Henry Thorne & Co. Ltd., Leeds, England

A JIGSAW PUZZLE WITH NO PICTURE ON THE LID

I had some jigsaw pieces but had also run out of places to find more. Other than knowing that the company history ran from the 1830s to 1972 and that Edward Woodhead and G.F. Tinsley were involved, I certainly didn’t have a complete picture:

• The Henry Thorne in the 1926 photo can’t have been around in 1834/7. Who was this Henry Thorne?
• Did Woodhead own Thorne’s?
• What did Thorne’s make?
  • Toffee tins were, and still are, common finds but the adverts show chocolates and biscuits too.
• If the firm was producing 2 million sweets a day in 1961, why was it gone ten years later?

So continued the quest to find the answers and complete the jigsaw – now a challenge that keeps me busy and finds me travelling all over the country for more information.

WOODHEAD’S BREAKTHROUGH

In 1997, I wrote to the Derbyshire Times asking for memories of Woodhead’s business. This lead to some useful oral history that described the link between Woodhead’s and Thorne’s but no concrete explanation of exactly what the relationship was. Mr. Hill, of Wadshelf, answered my appeal and kindly gave me some copies of Woodhead’s Price List from the 1930s. In these, Woodhead’s heavily promoted Thorne’s products and a Century Assortment advert celebrates Thorne’s being 100 years old in 1937.

1. Private collection ↩︎