Henry Norris as an
Employer
Last
updated: November 2008
From aged 13, when he
left school, until age 32, Henry Norris was an employee. Then, in one bound, he crossed the desk and
for the rest of his life was an employer, on a wide and reasonably grand
scale. In this file I’m going attempt to
look at what kind of an employer Henry Norris was. I’m handicapped by a lack of information on
Norris’ employees: his household records don’t exist any longer; nor do the
employee records of Allen and Norris; and as far as I know, nor do the records
that far back of either [Woolwich] Arsenal FC or Fulham FC. I shall start with the area of employment
that is notoriously the least documented on both a national and a personal
scale:
The Servants
It’s not been easy for
me to find evidence for Henry Norris as an employer of servants. Most of the evidence I have comes from late
in his life. On the days of the 1881 and
1891 censuses he was still living at home in a household with no servants. In 1901 he was a widower living with his
sister and again he had no servants.
However, he married for the second time shortly afterwards, had three
children and continued to make money and entered into public life. On the first Sunday in April 1911 he
completed the 1911 census. It was
term-time and Norris’ two elder daughters were at their boarding school, so the
family consisted of Henry, Edith his wife, their youngest daughter Nanette and
his unmarried sister Ada Patience. Henry
Norris employed four servants, all single women. Annie Louise Slade, aged 34, was a cook but
she probably also did a share of supervising the other three servants: Alice
Saunders aged 21 the parlourmaid; Mary Younger aged 19 the housemaid; and Mabel
Anderson aged 21, a nurse who will have had daily charge of Nanette. I actually think this is rather a modest
household for the mayor of a London borough and his busy wife. Perhaps Ada Patience undertook part of the
housekeeping role with the cook doing the daily shop to a menu agreed
beforehand. Henry Norris probably
employed a chauffeur by this stage but he was living in accommodation
elsewhere.
The latest source for
Norris as an employer of servants is his Will, dated 1933. In it, he leaves one year’s salary to all the
servants he had at his death who had been working for him for at least five
years. The wording of the clause gives
me the impression that there were still several servants in the Norris’
household at any one time, at least in Henry Norris’ later years. In addition Norris left sums of money to Rose
Miller , an ex-housemaid (perhaps a particularly long-serving one) and Daniel
Rider, the chauffeur who was paid by Arsenal FC from 1921 to 1923; a sum of
money to Alexander Kefford, his current chauffeur; and an annuity to James
Keene, his former gardener, now retired.
Henry Norris’ grand-children tell me that Alexander Kefford continued as
the family chauffeur after Norris’ death, employed by Edith. They also speak of a woman they all remember
from their childhoods, who began in Henry Norris’ employment as a housemaid and
ended her career as Edith’s cook and mainstay of the household during World War
II. Although people in general didn’t
change jobs then as much as they do now, the Will and these stories do suggest
that the Norrises were a couple whom servants were happy to continue working
for. The Will shows Henry Norris as an
employer who valued some at least of his household staff, even after they were
no longer working for him. I suggest
that he thought of them as ‘family’, an attitude that dominated his
relationships with employees further from home.
Below is some
speculation as to what servants Henry Norris might have employed at different
stages in his life:
A servant is the one
type of employee that Henry Norris might have had while he was still a clerk in
a solicitor’s office. If he had employed
a servant, it would have been the type that was for most people their first
experience of such employment: a young girl, possibly fresh from the workhouse,
or arriving new to London from a rural area.
She would live in her employer’s house (so he had to have a big enough
house to give her somewhere to sleep) and do the cleaning and some washing,
while his wife if he had one concentrated on the shopping and cooking and
childcare. It’s a pity that Henry
Norris’ first marriage began and ended between two censuses: I’ve not been able
to find out whether Mr and Mrs Norris employed any servants. In 1891 he was still a bachelor, living with
his mother; in 1901 he was a childless widower, living with his unmarried
sister. There was no servant living in the household on either occasion.
It would not surprise
me to find that Henry Norris had employed a servant during his first marriage;
partly because having a servant was part of the territory of a middle-class
marriage and a badge of the couple’s middle-class status, and partly because
(so his grand-children tell me) Henry Norris’ first wife died of a wasting
disease, most likely TB. In addition,
there’s the evidence of Hill Crest Thurleigh Road to take into account: the
house built for Henry Norris in 1897.
It’s big. It’s a house whose
owner can afford servants and intends to employ them. Mary Jane Norris was probably showing signs
of illness by the time they moved into it.
As her health deteriorated, she would not have been able to do the
shopping and cooking, let alone the cleaning and washing, even if she had been
doing them before, which I think is unlikely.
She will also have needed nursing.
Ada Norris went to live with Henry and Mary Jane to help with the
household tasks during this crisis but a nurse, at least during Mary Jane’s
last few months, may have been another type of person employed by Henry
Norris. This, though, is speculation in
my part, making assumptions based on what happened in other households but
without any real evidence in Norris’ case.
Although he was a
widower on 1 April, the day of the 1901 Census, Henry Norris married again
three months later. I’m sure that some
servants were part of the household he set up with second wife Edith, right
from the start. The number of servants
employed by Henry and Edith will have gone up the following year when they had
their first child; and probably as and when they decided that they wanted to
employ more - an Edwardian household tended to employ as many servants as the
bread-winner could afford.
Of course, I can’t get
at the 1911 Census data yet. Roll on the
day! By this time Henry Norris was a
successful property developer living in swanky Roehampton, mayor of a London
borough, director of two football clubs and a married man with three
children. I will expect to find him
employing several (not just one) servants, all of them one step-up at least
from the basic general servant whose duties I’ve outlined above. In addition to giving me some clue as to what
servants the Norrises thought were most necessary to them, given the large
number of social engagements they had, the number of servants living in the
household in 1911 might give me precious indications about Henry Norris’ income
at that time, about which I have NIL information. Again going on what servants other households
that might be in the same income bracket employed, I’d expect the Norrises to
have one housemaid, maybe two; or a nursery maid instead of the second
housemaid; a cook; and a chauffeur. But
not a butler or a valet or a lady’s maid: they came very expensive and were for
the very rich only. If the Norrises have
any of those three I shall be very impressed! - they will be richer even than I
think!
If they kept a
carriage and some horses, the Norrises might have employed a groom and a
coach-driver as well, who would normally have slept over the stable. By 1911 though, it was just about possible
for Henry Norris to have a car instead of a carriage; he certainly had one by
the time of his tour of north London (in 1912) looking for a suitable new site
for Woolwich Arsenal’s football ground.
When Daniel Ryder was employed by Henry Norris as his chauffeur, in the
early 1920s, he had two cars to look after: Henry’s Rolls-Royce (his grand-son
tells me he had a new one each year) and a smaller car which his daughters
drove. Ryder lived in rooms above the
garage. As Henry Norris didn’t drive,
Ryder drove him everywhere, including all the way through France to the Riviera
at least once a year in the early 1920s, when the Norris family went to stay at
their house in Villefranche: getting petrol and breakages mended in French, I
presume!
Possibly in 1911 and
certainly between 1913 and 1925, when they lived in houses with extensive
gardens, the Norrises employed at least one gardener.
Henry Norris’ Will
indicates that he continued to employ servants in his home up to the time of
his death; and his grand-children’s reminiscences show that he left Edith well
enough off for her to continue to employ some of them at least until World War
II. Thus the Norrises had servants
throughout a period of economic downturn, and through a period in which those
who could still afford servants had to compete for personnel with other kinds
of employment which gave women (most domestic servants were women) a wider
choice of work than they had ever had before.
That’s quite an impressive record, I think, both financially and on a
personal level between employer and employee.
Allen and Norris
Henry Norris’ great
leap across the desk came - of course - when he became a partner in William
Gilbert Allen’s building firm; and as Allen’s firm had already been in business
for several years, Norris ‘inherited’ a lot of employees that he hadn’t chosen,
including (I imagine, although his grand-daughter isn’t sure when he joined the
firm) Allen’s own brother-in-law, Francis Plummer . Norris seems to have trod with all the
caution that was necessary in the circumstances because neither his
grand-children nor Allen’s grand-son have any tales to tell of great bust-ups
and employees walking out at this point.
Although he probably saw them all on pay-day it’s likely that Norris
didn’t have all that much to do with the on-site labourers: they were Allen and
Plummer’s department and they did the hiring and firing as well as the
supervision, I am sure. In due course,
William Gilbert’s youngest brother Harry probably joined the firm as a
carpenter; I would suppose that the decision to hire him was taken by William
Gilbert Allen and Francis Plummer. I’ve
argued in my history of the Allen and Norris partnership that Henry Norris’
role, in 1896 and beyond, was to take charge of the office, both in terms of
function and in terms of personnel.
Maybe his first task as partner was to hire some office staff - that
will have been a first for him! - and even if it was not - even if Allen had
some clerks already - Henry Norris was in charge and probably oversaw the
process of hiring and firing clerks thereafter.
However he continued the policy of employing relations of Allen and
Plummer, at least I think he did (without any of Allen and Norris’ papers I can
only guess); see below.
Because no personnel
records of Allen and Norris survive, I don’t know how many men (it was almost
certainly all men and no women, at least until World War I) were employed by
Allen and Norris at any one time, and what kinds of work they did: though
building work is building work is building work, so those employees at least
were putting up scaffolding, doing plumbing and carpentry, laying floors,
plastering walls and putting tiles on the roof and the walls much as they do
now. By 1911, at least, there must have
been an awful lot of them - the labour costs of the whole Crabtree Lane Estate
were estimated at £50000-100000 though those figures will include the wages of
the office staff too. Thinking about
what other kinds of work employees of Allen and Norris’ will have done in 1911,
the main office will have had to have a hierarchy of clerks dealing with the
wages and their National Insurance payments; and preparing letters for
signature by one of the partners; as well as issues like health and safety,
coverage for accidents, sick pay, holidays, leave of absence and all the other
administrative details of employing people.
There will have been a group of employees doing the partnership’s
accounts; credit and debit; paying the bills and pursuing money owed. And in addition, since this was a property
company, some employees will have been collecting and recording rents and
ground rents due to the partnership.
Francis Plummer’s grand-daughter tells me that some people, including
women (her aunt did it sometimes), were employed to go house-to-house actually
receiving the payments of rent and ground rent, cash in hand. I suppose some clerks might have done the
wages due to and taxes payable by William Gilbert Allen and Henry Norris
themselves - very confidential work. And
some employees, at least after 1911, were involved in some of the preparation
of planning and drainage applications which up until then had largely been done
in William Clinch Poole’s office. All
the documents that I’ve seen as having been issued by Allen and Norris up to
World War I have been completed by hand; it’s only later documents that are typed. The typing goes with the post-war period when
the scale of Allen and Norris’ work was much reduced - there was no actual
building work going on - and the partnership concentrated on building
maintenance, rent collection and buying and selling property in a more modern
way. The number of labourers the
partnership employed, in particular, must have declined considerably. But I see the pre-war office that Henry
Norris was in charge of as an ant-hill of activity, with clerks writing
furiously in ledgers or preparing letters and other documents for Norris’
signature, all by hand; Norris - especially after he entered local politics -
presiding over the hive of activity in between rushing off to go to site
meetings, business meetings, political meetings, Council meetings, meetings
with William Gilbert Allen at which the future course of the partnership would
be decided; and occasionally home to his family.
The Allen and Norris
partnership must have employed dozens - maybe hundreds - of people. I don’t know what they were paid; I don’t
know how long (on average) they worked for the firm before they left or
retired; and I know hardly any of their names.
I know two things about them as a group that shed light Henry Norris’
attitude towards workers rights. During
a political speech after World War I Henry Norris got into an argument with a
member of the audience in which he told his heckler that the Allen and Norris
partnership had always allowed its employees to be members of a trade
union. I find it quite hard to envisage
Henry Norris negotiating wage levels with his trade union representatives;
perhaps William Gilbert Allen performed that task. As far as I know, the Allen
and Norris partnership was never involved in any labour dispute and never had
their work schedule disrupted by a strike or a go-slow, even during the period
1911-13 which was one of considerable trade union activity in Britain. Perhaps they were good employers, paying well
(or well enough) and not laying people off unless they had to, in an industry
where sudden lay-offs have always been such a fact of working life. Still, I do find it surprising that Henry
Norris was prepared to allow trade unions on his patch; at least within the Allen
and Norris partnership he was not quite the autocrat he has been portrayed.
Norris was also a
supporter of the trade union formed by a group of professional footballers
before World War I, at least until they affiliated themselves with a trade
union grouping. Then he changed his
tune, as the players claimed the right to strike; Arsenal FC couldn’t afford a
players’ strike. And he was not alone in
regarding a downing of tools by the players as something too horrible to
contemplate: the Football Association didn’t like it either and refused to
recognise the PFU until they’d given up the right to strike. The union was attempting to make it possible
for players to negotiate wages as a group.
I haven’t studied the early history of the PFA but I get the impression
that at least during Henry Norris’ time in football, they made very little
headway in this. Norris continued to
negotiate with each player individually.
Divide and conquer.
When World War I was
declared in August 1914 and Lord Kitchener asked the nation for 100,000 young
men by September, both William Gilbert Allen and Henry Norris agreed that
although the firm was still heavily involved in building the Crabtree Lane
Estate (which was behind schedule due to a planning dispute) they would not
stand in the way of any employee who wanted to leave the firm with very little
notice to fight for their country. This
patriotic attitude was not as common as you would suppose: at Sunderland FC
(for example) player Charles Buchan wanted to volunteer in August 1914 but the
club’s directors made it very clear to him that if he did, they would sue him
for breach of contract; so he didn’t.
I know the names of
one or two men who worked for the Allen and Norris partnership because they
became involved in one of the other enterprises organised by William Gilbert
Allen and Henry Norris. I’ve argued
elsewhere that in 1903, the Allen and Norris partnership took over Fulham FC;
well, William Gilbert Allen and Henry Norris were able to persuade some of
their employees to buy shares; the more senior employees, that is - the ones
more likely to have spare money to invest in such a dodgy deal as a football
club. When the first list of
shareholders in Fulham Football and Athletic Company Limited was published in
1903, Arthur Foulds had bought 20 shares, and Francis Plummer 10. Ten shares was not enough to make you
eligible to act as a director of the company, and there’s no evidence that
Francis Plummer ever bought any more than his ten; he never took an active role
in running the club. But Arthur Foulds,
one of Allen and Norris’ senior carpenters, was a director of the club from
1903 until the AGM of 1913, when he stood down; and by 1906 he’d bought 200
shares, doing his bit to fund the rebuilding of Craven Cottage in 1905.
Fulham Amateur Boxing
Club, founded in 1910, could be described as an Allen and Norris-based venture,
though it could also be described as a Plummer-and-relations idea. Francis Plummer was involved again, but the
driving force behind the whole idea was Percy Arthur Jones, an ex-bantam weight
champion and well-respected boxing referee.
Jones acted as the club’s honorary secretary and was a relation of
Francis Plummer’s (although Plummer’s grand-daughter isn’t quite sure how he
fits into the family tree). Jones was a
qualified electrician and worked for Allen and Norris until he volunteered to
join the navy in 1917 - becoming one of the employees allowed by William
Gilbert Allen and Henry Norris to leave the firm without hindrance to fight in
the war. Henry Norris took an interest
in the boxing club, especially in its first few years, attending its annual
dinners (an important fund-raising event); though I get the impression he
wasn’t keen on boxing and in any case the club tended to have its competitions
on evenings when he was tied up with Council meetings. Francis Plummer, William Gilbert Allen,
Arthur Foulds and Harry John Peters of Allen and Norris also went to the
dinners at least up until the outbreak of World War 1.
It’s much more
difficult to discover the names of Allen and Norris employees who didn’t take a
prominent role in life in Fulham.
However, as a result of scanning all the way down the houses in
Settrington Road, on Allen and Norris’ Morrison’s Farm Estate, I can suggest
(but not say categorically) that on the day of the 1901 Census, some at least
of the residents worked for Allen and Norris: there were a suspiciously large
number of carpenters and plumbers living in the road, especially in the high
numbers, just round the corner from Allen and Norris’ offices and joinery
workshop! And also a larger than I would
have expected number of residents claiming to have been born in Cornwall -
where William Gilbert Allen and Francis Plummer’s wives came from. On the basis of the census and other
information I’m fairly confident that Settrington Road residents Harry Allen,
carpenter and joiner and Arthur Diplock, commercial clerk, were Allen and
Norris employees in 1901. Harry Allen
was William Gilbert Allen’s youngest brother; and Arthur Diplock had married
Francis Plummer’s sister Emily.
Which brings me to
another point I’d like to make about William Gilbert Allen and Henry Norris as
employers: they liked their employees to live in the houses they had helped
build. It kept good workers in the neighbourhood;
and it made the firm look good if its employees were happy to live in its
products. Of course, I haven’t got any
evidence about the finances of this.
Perhaps the employees were offered a good rent, lower than the
commercial value; or help with finding a mortgage. If they were offered a deal, it was a good
one; either that or the partnership was able to inspire great loyalty on the
part of these employees at least: the Allen and Norris employees I know about
moved several times from one Allen and Norris property to another. In 1897 Francis Plummer was living in one of
the Allen and Norris houses in Clancarty Road; by 1901 he had moved round the
corner to a rather larger house, 2 Settrington Road; he described himself to
the 1901 census-taker as a builder’s foreman, so by this time he had already
moved up in the world from his beginnings as a carpenter and joiner. By 1909 Plummer and his family had moved
across Fulham to 34 Finlay Street, where they stayed until the 1930s when
Francis retired. In 1901, and still in
1903, Arthur Foulds was living at 3 Clancarty Road. That house might have been rented but at some
time after 1911 Foulds moved to 105 Wimbledon Park Road on Allen and Norris’
Southfields estate, which was all for sale not for rent, as far as I know. Percy Jones lived at Allen and Norris’ 143
Harbord Street in 1912 before moving to 37 Rosedew Road on the Crabtree Lane
estate by 1917. And Harry John Peters
bought 155 Wimbledon Park Road, presumably while he was still working for Allen
and Norris as an accounts clerk; though he later left the partnership to work
for another of Henry Norris’ companies, Arsenal FC - see below for the tale
that hangs thereby.
At first, it was only
William Gilbert Allen’s family that got jobs with Allen and Norris. However, by the time of Henry Norris’ death
in 1934, there were a member of his family employed by the firm, as a clerk in
the office: Percival Harris, son of Edith Norris’ sister Mary Featherstone Harris. And Francis Plummer’s grand-daughter tells me
that his daughter Winifred was also employed by the firm as a rent collector,
though this was as and when needed, she wasn’t a permanent member of the
staff. However, as I’ve pointed out in
my history of the Allen and Norris partnership, only one of the two partners’
children ever worked for the firm - William Gilbert Allen’s estate agent son
Frederick. So the employment of family
members by the Allen and Norris partnership gradually declined in the 1930s.
Of course, it’s as an
employer of people in football that Henry Norris is best and most infamously
known. I’ll deal with that next.
[ROGER FILE SLEMPRF
FOLLOWS STRAIGHT ON FROM THIS ONE]
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW
MORE ABOUT THE SOURCES OF ALL THIS INFORMATION, SEND ME AN EMAIL AND I’LL SEND
YOU THE SOURCES FILE.
Copyright Sally Davis November 2008
***