Thursday 19th January 2012
Tour of the Royal British Legion Poppy Factory at Richmond
Visit to Poppy Factory at Richmond
Twenty three members and wives of the Ewell Probus Club met, under the leadership of John Mills, at the Poppy Factory in Richmond, at 10.30 on Thursday 19th January 2012. After tea and biscuits our guide, Charlie Mulloy, gave a presentation about the adoption of the poppy as a symbol for soldiers killed in war, followed by a tour of the factory where about 50 ex-soldiers and/or their relatives or widows worked to produce the poppy badges and wreaths.
The remembrance poppy has become a familiar emblem of Remembrance Day due to a poem In Flanders Fields, written by Canadian physician Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae in May 1915. The sight of these delicate, vibrant red flowers growing on the shattered ground caught his attention. He noticed how they had sprung up in the disturbed ground of the burials around the artillery position he was in near the Ypres Canal. . He is believed to have composed a poem following the death of a friend at that time. The first lines of the poem have become some of the most famous lines written in respect of the First World War
The poem was sent to the Punch Magazine and published. Later, the American Ladies Home Journal published it under the title “We Shall Not Sleep” The author of the poem, John McCrae died in January 1918 of pneumonia but in November of that year it was read by Moina Mitchell, a delegate, who was attending a YMCA HQ Meeting, in New York, dealing with ex-servicemen and their difficulties She was struck by the last verse,
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you with failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high,
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep; though poppies grow
In Flanders fields
She also wrote a poem “We Shall Keep the Faith” based on McCrae’s one, and bought 25 red silk poppies for delegates to the Conference. In the following year, 1920, the American Legion adopted the poppy as a symbol; and urged members to wear a red poppy annually on Armistice Day and Moina Mitchell became known as the “Poppy Lady”. The symbol was adopted in 1921 by Canada, Britain and Australia and in 1922 by New Zealand.
At the 1920 convention Madame Anna Guérin, a delegate from the French YMCA, believed that artificial poppies could be made to sell for aid for their servicemen and wives. Now dubbed “The French Poppy Lady”, she returned to France and in 1921 organised the sale of French poppies in Britain and America. By 1923 Americans were making their own poppies at the Buddy Poppy Factory in Pittsburgh.
In 1922 Field Marshall Earl Haigh, founder of the British Legion, advanced £2,000 to Major George Howson, MC. to start a poppy factory in Britain. Initially, dubious of its success, he founded the Disabled Society and with five ex-servicemen took over Mitchell’s Collar factory in the Old Kent Road. By 1925 the need for larger premises resulted in a brewery in Richmond being taken over, and still in use today.
We strolled round the factory chatting to some of the 50 workers who produce 40 million poppies for wreathes, sprays and buttonholes. Several of the workers had use of only one arm or hand and thus a wooden template had a slot incised in it to hold a cross while it was being decorated with a poppy. The wooden crosses are supplemented with other designs for Atheists, Humanists, Muslims, Sikhs and Jews.
Our guide emphasized that the Factory is independent of the British Legion, who order their poppy supplies from the Factory for sellers throughout the country and three large events –the Cenotaph wreaths, the Albert Hall where poppy petals shower down from the roof – each one representing a life lost; . And at Westminster Abbey where the Factory staff lay out hundreds of crosses for regiments and other groups of the Services.
Passing a corridor of regimental crests and simple wooden crosses of unknown soldiers and photographs of other visitors, we ascended to the first floor. Here were installed the machines for pressing out the poppy and leaf shapes and storage of the plastic wreath bases together with finished products ready for the next November. Here boxes were made up of a small bundle of wooden crosses, poppies and a length of ribbon for sellers to put round their necks to hold the boxes. The weighing machine was calibrated to accurately weigh exactly 200 poppies.
Exiting the building by the Gift Shop members were able to buy various poppy themed gifts and donate to such a worthy cause. At about 12.30pm.our President, Peter Anning made a short speech of thanks to our guide for the interesting tour we had just experienced
Photographs and Text with thanks to Deric Tonge
Our guide Charlie Mulloy
The Royal Wreaths here and below
