Hi
Ex employee from J & H Wilson Westbrook Mill Sheffield here!
Happy to answer any questions!!

What’s better: bigos or pierogi?

Sorry but I don’t know what you are referring to?
Purely here to offer my knowledge of the snuff manufacturing process…

I simply couldn’t resist when someone writes that they will answer every question
So does the number 99 in the name Medicated have any special meaning? Of course, it is known that this is a purely marketing ploy to stand out more on store shelves (because no one has heard of Medicated from 1 to 98). Nevertheless, maybe there is a more interesting story behind it?
And besides, I prefer pierogi, but lovers of bigos can combine the two and eat simply pierogi with cabbage and mushrooms.

Nope no special meaning that I’m aware of, third bestselling snuff and one that sold nation and worldwide.

How many bugs do you think make it into the mills per kilo.

@Filek Perogi are Gypsy fare here in the US, minus Chicago that is. But what the American - Romani call perogi is delicious. Since I tend to order out for lunch, I’ll be in the perogi camp. Also, the folks born in 1999 are just coming into prime marketing age.

Zero Bugs in Sheffield …

And this is very interesting, because pierogi have a completely different name in Romanian. However, from what I read, they are exactly the same dishes.

A different question then. Do you know who was Dr.Craig, Morton or Fleming? Or what was Asthorth snuff?

Pretty sure they had Scottish connections, it was Dr Craigs no 27 and I think Mortons 1& 2, Morton’s was a dark wet snuff not a big selling blend but I think it appealed to the Scottish market.

Maybe a dumb question/already all over a website somewhere…what is the base tobacco of most of the snuffs? Or are there different one’s for say…Plain and M.? Are most of them different? And how do you sort that?

I know snuffs like Africa are way different but… yeah, just curious.

Welcome back aboard and thank you for shedding a fair light on modern snuff manufacturing with your previous posts, @gillybean129! That’s some grand contribution!

@clsmoothie has asked a good question.

It’s obvious that many mills use the same base flour for many snuffs of the same type. Most prominent example is McChrystal’s - out of -een snuffs of theirs only Aztec and the newly lauched coarser Highland Ice seem to have different bases.

So, we are curious if the same base flour was used for the best selling triplet of J.&H. Wilson. Analysis data of later-produced snuff samples show same or very similar water content and pH (alkalinity). If my memory doesn’t fail, also very similar (if not the same) nicotine percentage.

I’ll have some more questions!

I’ve always wondered why the Top Mill No.1 has never been sold in larger tins than the 5gm tap tins?

Welcome to the forum, WilsonsGirl.

In what capacity were you employed at Sharrow Mills?

It wasl Vac-sealed 25 g tins were still on a market less than two decades ago.

Bugger, shame they went away, I really liked the vac tins as well.

And sorry for my tardiness, welcome to the forum.

Started out as office junior, ending up as accounts management which included working in the mill taking across the mixing (recipe) cards and collecting the finished snuff sheets.

Yes, there was a base snuff, in fact it also went to other UK manufacturers (a bit like Cadburys do) and also a big customer in Germany

Lets get one thing straight…
Wilsons & Co (of Sharrow) absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Joseph & Henny Wilson that is after 1833.
J & H built Westbrook (Top Mill) as a rival company with modern machinery.

It used to be sold in 28g airtight tins when I was there, they would keep their flavour for 4 years if left unopened. They were sold in outers of 8.

That’s a top secret.

28g I am unsure when they stopped this probably after it left our production in Sheffield in 1989

Apologies - my mistake. As soon I saw Wilsons I assumed Sharrow.

I cannot answer these questions as I did not work for Wilson’s & Co, they were our rivals!!!

Please see the title of my thread!!

Ah, as does everyone else, I can’t tell you how many phone calls I picked up for them in my time!

I’m tempted to provide you with a quiz to test just how much you know about the history of J&H Wilsons of Westbrook Mill and their products. As an ex-employee you will be familiar with recent affairs but are you game for a challenge?

Actually I’m totally not up to date with What’s happening with the product I only know in 1989 it went to our parent company in Liverpool and thereafter I think theycut back on certain lines …
I’m no expert and I was only a whippersnapper in 1989 so it’s a loooong time ago but like I say I want to try to help if I can do why not even though I will probably fall at the first fence to all you hardened snuff takers !!

Here are some questions for you, some of which you may know the answers to. Others here might be able to answer some of them also.

In what year:

-was the mill above Westbrook House completed? (there are conflicting answers here so either will do).

-did ownership of J&H Wilsons pass into the hands of the Thompson and Harland families?

-was the business acquired by Imperial and what was the reason for it?

-was Top Mill first introduced?

-was the informal agreement by the rival Wilsons not to poach on each other’s territory terminated?

-did J&H Wilsons change the font of their lettering from italic to block?

-was the production line introduced?

To what institution did J&H Wilsons offer free snuff?

Whose snuffs were made by J&H Wilsons after they closed in 1981?

Whose snuffs were made by J&H Wilsons after a disastrous fire?

Which of the little oblong boxes – three of them - were not coloured blue?

Which was the first snuff by J&H Wilsons to be packaged in a tap-box?

How many pounds of snuff at a time was introduced into the modern twin-turbo dressing machine?

Approximately how many of the little boxes introduced in 1927 did J&H Wilsons package daily after the introduction of modern production lines?

After grinding what percentage of salts and moisture was added before tipping into the dressing machine?

Sieved flour, kept in barrels was stored in the what?

From which three countries did J&H Wilsons primarily source their tobacco?

I know the answer to the last five questions because I still have the little booklet acquired when I visited the mill. Some of the questions you won’t be able to answer unless you have read chapter seventeen of Mark Chaytor’s book which is rather unfair of me.

Goodness me Phillip is this a test for Mastermind or what?!
In what year:

-was the mill above Westbrook House completed? (there are conflicting answers here so either will do). - I don’t know of a Westbrook House at all, if you are meaning Westbrook Mill it was 1833.

-did ownership of J&H Wilsons pass into the hands of the Thompson and Harland families? - I only know of John Harland who died in a tragic accident (we had beautiful oil paintings including one of him) thereafter it went to Imperial Tobacco Company (and what a wonderful company they were!)

-was the business acquired by Imperial and what was the reason for it? - see above

-was Top Mill first introduced? No Idea but since the Mill was referred to as Top Mill sometimes as we were higher up on the hill I assume it was one of the first ones made.

-was the informal agreement by the rival Wilsons not to poach on each other’s territory terminated? I didn’t even know there was one!

-did J&H Wilsons change the font of their lettering from italic to block? Probably 80’s?

-was the production line introduced? - which line are you referring to as we have a new addition built to the mill in the 1990’s

To what institution did J&H Wilsons offer free snuff? - House of commons, every 2 weeks 2 airtight tins, did they use it? Who knows!

Whose snuffs were made by J&H Wilsons after they closed in 1981? - Fribourg and Treyer

Whose snuffs were made by J&H Wilsons after a disastrous fire? Illingworths of Kendal

Which of the little oblong boxes – three of them - were not coloured blue? - Are you referring to the pocket boxes, are these now called ‘tap’ boxes, they all had blue bases and tin lids, so Wallflower was yellow, Otto de Rose was pink and I think Jockey Club was green?

Which was the first snuff by J&H Wilsons to be packaged in a tap-box? Do you mean the brand Kensington in the long maroon box?

How many pounds of snuff at a time was introduced into the modern twin-turbo dressing machine? I have 400lbs in my head…

Approximately how many of the little boxes introduced in 1927 did J&H Wilsons package daily after the introduction of modern production lines? I wasn’t there in 1927 lol, no idea but I am betting it’s more than Wilsons and Co

After grinding what percentage of salts and moisture was added before tipping into the dressing machine? 4%

Sieved flour, kept in barrels was stored in the what? Used to be Yolk room but I remember the finished snuff was stored on the top floor (3)

From which three countries did J&H Wilsons primarily source their tobacco?
[/quote] Malawi, India, Brazil? I remember the huge bales being hoisted around and to allow for losses at month end as they lost so much moisture on storage.

And I was about to write “hold my beer”, and here almost all the answers are served on a plate. Personally, I am impressed because I have never met someone who worked in the tobacco industry and was so familiar with the history of the company he worked for. At least not among English companies.

I’ll take advantage of the opportunity. How much snuff actually came out of the J&H Wilson stable? While preparing the all-time list a long time ago, I counted about 44. Here’s my appreciation for remembering that Dr. Craig had the number 27. I also wonder if there were other licensed snuffs apart from Al-Capone Powder Vanilla (this one was for the Swiss market, if I remember correctly). ? And I’m not thinking about dealings with the German company from Kontanz.

Well done, WilsonsGirl – that’s an impressive score – especially as you are relying on memory. The colour of the boxes not in blue and their names is spot on and it was indeed Kensington snuff that made its debut in the maroon tap-box.

The ownership of J&H Wilsons passed into the hands of the Thompson and Harland families’ back in 1895. The nephew of the two surviving Harland brothers (both bachelors) was killed with the RAF. With no one to carry on the business it was the Harlands who sold out to Imperial in 1953. Work on the construction of Westbrook House (not the mill) commenced in 1794, decades before the schism.

You are correct. The twin-turbo dressing machine took batches of 400 lbs at a time. Before that 12% moisture and 12% salts were added. That’s what the booklet says. I have a picture of woman in quality control testing samples for the correct moisture level.

When fully automated J&H Wilsons daily output of pocket boxes was 50,000. Barrels of snuff matured in the Dressed Snuff Store. The booklet claims that J&H Wilsons sourced from the USA, Canada and Malawi.

Some questions were rather unfair. For example J&H Wilsons greatly upset their rivals (who sought legal advice) when they changed their product lettering from italic to Sharrow’s block lettering in 1915. London, meanwhile, had always been a free-for-all but J&H Wilsons terminated the agreement with Sharrow regarding areas of interest in 1913. According to Mark Chaytor, Top Mill was introduced and registered as a brand name in 1899.

If I get a chance I’ll make photos of the booklet and upload them to this site – you might recognise some of the people who appear in the photographs. Why, you might even recognise yourself.

[quote=“PhilipS2, post:32, topic:30874, full:true”]
Well done, WilsonsGirl – that’s an impressive score – especially as you are relying on memory. The colour of the boxes not in blue and their names is spot on and it was indeed Kensington snuff that made its debut in the maroon tap-box.
Re the box colours, there were of course others, like SP No1 was red, Med 99 I think Maroon, Aniseed white…also the Kensington was a bid to get younger people into snuff because of the fancy box, it was a blend of two of our bestsellers at the time.

The ownership of J&H Wilsons passed into the hands of the Thompson and Harland families’ back in 1895. The nephew of the two surviving Harland brothers (both bachelors) was killed with the RAF. With no one to carry on the business it was the Harlands who sold out to Imperial in 1953. Work on the construction of Westbrook House (not the mill) commenced in 1794, decades before the schism. I have never heard of the House, the Mill itself was a beautiful grade II building hence Lord Hanson selling it, how I hated that man for making me lose my job.

You are correct. The twin-turbo dressing machine took batches of 400 lbs at a time. Before that 12% moisture and 12% salts were added. That’s what the booklet says. I have a picture of woman in quality control testing samples for the correct moisture level. Of course 12%! I think the 4 comes from the SP ingredients in my head, I wonder if Betty was the woman, I would love to see if you have the time. Yes we did moisture testing all the time and I had the check the filling and lidding cards to make sure they all weighed up the amount of flour that had gone into the tins was correct at the end of each day.

When fully automated J&H Wilsons daily output of pocket boxes was 50,000. Barrels of snuff matured in the Dressed Snuff Store. The booklet claims that J&H Wilsons sourced from the USA, Canada and Malawi. I only knew it came from Liverpool at the time!

If I get a chance I’ll make photos of the booklet and upload them to this site – you might recognise some of the people who appear in the photographs. Why, you might even recognise yourself. I’m pretty certain I wasn’t on any information, I would love to see this though, I could tell you who it was. Pity the mill manager isn’t still with us, he was wonderful.

@PhilipS2 when did you visit Westbrook Mill?

I know the UK is at under 20% of the insect population it should be due to overuse of pesticide and habitat clearing, which is proving abominable for the farmer, also caused by the farmer or maybe their Council. But the UK doesn’t really grow much tobacco. I am a country boy with many a summer working the the 1 sq mile, family tobacco plot. Mostly heirloom burly and KY fine grade…which is Virginia seed acclimated to higher heat and humidity, usually acclimated at the co-op. By the time that tobacco got back to the Murray - Calloway co-op auction house, cured, there were still some bugs in there. I’d say 4-5 per kg on the air cured [Virginia/Fine] and probably one per 5 kg on flue cured burly. I still find the ocasional bug in pipe tobacco from domestic blenders. Bugs ain’t bad, but at the processing rates you claim later in the thread, Wilson has/had a small army of de-stemmers, they purchased pesticide rich leaf or pre-milled flour. Otherwise, there are/were some bugs. And I’m totally cool with a little extra protein, I put spicy tobacco in my nose. There are few tobacco houses that will answer this question honestly, it reflects their awareness of the entire production process. It’d be like grabbing something sugared or chocolate and denying that slave labor was involved. If it’s processed tobacco, there are bugs in it. Heck, if it’s a processed agricultural product, there are bugs in it…you just might not see them.

Medicated No. 99 + Top Mill No. 1, right? The former constituting not less than 2/3 of the blend?

Actually no…I can’t tell you the make up unfortunately, our recipes were/are secret

Pierogi all the way with some Mizeria <3

No? Then, must be a blend of SP No.1 and Medicated No. 99, if top three sellers were SP No. 1, Medicated No. 99 and Top Mill No. 1. Or… blending ratio was different, perhaps more like 3/4 Med99 + 1/4 snuff X. And no, I’m not going to annoy you anymore in regard to this matter (letting us know it was a blend of two J&H W best-sellers was generous enough!).

Anyways… For the joy of the most curious ones, there’s little room for secret in the EU, when it comes to the composition of tobacco product placed on its market. Manufacturers are allowed to not disclose only that part of composition, which does not exceed 0.5% of total.

Since Kensington brand was aquired by Swedish Match / Scandinavian tobacco and placed on the Germany’s market, where it was sold till the discontinuation (2023), its ingredients were disclosed for consumers on BMEL.de website: BMEL - Navigationspunkt Tabakzusatzstoffe-Datenbank (tobacco, water, potash, eucalyptus essential oil, menthol, salt, lavender essential oil and undisclosed flavourant (0.15%, most probably some citrussy oil or a blend of several oils)).

Correct on ingredients but wrong on the base flour!

It was likely the early eighties. You can probably specify the exact year because I responded to the invitation to visit on the back cover of the ‘Would You Like a Pinch’ booklet that was part of J&H Wilsons first advertising campaign – probably 1982 or 1983, By prior appointment I also visited t’others (shush – you know who) on the same day, and who were still making snuff in the traditional way. I noticed in a Sheffield tobacconist that guided tours were also advertised.

Top Mill was, in my opinion, the best in the range although S.P No.1 together with S.P No.2 and S.P No.3 was a close second. Top Mill Black Horn was also good but only available loose, transferred from a 2lb canister into a paper packet at my local House of Bewlay. Otto de Rose and Jockey Club, with respect, were vile and I don’t use medicated snuff. I can’t recall the flavour and colour of Dr. Craig’s No.27 snuff, alas. Can you remind me? Was it perfumed?

J&H Wilsons stated that Top Mill is “very similar to S.P No.1 but with added flavour in a higher concentration. This however does not encroach on the taste of the balanced blend of tobacco.”
Are you at liberty to expand at all on that terse comment?

Finally, although I’ve uploaded it before the excellent Wilsons’ advertisement my son sent me is shown for your entertainment. Anyone born in the 1940s or 50s will understand it.

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So we will definitely have crossed paths, I would have been in the office at this time.
I was employed as the tax was lifted and the price of snuff halved and sales went through the roof, imagine that these days!

I think I sent a million booklets out like that! I remember Frank Muir (call my bluff) was featured, all our publicity was done by Ogdens at Liverpool and sometimes we would see someone from the St Bruno adverts on the premises, remember those?

I think Dr Craig’s was of the scented variety, I remember walking to work and I could tell if they were doing a Wallflower or Aniseed blend!

Yes, Top Mill recipe was 50% more flavoured than SP No1.

Talking of the 1lb drums we had one cash sale customer who regularly purchased a pound drum he appeared as if he had thrown most of it on himself, bless him!

It will have been Mr Bamber who took you round the mill, lovely lovely man. I remember a school party from my old school looking round (swinging on the staircase and being generally unruly )and recognising me that was very embarrassing for a 17 year old!

I would still have been there had it not been for Lord Hanson, loved the place didn’t appreciate at the time how special it was, especially the antiques and snuff boys we had, when I think back how much it must all have been worth. All antiquities were sent to Christies purely because they had a break in at Imperial Bristol, such a crime sending all our huge oil paintings and furniture including a vast snuff box collection the place was never the same after, hated them for making us lose our history.

Sorry just seen this.
There were many recipes for flour.
We did have a plain base flour for SP and Top Mill but they had a different concentration of flavour in them.
For example some recipes used tobacco stems and there were different leaves used in proportion to the coarseness/moisture content.
Some were hand mixed, like the Fribourg and Treyer snuffs, they looked like black tea leaves!

I have my little 28-page booklet from 1981 - provided free of charge - on how J&H Wilsons manufactured their snuff. The entire process up to the finished product is detailed but without divulging trade secrets. It also contains a potted history of snuff. Unfortunately it contains fewer photographs of employees than I remember and my photos of photos are not terribly clear – but anyhow, here they are.

No one who was a snuff-taker at the time can forget 1 January 1978 when tobacco tax on snuff was repealed. Both the Wilsons had to have extra shifts to keep up with demand. Larger tobacconists stocked a huge range of snuffs (like Wix in Piccadilly) and business was booming. Even newsagents usually had a number of snuffs to choose from. Those halcyon days didn’t last, alas, and the reasons for the demise of snuff in the UK have been detailed at length elsewhere.

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Oh, Yes I had completely forgotten about this booklet!!
I know all the people in there!
Gary Ortton, Gordon Burdett (Foreman)
Jim Ferrar - Bless him was in his 90’s he used to walk to work with me and I struggled to keep up used to watch me cross the road!
Gillian who later went on to marry Gary Ortton
Margaret and my favourite person Linde Wilson, in the warehouse, (Odeline Margareta Stierer)
Thanks for posting, happy memories.

Anywhere I can find this online?

It was a free twenty-eight page souvenir booklet – probably very limited in number and doubtless, after 43 years, very rare. As far as I am aware it is not available online.

Bristol Archives have copies from 1980 and 1981. Perhaps they have digitalised it so it can be read online. You can contact the archive from the link below and ask. Imperial Group, of course, owned J&H Wilson Ltd, and was behind its publication.

In case the booklet is not available to read online, these complete pages describe the process of manufacture. The rest of the book concerns the history snuff, snuff boxes and famous snuff-takers past and present.

Unlike Samuel Gawith, J&H Wilson only made medium snuffs, as indeed did Sharrow at the time. So, no black or brown rappee or Irish snuff. It did mean, however, that using modern equipment the company could manufacture a great deal of snuff, 46% of the home market according to a contemporary figure although Illingworth, the other large company would doubtless have contested that figure.

When Albert Harland became a director (20 November 1895) he signed an agreement not to disclose the recipes kept in locked boxes at the Co’s bankers or act on behalf of any other snuff manufacturer. Although added scents have since been disclosed (Kensington, for example) the exact mixture of varied tobacco leaf and their source and the proportion of stem used remains, to the best of my knowledge, unknown.

For anyone who is interested there is a brief history of J&H Wilson Ltd from the link below. Also of interest are the excellent digitalised reports by Sonia Roberts and Jacques Cole for the journal ‘Tobacco’ which reflect the optimism and buoyancy of UK snuff manufacturers in the early 1980s (see citations 11, 13 and 14 on the same page).

https://www.snufftabak.com/resources/articles/joseph-and-henry-wilson-snuff-concern.html

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Thanks so much for sharing the brochure. Most interesting!

Graeme