The Albright and Wilson factory site at Langley is regarded by some misguided individuals as a “heritage” site- usually those who were or are involved within the chemical industry themselves and believe that in some way we should all be very grateful to those who established these polluting environmental death sites in one small place.
But Albright and Wilson’s dire record in not only polluting the local environment is perhaps only surpassed by the manner in which some of its staff paid the ultimate price with their lives for making the insidious cult of money making Quaker weirdo’s a shed load of money so that they could live in comfort in leafy Edgbaston and other such more prosperous none black country industrial locations.
This article from 1899 from The Bromyard News. is one such early example of a fatal blow at the Trinity Street factory- the year before founder Arthur Albright at 89 popped his clogs.
Poor Eli Guest (54), of Langley along with two other men were burnt when a boiler exploded, and he did not survive.
Making phosphorus, as well as using it at all was a very dangerous business. The photo below from nine years prior to this incident shows a group of men, one of them also named Guest with phosphorus retorts, the old way of making this insidious chemical. Given the manner in which whole families worked for the two controlling families, it would not be unreasonable to believe that they may have been related.
Though the pure fantasy of the company presented in the centennial book “100 years of phosphorus making” attempts to portray the Quaker families as some form of moral heroes overcoming adversity, the reality of the situation is that the Albright and Wilson’s were at the very centre of high society and its potty traditions, and controlled matters of law/commerce for their own personal monetary gain. Part of this was class servitude of other local families- and it would continue over generations in this way.
From 100 years of phosphorus making (1951)
Some of these old retorts still exist in Oldbury used to make a wall, their contents long since spilt or dumped in some piece of ground or cut, and no doubt still lurking somewhere it shouldn’t.
Why?
Albright and Wilson the company would boast long and loud over the years about its convalescent homes and providing their employees with care, but the Quaker philosophy was really one of managing living automatons to replace others, and damaged goods would be better out of sight than a reminder to others of the very real dangers that their workforce faced.