Contents

Growing Steadily

Part of RM's first workshop – assembling stringed instruments at City Road.  The workmen in the foreground may be recognised in the picture on page 9.

Early in 1933 there was some shifting of departments to make room for a workshop at City Road; the showroom was halved in size, an office moved and space obtained for the setting up of a few benches, a couple of lathes and a small circular saw.  Shafts and pulleys were erected, and the first Rose-Morris electric motor installed  (at the somewhat unusual voltage of 534 D.C.). 

RM's first machinery.  Powered lathe, sawbench and drill at City Road, c 1933.  Scribing the heel of a Banjo in the foreground –Francis Beddard, father of our present factory manager.

Hence commenced a small scale manufacture of uke-banjos and banjos and the little factory was kept hard at work.  A small quantity of guitars was produced later - large bodied acoustic models which were distinguished with the name 'KRUNA' (a play on the word 'crooner' soon to distinguish the inimitable style of Bin  Crosbv).  These were sprayed in the Gramophone shop downstairs, using, a motor car tyre pump to produce the necessary air pressure - the overspray descending on  the unhappy inhabitants of the record department!

It soon became evident that the manufacturing side of the business had scope for enlargement.  More space was needed for the activities of the warehouse, and it was decided to establish a factory outside the existing premises.  A small building, at 14 Sun Street,

Finsbury Square, was thought suitable, though its inconvenience was to be found later on.  Here, on five small floors, with a twisted wooden staircase and a microscopic hand-operated lift, the Rose, Morris factory was born.  Absorbed into it were the Cowlins, father and son, who had been making drums for R.M. for several years: with them came two workmen, and together they began the first R.M. manufacture of drums. (Some years later Cowlin Senior retired, and the younger left the company and the industry).  A. Nathan was moved from City Road to Sun Street to become the 'factory office' a post he filled until 1958 except for the war years.

The following five or six years were years of steady growth, both in the warehouse and in the factory.  Home trade and a small export business grew side by side, though competition was fierce, and a price difference of sixpence could make or mar a line.  The factory produced a growing range of merchandise, now including ukuleles, drums of many kinds and numerous accessories - all of which were trundled

An early photograph of the Woolf twins – Maurice on the left, Willie on the right (or is it the other way round?) with Stanley Rose and Bob Beddard.

round to the warehouse in City Road on a handbarrow.  Enormous business (in bulk if not in value) continued to be done in the gramophone record department, and mouth-organs and accordions remained best sellers.

In 1936 Adolf Juviler reappeared on the scene: having been precluded by agreement from engaging in the Musical Instrument Trade before then, he now set up a small company in competition with Rose, Morris & Co. Ltd.  He attracted to him two of R.M's outdoor representatives - David Waters and Henry Friedenthal., and the firm of Juviler & Waters came into being. (It was short lived: 1939 killed it.  David Waters has since died; Henry Friedenthal became the head of a notable retail musical instrument company in Hull).

Thus there was imperative need for representatives, and two young men already well known in the trade were invited to join Rose, Morris.  William A. Woolf came to the company from British Music & Tennis Strings Ltd.: his twin brother, Maurice A. Woolf came from Decca.  That they were a notable acquisition to R.M. soon became evident, and their irrepressible sense of humour (as strong today as then) and their identical appearance produced some memorable situations.  In 1937 the company was joined by Roy B. Morris, elder son of Victor Morris: after a spell of indoor activities he joined the travelling sales staff.  1938 saw the engagement for the travelling staff of Michael Berman, from Decca.


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Survival in War

The lower floors of 74-76 Ironmonger Row EC1.  Our camera could not capture the upper floors – but we well remember those stairs!

In this form then, Rose, Morris & Co., Ltd. faced the approach of the war.  A flourishing wholesale business and a thriving young factory, keen and dedicated staff - all too soon to be put to the test of survival.  The Munich crisis had given the warning, if warning was needed: staff shelters were organised, and some stock was moved into the country.  Accounts were kept in duplicate, one set out of London, and for the time, being the business ticked over.  The outbreak of war saw the gradual whittling away of staff, as, one after another, they took their posts in the services.  Even so, the volume of trade was insufficient to enable those left to be retained by the company and it was necessary to dispense with the services of some.

The Sun Street factory was an early casualty, the top floor falling victim to an incendiary bomb (and the remainder to the activities of the firemen) ~ but emergency repairs were organised, and with a much reduced staff production was resumed on a small scale.  The great fire raid on the City of London in December 1940 was the finish of the City Road building, which was destroyed completely.  The few remaining employees trooped disconsolately round to Sun Street: there was little enough business to be done, and almost no stock remaining, and the directors might have been justified in calling a halt until the end of hostilities.  That, however, was not their decision; premises were found at Ironmonger Row, not far away: the task was now to keep the company in being, keep a nucleus of service going, to improvise in manufacture and supply a trickle of musical instruments to N.A.A.F.I. and similar outfits; music, after all, being one of the forms of entertainment favoured by the troops.

The Ironmonger Row building (five floors, like Sun Street - and almost as inconvenient) was soon to see bigger efforts.  In association with Boosey & Hawkes Limited the company engaged in war work; instead of instruments of music, instruments of destruction . . . pull switches for explosive devices and limpet mines, together with other infernal devices of a similar nature.  Staff, mostly women, was recruited from the surrounding district; firewatching rosters were organised (the building was never hit, though severely shaken on many occasions), and so Rose, Morris continued remote from its normal sphere of activity, until the end of the war.  The founder-directors were precluded by age from taking an active role in the war, though they did not shrink from a number of humanitarian services.  Leslie Rose became a Chief Air-Raid Warden, and among his many other activities Stanley Rose became President of the Association of Musical Instrument Industries (a post he was to sustain for a record 13 years, doing much to re-establish the Trade after the war).  William Woolf went into the Army: his brother to the Royal Air Force; Roy Morris served in the Royal Navy and the Fleet Air Arm, Michael Berman in the National Fire Service.  Employees gave their services in every branch of the Forces: all but two survived.