The records featured this week from the Stephenson and Alexander collection at Glamorgan Archives are from the world of “dippers, doublers, picklers and behinders”. All were roles undertaken by workers in the production of tin-plate, and the jobs of several hundred men and women were clearly at risk in December 1900 when the Waterloo tin-plate works at Machen was offered for sale.
The production of tin-plate – rolled sheets of iron and later steel, protected by a coating of tin – revolutionised the food industry with the capacity to preserve food for long periods in cans and boxes. With access to the basic raw materials and the skills needed to produce tinplate, Wales accounted for 80% of worldwide production at one point in the nineteenth century. Employment in a tin-plate works, with its furnaces and choking fumes, was hot and dangerous work. However, with the offer of jobs for both men and women, the hundreds of small factories scattered across South Wales were an important source of employment for many communities.
As the date of the proposed sale of the Waterloo Works, on Tuesday 11 December 1900, approached the auctioneers were upbeat. After all, the Waterloo Works was a going concern with four mills and rail access to the ports of Cardiff and Newport. In addition, much of the equipment in the mill, tin and boiler houses was relatively modern. The inventory compiled by Stephenson and Alexander underlined the extent to which the works was a cornucopia of industrial equipment, from the large Lancashire steam boilers and twenty ton Bartlett railway weighing machines, to the array of hand tools and ancillary equipment that included Batson’s “hot neck grease” and an “old steel fast crab”.
The auctioneers’ notes, however, suggest that Stephenson and Alexander were less that sanguine about the prospects for a sale given that …the tinplate trade is at the present moment in a most unpromising condition. By 1900 intense competition from both Europe and the United States had loosened the grip that South Wales had once held on the market for tin-plate. As factories experienced ever lengthening periods of trade depression, many tin-plate works were working short time or had been placed on the market for sale. It was estimated that, in little more than a decade, the market value of a tin-plate works had fallen by almost 50%.
As a result, the reserve set on the Waterloo Works at the auction was £5,000. Even at this price, no bids were received. Ten months later a further attempt to auction the works was also unsuccessful. For many works across South Wales this was the end of the line, with the company liquidated and its assets sold off piecemeal. If the Waterloo works followed the same route, Stephenson and Alexander advised that the equipment, despite its quality and condition, would raise no more than £3,000 at auction.
It had been estimated that, as a going concern, the works might expect to realise an annual profit of £300. No doubt to the relief of the local community, the owners elected to carry on, with records confirming that the Waterloo works finally closed in 1943.
Details of the Stephenson & Alexander collection, including the sales prospectus for the Waterloo Works and a full inventory of the buildings and equipment on the site, can be found online, under reference DSA, in the catalogue of Glamorgan Archives at https://canfod.glamarchives.gov.uk/.
Tony Peters, Glamorgan Archives Volunteer
Glamorgan Archives 