| Emanuel Spence - a man of high
principle
One of the major projects undertaken by Middlesbrough council’s
Sanitary Department in 1926, was the installation of modern water closets.
The Master Plumbers’ Association was called in and a price for each
conversion was agreed at 48s 6d.
Emanuel Spence, who was one of
the best known plumbers in the town and a forthright councillor, did his
own sums and concluded that the rate payers were being taken for a ride.
Although
he stood to lose out, he nevertheless won his corner and the cost of each
conversion was finally reduced to 15s.6d. His intervention understandably
did not go down well with the other plumbing contractors on the job.
Recalling
the story, his grandson John Spence, who now runs the 104 year old
plumbing and glazing business from premises on the Letitia Street
Industrial estate in Middlesbrough, revealed that his grandfather, who
later was to be awarded an OBE for services to the town, had always been a
man to call a spade a shovel. Emanuel’s wife Florence was one of three
Almgill daughters whose father, David Almgill, was a master builder in the
town.”He must have built a lot of houses” smiled John.”Because on
their 21st birthdays he gave each of his daughters 21 houses. From his
home in Yarm, John recounted Emanuel Spence’s involvement in exposing
the scandal of the Linthorpe Road widening scheme which rocked
Middlesbrough to its very foundations in 1926.
The council at that
time was of the opinion that Middlesbrough could never thrive as a
commercial centre without a main thoroughfare and Linthorpe Road was the
ideal choice, providing a bottle neck near Chipchase Road could be
widened. And herein lay a major problem.
A number of the elegant
Edwardian houses that lined this section of Linthorpe Road had front
gardens, and it was these premises that the council decided to acquire.
Seven
properties were involved and a sub-committee was set up with plenary
powers to agree prices and compensation. But instead of reporting its
deliberations back to the finance committee, deals were struck and
suddenly the council found itself facing a fait accompli, and many
councillors, including Coun. Spence were outraged at the prices that had
been fixed.
In total, a sum of £23,833 9s 6d. was paid out for
seven shops and two small cottages. An examination of the registers at
Northallerton suggested a generous valuation of these properties would
have been £11,000. Coun Spence and a number of his fellow councillors
demanded that £13,000 be restored to the Borough fund, which was badly in
need of it.
Quickly the Linthorpe Road scheme became a cause celebre
and reached fever pitch when hundreds of rate payers descended on the Town
Hall for a protest meeting So many turned up that hundreds were locked
out.
Under the chairmanship of Mr J Wright the meeting passed a
resolution condemning the council’s extravagent policy and called for
the recovery of the amounts paid in excess of fair market value. Coun.
Spence speaking on behalf of the rate payers said that the cost of the
transactions came from the rate payers, many of whom would have to sell
their furniture to pay their rates. Mr C Little told the meeting of the
sums involved. A shop at the corner of Chipchase Road owned by A.M. Winney
and J.T.Turner had cost the owners £950 in 1913. Taking the current
rateable assessment of £58, the present market value worked out at
£1,450. The Corporation had paid the owners £5,724. How could they
account for the difference he asked. Highlighting other cases, Mr Little
claimed that Ann Booth had been paid £2,000 over the odds for her house
and shop at 443 Linthorpe Road., and Mr H.B. Beckworth had received double
the market price for his land, house and shop at 437 Linthorpe Road.
Why
had the entire question of compensation not been referred to arbitration
Mr Little wanted to know.The meeting finally drew up a 20 point
questionnaire for the council to respond to.
At the next
council meeting there was a call for the council to resign “lock stock
and barrel”. The Town Clerk, Mr Preston Kitchen, came in for a torrid
time, but the council exonerated itself from any wrong doing but admitted
to a “bungle”. “My grandfather would have been in his element,
fighting this one” smiled John Spence who has retained much of his
grandfather’s spirit when it comes to fighting beaurocracy.
In
1926 at least the people who ran Middlesbrough had a very clear vision as
to how the Town should look and how the trade and shops should be run.
Today, councils appear to be pre-occupied with one off prestige projects,
and some have lost sight of the need to plan for the people who live and
work in the towns.
John took over the temporary running of Emanuel
Spence Ltd in 1980 when his father, David, became ill. “My father was a
fighter too, said John.” Quite literally in fact, he was mentioned in
dispatches during the war, and received a letter from the King. But he
turned his back on his regiment, The Green Howards, when on demobilisation
he requested a truck for his fellow soldiers to get their kit home from
Catterick. The army refused, so that was that, he refused to have anything
to do with the army after that.”
John had intended to follow his chosen route and use his degree in electronic engineering.”But I thought here I am, the business needs sorting, let’s get on with it.”
He has been “getting on with it” ever since. His first task was to buy back the premises which were owned by two members of the family, and buy a modern fleet of vans for his staff. Currently Emanual Spence has 22 employees and John puts down his success to retaining the company’s core business. “Yes, we do a lot of impressive contract work, but we never lose sight of the fact that we are plumbers and glass merchants as well as ventilation and pipework specialists. When Mrs Bloggs has a problem with her tap, she expects us to fix it. That’s how my grandfather started out, and that is the policy I intend to follow.
Emanuel Spence was a plumber, and the company, has not lost sight of its core business. Today however, the business specialises in 24- hour Building maintenance and Heating, and still operates as a glass merchant. The company is also a major provider of emergency services to insurance companies, housing associations, and water and electricity companies.
This article originally appeared in the November 1999 issue of Now
& Then Magazine |
