| AdminHistory | Overview
The Cadbury Trusts collection consists of the administrative and operational records of eight interrelated charitable organisations, the Barrow and Geraldine S. Cadbury Trust, the Barrow Cadbury Fund, the Paul S. Cadbury Trust, the Barrow Cadbury Fund Ltd., the Southfield Trust, the Worgan Trust, Chapmans Hill School Farm Ltd. and the Barrow Cadbury Trust. Of the eight, the Barrow Cadbury Trust and the Barrow Cadbury Fund Ltd. continue (as of 2014) to operate from premises in London while the Worgan Trust carries out its now independent functions from Worcestershire. The other five organisations have either wound up their activities or merged to form the current Barrow Cadbury Trust. The records of other independent Cadbury family trusts are not included in this collection.
Shared family governance, a steadfast commitment to Quaker principles and a connection to Birmingham and the Black Country underpin the historic and contemporary work of the Cadbury Trusts. The trusts have traditionally been managed by the Cadbury family, and, with few exceptions, trustees and directors have been drawn from the descendants of the founders Barrow and Geraldine S. Cadbury and their son Paul. The newest generation of family trustees are Barrow and Geraldine's great, great grandchildren. In recent years non-family trustees possessing specialist knowledge and skills have been invited to augment the family led board of the Barrow Cadbury Trust and the Fund.
Three figures dominate the history of the Cadbury Trusts: Barrow Cadbury, Geraldine Southall Cadbury and Paul Strangman Cadbury. It was Barrow and Geraldine who decided to establish a trust bearing their name in 1920 as a formal extension of their considerable private charitable giving. Four years later they created the Barrow Cadbury Fund as a benevolent fund to allow them to expand the scope of their giving to include causes not considered as charitable or potentially not considered as charitable. In 1952 the Fund was wound up and its functions transferred to a new charitable company, the Barrow Cadbury Fund Ltd.
Barrow and Geraldine's son Paul and his wife Rachel established their own charity, the Paul S. Cadbury Trust in 1931. By 1958 Paul was chairman of this trust in addition to the trust and fund established by his parents. In 1967 Paul founded the Worgan Trust to purchase land for amenity purposes and later, in 1972, Chapmans Hill School Farm Ltd. to operate a demonstration farm for school children near Waseley Hills Country Park in Worcestershire. Additionally, Paul oversaw the work of his children Catherine Hickinbotham, Edward Cadbury, Charles Cadbury and Philippa Southall who served as trustees of the Southfield Trust, established in 1966 to administer the Southfield hostel for ex-borstal boys in north London.
In 1994 the Southfield Trust was dissolved and the Barrow and Geraldine S. Cadbury Trust and the Paul S. Cadbury Trust were merged under the joint Chairmanship of Charles Cadbury to form the new Barrow Cadbury Trust. The Trust and the allied Barrow Cadbury Fund Ltd. moved offices from College Walk in Birmingham to London during 2003. This move corresponded with the separation of Worgan Trust and Chapmans Hill School Farm Ltd. activities from those of the Trust and Fund.
The Cadbury Trusts' have supported a great variety of individuals and organisations since 1920. Early giving tended to take the form of subscriptions and donations to traditional Friends organisations, local meeting houses and institutions promoting social welfare in the absence of the welfare state. Temperance, penal reform, education, town planning, medical research and the promotion of international peace all feature as prominent areas of charitable activity for the trusts. In penal reform the focus was particularly forward thinking with Geraldine Cadbury promoting structural changes at the national policy level. By the 1960s Paul Cadbury was eager to transform the Cadbury Trusts into an innovative grant making institution capable of supporting new ideas and ways of working. Subscriptions and small personal grants were pruned in order to focus resources on a smaller number of large-scale projects.
To enable this transition to grant making Paul began to recruit professional staff to administer the trusts. Kenneth Nicholson was appointed in 1968 and, following his death, was succeeded by Anthony Wilson in 1969. Anthony was in turn joined by Assistant Secretary Eric Adams in 1972. Paul's decision to employ trained administrators at the Cadbury Trusts was a highly unusual one that was soon to bear fruit. These positions had hitherto been the province of retired military officers, diplomats and senior civil servants.
The success of the Cadbury chocolate brand during the 20th century led to the accumulation of considerable personal wealth by the Cadbury family. Barrow and Paul both served as chairmen of Cadbury Brothers Ltd. and regularly reinvested the profits of the Company into their charitable trusts. This pattern of reinvestment increased the endowment of the trusts and allowed for increased charitable expenditure. The value of Trust investments rose considerably as a result of the 1969 merger between Cadbury and Schweppes. This event, coupled with the appointment of professional staff, allowed the trusts to become involved in a range of new projects and areas of work at a local, national and international level.
While project oriented grant expenditure increased steadily from the 1970s onward it did not entirely displace subscriptions, donations and small personal grants at the Cadbury Trusts. Nevertheless the transition to grant making was largely a successful one. New grants were made to Black self-help groups in Handsworth, to employment initiatives in deprived areas of Birmingham and to community organising projects in the West Midlands and rural Northern Ireland. The trusts were also involved in the peace accords that ended the First Sudanese Civil War in 1972 and in promoting the rights of asylum seekers in the United Kingdom. There is a direct link between the work of Geraldine Cadbury with young offenders and the Barrow Cadbury Trust's support for the Transition to Adulthood Alliance in the 21st century.
The Cadbury Trusts' have worked in a variety of different funding areas since their inception. Though portfolios of work vary over time they reflect the unfailing Quaker desire to improve the world through a commitment to human rights, peace, social justice, community life and freedom of conscience. It was the wish of the trusts' Quaker founders that their successors enjoy the freedom to address these concerns in a manner appropriate to the day. The deeds of trust establishing the Barrow and Geraldine S. Cadbury Trust and the Paul S. Cadbury Trust were left intentionally open ended in relation to defining acceptable categories of charitable giving. Thus, while Barrow and Geraldine may not have identified the rights of asylum seekers as an issue of their day, current Trust work in this field represents a logical extension of the Quaker interest in human rights and social justice. More familiar to the founders would be work in criminal justice and penal reform, a field that was viewed with as great a concern in 1920 as 2014.
The Trusts' base in London has proven useful in exercising the Friends' maxim to 'speak truth to power'. Though the move from Birmingham was met with some trepidation by local grantees the Trust and Fund concluded that facilitating policy change at the national level would provide benefits not just to Birmingham and the Black Country but to the United Kingdom as a whole. While most local projects continue to be carried out in and around Birmingham these are intended to promote national level policy change and to shape public opinion.
Barrow and Geraldine Cadbury
Barrow Cadbury was born in Edgbaston, Birmingham on 27 September 1862 to prominent Birmingham Quakers Richard and Elizabeth Cadbury. He was named after his grandmother, Candia Barrow and was the elder brother of William Adlington Cadbury, born on 17 February 1867. At the time of his birth Barrow's father and uncle George were managing the family tea, coffee and chocolate shop established by John Cadbury in 1824. Despite improvements in chocolate purity and advertising, the business, Cadbury Brothers, was in financial difficulty.
It took the advent of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and the subsequent collapse of the once dominant French chocolate industry to radically alter the fortunes of the firm. Lacking a continental supplier, British consumers increasingly turned to Cadbury Brothers for their chocolate requirements during the 1870s. These market successes led to the opening of a new factory along the Bourn Brook in rural Worcestershire near Kings Norton in 1879. The name of the new factory community was Bournville, the ville conveying a certain continental flourish.
The works grew steadily throughout the late 19th century into a thriving model village where the needs of the workers were met by the profits of the business. Together, Richard and George built a self-contained community based on Quaker principles. Bournville employees and local residents were provided with medical care, amenities, education, lodging and other forms of social security unheard of at the time. Alcohol, gambling and other vices were not permitted. In 1899 Barrow's father died and his uncle George transformed the business from a partnership into a private limited company.
It was amidst the backdrop of waxing and waning family business fortunes that Barrow grew up. He attended Quaker schools in Birmingham and spent two years studying in Germany when he was eleven. This experience left him a fluent speaker of German. Barrow studied chemistry and mechanical drawing at Owens College in Manchester. With this training he was able to assist in the preparation of plans for new buildings at Bournville. With his academic course complete Barrow interned in London as an apprentice at C.M.&C. Woodhouse, a firm of colonial brokers that imported, among other raw materials, cocoa.
In 1882 Barrow began his employment with Cadbury Brothers. He served in a number of different positions in the business to gain a well-rounded understanding of manufacturing processes and administration. At the time of his father's death in 1899 Barrow occupied a senior post in the Cashier's Department. With the creation of Cadbury Brothers Ltd. he became one of four directors serving under the Chairman, George Cadbury. In 1914 Barrow was appointed Vice Chair of Cadbury Brothers Ltd. and, following George's death in 1922, Chairman. He held this position until his retirement in 1932. That same year he was given the Honorary Freedom of the City of Birmingham. Barrow lived a long and healthy life, giving generously until his death in 1958 at the age of ninety five.
Geraldine Southall was born on 29 June 1865 in Birmingham to Alfred Southall and Anna Strangman Southall (nee Grubb). The Southalls were a well-established Birmingham Quaker family. Geraldine's grandfather William owned a chemists shop on Bull Street. Her father Alfred followed in William's footsteps, training as a chemist and eventually taking on the family business. The Grubb family were also prominent Quakers though they had come to Birmingham more recently from southern Ireland. Anna was the president of the Friends' Reading Society in Birmingham, the first woman to serve in this post. She was also a trained botanist.
Geraldine was the eldest of nine children. Like her mother she was well read and open minded. Her upbringing was Spartan but happy. She attended Edgbaston High School for Girls in 1880 and later spent a year at a Quaker boarding school in York. Geraldine returned to help look after her brothers and sisters when her mother's health began to decline. Both the Southall and the Cadbury families were members of the Bull Street Meeting in the centre of Birmingham. It was here that Geraldine and Barrow first met. The pair fell in love and became engaged in December 1890. They wed on 08 September 1891 and honeymooned in Switzerland.
Barrow and Geraldine lived modestly, despite his rising fortunes at Cadbury Brothers and inheriting a substantial sum from his father. The couple were deeply concerned with the social ills afflicting Birmingham, particularly relating to poverty. Public attitudes toward the poor during the Victorian period tended to be punitive and severe. This view was not shared by the Cadbury and Southall families. Alfred Southall was engaged in the coffee house movement both as a temperance business venture and to combat public drunkenness, then a major problem in Birmingham. Richard Cadbury had been a major advocate of the adult school movement to teach men of poor circumstances how to read and write.
Barrow followed his father's example and continued his engagement with adult schools. In addition to holding positions in the national organisation he taught at Moseley Road Institute and helped to establish Westhill Training Institute in 1907. The Cadburys were also regular supporters of the Society of Friends and helped to fund the construction of Friends House in London. Many donations were also made toward the upkeep of local meeting houses in the Midlands.
Geraldine was deeply concerned about the health of poor urban children in Birmingham. She felt that an upbringing in slums left children particularly susceptible to disease and an array of social and developmental problems. Geraldine proposed to create an open air school for sickly children on family property situated near Uffculme House. Works began on Uffculme School in 1911 and were completed that same year. Small classes, hearty meals and exposure to fresh air combined to improve the health of most children admitted to the school. In 1922 another open air school, Cropwood, was donated to the City of Birmingham as a boarding school for sickly children. The site of the school had once been Geraldine and Barrow's holiday home.
Another cause close to Geraldine's heart was the plight of 'delinquent' children. At the beginning of the 20th century no distinction was drawn between prison and court facilities for young offenders and adult offenders. Barrow and Geraldine were enthusiastic supporters of the Birmingham Children's Court established in 1905. Barrow and Geraldine's father Alfred were appointed magistrates of the court in 1906. Geraldine acted as an observer and de facto case officer for children brought before the court. She too was appointed magistrate in 1920 and later Chairman of the Juvenile Court Panel of Justices in 1923.
To assist the business of the court the couple outfitted a remand home to house children with cases pending or cases awaiting decision. This facility allowed children to be kept apart from the adult offender population. The home, opened in 1909 featured class rooms, modern sanitary facilities, opportunities for play and large, airy bedrooms. In 1928 Barrow and Geraldine decided to outfit and donate a separate children's court to the city. This new court provided a less imposing environment for children and further segregated them from adult offenders who were hitherto tried in the same building as young offenders.
In addition to working to improve conditions and outcomes for young offenders in Birmingham Geraldine was also involved in penal reform at the national level. In 1922 she was invited to join the Home Office Committee on Probation and in 1925 the Committee on the Treatment of Young Offenders. She lobbied for better trained probation officers, raising the age of criminal responsibility and ending corporal punishment. Her efforts met with some success and in 1933 the age of criminal responsibility was raised to eight (Geraldine had recommended fifteen) by the Children and Young Persons Act 1933. She was also effective in reducing the severity of sentencing for children through the preferential use of probation over incarceration in non-serious cases.
In 1937 Geraldine was recognised by the King for her services to children and appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. In 1938 she published a history of young offenders in England entitled 'Young Offenders Yesterday and Today'. Geraldine died in 1941 at the age of seventy-six. Barrow, who had been retired for almost a decade at the time of Geraldine's death, continued to pursue penal reform in England and Wales. In 1947 Forhill Observation Home was opened in Kings Norton to allow for the effective screening of young offenders for mental illness and other health conditions. Geraldine had been a keen advocate of establishing observation facilities in the UK following a tour of the State Observation Centre in Belgium in 1926. Barrow viewed Forhill as a tribute to Geraldine and the realisation of one of the many facets of her work in penal reform.
Prior to the First World War Barrow and Geraldine worked to promote international peace and understanding through establishing closer ties between British and German churches. Barrow was appointed the treasurer of the Associated Councils of the Churches of the British and German Empires and formed part of the delegation to King Edward VII at the Seventeenth Universal Congress for Peace in 1908. When war came Barrow made considerable donations to the Friends Ambulance Unit and other Friends relief organisations. He visited parts of eastern France formerly occupied by the German Army and made recommendations to the Friends War Victims Relief Committee on how to improve conditions for civilians in the region. In Birmingham Geraldine was successful in organising accommodation for thousands of Belgian war refugees resettled in the Midlands. She even set up a maternity home to safeguard the health of Belgian mothers and their babies.
Barrow and Geraldine gave freely of their personal wealth to charitable causes and to individuals in need. In 1920, after decades of substantial informal giving the couple established the Barrow and Geraldine S. Cadbury Trust as a formal channel for their philanthropic activities. The new trust was created partly in response to Joseph Rowntree's call for increased private charitable giving to accompany the greater investment in social welfare being pursued by Government following the First World War. The couple administered their trust and allied benevolent fund until their deaths at which time this responsibility passed to their children.
Paul Cadbury
Barrow and Geraldine had three children, Dorothy Adlington, Paul Strangman and Geraldine Mary, affectionately known as 'Cherry'. All three became involved in the philanthropic activities of their parent's trust though none more so than their second child Paul. Born in 1895 Paul attended school in Birmingham before spending a year at the country home, Cropwood, to improve his health. Fully recovered as a result of his open air cure, Paul attended Leighton Park School where he excelled academically and in school sports. Admitted to St John's College, Cambridge, his studies were interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War.
Paul volunteered to accompany a contingent of the Friends' War Victims Relief Fund to France in 1914. From this posting he joined the Friends Ambulance Unit where he served in a variety of roles during the course of the war. While in France Paul met his fiancée Rachel Eveline Wilson who was then serving as a Unit nurse at Dunkirk. The couple married after the war on 24 June 1919 at the George Road Meeting House in Edgbaston.
With the war over Paul joined Cadbury Brothers Ltd. where, after a year, he was appointed as a Managing Director alongside his sister Dorothy. Paul worked primarily in sales and marketing where he achieved remarkable success for the Company despite the poor national economic conditions prevalent during the 1930s. In 1921 Paul was appointed to the joint board governing Cadbury and Fry. He joined the Council of the Manufacturing Confectioners' Alliance in 1920, serving as president of the organisation for three terms. In 1948 he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his services to the Ministry of Food. In 1959, Paul's cousin Laurence stepped down as Chairman of Cadburys and Paul was appointed to manage the Company. He served as chairman until his retirement in 1965.
Paul shared his father's interest in adult education and volunteered as a teacher at several adult schools after 1918. The couple also shared a concern for the welfare of children and the disabled. Paul and Rachel accrued many years of service on behalf of Middlemore Emigration Homes. In 1930 Rachel gave birth to a daughter, Margaret, who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. This event led Paul to divert some of his considerable energies to medical research into the causes and treatment of the disease. Paul co-founded the Midlands Spastics' Association with Steven Quayle in 1947. He also helped to establish Carlson House School, the first educational institution catering to the needs of children with cerebral palsy, in 1948.
Paul and Rachel were very active in the Society of Friends and generously supported Quaker causes and meetings. During the Second World War Paul led the effort to reform the Friends Ambulance Unit and deploy its medical staff to major theatres of the war. He also spoke on behalf of conscientious objectors at their tribunals. His interest in international peace took him to the Soviet Union in 1951 in the hope of promoting better understanding between east and west.
Paul had a lifelong passion for town planning and community development. He was appointed a trustee of the Bournville Village Trust by his uncle George in 1922 and was an enthusiastic advocate of parks in Birmingham and preserving green belt land around the city. During the Second World War while serving on the Birmingham City Council he was appointed chairman of a post-war research and planning committee. He was later appointed Honorary Secretary of the West Midlands Group on Post-War Reconstruction. In 1957 Paul was invited to join the Royal Commission on Local Government in the Greater London Area and the Central Housing Advisory Committee. He published several books on post-war planning and local government and was regarded as an authority on the subject.
Paul accumulated considerable wealth during his career at Cadburys. Like his father, he directed most of his personal fortune to charitable causes. This generosity was principally manifested through the Paul S. Cadbury Trust and the charitable trust and fund established by his parents. From 1958 until the end of his life Paul chaired the Cadbury Trusts. During his tenure an innovative and professional organisation emerged to carry forward the trusts' enduring commitment to a more just and equal society. Paul died on 07 October 1984.
After Paul's death the leadership of the Cadbury Trusts passed to his daughters Catherine Hickinbotham and Philippa Southall. They were followed by their brother Charles Cadbury and then in turn by Paul's grandchildren Anna Southall, Ruth Cadbury and Helen Cadbury.
A Quaker ethos
The founders of the Cadbury Trusts' were greatly influenced by their Quaker beliefs. The Friends' have long established roots in Birmingham alongside other non-conformist denominations of Christianity. Many prominent Birmingham families, including Cadbury, Lloyd, Sturge, Humphrey, Wilson and Albright were members of the Society of Friends. These families have collectively exerted a great influence on the development of the city of Birmingham through their desire to improve the world and their success in business.
Quakerism traces its origins to the 17th century and the teachings of George Fox. Fox advocated a personal relationship with God and the idea that the light of God is in everyone. These egalitarian beliefs were at odds both with the established church and the British class system and the Quakers were persecuted by enemies from church and state. The Toleration Act of 1689 improved the legal status of Quakers by acknowledging their right to religious worship. The Act did not alter the prohibition excluding Friends from attending university. This stricture, in force until the late 19th century, had the practical effect of barring Quakers from medicine, law and other professions. In response the community became more closely associated with business and banking and soon earned a reputation for honesty and integrity.
The belief that God is in everyone has engendered a strong sense of fairness and equality in the Quaker community. This belief is expressed though a commitment to gender, racial, economic and social justice and the promotion of peace and human rights. The Friends were outspoken advocates for the abolition of slavery and women's suffrage. While Quakers oppose war and violence many have served as non-combatants in war relief organisations or medical units in conflict zones. Friends assiduously avoid conducting business with or investing in industries that profit from war.
Success in business provided Friends with the financial resources necessary to realise their vision of a more just world. Through hard work and perspicacity the Rowntree and Cadbury families made a name for themselves as prosperous chocolate manufacturers. Both families in turn reinvested their profits into a group of charitable trusts whose work reflected the Quaker principles of their founders. Early giving by the Cadbury Trusts was directed towards organisations promoting penal reform, adult education, temperance and international peace: all well-established Friends causes. While the form and focus of charitable giving by the Cadbury Trusts is constantly evolving to meet the needs of the day, the underlying principles remain unchanged. In this way the ethos of the trusts transcends any political ideology, economic theory or cultural whim and remains true to the teachings and practice of the Society of Friends. |