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"W.J.Capper - Our Founder" Address to the Shareholders of Capper & Co Ltd, following their A.G.M. on the 29th September 1997, by T.J.Pratt
William James Capper the First, as we should probably refer to him in present Company, has been to most of us merely a name. For some of us he was the grandfather we never met; for all of us he was the founder of the business which brings us together tonight; so because we ought to know more about the person behind the name, I offer you this short biographical sketch. I'm grateful to all who have helped by providing me with this and that snippet of information: I have enjoyed the task of putting it all together, and I hope to to continue the research in the future. I have his photograph here, which I suggest you pass around as I talk; what do you think was the character behind that face?
[I think this was the photo shown. bjc] The story starts on Dartmoor, - not in Dartmoor, I hasten to add, - because William was born at Princetown, Devon in 1873 where his father was a Prison Officer, as we would say today, in Dartmoor Prison. William was the 5th of the 6 children of John Capper, a native of Armagh, N.I., and Anne, his Devon-born wife. (Speaking of six children, I cannot avoid mentioning that this evening we have with us six children of a later generation, all the John Cappers, as we now call them; the first time that they have all been together under the same roof for over 10 years, I believe.) This was John's retirement job after his 23 years' Service in the Royal Artillery, including some years in India, where some of the other children were born. Fairly soon after William's birth, the family moved from Devon to Rochester in Kent, where the youngest sister was bom and where mother (Ann) died when William was only eight. Never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined, during later years in Newport, that the business he founded would one day have grown to include the very area where he spent his childhood years! Sometime in about 1885, for reasons which research has not yet uncovered, John moved back across the country westwards, this time to Newport, bringing with him (at least) 12-year old William and his younger sister Adelaide. Might it have been, I wonder, that they moved specifically to enable William to find work? More of that in a minute. Physically William was tallish but slim, and therefore fairly light in weight, an appropriate physique for the gymnastics which he took up in his teens, and at which he obviously excelled: because, by the age of twenty, we know that he was representing Newport in the final of the National Physical Recreation Society 200 Guineas Challenge Shield Competition held in Liverpool. We believe that he went on to achieve international selection for Wales, but we have not yet been able to verify that. Anyway, we know a little about that final from the South Wales Argus of the day; announcing the teams the Argus highiighted the fierce competition for places thus; "It will be noticed that A.E.Green is feft out in the final. This is hard for him, but still the honour of Newport for premier position for gymnastics in the kingdom is at stake, and the work of both teams is so level that a point might decide it either way. For dumb-bells and parallels both men are equal, but in jumping Capper has a decided lead, being 4 or 5 points better than Green. Green however accompanied the team as reserve."
In 1900 he married Edith, youngest daughter of a family of at least 10 children, and they lived initially in a house near the top of Stow Hill in Newport, (now sadly derelict) where their four children were born, Eileen, John, Clarice & Melville. About 12 years later they moved (as the Estate Agents woutd say) to a spacious newly-built house in an up-market housing development at the top of Fields Park Avenue, which had the added advantgage of providing stabling for one of the business cart-horses. That home has special memories for many of us here tonight, as it continued as a Capper famity home right through till 1975. Sadly William died prematurely, in 1936, a few days before his 63rd birthday, and he is buried at St Woolos Cemetery in Newport. For a man to whom family life was so important, it is sad that he did not live to witness the marriages of his children in 1939 and 1941, let alone to see any of his 13 grandchildren. The impression we have of family life in Fieldsdene, äs the house was called, is of a close-knit, supportive and fun-loving family. His children adored him and always spoke highiy of him. He took special interest in all their activities and achievements, and when they were training away from home he made time out of his business life to visit them, although that involved considerable journeys to other parts of the country. Holidays seem to have been a particular highlight of the famity life. Regularly in the summer they would take a large house in Torbay for a few weeks, to which the children were encouraged to invite their friends (my own father had experience of those holidays). Perhaps it was for the purpose of getting the family down to Devon for those hotidays that William acquired in 1925 a large saloon car named a Minerva. (A photograph of that car is still available). There must have been something very special about that car because he bought it (for £125, about £3100 at today's equivalent) even though a front tyre had came off during his test-drive! He can hardly have been surprised, then, when on a journey to South Devon later in the year, as his diary records, there were three separate punctures between Newport and Torquay! Wheel technology seems to have been troublesome in those days, because my mother well remembered, on a holiday journey along the A48 near Newnham, a wheel came off another car, a Rover I think it was, and flew over the hedge into the adjoining field! Those of us here who are his grandchildren will, I'm sure, recognise that the family-fun times which our own parents gave us were almost certainly inspired by the family-fun atmosphere in which they themselves grew up in Fieldsdene. So where did his business fit in? I suggested that the move from Kent might have been connected with the need for William to have employment because in 1886, when young William was 13, he was offered a 4-year apprenticeship - unpaid, of course - in a business known as Kenvyn & Co trading as Provision Merchants in Victoria Hall Warehouse, Maindee, in Newport. He would have gained wide experience there, including experience in some unusual products which would challenge even our Brian's Range-Management skills, for their letter-head announces them to be Importers of, amongst other things, Salmon, Lobster, Oysters, Sardines, Lunch & Ox-Tongues, Boiled Rabbit, and Boiled Kidneys. (Quite a relief after that list to find something as ordinary as "Canned Fruits"!) He must have completed his apprenticeship with Kenvyns because he remained working there until aged 25 when, for some reason we do not know, he left and went to sea. Was it a sabbatical, I wonder, or a career move; disenchantment with the food trade, perhaps, or reaction to the death of his father the year before. In August 1898 he signed on as Purser with the Steamship Dorothy for a voyage to the Mediterranean taking in Genoa and Southern Spain, then returning to Rotterdam. He was only away for two months on that voyage, but it seems to have been long enough for him to realise that sea life was not for him; his diary of that voyage shows that he realty strugglied with the conditions at sea, not least the effect that it had on his digestion! (As we have only just finished dinner, I will spare you details of his symptoms!) When the ship reached Rotterdam he took his discharge, retumed to England and, after only a day or two, re-started with Kenvyn & Co. Although he went back to Kenvyn & Co as Manager, he was not to be there for much longer because, just a year after his marriage and at the age of 28, he left them and started in business on his own, trading as "Capper & Co", at No 13 Dock Street. The exact date, so far as we know, was the 14th July 1901: and the rest, as you might say, is our history! Of his 35 years in the business I can only highlight a few of the milestones. The business obviously grew quickly at first, because a warehouse in Griffin Street was acquired early in 1903 and then, little over two years into the business, a move of the Office and SaleRoom was necessary to No 11 Skinner Street for reasons which we now call "Service Level", but which in those early days they described in rather more expansive language; "We found the change necessary to secure concentration and thereby efficiency and dispatch, and we think we can safely promise this in a greater degree in the future than in the past. 1924 was a milestone year when William made another move, again just down the road, but to what were described as "more commodious premises" in Lower Skinner Street, Nos 18 & 19, the building which you now see right in front of you if you leave the bus station going north towards the Castle roundabout (now occupied by Gartside Harding & Davies, Solicitors). That was the year of "technological revolution" in the Company, because when the change of address notice described the new premises as "up-to-date", that phrase mainly meant that their old rope-and-pulley hoist was now replaced by a mechanical lift! By then, of course, their transport fleet would also have acquired a new look äs mechanised vehicies were replacing the horses and drays with which the business had started. 1925 was another milestone year, as it saw the business become an incorporated Limited Company. The Certificate of Incorporation was dated the 14th May, the brass plate went up on the 21st May, and the first Board Meeting of the new-born company was held on the 29th May. The first Directors were WJ. as Managing Director, his elder son John, and Mr G.A. Brain. Mr Moran will be interested to know that the fee agreed to be paid to the Auditor was a modest £40 per half-year! (That equates to about £970 today). Although one can detect in the documentation a sense of pride and achievement in this new status that the business had reached, it has to be noted that William's initial enthusiasm for Company formalities waned fairly quickly; so much so that after 1927 there is a gap in the Minute Book until 1938, 11 years later! I trust that our Robert will not treat this detail as a precedent which he should follow! William's next significant achievement was to steer the business through the depression of the mid and late 1920s. 1926 saw the Miners' Strike, followed by the General Strike. How he felt can be gleaned from this note in his diary; Those years produced huge pressures on the business, supplying as it did the valleys in North Monmouthshire where the effects of the depression were felt so heavily. Retailers found themselves having to give credit to their customers even for food purchases, so that the wholesalers in turn had to give extended credit to retailers. In Accountancy jargon, it was all about management of the Debtors Book. The Company's accounts of that time indicate that the amount of Debtors was in the region of twice the amount of the stock-holding. Many food retaiters and wholesalers disappeared under the pressure. But Capper & Co survived, and we must, I think, give much of the credit for that survival to William's management. I've spoken of William the man, William the Family Man, and William the Business Man, but no assessment of his life, however short, woutd be adequate without reference to William the Christian Man. Reported to have become a believing Christian early in his 20s, he made his spiritual home at what was then known äs Bethesda Chapel in Mountjoy Street, just off Cardiff Road, where he was He also served as Secretary to a committee which organised special interdenominational Christian meetings in the town to which leading Bible Teachers from all over the country were invited. I trust you will forgive me for mentioning that, incidentally, the Treasurer of that committee was a friend of his, one Stanley Pratt, whom William sometimes consulted on legal matters and with whom he occasionally played recreational golf. (I count it a privilege that the links between the two names have continued down the generations, although this grandson has to apologise that he cannot reciprocate the golf!) But his Christianity was more than merely church membership; it was obviously a living faith by which he directed his whole life, and a reality which he passed on to his children. We know that he had a reputation for business integrity, and I feel sure that it was his application of Christian Biblical principles to his business life which led to that reputation. Evidence of business integrity is not easily to be found in documentary records, but what can be found on paper is some indication of how he treated his employees; and with this I come to my last picture of him, äs William the Employer. Out of a number of insights into his concern for his staff, I select just three. First, in the summer of 1925, soon after the incorporation of the Company, he took all his staff on a Saturday afternon outing, Edith having gone a few weeks before to make the necessary arrangements. Let his diary give us the details; Not a big event, you may think, but my hunch is that he wanted to celebrate with all his staff the achievement of Company status. Secondly, of his concern for his staff, you could say that he died as he had lived, because in his will he provided for every employe to receive £1 for every year they had worked in the business. To put that gift into perspective you should know that £1 in 1936 would equate to about £29 now. (Perhaps I should make it clear here; now that the Company is a little larger, I'm not suggesting that our present Lastly, listen to what his daughter Clarice told us of his attitude to his employees when she spoke at a Shareholders Dinner 20 years ago to celebrate both the move to Talbot Green and also the 75th anniversary of the business. Putting all that together, I can only conclude by urging that we in the third and fourth generation heed the tribute to him which went out to all customers and suppliers with the notification of his death; Thank you for listening so well! |
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