The Shop in Billinge Road
Working as a Pieman Full Time
The next couple of years were spent working in the bake house, during which time, Sellars Ltd. prospered quite well. After the demise of Arthur, however, there was quite a bit of rankling over his share of the business, and Colin, Arthur's son, felt that he wasn't getting his fair share. After all, he was in effect, along with his mother, the heir to it. I recall that when Eric and Roy went to see the accountant, after Arthur's death, he told them there was a sum of £23,000 in the bank which Arthur had put there as a buffer in case it was needed. The accountant's advice was to spend some of it.
They got a new car each, an Audi 80 and a 100, and then came the caravans. Eric had 40 footer on "Greenacres" at Morfa Bychan and Roy had one at Blackpool, on the site at Marton Mere. I don't think that Colin saw any of this money.
We had about four butchers bringing in meat and pork, the biggest supplier being Jack Cunningham from the end of Billinge Rd. I think that Jack's weekly bill was over £1000. Bill Hurst was manager for Jack Cunningham, and he was Colin's father-in-law, so that is how they came to have the contract. Another supplier was a chap named Roberts from Warrington.
After Arthur's death in 1971, the meat supply job got a bit chaotic. We were getting a lot of fat mixed in with the meat. The way that things worked was that as the meat came in, it was put into two large gas boilers and cooked. After it had cooled down, the fat on the surface was skimmed off and put to one side and later on, used in the pastry to complement the lard. The meat then was placed into cooling trays, and cooled down rapidly in front of a fan, before being put in the fridge overnight, ready for use the following day. Sometimes, there would be a couple of buckets of fat from each boiler, which meant that the fat was costing the bake house a lot of money. We had heard that Cunningham's were actually going around to various other butchers and buying fat from them to add to the meat sold to Sellars. A nice little racket, if you can get it!
Another supplier was Reggie Birchall from Billinge. He had a shop in City Rd, Kitt Green and he supplied pork, as well as some beef. Reggie had poor eyesight and one day, we had a complaint from a canteen in Wallgate. The manageress asked for one of us to go and see her. I was the one who dealt with complaints, so I went down. She said that she thought that we had minced a mouse up, because there was some fur in one of the pies!! It turned out to be a piece of cowhide.
When we investigated the source of the meat, it was found to have come from Reggies. When questioned about it he said "Aye, Ahve bin usin face fillets" which meant he had been buying cow heads and stripping the face meat off to mince up. Being of poor eyesight, he had missed a piece of hide and it had got minced in with the meat!!
We also got a complaint once about some pork in one of the pies. A customer said that some of the meat was green! We couldn't understand how this had come about, but on investigation, it was found to be from the batch that Reg. had supplied. When questioned about it, he said that he had been mincing bacon ends into the pork to use them up, and he hadn't skinned them first. The green colour was the dye that was used to mark the bacon with!!
Eric knew all about these things going on, but he wouldn't do anything. He never seemed to have the backbone to fire them off for it.
I once went out on a complaint from a woman in the council estate around Tyrer Avenue. She said that she had a pie with a fly baked into it. If this had been true, and she had pursued it with the Health Authority, the firm could have been taken to court and fined so I was sent out there to smooth things over. " Mr. Sellars says that I am to give you some groceries as compensation" I told her. "That's not good enough," she said. "I am a registered child minder and one of my children nearly ate that fly and was violently sick afterwards at the thought of it!!" I thought to myself, "Come off it Missus, who do you think that you're trying to kid?" "Well then, what are you going to do about it," she said. "Because I think that I should report it," We argued for a while and then she said that I should come back when her husband had come in from work.
I went back and told Eric what had happened, and he asked me to go back again later on and make sure that I got the offending pie. Later, the same day, I called on the customer again and this time her husband was in. I gave him the offer of some free groceries, but his reply was "We were thinking more of a monetary compensation." He had us there all right, "How much had you in mind?" "I was thinking of £5.00." I asked if I could use the phone to call Eric with the offer. When I told him, he said, "Give it to him and make him sign for it, and make sure you get the pie back".
I often wondered after that, how many more firms they had ripped off the same way.
Arthur in 1969, had asked Mick Boffey, who was married to John Ascroft's daughter, if he would like to work for him. Mick came to work, but was never very satisfactory. He was light fingered, and on one occasion, Stephen Sellars, who was a schoolboy then, had left his radio in the bake house. This was about 1970 when the bake house was being extended, and the place was a bit of a tip. Stephen used to go out with Arthur Whalley in his van during the holidays, and he would take his radio with him. A search was made for the missing radio, and it was found hidden in some bags of rubbish, near the gate. It could never be proved that Mick had put it there, but everyone had an idea that it was he.
Mick had a "hygiene" problem, in the fact that he was a dirty dresser, not changing his clothes regularly, and given to BO. There was one occasion when a Rathbones driver came in, wearing aftershave, and Mick said about him " He smells like a pouf" The lad turned to Mick and said, "I smell a bit better than you do!"
Mick would eat his way through several pies during the day, and then at dinnertime, as he had already eaten, he would off to the "Jawbone" aka Prince of Wales for a couple of pints. He wasn't very literate and on occasion had to write out orders for people, this led to some fantastic spelling mistakes. Our Dave and Peter Hurst, who was Colin's brother-in-law, took the mickey unmercifully. They were both college students at the time, and were working in the bake house for pocket money.
One day, a chap by the name of Roberts had been in for some pies. He was one of the butchers who sold mince to the firm, and he was entered into the sales book as "Roberts, Butcher" Mick had served him and had written his counterfoil out. Dave and Peter saw what he had written and Dave said to him, "What's this Mick? Robest Buther" It was hilarious!! Another classic was Brian Bispham, who was written in as Brian Bipam. We have had a laugh many times over it during the past years.
About this time, however, Rathbones decided to start making their own pies. Until now, Sellars had supplied all of the pies that were sold in Rathbones shops, and the quantity was quite considerable. When we made pies, we made them for the day after, putting them in the fridges, of which there were three big "walk in " ones.
Just a word about the walk in fridges. One day, when I had been helping two of the girls to push a rack of pies into the fridge, Arthur Whalley shut the door as a practical joke, and put a nail through the lock. It was possible to open the fridge from the inside by pushing on the lever, but with the nail through it couldn't be done. It didn't bother me, being in the dark, because I knew that someone would come and open the door again, but Angela Parkinson, who was one of the girls, had a panic attack and was nearly fainting. There wasn't half a stink about it and Bob, her husband came to see Eric and complain. Arthur Whalley wouldn't own up that it was he that had put the nail in but it was pretty obvious that it was he.
We were making, on average, 10 racks of each, meat, and meat and potato. On each rack were 21 trays with 21 pies to a tray. All told about 10,000 pies a day, which is quite an amount.
The firm had invested in a new pie-making machine just before Arthur's death. It was an "in line automatic" and was made by a firm in the Midlands somewhere. The dough was fed into a hopper at one end, and, through a screw and guillotine arrangement was deposited in pellet form into the foils that were placed by hand in the holes in the belt. As the foil made its way along, it went into a heated press that formed out the pie base. From there, it went under the filler, where a measured amount of filling of either meat, or potato and meat was added. It was then lidded by hand, and went into the crimper. As it emerged from the crimper, it was ejected from the belt by means of two curved slides and made its way on to the tray to be sprayed with glaze, and the trimmings from the crimp gathered up to be re-cycled into lids for the pies. Three people could operate the whole system. It was a good idea.
To mix the dough, there was a large Hobart mixer, which could turn a 70lb sack of flour, 28lb of lard, 2gallons of water and a scoop of Soya flour, into dough in about 30secs. The mixer had a stainless steel blade at the bottom, just like an aircraft propeller, which was driven directly from the big electric motor underneath. All the material was placed in the bowl, the lid closed, and a timer switch closed. The machine used to vibrate like mad!!
As well as the in line Automatic pie maker, there were the two Ohmatic machines, which were used to make puddings and small meat, or pork pies. All the larger pies, such as plate steak, family pork, and plate apple were all hand blocked.
Edna was working for Rathbones by this time and had told me of their intentions to make their own pies. Terry Kennedy the sales director there had been telling her about it, knowing that I worked for Sellars. I had passed this information on to Eric and I wanted him to see Tom Rathbone with a view to getting his pie operation taken over by Rathbones, as this would have given both him and Roy job security, as well as protecting his workers jobs. He wouldn't listen to me and Rathbones took their pie trade away. This reduced the amount of pies made by over 3,000 per day, and resulted in four of the girls being made redundant.
Sellars Ltd never really looked up much after that. Roy and Eric were always bickering; Roy would storm off in a huff and go home, leaving Eric and Colin to carry on. He would go off and sit in the house for a couple of hours and them come back again. Not a very good way to run a business.
Eric had a bee in his bonnet at one time about a chap by the name of Cliff Brown, who ran an estate agency in Wigan. I used to get earache every morning about this. He must have spent a lot of money with solicitors, because the argument had been running for quite a time. Apparently, Cliff Brown, who lived in a farmhouse behind Pine View where Eric lived, wanted to take wagons from a gravel pit on his land, down the lane by the side of Eric's house. Now this lane had been closed off for some time previously, but no doubt was still a right of way, otherwise Cliff would not have tried to use it. Every morning, Eric would come to the ovens where I was working and start on about the lane. He got utterly boring!!! Finally, Cliff gave up on the whole idea, and this made Eric think that he had won.
Another time, Eric decided that he was getting too fat, so he decided to diet. Just at that time, I also was quite overweight, and I wanted to lose a few pounds, so we began to weigh ourselves each week on the sack scales that were in the bake house. All went well until I started to overhaul Eric. It was funny to watch as he tried to show a weight loss. He would empty his pockets of everything, keys, money, and then take his shoes off and his white coat. Of course this made not the slightest difference and he couldn't lose it. He would go without breakfast and would be really ravenous, but every night he would go down to the pub and sink a couple of pints, which isn't the thing to do if you want to lose weight!
In the baking trade there was always a lot of dishonesty. If money could be made from misappropriating goods, this was the trade that did it. At one time, at Rathbones, about 10 drivers were either dismissed or fined for stealing. Sellars also had their share. We had a driver by the name of Vince, who started working for the firm. He used to work for Mark Williams, the pork butchers. He was very efficient, and energetic, and soon was selling quite a good number of pies. One of his drops was the Labour Club in UpHolland, and they were taking 6 dozen pies a day. Suddenly, their order ceased. Vince told us that they had got another supplier.
The biggest problem with Sellars was that they trusted people too much. Nothing was suspected about the fact that the order to the Labour Club had dried up, and no-one would have known anything except that Vince went off work and I went up to his house to get his docket book in which he recorded his sales. When his wife answered the door, she gave me not one docket book, but two, and one of these had all the records of pies sold to the Labour Club!! A nice little racket if it works.
The same sort of thing occurred when the drivers from Rathbones were picking up their loads. Quite a few of the retail men and most of the franchise used to call for pies, and some of these would help themselves to extra ones. Originally, Arthur, to boost trade, would give a couple of pies to almost anyone who called at the bakehouse, but it got a bit out of hand in the end and people used to think that it was their right to have extras.
No one ever checked the pies and all the van drivers loaded their own vans. After Vince had left the job (he never came back after being rumbled), Eric took on a woman van driver by the name of Lee. Her real name was Elizabeth Slater and she lived in Merton Road. She was quite efficient and was still there after I had left to go back in the mines. Eric got this old chap that he knew, by the name of Bert, to come in and assist us. His primary job was to pack pies, but also he had to go out and check the van loads before the drivers took them out. He used to do this thoroughly, even checking down to 1/4 dozens, the only thing that was wrong with the system was that they weren't checked in again.
Reports were coming in to us of people in the Norley Hall area getting Sellars pies at cut rates. One shop said that he couldn't compete with the price that was being charged. We found that one of the drivers, Jack Reddy, was selling from the back of his van at lunchtime when he had gone home for his dinner! Another, Arthur Whalley, who incidentally was Eric's step uncle, used to swap pies for all kinds of goods. I remember going out with Arthur's van when he was on holiday, and when I called at the Labour Club in Standish Lower Ground, a woman came to the van and asked for pies. When I asked what Arthur charged her, she said "a shilling each." The retail price at that time was around 2 shillings each.
I told Eric this, and one day, he got me to check the vans as they came in after the lunch break. Of course there were discrepancies, and Arthur Whalley got on his high horse, saying that if he couldn't be trusted then he would leave there and then. If Eric had taken him at his word then he would have saved himself some expense.
I've never forgotten the first time that I took Arthur Whalley's van out on the round. He was on holiday so I took over for a week. It was ok until I got to Skelmersdale, and then I completely lost it. I was going round in circles trying to find my way, because the New Town had been built and all the old roads in and out had been altered or stopped up. I never completed the round that first day, in fact, I ran out of petrol trying to find my way off the various estates. I could see where I wanted to go but the road was stopped off!! I had to borrow a can from a garage to top up the petrol tank. Later on I picked up a map from the development office, and managed to come to terms with it. Around this time, however, Eric decided to get rid of his meat suppliers and cut up his own beef. The penny had finally dropped. He realized how much fat he was paying good money for. He asked Sid Tickle and his wife, Edith, along with their employee Cec. To come and run the operation for him. Sid and his wife had been in business as butchers in Warrington, and had decided to call it a day.
In the early 70s there was a lot of cheap Irish beef about, and Eric fitted out the old shop as a butchers cutting room, complete with fridges, cutting block and mincer. Edith and Cec were cutting and boning out and Sid was on the road getting orders for pies. Talking about Sid and his pie round, I had occasion to go out on Sid's round once, when he was off. When I saw the distance that he covered, I couldn't believe it. He must have driven over 50 miles a day. At one of his drops, I went into the shop with a tray of pies and the lady behind the counter said "3 of each" of which I assumed to be dozens, but no, it was just six pies. I asked her when she would like some more and she replied Thursday" and the order would be the same. When I got back, I told Eric and said that it wasn't worth stopping the van for. We didn't drop any more there.
As soon as we started to cut our own meat, the fat content in the boilers dropped dramatically, and we didn't need to use the fat in the pastry. We tried various other fillings in the pies, such as chicken and mushroom, cheese and onion, steak and kidney, all of which sold quite well. We also made éclairs and fruit tarts, plate steak and plate apple, as well as meat and potato pasties.
Before I left, however, the business had started to slide. There were price increases every other week, and I had the job of working out the new prices. I don't think that Eric, or Roy for that matter, had much idea of arithmetic. In fact, on the odd occasion that I had to go out on a run, when I got back, I'll guarantee that Roy would get my takings wrong and I would finish up owing him money! To try to keep his prices viable, Eric was buying new blocks to make the pies smaller, and these were not cheap, at around £200 each. He was always moaning about profits being down, and I told him "Don't go around telling people that you are in a mess, or the ones that you owe money to will foreclose, and will break you." Anyway, that's all water under the bridge as they say. After I had left, they carried on for about another four years, Stephen came into the firm and had a lot of big ideas, which finally backfired on them and they went into voluntary liquidation and the bake house was sold up, and demolished. Later on, 3 bungalows were built on the site and now, there is no sign of where the bake house and shop used to be.
