the third blast furnace operated in the Bed-minster works. There was, however, no space remaining for further plant or buildings; we shall see how in a few more years the directors' thoughts began to turn to expansion, or complete rebuilding, away from Bedminster,

The next great event in the history of Capper Pass was the death of Alfred Pass. He had gone to live at Wootton Fitzpaine about 1900. Soon after that, as one gathers from his resignation from the University College Council in 1902, his health began to fail. He was an invalid for some time before he died in October 1905. From what has been said of him it is clear that his services to his firm had been decisively important. He was also well known and much respected in Bristol as a religious man and, to quote Mr Cable, *a gentleman in every sense of the word'. From what the Lord Mayor said of him just after his death he seems, in performing his duties as a magistrate, to have been generous as well as merciful. For he was said to be 'a liberal contributor to the poor box', and the Lord Mayor added, in his public tribute to Alfred Pass, that 'the whole city had lost a very good friend'. The Bristol Times and Mirror in its obituary notice, summed up its own estimate of Alfred Pass by saying that he was 'a friend and citizen whose memory will be kept green for many years to come'.

5 The War

For some years before Alfred Pass's death the day-to-day management at Bedminster had been in other hands. Mr Pass remained sole director till the middle of 1905, coming up to Bristol from Wootton Fitzpaine to attend annual general meetings whose minutes he still signed. But his increasingly poor health in the end made these journeys im­possible, and in May of 1905 Mr Stanley Badock presided at that year's annual meeting on Alfred Pass's behalf. Next month, an extra-ordinary general meeting was held, and at this a board of management was set up to carry on the work of the firm. Mr Badock, who had for some time had in his hands the practical management of the works, was appointed, by the terms of Alfred Pass's will, the first president of that board. Its first meeting was held a few days after Alfred Pass's death; at the second, among other items, it was decided to give £100 to the City of Bristol Unemployment Fund. The commercial department, or business side of the firm, was now managed by Mr Crosby Warren.

For the first few years after Alfred Pass's death things continued in much the same way as in the last years of the previous century. The steady and assured market for solder still brought good profits to the business, and the ups and downs in the values of metals do not seem to have had much effect on its prosperity. The danger lay in the tendency to believe that a business like that of Capper Pass could be static, that no competitors elsewhere might in time draw ahead, and that no new technical developments or researches would come to upset or supersede the steady, well-established pattern of its activities.

The years between Alfred Pass's death and the first world war, like those of the later nineteenth century, were thus a time when not much was done by way of an experiments or new lines of production. Solder remained the chief, though not the only product, with Bolivian tin concentrates coming in as raw material at the very end of the nineteenth century. Casting copper, soft lead, and antimonial lead were also produced. A new product of this period was copper sulphate, its raw materials being a coppery tin alloy known in England as metalline. Mr Alfred Pass had himself invented the process, and experimental production was started in his time. But an output of some ten tons a week was not attained till shortly after his death. The man behind this particular aspect of the firm's work was Mr Morris Fowler who had been taken on about 1900 as a tech­nical assistant. He was, for the purposes of this small but quite profitable sideline, left largely on his own and designed and built the tank shed in which it was produced. For a number of reasons the new directors of the firm were little interested in new lines of production. Among these the fact stood out that the works, even on a site much enlarged since the 1840`s, were so cramped and so full of various plant that no room was left for additional apparatus or new processes.

These problems of congestion, and of possible expansion in Bedminster itself or elsewhere, must have been well in the director's minds very soon after they had taken over from Alfred Pass. But for the first three years their minutes contain nothing about possible moves; some more changes were still, however, made on the site of over sixty years' standing. By 1908, for example, electrical equipment had been partially installed and there had been considerable additions to the buildings and the plant which the yard contained. The offices, designed by Mr (later Sir George) Oatley were ready for use that year on the site of some houses which had once stood on the corner of Paul and Coronation Streets.

Commercial prosperity had also continued. The year's working in 1906 was more favourable than ever before. The profits (£20,000 of them accounted for by apprecia­tion in metal values) were over £16,000, and the firm's reserves stood at £90,000. It was from these reserves that the new work of 1907-1908 was financed. An 11 per cent bonus for 1906 was paid to the workmen and salaried staff, and in 1907 the solder sales, at nearly 4,000 tons, were the highest in Capper Pass's history.

The year 1908 was one of considerable importance in our story. Apart from the changes inside the Mill Lane works the question of a new site away from Bedminster was seriously considered. It was found that the lack of space in the old works was now proving uneconomic, and as no extra land seemed available in Bedminster the directors spent much time, that autumn, in visiting possible sites elsewhere. Keeping for the moment to the Bristol area they investigated sites at Avonmouth, Keynsham, Brislington and in St Philip's Marsh not far away from where the first Capper Pass originally installed himself in the district. Nothing came of these visits, but then in the spring of 1909 the chance came to buy two plots of ground, in all amounting to over eight acres, not far away in Bedminster. One of these, forming part of the Ashton Court estate of the Smyth family, lay just to the west of Shene (formerly Albert) Road. The other, adjacent to it, was the site of the defunct Malago Vale Brickworks and had formerly been a colliery. The two sites together, along with some smaller purchases in their immediate neighbourhood, made up a larger area than that of the Mill Lane works. They were duly bought in 1909, and the brickworks site was at once used for the storage of coal and of residues awaiting treatment.

Another event of 1908, of great importance for the future well being of Capper Pass's, was the engagement, on the technical side, of Mr (later Sir Paul) Gueterbock. Mr Douglas Pass well realised that if the firm was to survive and progress it would be necessary to increase the technical ability available from within its own staff. He and Mr Gueterbock had become friends at Cambridge, where they were colleagues in the University Shooting VIII. Mr Gueterbock, who was an excellent scientific chemist, had done well at Cambridge, and when he came down he was brought to the directors' notice by Mr Pass, and was eventually taken onto the staff. He proved most able both on the business side and in finding out and elaborating the chemical theories behind the somewhat haphazardly made discoveries of Alfred Pass's time.

The last few years before the first world war continued, commercially speaking, to be prosperous, and the board minutes contain no suggestion that really bad times lay so close ahead. The sale of tin in increasing quantities (173 tons in 1909) kept company with solder sales as a revenue producer. The sales of solder reached a new high level, staying steadily over 4,000 tons a year from 1910 till 1914. Mr Morris Fowler's works diary gives some details, from 1912 onwards, of what was happening in the works them­selves. In 1912, for instance, a new blacksmith's shop and a new, two-storeyed mill shed were built, and corrugated iron roofing replaced primitive timber roofs which were badly liable to catch fire. Labour problems come also into Mr Fowler's record of events. In June of 1913 the Gas Workers' Union held a meeting of Capper Pass's employees, of whom some sixty to seventy joined. Later that year an employees' meeting voted for the setting up of a board of workmen to negotiate with the management; the voting figures show that the firm's manual workers then numbered 189.

In the meantime the search for new ground for expansion was taken up again. In the summer of 1912 the board gave Mr Badock, its chairman, authority to negotiate with the firm's neighbours, the Western Tanning Company, for the purchase of their prop­erty, but nothing came of the idea. Next year Mr Badock was asked to make contact with Mr Napier Miles over a possible works site in the Bristol district, and later in that same year the directors paid a visit to the site of the old Ashton Vale iron works. No option on this site was, however, secured, and nothing more along these lines was done before the outbreak of war. In the meantime, late in 1913, Mr Humphrey Prideaux (an accountant) was engaged as a junior manager, another staff member who would be im­portant in years to come.

The outbreak of war in 1914 at once brought a sharp check to Capper Pass's output. The employees had been strongly encouraged to join the Territorial and Reserve forces, with the result that about sixty were at once called up. From among the management Mr Gueterbock and Mr Prideaux were also away on military service. It was only found possible to run two out of the three blast furnaces. But the war itself, and its heavy

munitions requirements, caused a steady demand for the firm's products, so that a few years more of good profits and a guaranteed market gave protection against efficient competition from other companies at home and in foreign countries. Labour shortage, and the withdrawal of men so that they could join the Forces, continued to cause diffi­culties. But early in 1917 the Ministry of Munitions gave support to the firm's claim against the enlistment of its men of military age, and though twenty men in the highest medical grades had to join up the remainder were declared temporarily exempt.

In the meantime there were the more ordinary problems of management, and the long-standing need for a more spacious works site had still to be kept in mind. In 1915 a wage claim for a general rise was met by the more limited concessions of an extra two shillings a shift for some of the men who worked a night shift. Potmen were given an extra ninepence a week, and there were rises for some individuals. Mr Badock addressed the whole body of employees to give them the firm's reasons for refusing a general in­crease. There followed some discussions on the problems of union recognition. The Gas Workers' Union, after its success in recruiting members from among Capper Pass em­ployees, was the one recognised by the management, the claim of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers being turned down. A less pleasant aspect of things at this time was when five men were dismissed for using undue pressure and intimidation on their fellow workers. In 1918 there was an unofficial strike, of a few days' duration, when attempts were made to force non-union men to join the union and to compel others who had left it to resume their membership.

In addition, the search for a new and more spacious site continued despite the preoccupations of war. Directors would go out in pairs to look for suitable places. The requirements were varied, and included nearness to a good coalfield, space for stacking and dumping waste slag, good water supplies and facilities for the discharge of effluent, an adjacent railway line, and ample space for any future development. Early in 1916 the Liverpool Silver and Copper Company's works at Widnes in Lancashire were in­spected, but the time had not yet come for a move so far away from Bristol. Later that year a large plot of ground was actually bought in the St Anne's district of Bristol, close down by the river and in all over fifty acres in area. It was used for the dumping of slag and residues, but nothing could be done immediately to build a new smelting works in this part of the city. This was as well, for the site (with no adjacent railway) was in many ways unsuitable for its purpose. In about ten years much of it was sold to the Bristol Corporation for the building of new council houses, and the present Wootton Road, with its reference to Wootton Fitzpaine, is a reminder of its Capper Pass ownership. The rest of the site, being the part of it lying closest to the Avon, was later sold, for the building of their existing works, to the St Anne's Board Mills.

The end of the war was soon followed by a time of considerable crisis and confusion. The large sales of solder which war requirements had caused gave way, in the early months of 1919, to a period when the demand fell drastically. Yet 1919 as a whole, with • sharp rise in metal values, was a year of high profits; really serious financial straits were for a while postponed. But troubles and difficulties soon became apparent at a time --vhen Mr Badock, who had been Sheriff of Bristol in 1908 and was increasingly caught up in public affairs and in his work for the University of Bristol, was tending to give less of his time to the management of Capper Pass. As research and modernisation had for some years been neglected or kept at a low level the Bedminster firm fell more and more behind its rivals in the same field. Its advertising and publicity were very defective, and as its chief product was sold direct to metal dealers, who then passed it on to the actual users of the solder, the name of Capper Pass was hardly known in the metal industry as a whole. Nor, as was seen in the strike of 1921, were labour relations very satisfactory,

1 there was a strike of the firm's carters in 1920. More promising factors were, how­ever, at work in the year 1920, the centenary year of what we now know to be the first certain record of the Pass family in Bristol.

Some debts due from German firms, unpaid during the war, had by now been re-

ered. More important still was a technical innovation of great significance. This was the introduction of tin refining by an electrolytic process. The process was one which had already been operated in the United States, and involved the smelting of higher srrade Bolivian ores and residues so as to produce high-quality tin. The plant for this process at Capper Pass's was put on the site which had once been that of the Malago brick works. It was actually on Armistice day, nth November, 1918, that the necessary i.terations were started. Work continued well into 1919, and tin refining by the new process started late that year.

By the end of 1920, despite the generally difficult trading conditions of that year, and despite the inadequacy of the Bedminster sites as the sole scene of the firm's activity, the rate of operations tended to increase and the blast furnaces had by now started to work over the weekends. A very troubled and difficult few years lay ahead, but the men were

I available who would in time guide Capper Pass through lean years and equip the firm for a more expansive and prosperous future. Mr Douglas Pass, Mr Humphrey

ieaux, and Mr Paul Gueterbock had all returned safely from their war service, and these, along with Mr Morris Fowler till his death 'in harness' as works manager, were those who would, in the main, be responsible for the move towards better things. Mr Gueterbock's combination of technical ability, foresight, and business capacity was to be of particular value in Capper Pass's progress from the St Philip's backyard of late Georgian times to the large concern, with its works both in Bristol and on the Humber, which one knows today.

6 The Last Forty Years

The time immediately after 1918 was one of sharply fluctuating fortunes for Capper Pass. The firm's deepest problem lay in the need to adapt itself to the greatly changed trading conditions of the post-war years.

At the end of the war, and for a few years more, solder was still the chief product oi the Bedminster works. Sales varied considerably, and in 1921 fell heavily, for this was the year of the one strike in the firm's history, apart from the General Strike of 1926. Ii was over a wage dispute and lasted from April to June. But though solder sales improvec in 1922 and 1923 they never approached the tonnages of the pre-war and wartime years Competition from continental and domestic smelters was becoming severe. Demand moreover, was now for the faster working, antimony-free solders, whereas Capper Pas only produced their traditional tin alloy. There was also a change in the type of ra\ materials available. In Bolivia, development of the tin-mining industry was progressing and substantial tonnages of low grade and complex tin ores were on offer. In addition the breaking down of surplus war munitions produced big tonnages of scrap metals an< secondaries, many of these being high in antimony.

These new materials could not be treated economically by the old-establishe methods, so that new processes had to be developed and new markets exploited. Th directors realised that there would always be a ready market for metals in element; form and of a high degree of purity, and much research to this end was carried out und( the direction of Mr Gueterbock. His work led to the separation by electrolysis of an e: tremely pure tin, justly claimed to be the world's purest tin at 99.99 per cent ti content and marketed under the brand name 'Chempur' (chemically pure) for the first time in 1923.

While the production of antimonial solder, antimonial and soft lead and copper sulphate continued as important items in the firm's output, the increasing demand from the motor, electrical and can-making trades for faster flowing solders was met by the production of antimony-free solders, the antimony being removed with aluminium.

In an endeavour to increase their profitable outlet for antimony the company now en­tered business as suppliers of type metal to the printing trade, and for some years the sale of type metal grew steadily. They also sold small amounts of anti-friction and bear­ing metals to shipbuilding and engineering concerns. But the cycling load of used type that printers and newspapers returned in exchange for new metal was such that the out­let for antimony was very limited, and in 1934 the goodwill of Pass Printing Metals was sold to the London firm of H. J. Enthoven & Sons.

Meanwhile, Mr Gueterbock was directing further development work to find a means of electrolysing a very much more impure anode. This led to the T' process, and in 1933 to the production and initial sales of Tass No i tin'. As the original Mill Lane works at Bedminster were too small for these new operations the work was done on the site owned by the company higher up the Malago valley and named the Malago works.

These favourable technical developments also compelled the directors to make a final decision about a new and more spacious site. During the war the question had lain dormant, but in the summer of 1926 the matter was taken up again. The board decided :o collect information on the requirements for a really large and spacious works. Many possible sites were visited, Mr Badock and Mr Gueterbock being particularly active in the search. The site already owned at Brislington was seen to be unsuitable, and was therefore sold. In 1927 and 1928 over twenty acres were bought at Keynsham, but this site also was never used. Some sites, like one at Newport and one at Sharpness, which the Earl of Berkeley refused to sell, were in the Bristol Channel area. One was at Peri vale in Middlesex, and another at Goole at the head of the Humber estuary. By the early months of 1928 the search was narrowing down to the district within easy reach of the Humber and its port of Hull. It was pointed out that congestion at Bedminster made the matter urgent, and that a failure to expand would severely endanger the com­pany's future. The search for a site was now concentrated on Melton, at North Ferriby on the northern side of the Humber a few miles above Hull. The board agreed that this was the only one to meet future requirements, so on 2yth July 1928 they decided to exercise an option. Thus they committed the firm to its most historic territorial move since the first Capper Pass moved from Birmingham to Bristol.

The Melton site was spacious and level. It had a main line railway immediately behind it, and water for cooling and for the discharge of effluents was available in the Humber nearby. Old clay pits were close at hand for dumping slag. Coal supplies from :he west Yorkshire coalfields were close, and ample labour existed in the district. The port of Hull offered shipping facilities both for distant sources of raw material and for continental markets, particularly in Germany. By and large the site seemed, and has proved, almost ideal for Capper Pass's subsequent period of expansion and more varied production.

Though the Melton site was bought (for less than £12,000) in 1928 the slump which soon started delayed work. Above-ground building did not begin till 1936. The tin refinery started working in about a year. The first blast furnace started operations in September 1937 and two more were finished by the outbreak of war. The Melton works started with seventy-five employees of all grades. These included a number of key men who moved with their families from Bristol. The total number initially employed at Melton was not quite a third of the number still working at Bedminster.

Both at Melton and Bristol many men left early in the second world war to serve in the armed forces. Some, however, came back to their civilian work, as the firm had some cover for its workers under the arrangements for men in reserved occupations. Morale among the workers was high in both works throughout the war. The story is told of a man at Bristol who, when he heard that his house was actually ablaze in an air raid, only asked to go home when the raid was over. Despite heavy destruction in the Bedminster area, the Bristol works had only slight damage and at Melton there was virtually none. A worse problem was the loss of the firm's chief source of raw materials.

Bolivian ore supplies were cut off owing to shipping difficulties. As a strategic move, and to avoid the shipment of precious Bolivian ores through the dangers of the open Atlantic, the United States Government set up a plant to refine them in Texas. Capper Pass had thus to find other raw materials so as to maintain its production of metals which were vital to Britain's war effort. The whole country was scoured for suitable tin slags, large quantities being obtained from disused workings in Cornwall. Technical development continued, however, throughout the war years. With increasing available supplies of secondaries which contained tin and copper, the outlet for copper as copper sulphate was unsatisfactory, and a change was made to recover copper as copper cathode. The electro refining of lead became necessary to recover increasing amounts of bismuth and silver, and equipment was installed to divide the slimes into a high bismuth-lead alloy and crude silver for marketing. After the firm's withdrawal from the type metal business surplus antimony was concentrated into fume, but no satisfactory market for this could be found and a plant for the production of antimony metal was designed and built.

The post-war story of Capper Pass is largely one of great changes in the relative importance of Melton and Bristol, with Melton becoming the more important of the two, and the centre of the firm's main activities. During the war two other solder-making firms were taken over by Capper Pass. One of these, Victor G. Stevens Limited, of Felling-on-Tyne, approached the directors in this connection, and seemed a worthwhile acquisi­tion both because it had good stocks of scarce raw material and because of its good contacts with the retail trade in solder. The other firm, Messrs George Pizey of London, special- sed in the production of highly fabricated forms of solder. It was taken over towards the end of the war and its plant was moved to Felling. Then in 1959 the entire plant of the Tyne solder works was transported to Bristol, where Capper Pass's production of fabricated solder has since been concentrated.

At Melton expansion and development have been continuous ever since 1945. The numbers employed there give a good indication of the changed balance between the firm's two centres of production. For the Melton numbers gradually increased from the time when the works were opened, rising, in 1952, to about 400 at which level they have remained steady, whereas at Bristol numbers gradually fell. In 1946, when Melton had 228 men and Bristol 191, they overtook the Bristol figures. The Melton numbers then increased, and since 1952 they have remained about 400 or a little more. At Bristol, however, the employees were gradually reduced; the figure for 1960 was about 150. Staflf numbers have shown the same trend, particularly after the firm's head office, with its commercial, secretarial, and costing departments, was moved to Melton in 1955. Early in the 1950*8 a research laboratory was built at Melton, research being carried out both there and in the works.

The tin smelter set up in the United States continued, uneconomically, for some years after the war, the United States Government finally withdrawing from tin smelting in about 1956. Supplies of tin ore from Bolivia in time became available again for British smelters, new complications being caused by political upheavals in Bolivia itself. But Capper Pass have been able to obtain ample Bolivian supplies, personal contacts with the Bolivian authorities being maintained as some of the firm's directors and executives have paid visits to Bolivia. The company has also contributed to the international loans made to the Bolivian Government for the re-equipment of its mines.

By the beginning of the I96o's, the firm of Capper Pass and Son Limited had got fully into its post-war stride. The Melton works, on their spacious site with ample room for new activities, and with housing provided close at hand for several of the workers, were amply fulfilling the plans made for them some thirty years beforehand, but par­tially interrupted by the war. Tin and cathode copper at Melton, and solder at Bristol were the three financial mainstays of the firm. The move to Melton had shown how necessary is ample space for the progress of such a firm. This had, in fact, been the story long before, when the Capper Pass of an earlier generation had moved from his back­yard in St Philip's Marsh to what were then the wider pastures of Bedminster.