DURING THE NINETEENTH century the character of Acton changed rapidly. Once a rural farming community famed for its healing wells, by the end of that century it had acquired the nickname of ‘Soapsud Island’. This was due to the proliferation of laundries (servicing the smartest hotels of London’s West End): in the twenty years from 1873 their number had risen from sixty to at least two-hundred-and-twelve. By the 1920s, Acton was also to become home to one of the largest concentrations of industry in the south of England and was known as Motor Town.
Previously an Agent for Servants, it was there, in 1871, that Joseph Kirby Farnell started a new business following the Victorian fashion for fancy goods – such as tea-cosies, pin-cushions and elaborate cards for all occasions. This would almost certainly have included a limited selection of toys.
The Farnell name is all but forgotten by the general public today, although its memory is hugely respected by toy trade magazines and writers. Kathy Martin’s excellent book, Farnell Teddy Bears, places the company, for the first time, in its true historical context.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, toy shops were few and far between and even then were found only in larger towns and cities. They would have stocked games and dolls and some mechanical animals such as bears or donkeys on wheels which were scary rather than cuddly. The concept of childhood had not yet been fully appreciated. However, it was the growth of department stores during the second half of the century which had offered new and exciting marketing possibilities.
The best known centre for toys in London was Lowther’s Arcade, off the Strand, a glass-covered walkway which was described by the writer George Augustus Sala in 1861 as ‘the toyshop of Europe’. It was a magical place in which the ‘honest, hearty, well-meaning toys of Old England’ were contrasted with those somewhat eccentric items from Germany and the fierce war-like products of France – all blood and glory.
By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Farnell had become Britain’s leading manufacturer and exporter, first of soft toys and then, importantly, of teddy bears.
Joseph Kirby Farnell died in 1891, leaving the business, most unusually for the times, to his three daughters, Agnes, Eleanor and Martha, and their brother Henry.
The company’s claim for first prize in the race to make soft, child-friendly toys is supported by an article in the February 1922 issue of Games and Toys, which says that Farnell ‘has been established for over 50 years’. However, an advertisement which appeared later, in 1965, put the date even earlier and, according to Kathy Martin, ‘this strong evidence would seem to suggest that some time between 1863 and 1868 Farnell had begun manufacturing the first soft, squashy, comforting, animal-inspired decorative items’. This would have placed it just ahead of the, now famous, Margarete Steiff company in Germany.
Margarete Steiff had been paralysed since the age of one. Always a courageous and cheerful fighter, she was seventeen years-old when her father transformed a study in their house into a dressmaker’s workshop where, with her two sisters, she made children’s clothes.
She produced her first stuffed toy – a little elephant called ‘Elefante’ – in 1879. The elephant was so popular with children and adults that she progressed to other animals and went on to launch the enterprise which grew to become today’s internationally celebrated company.
Also in Germany, in 1894 the company of Gebruder Sussenguth had produced the first catalogue showing a stuffed toy bear based on Robert Southey’s 1834 fairy tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears .
Around 1898, the entire Farnell family moved upmarket into The Elms on Acton Hill. The house was described in the sale details as ‘a very substantial and excellent eighteenth century mansion’. It boasted greenhouses and a boating lake, set in a thirty four acre park. The property was big enough for the building of a new factory in the grounds to the north east which eventually became the headquarters of the expanding Farnell enterprise.
It was here in Acton in 1921 that the ‘best bear in the world’ would eventually be born.
After the death of the reclusive Queen Victoria in 1901, there had been a lightening of mood throughout Europe, which heralded a new delight in childhood and, in its turn, opened the way for the emerging toy industry.
A year later, in America, President Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt travelled to Mississippi to help settle a border dispute with Louisiana. His hosts famously took him bear-hunting but when no bears appeared the President was invited to shoot a cub that had been previously captured. He refused to fire at such a helpless target – an act which inspired the famous cartoon by Richard Berryman Drawing the Line, which appeared in the Washington Post on 16 November 1902.
It was this cartoon which encouraged Maurice and Rose Michtom of Brooklyn, New York, to make a toy bear in honour of the President’s actions. They wrote to ask for his permission to call it Teddy’s Bear. He replied: ‘I don’t think my name is likely to be worth much in the toy business but you are welcome to use it’. To the delight of everyone it was not a moose, as expected, but a bear, which he decided to use as his mascot in the next Presidential election.
The Michtom’s bear looked sweet and innocent, which is probably why he was an overnight success with the public. In fact, demand was so strong that the Michtoms, with the help of a wholesale firm called Butler Brothers, formed the first-ever teddy bear manufacturing company in America. It was called the Ideal Novelty and Toy Company.
Margarete Steiff’s nephew, Richard, was in America that year and attended a circus performance by dancing bears. They gave him an idea. He returned home and took out patents for a toy dancing bear which he called ‘Friend Petz’ and also a brown bear with his handler. The bears were shown at the Leipzig Toy Fair in March 1903 but the dancing bear did not sell at all well until, just as the Fair was closing, New York toy importer, Hermann Borgford, ordered four thousand.
People in Europe and America were beginning to get teddy bear fever and the Steiffs and the Farnells were leading the way. The toy bear – known originally in trade magazines as a ‘Bruin’ – had arrived.
In 1908, the American composer, J.K Bratton, wrote The Teddy Bear Two Step, which soon became popularised as the toe-tapping Teddy Bears’ Picnic and was used in Roosevelt’s next election campaign.
By this time, the Farnells had begun exporting bears to countries such as South Africa and Egypt and, of course, America. Originally made from animal skins, teddy bears were now made in a new fabric. Yorkshire mohair was long-haired, silky and very tactile, woven from the hair of the Angora goat. Mohair is the most durable, soft fabric, with none of the harshness of man-made materials.
Then, in 1908, Farnell produced what is generally believed to be the first British teddies. Farnell bears had long tapering limbs, with webbed stitching on their paws and rather pronounced muzzles. Their ears were quite large and round and their eyes in various shades of clear glass with dark pupils but most importantly they GROWLED. Christopher Milne recalled, as a grown-up, that Pooh’s growl didn’t last long!
The new bears were cuddly and looked more like furry people than the four-legged wild animals on which they were based.
Dolls were for girls. But, being genderless and classless and selling in a wide range of prices, teddy bears could be equally well-loved and hugged without shame by boys as well as girls and, before long, by grown-up men and women too, from all sections of the community.
An article by F.R.B. Whitehouse appeared in the 1954 July issue of the magazine Toys and Games in which he describes the enduring magic of the time when the bedroom light is turned off and all is dark in bed, secrets can be imparted between the child and the teddy and an affection is created which lasts long after childhood has passed.
The Harrods catalogue of 1910 shows a photograph of Teddy Bear TY 365. By the 1912 catalogue this superior bear is proudly identified as from Farnell.
During World War I, toy imports from Germany stopped, leaving the way clear for a boom in British bears. However, after the Armistice in 1918, a very worrying increase of imports of ‘cheap foreign muck’ was reported in the trade press.
Despite all the setbacks, Farnell was flourishing, with fifty outworkers and one hundred and eighty nine factory girls in the care of Sybil Kempe, daughter of a local Professor of Music.
Factory conditions were excellent. Wages were above average. There was plenty of space and the girls worked in teams at long tables on the various stages of the teddy bears’ creation. The fabric was first cut to shape ready for the machinist to assemble and put in baskets. Others then turned the parts inside out ready to be stuffed with wood shavings and more solid wood wool for the head. Limbs had to be jointed and eyes inserted. Most important of all was the stitching of the nose, as it was this which gave each bear his individual character.
In 1920, Rupert Bear appeared as a picture story Little Lost Bear, in the Daily Express. He was introduced as competition for the Daily Mail’s ‘Teddy Tail’. Written and drawn by Mary Tourtel, Rupert was a fictional character inspired by the current passion for teddies, but he was a bear dressed as a little boy with a yellow scarf. His popularity gave an additional boost to the new trend.
In 1921, the Farnell family decided to formalise their company. Agnes and Henry became company directors, and the factory at The Elms was named The Alpha Works. Their new Alpha range of soft toys, including the Alpha bear, was lauded in the trade press for its quality.
At the same time they also opened a showroom in union Street in the East End of London. There were huge bears and growly bears, baby bears and musical bears, dressed bears and bare bears.
In that memorable year of 1921, Sybil Kempe had been with the firm for thirty years and had risen from her role as a simple fur worker to a position of considerable responsibility and importance not only to the factory but to Agnes and Henry personally: they both remembered her later in their Wills. Her exact role in Pooh’s arrival is uncertain but several magazines refer to her as a ‘gifted designer’ and it is not unreasonable to imagine that she may have been the ‘midwife’ at his ‘birth’. She died in St. Albans on 3 December 1959 at the age of 84.
Today, the factory itself has been demolished but the Farnell home, The Elms, has become Twyford Church of England High School.
In Acton, there is no blue plaque on the wall to remind pupils, the people of Acton, or the rest of the world, WHO was born there in 1921.
During the summer of that year, the Alpha teddy bear who would eventually become Winnie-the-Pooh travelled with his many siblings and a consignment of other toys, including Beatrix Potter’s Jemima Puddleduck, in the Farnell delivery van from Acton. They sped across London, towards Harrods department store in Kensington. Who would have guessed then that, from all the hundreds of bears who left the Works that year, one alone was destined for fame and fortune and would become a household name worldwide.
If hand made mohair bears like Pooh seem expensive, that’s because mohair IS expensive! Priced according to thickness and length of pile, it can cost up to £150 per metre today. It takes many hours to make a bear from design to finished article. The price doesn’t really reflect this – bear makers have always designed and made bears with love.
Mohair is the most durable, soft, huggable fabric. The vintage bears of a hundred years ago, made with mohair, have stood the test of time. Alpaca and cashmere plush are sometimes used for tiny bears. They have the same qualities and are excellent for children who will want their bears to remain with them as they grow up.
A traditional teddy bear is made, as it has always been made, with wood or hardboard joints held by long cotter pins. The filling is wood shavings and the eyes glass. Modern safety regulations mean they must no longer be sold for children to play with and are for adult collectors only. Much the same character can be achieved for a child’s bear by replacing the joints and eyes with plastic, and filling with a softer acrylic fibre and/or acrylic ‘beans’.
The ideal place to keep an elderly bear is in a glass-fronted cupboard where it can be seen and taken out from time to time. Alternatively, protect your old bear’s fur with soft clothing and dust occasionally. Above all, keep bears out of the dog’s reach!