Unknown Coat of Arms on No. 15 Transit Chest

[Alan de Enfield]

Thanks! Canadian or Brit?

I'm surprised so few manufacturers made these chests--would have expected them to be made by mom & pops since they were rather simple woodworking projects.

Papworth Industries.

During the First World War, the Welsh physician Dr Pendrill Varrier-Jones was appointed temporary county tuberculosis officer for Cambridgeshire. He set about establishing a self-supporting colony where TB sufferers could learn to live with their disease under medical supervision and do a level of work that did not worsen their condition, and be paid for doing so.

What began in February 1916 at a house in Bourn as the Cambridgeshire Tuberculosis Colony with six patients soon won official backing. Then, with the support of almost £10,000 in donations, the colony was able to acquire Papworth Hall at Papworth Everard, some five miles away and move there in February 1918. By the time of Queen Mary's visit, the first of many royal visits, on 9 October 1918, there were 25 wooden shelters for the more stable patients, 60 beds in the hall itself for the seriously ill, 8 cottages for patients' wives and children and facilities for five separate industries: a carpentry and cabinet-making workshop; a boot-repair shop; a poultry farm, a fruit farm and a piggery. Patients whose health was improving were assigned paid work under medical supervision and the goods manufactured were sold at commercial rates on the open market. In 1919 further industrial facilities were added, among them: a printing shop; a bookbindery; and a trunk-making workshop, this latter the origin of Pendragon Travel Goods.

"In 1930 there were 200 men and 80 women patients," wrote Rowland Parker; "294 on average were in daily employment; the Industries had an annual turnover of £68,000." The development of the colony was nevertheless costing far more than the Industries could make. In an appeal on the wireless in 1932, Stanley Baldwin said of Varrier-Jones: "For years he has struggled on, entirely without endowments, harassed by the conflicting claims of finance and humanity. His humanity has won, but his overdraft is enormous."

On 17 December 1935 at the royal premiere at the Leicester Square Theatre, London of René Clair's The Ghost Goes West before Queen Mary, the whole of the proceeds was devoted to the provision of a nurses' home at Papworth. A short film by Anthony Asquith, The Story of Papworth, the Village of Hope had its premiere at the same performance.

During the Second World War, the carpentry section of the Industries switched mainly to the making of aircraft parts.



Remploy was set up during WW2 to rehabilitate and provide an income for disabled soldiers - from loss of limbs to blind or metally handicapped. They manufactured quite an assortment of military goods from canvas. webbing to woodwork and metal items, They later expanded into civilian work supplying a huge range of items from something like 100 factories.