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situated at the junction of Syon Lane with the Great West Road
The merger between Gillette and the Valet Auto strop Razor Company
to form Gillette Industries YK Ltd, created a need to rationalise
razor and blade production in Britain. In 1935, Gillette purchased
land in Isleworth at the junction of the Great West Road and Syon
Lane and began the planning of a new London factory. The Isleworth
works was to house the combined production of Gillette's factory at
Slough and the City Road, London works of the Valet Auto strops
Razor Company.
At Isleworth, the continuous steel ribbon process of razor blade
manufacture developed by the Valet Company was adopted. Razor blade
making at gillette's had been based upon the treatment of individual
blades. The result was a significant improvement in productivity.
Output from Isleworth in the late nineteen thirties was 1,500,000
razor blades and 25,000 razors daily. The factory employed some 900
people with around 750 of them at work on the factory floor
Prior to the Great War (said Thomas Wallis) the worker used to
arrive with his meal in his pocket and his luncheon hour was spent
by his machine. Such things as this have entirely changed and in
every well-governed factory, the worker, male or female, is treated,
as a human being and his health retained to the benefit of his employer.
At the Gillette factory employee welfare has always been taken care of
in an exemplary fashion. This is more than the characteristic of a
single factory. It has always been a foundation of company policy and
an expression of the beliefs of the company founder, King C Gillette.
Gillette's Isleworth factory opened for business with its own Doctor,
a nursing sister and three nurses. A chiropodist and a physiotherapist
have always visited the plant regulary and a consulting room, rest rooms
and a surgery are among the facilities provided there. The factory's
canteen was designed to double as a theatre for concerts and amatuer
threatricals and the staff recreation rooms offered facilitiesfor darts
and billiards. Even the prices in the staff canteen were subsidised. In
this company's philosophy a healthy worker is a good worker.
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