A Whiff Of Chocolate

Dame Elizabeth Cadbury had brought them together in the beginning... could she do it again?

- ANNIE MURRAY

I cried when I saw it in the paper, in December 1951. How I felt took me by surprise. The announcement of the death of Dame Elizabeth Cadbury and a big write up about her. She really was an extraordinary woman, her whole life given over to making the lives of others better.

Yet I knew it wasn't just that. I was crying for Sylvia and me. For that day in May when I knew my friend's heart had broken- and she took it out on me. Even now it was like a kick to my belly remembering her face, pale and tight with loathing as she rushed up to me looking half mad, like a stranger.

We had both been "Cadbury girls" - or chocolate girls we were sometimes called, working in the big Bournville factory, a few miles south of the heart of Birmingham.

I met Sylvia the same day I set eyes on "Mrs. Elizabeth", as we called Elizabeth Cadbury...

It was 1924. We were school leavers, at Cadbury's, the factory in a garden. It was very different from most big firms at the time, I can tell you.

Around the area they always said you could tell when it was going to rain because that was when you could smell the chocolate.

They were very particular about who worked there. No drinking-the Cadburys built all that area with not a single pub-and you had to be a clean-living sort.

That day when we hopeful fourteen-year-olds were being inspected for the job, I was standing next to Sylvia as Mrs Elizabeth came along the line to look at our hands. She was a tall lady, hair piled up on her head and she looked strict and a bit frightening, but as she took my hand she had a twinkle in her eye.

"It's all right," she said, "I'm not going to eat you."

This had made Sylvia and I both giggle. Once she had seen we didn't have dirty hands or warts, and moved on down the line, Sylvia and I whispered our names to each other.

We had been best friends from then on.