What was life like in 1952?
As the jubilee approaches, I’ve been delving into the staff magazines to see what life was like for people on the staff of our ancestor companies when the queen came to the throne in 1952.
In 1952 most large insurance companies produced staff magazines to keep their employees up to date with company events and the personal news of their colleagues in branches across the country and across the globe. Back then, the office seems to have been the centre of employees’ social activities as well as their working lives. Staff outings to stately homes, the seaside, or to theatre performances were regularly mentioned. General Accident took 200 members of its London staff on a trip to Brighton in 1952 and the staff magazine reported that a member of staff on the Salisbury branch outing lost his trousers somewhere between Bournemouth and the Isle of Wight. That year staff at Norwich Union’s Sheffield branch had an outing to the British Thomson Houston glass works at Chesterfield to see the blowing of cathode tubes for television sets.
By 1952 all our major ancestor companies had their own sports grounds and staff could join any number of clubs depending on their specific interests. People working for General Accident in Perth even had a country dancing club, while activities for the London staff included billiards and boxing. Commercial Union had a camera club as well as sections for badminton, swimming, darts, and netball. The company’s athletics section membership included Ann Johnson who represented Great Britain in the 200m at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.
1952 also saw Norwich Union hold is first ever staff hobbies and handicraft exhibition. This filled the balcony around the marble hall with samples of needlework and knitwear and the board room with photographs, weaving, and rugs. Woodwork and model making exhibits, which were on display in the west committee room, included a beautiful cabinet and table made by the office carpenters and a working violin which was produced by Mr C G Foster of the fire office.
For those who yearned for a life on the stage, most of our companies had operatic and dramatic clubs. In 1952 the drama critic at the Post Magazine (a weekly insurance industry publication) reported that he had reviewed 40 drama performances, 6 operatic shows, and 8 concerts featuring more than 830 men and women working in the insurance industry. That year Commercial Union’s CUACO Players won the Insurance Drama Festival; the company didn’t see any winners in the section for Individual Dramatic Performance (Men) even though two future stars of stage and screen, Leonard Rossiter and Michael Williams, were both working in the Liverpool branch claims department at the time.
As well as displaying handicraft skills and charting successes on the stage and the sports field, the staff magazines also reported on career developments, resignations, and retirements. There are frequent notices about the comings and goings of junior clerks on National Service while retirement notices often gave details of service in the First World War as the generation who had joined the offices in the early 1900s reached the end of their working lives.
The Second World War was also fresh in the minds of those working in our offices in 1952 with regular references to experiences in the evacuated head offices and to the destruction and rebuilding of branches following the Blitz. The shadow of war still hung over the country with several magazine editorials referring to the war in Korea and the UK’s plan to test an atomic bomb:
“national and international affairs are still in a very disturbed state, and sometimes it only seems a remote possibility that we shall ever be able to write or comment upon a period of tranquillity and prosperity such as obtained in the late Victoria and Edwardian days. — the mad race for armaments is still dominating the lives of all peoples, bringing with it the terrible fear that in the end all these means of destruction foreshadow world chaos and ruin.”
Many entries in the magazines are given over to the reporting of weddings amongst the staff. General Accident’s May 1952 issue reported 37 weddings including six where both bride and groom worked for the company. By 1952 marriage for a woman didn’t instantly mean compulsory resignation from the company. This was still a relatively recent development; Northern Assurance had only dropped the rule three years earlier and it was actually reintroduced by Norwich Union during 1952 and remained in place at that company until 1957.
Resignation notices for women in 1952 refer almost as often to them moving for their husband’s job as leaving to start a family. The ambitious insurance man in 1952 took advantage of many training courses and regularly moved from branch to branch to climb the career ladder. The importance of a wife who was willing to move (and in all other ways support her husband’s career) was the subject of an article in the Post Magazine in 1952. Based on research carried out for an article in Life Magazine in January that year, the article concluded that the ideal wife was highly adaptable, highly gregarious, and realised that her husband belonged to his employer. Advice offered to wives of would-be executives included:
“don’t turn up at the office unless you absolutely have to;
don’t get too chummy with wives of associates your husband might soon pass on his way up;
never get tight at a company party;
be attractive. There is a strong correlation between executive success and the wife’s appearance”.
Other articles in the Post Magazine in 1952 looked at the insurance implications of disasters such as recent bush fires in Australia and events closer to home like the Lynmouth flood. Heavy rain over North Devon and West Somerset in the Summer of 1952 had caused the West Lyn River to rise 60 feet above the normal level causing what is often described as the worst river flood in English history. The village of Lynmouth was hit by a wall of water and rubble: 34 people died, 420 were made homeless, and 38 cars were washed out to sea. While noting that many home insurance policies excluded flood cover for buildings, the Post Magazine concluded:
“It can safely be assumed that British insurers will live up to their reputation for generous treatment and will, as usual, seek justification for the payment of claims rather than reasons for avoiding paying them.”
Our company, General Accident set aside £17,000 to meet motor claims and £10,000 to meet fire and household comprehensive claims due to the disaster.
Another disaster covered by the Post Magazine was the train crash at Harrow and Wealdstone station which caused the deaths of 112 people and is still the worst peace-time rail disaster to have happened in England. Many of the passengers in the local train were railway employees commuting to office jobs at Euston and a number were insured with our company Provident Mutual, which ran staff schemes for railway companies. Another casualty of the disaster was William Ledger who worked in General Accident’s Harrow branch and was killed on his way in to work.
The Post Magazine also kept insurance professionals up to date with other relevant topics such as the story that Blackpool Council had decided to insure its lady mayoresses against injury while on official duties. This came after a former mayoress injured her right thumb and wrist during a particularly vigorous handshake with a very large man, which left her unable to play the piano, knit, or pour tea.
A story from the United States was shared to demonstrate the importance of insurance cover for damage by burglars as well as burglary loss: a frustrated burglar in Illinois who found nothing in the till was reported to have smashed 10 dozen eggs, poured vanilla extract over the stock of meet and hurled hamburgers against the refrigerator. Legal cases reported included liability for the collapse of a garden chair and a claim that a man was driven to steal from the Jolly Boys Club by the fear of a fortune teller’s prediction.
Reference was also made to cutting-edge research at Bristol University to discover how much drink people could take before they were incapable of driving, and to the recently published Review of Public Health 1950 which had concluded that:
“great care must be used before one can assume that there is any close connection between cancer of the lung and an increased consumption of tobacco.”
Both the Post Magazine and our own staff magazines referred to rising inflation and the cost of living in 1952. An article in the Post Magazine commented:
“The present Government is faced with stupendous tasks, and it seems likely that some action to ameliorate our more pressing problems will be taken even before the annual Budget. The chancellor’s statement that the deficit in our overseas payments may be as high as £600m in 1952 leaves no doubt as to the gravity of the situation. […] The steps already taken by the Government in increasing the bank rate, demanding drastic economies in Government departments, reducing tourist’s allowances etc, are reassuring although representing barely the first step along the stony road back to stability.”
Meanwhile Norwich Union’s Norwich branch received this response from a customer who had been invited to increase the amount on his policy:
“Sorry I cannot increase my insurance premium, but I have cut my consumption of beer to the bone to meet the present-day cost of living. As the Insurance companies panteth for premiums so panteth I for ale”.
In 1952, each of Norwich Union’s branches contributed regular articles to the staff magazine. Some, like the one for Norwich branch above, reported amusing letters from customers while others welcomed the arrival of new technology in the form of Emidicta dictation machines. Reports from Paris, Sheffield, and Leicester referred to the installation of new neon branch signs while Newcastle branch proudly announced the return of the FA Cup to the city for the second year in succession. In Manchester, the introduction of a new smokeless zone saw the delivery of gas and electric heaters to the office to replace the remaining open fires.
Excitement came to Norwich with the arrival of a film crew to record an interview between Richard Dimbleby (father of David and Jonathan) and Sir Robert Bignold, President of Norwich Union. The interview, for Dimbleby’s “Come with me” cinema travelogue on Norwich, took place in Bignold House across the road from our current offices in Surrey Street. Filming of the interview took all day and had to be planned around the striking of the Skeleton Clock, which is now in Surrey House but was then in the board room where the interview took place. The lights and cameras also required a special lead to be run to the mains in the old Georgian building and at one point a cable fused causing a loud bang and a scorch mark on the board room carpet. The interview lasted only about 2 minutes in the finished film, which also included sections on other notable Norwich businesses such as Colman’s Mustard and views of the chocolate and cracker factory of Caley Mackintosh Ltd. You can see the film by following this link.
I’ll end our look back at 1952 with some thoughts on the future, by pensioner E E Williams, which appeared in the Norwich Union magazine that year. Mr Williams, who had joined the company 53 years earlier (before the introduction of electric light and telephones to the office), mused about what changes the next three or four hundred years would bring:
“Will coal still be available or will it be exhausted or superseded?
Will every man have his own aeroplane?
Will everyone be able to carry a small instrument in his pocket which would serve all the purposes of our present wireless radio, including television?”
