Listers - Maria Lister's laundry and her sons' innovative machinery works

 

Sixty years ago when I was young and silly I was working for a laundry trade magazine. In the office we had bound volumes going back 100 years or so back and when I had a moment with nothing to do I read my way right the way through all those years of  magazines .  If you’d known me in 1968 could told you a lot about the history of the laundry industry but, sadly, of course in those days we didn’t have photocopiers.  The only way of repeating all that information is what’s left in my head - and that’s going fast!

One firm whose name has stuck with me was ‘Lister's’ and only because it was one of the few firms in the south of England - in Woolwich  - and it was doing really interesting work in developing new laundry equipment .  When I came to live here and I started to look at local industries but I could never find anything out about this firm - they were a complete mystery. I remember talking to Jack Vaughan, the first Chair of Greenwich Industrial History Society – did he know anything about them? ‘Oh yes’ he said ‘I used to go out with a girl that worked there’ .... ‘Ok - but what did they do? ‘Laundry ’ he said.

He turned out to be right.

Lister’s were in Nightingale Vale which of course now is a road on the Woolwich Common Council estate. If you go up the road today past all the flats there’s a very definite bend in the road on the corner of Fennell Street. I’m pretty sure that’s where Lister’s were based in a big old house. There are even pictures of it on the Historic England website and they say it was built about 1840.  The Survey of Woolwich points out that Nightingale Vale follows the line of a stream and also the parish boundary.  The area was developed for housing in the mid 19^th century and the road climbed up the hillside to these posh houses at the bend.   They were called Belmont Place, 59 Nightingale Vale

For its first few years Belmont Place does seem to have had middle class residents. My research on it found an article in Andrew Simpson’s blog (which I very much recommend (https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=crossness). He had discovered a John Cowan  registered to vote in 1865 at Belmont Place and identified him in a photograph taken at Crossness Pumping Station. I’m sorry Andrew I think you are wrong.  I think that John Cowan is a member of Woolwich Local Board and there are various bits of biographical information about him in Vincent’s History of Woolwich.

What actually happened is that a Maria Lister opened the Belmont Laundry in 1881 in sheds behind Belmont Place. She was recently widowed - her husband, Samuel Lister, had been an assistant foreman in the Royal Gun Foundry, Woolwich and had died age only 41 leaving Maria with seven  children, No doubt she thought she had better find a way to make a living.  In subsequent years the children, once old enough all worked in the laundry - the eldest daughters on ‘washing’, from the start. Subsequently her sons were became apprenticed as engineers to return and to be managers in the laundry. Victor Lister served his apprenticeship in the Royal Gun Foundry where his father had worked.

Maria was not alone - other women took washing in and other laundries were set up in this area. Just down the road at 13 Nightingale Vale Anna Maria Berwick had a laundry. This was large enough to have employees, one of whom, Maria Wilkes, was charged with theft of items from the washing in 1884.  Nightingale Vale was seen as  a good area in which to found a laundry - it was near the barracks and other military buildings all full of men all needing to ‘look smart’ and authorities with contracts to let out.

Maria Lister however was remarkably successful.  The laundry flourished and she was to live into the  1930s by which time the business was in the hands of her grandchildren As the laundry grew It extended into more and more larger buildings at the back of the house where the land fell away steeply – a younger Lister remembered ‘running down a steep slope to enter the laundry. A shop was established on Nightingale Place itself at the front. They were employing more than forty people and jobs there were frequently advertised in the local press .. ‘a good shirt Ironer; constant employment’ in 1888

The success of the business led Victor Lister to establish the Standard Laundry, further north on Nightingale Vale in 1899. I suspect that this was a takeover of an established business – it was described as “premises substantially built three years ago - splendidly lighted, fitted with gas engine and shafting and with six good dwelling rooms, fitted with every convenience for occupation”.  Later Victor and Samuel Lister became proprietors of the Criterion Laundry in Brockley.

Back at the Belmont Laundry more rear workshops were added commissioned by Maria – there are reports of ‘architectural drawings. It was enlarged again in 1912 and again later. In 1902, Victor Lister, by then the manager, was applying for an electricity supply for a ‘10 horse-power motor’.  They also used motorised vehicles – there are newspaper reports of drivers – and the company –being fined for the usual traffic infringements. In 1922 ‘improper use of a lorry’ – sadly there is no report of what this ‘improper use ‘consisted of. Job advertisements reflect this “Charge Hand Wanted, to take control of callender room; must have thorough experience and knowledge all work and types of machines’. (I’m afraid my spell checker can’t cope with ‘callenders’.  Just as well that I can!)

Note here that the laundries have engines using gas and electricity. This was no longer an industry of hard working washerwomen. The Magazine which I worked for in the 1960s – Power Laundry – had been founded to report on and promote the use of powered equipment in the industry.  Soon the Lister’s, as Lister Bros., diversified into light engineering and additional premises were taken on and built to the rear of Belmont Place.

The Lister family were also becoming prominent locally – over the years newspaper reports of their weddings become longer and longer with the names of well known and well connected guests.  Younger Listers were involved in Woolwich politics and sat, as Tories, on local Boards and Councils. In 1922 we hear of ‘Councillor Victor Lister - vice-president of - the Woolwich Chamber of Commerce’.

By the late 1920s Listers were producing a great deal of equipment for ‘powered laundries’. A ‘rotary washer’ was patented internationally by Victor and Samuel Lister – and they held several other patents. They were fitting out laundries for local authorities sand others – in 1929 for a Poplar Council Laundry, in 1936 for ‘Chelsea Institution’.  In 1948 their equipment for clothes drying was adapted for Royal Mail to dry letters accidentally soaked for whatever reason. In 1949 it was again adapted as a leather drying conveyor machine. They also specialised in decontamination equipment.

In 1949 they introduced the ‘Prosperity Cabinet Shirt Unit with which a team of three workers, could ‘on a balanced work cycle’ restore 120 shirts an hour to a state of perfection. This included a  sleeve press.  I remember from my 1960s reading that shirt presentation was one of the most difficult areas for laundries to mechanise. It’s perhaps worth noting here that another local firm, Stones, introduced a continuous sheet washing and ironing process in the 1960s.

In the 1950s they developed the 'Little Plumstead Mechanical Sluice' specifically for hospital use and in co operation with a Norfolk based specialist unit. Hospital laundries were very much a growth area in this period. In 1960 Gladiron machines were promoted with great success and in 1961 ‘Hot Air Cabinet’ with having a capacity of 35 gallons per minute. In 1962 it was the ‘twin imperial roly poly packager’ and the ‘Atlantic washer’.

So what happened to this successful and busy local manufacturing business?  Well – what happened was the Woolwich Common Estate.  Clearly this isn’t the place for me to go into the long saga, of the Public Enquiries and the demolitions  necessary to get that housing built. I mean, if you are demolishing a load of listed buildings including General Gordon’s birthplace what chance does a laundry machinery firm stand.

 The company was eventually wound up in 1973.

The Lister family continued for some years with their role in local government. In 1940 Sam Lister, had married Unity Webley. He was a Woolwich councillor but it was Unity who stood for the London County  Council.  She was Deputy Chair in the early 1960s and in 1971 she chaired the national Tory Party conference. She died, as a Dame, in 1998 – Sam had died three years earlier in 1995.

My memories of the 1960s write ups of Lister machinery was that it was ground breaking and successful. Much of the machinery we were reporting on was from northern manufacturers and still steam driven and were basically redesigns of equipment from the 1920s.  Growth areas were dry cleaning – pioneered by Leatherhead based Neil and Spencer. And of course, Launderette equipment very little of which was British.   As domestic washing machines became more common institutional laundering was also a growth area – we used to publish a regular Hospital Laundry supplement.  Hospital launderers offered me a trip to an Amsterdam hospital as a treat.

Whatever! - Lister's were a successful Woolwich based firm and I am very aware that if I hadn’t had that job in 1966 I wouldn’t be writing about them now – and I have only ever seen one mention of them; from a granddaughter who had some relics which no-one seemed to want.

Does any Lister equipment still remain out there?  I have a report of a ‘Great Spur Wheel’ fitted by them in the windmill at Shirley, outside Croydon in 1935. Is it still there?