Wards at Work, 1962 : Dick's Asbestos and Insulating Co. Ltd. ; application of cotton canvas to 100% Amosite Asbestos Pipe Section
From a very fine 1962 publication issued by Thomas W Ward of Sheffield showing recent activities amongst the Ward Group of Companies. The company was founded in Sheffield in 1898 and during the 20th century it grew to acquire a multiplicity of allied companies and activities. I suspect they are best recalled for railway engineering works and shipbreaking. The Group was restructed in the late 1970s and the bulk of the company was acquired by RTZ in 1982.
This book is a tremendous record of the group and is beautifully produced although very annoyingly no printer or publisher is shown. The company commissioned the photographer Walter Nurnberg to take the vast majority of the near 200 images. Nurnberg was an acknowledged and accomplished photographer of the industrial landscape.
I can sit at look at this fine image of a woman worker applying canvas to make insulated pipe section and wonder if anyone knew or cared as to the likely impact on this worker of the trade she was in and the job she was doing? Albeit this appears as a 'wet process' the thought of the product she (and many others) were working with really does give me a shock. Born and brought up in Rochdale, arguably the home of the asbestos industry, this material and its ramifications loomed large in my life as my father worked for Turner Brothers Asbestos at their Spotland plant; a site so polluted that even now, after years of abandonment and dereliction, it is still unsafe to re-develop. BY the time this book was produced, 1962, the evidence against asbestos was already stacking up and was well known. Indeed as early as 1922 warnings had started to be raised about the dangers of asbestos in mining, production and use. TBA spent many years not just downplaying these fears but actively working to ensure that even medical knowledge was undermined. So spare a thought for this woman whose only 'protective' work gear appear to be her rubber gloves and an apron.
Wards at Work, 1962 : Dick's Asbestos and Insulating Co. Ltd. ; application of cotton canvas to 100% Amosite Asbestos Pipe Section
From a very fine 1962 publication issued by Thomas W Ward of Sheffield showing recent activities amongst the Ward Group of Companies. The company was founded in Sheffield in 1898 and during the 20th century it grew to acquire a multiplicity of allied companies and activities. I suspect they are best recalled for railway engineering works and shipbreaking. The Group was restructed in the late 1970s and the bulk of the company was acquired by RTZ in 1982.
This book is a tremendous record of the group and is beautifully produced although very annoyingly no printer or publisher is shown. The company commissioned the photographer Walter Nurnberg to take the vast majority of the near 200 images. Nurnberg was an acknowledged and accomplished photographer of the industrial landscape.
I can sit at look at this fine image of a woman worker applying canvas to make insulated pipe section and wonder if anyone knew or cared as to the likely impact on this worker of the trade she was in and the job she was doing? Albeit this appears as a 'wet process' the thought of the product she (and many others) were working with really does give me a shock. Born and brought up in Rochdale, arguably the home of the asbestos industry, this material and its ramifications loomed large in my life as my father worked for Turner Brothers Asbestos at their Spotland plant; a site so polluted that even now, after years of abandonment and dereliction, it is still unsafe to re-develop. BY the time this book was produced, 1962, the evidence against asbestos was already stacking up and was well known. Indeed as early as 1922 warnings had started to be raised about the dangers of asbestos in mining, production and use. TBA spent many years not just downplaying these fears but actively working to ensure that even medical knowledge was undermined. So spare a thought for this woman whose only 'protective' work gear appear to be her rubber gloves and an apron.