Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between the World's Greatest Chocolate Makers (4 page)

Today, among the gleaming black facades of Mincing Lane in the City, there is little to give away its colorful past as one of London’s thriving trading markets. But when John Cadbury visited in the 1820s, there was a teeming market where colonial brokers met to trade in different commodities from Britain’s growing empire. There were salesrooms where frenetic auctions were taking place for tea, sugar, coffee, jute, gums, waxes, vegetable oils, spices, and cocoa. Prices and details of business were written on a black board. Samples of goods from warehouses in docks along the nearby Thames were on display. They included the cocoa bean or “nib” from South America, which looked like a huge chocolate-colored almond, still dusted with the dried pulp that surrounded it in the cocoa pod and baked by a tropical sun.

At a time when cocoa was purchased primarily to produce a novelty drink for the rich, John tried to ascertain whether there might be a future in the unpromising black bean.

J
ohn Cadbury, like his father before him, had set out as an apprentice to learn his trade at a young age. In 1816, aged fifteen and proudly dressed in the best-quality cloth from the family draper’s shop, John took the hazardous coach journey to Leeds, where he was apprenticed
to a Quaker tea dealer. It appears he made a good impression. His aunt, Sarah Cash, who visited the following year declared, “John is grown a fine youth, he possesses a fine open countenance, is vigorous of mind and body and desires to render himself useful.” Others also commented that the plain Quaker boy formed a contrast to “some of the rough Yorkshire boys.” He wore “a neat white linen collar and black ribbon round his throat tied in a bow at the front.” It seems the owners were soon content to leave the care of their tea business with John when they had to travel, and he was rewarded on his departure after seven long years with a fine encyclopedia.

John went to London and apprenticed at the teahouse of Sanderson Fox and Company. While in London he had a chance to see the warehouses of the East India Company and witness the sale of commodities such as coffee and cocoa. The 23-year-old was soon able to tell his father that he was convinced there was potential in the new exotic bean, although he was not yet clear what that potential was.

In 1824 John returned to Birmingham and set up a tea and coffee shop of his own on Bull Street, right next to his brother Benjamin’s draper’s shop. John’s father lent him a small sum of money and said “he must sink or swim,” there were no further funds. John proudly announced the opening of his shop in the local paper,
Aris’s Birmingham Gazette
, on March 1. After setting out his considerable experience “examining the teas in the East India Company’s warehouses in London,” he drew the public’s attention to something new. He wished to bring “to particular notice” a substance “affording a most nutritious beverage for breakfast . . . Cocoa Nibs prepared by himself.”

John Cadbury took advantage of the latest ideas to attract business to his shop, starting with the shop window. While most other shops had green-ribbed windows, John had a myriad of small squares of plate glass set in a mahogany frame that it is said he polished himself each morning. This design feature alone was such a novelty that “people would come from miles around.” On peering through the windows, prospective customers were intrigued by the unusual, a touch of the Orient in the heart of smoky Birmingham. The many inviting delicacies were displayed among handsome blue Chinese vases, Asian figurines, and ornamental tea chests. Weaving his way
through all the exotica was a Chinese worker in Oriental dress, weighing and measuring, promising something different, a promise that was assured on opening the door by the lingering aroma of chocolate and coffee. John ground the cocoa beans in the back of the shop with mortar and pestle.

Word of John Cadbury’s quality teas and coffees soon spread among some of the wealthiest and best-known families in Birmingham; his customers included the Lloyds, Boultons, Watts, Galtons, and others. Meanwhile, through the Quaker network, John met Candia Barrow of Lancaster. The Lancashire Barrows and Birmingham Cadburys had developed very close ties through marriage. In 1823 John’s older sister Sarah had married Candia Barrow’s older brother. This was followed in 1829 by the marriage of John’s older brother Benjamin to Candia’s cousin Candia Wadkin. In June 1832, when John Cadbury married Candia Barrow, it was the third marriage in a generation to link the two Quaker families and proved to be a very happy union.

As John’s shop prospered, he could see for himself the growing demand for cocoa nibs. He took advantage of the large cellars under the shop to experiment with different recipes and created several successful cocoa powder drinks. So confident was he of the popularity of this nutritious and wholesome drink that he decided to take a further step—into manufacturing.

In 1831, John rented a four-storey premises close by on Crooked Lane, a winding back street at the bottom of Bull Street, and began to produce cocoa on a larger scale. Using machines to help process food was in its infancy, so to help with the roasting and pressing of beans, he installed a steam engine, which evidently was a great family novelty. According to his admiring aunt, Sarah Cash, everyone in the family “had thoroughly seen John’s steam engine.” After ten years he had developed a wide variety of different types of cocoa for his shop: flakes, powders, cakes, and even the roasted and crushed nibs themselves.

Meanwhile, Candia and John started a family and moved to a house with a garden in the rural district of Edgbaston. Their first son, John, suffered intermittently from poor health. Richard Cadbury,
their second child, was born on August 29, 1835, and was followed by a sister, Maria, and then George, born on November 19, 1839. To the boys’ delight, their parents placed a strong emphasis on the pursuit of a healthy outdoor life. Their house had a square lawn, recalled Maria: “Our father measured it round, 21 times for a mile, where we used to run, one after another, with our hoops before breakfast, seldom letting them drop before reaching the mile, and sometimes a mile and a half, which Richard generally did.” Only then were they allowed in for breakfast, “basins of milk . . . with delicious cream on top and toast to dip in.” After this early morning ritual, their father, John, set off to work. “I can picture his rosy countenance full of vigour,” says Maria, “his Quaker dress very neat with its clean white cravat.”

Another memorable delight for the boys was the arrival of the railway in Birmingham. Britain was in the grip of railway fever. The first train line, the Grand Junction Railway, steamed into Birmingham from Manchester in 1837. Within a year, a line opened that covered the hundred miles between Birmingham and London. The treacherous two-day journey to London by horse and coach became a two-hour journey by steam train, opening up dramatic new possibilities for trade.

Although Richard and George were close, Richard was sent away at the age of eight to join his older brother, John, at boarding school. George studied with a local tutor who had a decidedly individualistic view on the best way to deal with boys. He aimed to instil mental and physical fortitude with a diet of classics and combative sports, including occasional games of Attack, which he devised himself and involved arming the boys with sticks. Somehow George came through the experience with a sound knowledge of French and Virgil—and a keen appreciation of home life. George’s spartan childhood was “severe but happy” with an emphasis on “iron discipline.” Their lifestyle was “bare of all self indulgence and luxury.”

Both George and Richard formed vivid impressions of trips to see their mother’s family at Lancaster. Their grandfather, George Barrow, in addition to running a draper’s shop in Lancaster, had created a prosperous shipping business with trade to the West Indies. His
grandchildren were allowed to climb the tower he had built on the grounds of his house, from where they had a stunning view of Morecambe Bay and on occasion his returning ships, sometimes banked up three at a time on the quayside. Sea captains came to visit and would invariably regale the children with tales of wide seas and foreign lands, the wonders of travel, and the horrors of the slave trade.

By 1847 John Cadbury’s Crooked Lane warehouse had been demolished to make way for the new Great Western Railway. Undeterred, John expanded his manufacturing operation into the Bridge Street premises and was soon joined by his brother Benjamin. By 1852 the two brothers were in a position to open an office in London and later received a royal accolade as cocoa manufacturers to Queen Victoria. It was around this time that John and Benjamin dreamed up a plan to create a model village for their workers away from the grime of the city and even designated one of their brands of cocoa The Model Parish Cocoa.

In 1850, when he was almost fifteen, Richard joined his father and his uncle at Bridge Street and was doubtless aware of these grand ambitions. With his father often away, he threw himself into the business “with energy and devotion.” Despite his commitment to work, Richard found time for his love of sport. He was passionately fond of skating and in winter would rise very early to enjoy an hour on the ice before work. “Richard used fairly to dazzle us with his skating,” said one young friend of his sister, Maria. But events were conspiring against such relaxed pursuits.

Cocoa sales had begun to decline during the economic depression of the “Hungry Forties,” when a slump in trade, rising unemployment, bad harvests, and a potato blight in England and Scotland in 1845 combined to create widespread hardship. Many small businesses struggled, but for the Cadburys, the irrevocable blow came in the early 1850s when Candia was diagnosed with tuberculosis.

These painful years left their mark on Richard and George. They witnessed the inexorable decline, first of their mother, then of their father, then the neglect of the factory as though it too were burdened with a malady for which there could be no happy conclusion. John still occasionally walked through the factory in his starched white
choker and neat black ribbon tied in a bow, but the enthusiasm that had prompted him to grow the venture over a period of 30 years was gone. He paid scant attention to the piles of cocoa beans accumulating in the stockroom. His hard-won accolade as cocoa manufacturer to Queen Victoria no longer excited him. A year after Candia’s death, he dissolved the partnership with his brother Benjamin. Gradually his absences became more prolonged as he searched for a cure for his arthritis, and the family firm began to lose its good name.

T
hese were the pressing concerns in young George Cadbury’s mind when at the age of seventeen, in 1857, like his father and grandfather before him, he too was sent away to learn his trade as an apprentice. His sister, Maria, had taken his mother’s place in the home looking after the younger children. His older brother Richard was taking on more responsibility for his father’s business. George was keen to master the trade by working in a grocery shop in York run by another Quaker, Joseph Rowntree.

Once past York’s famous city walls, seventeen-year-old George Cadbury found himself in a maze of winding streets with irregular gabled houses, the overhang of their upper storeys making the streets feel narrow and dark. As he crossed the center of town, the road opened onto a busy thoroughfare called Pavement. Almost directly opposite, he found the Rowntrees’ shop at No. 28, a handsome eighteenth-century terraced house, tall and narrow, with subsidence that made it appear crooked. The colorful thoroughfare outside disguised the austerity and long hours that awaited George inside the shop.

Joseph Rowntree issued a memorandum that clearly set out the strict rules of conduct that he expected his numerous apprentices to follow. “The object of the Pavement establishment is
business
[his italics]. The young men who enter it as journey men or apprentices are expected to contribute . . . in making it successful. . . . It affords . . . a full opportunity for any painstaking, intelligent young man to obtain a good practical acquaintance with the tea and grocery
trades. . . . The place is
not
suitable for the indolent and the way ward.” The memorandum specified every detail of the boys’ lives: no more than twenty minutes for a meal break, only one trip home a year, and the exact hour at which the young men were to return each night. In June and July they were allowed to walk outside in the evenings until ten o’clock; during all other months the curfew was earlier.