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HOME IMPROVEMENTS THE POPPY APPEAL TIN
From its establishment after the 1914 – 1918 war, the Earl Haig Fund acquired its poppies from England. 1921: MADAME GUÉRIN. It all started with Madame Guérin’s ‘Inter-Allied Poppy Day’ idea. After taking her idea to Field Marshal Douglas Haig and the British Legion, Madame Guérin’s poppies (made by the widows and orphans/women and children of the devastated areas of France) were distributed on British streets on 11 November 1921 – on the country’s first Poppy Day. Madame Guérin personally paid for the British consignment because the Legion was so poor and was reimbursed after the Armistice Day distribution. www.poppyladymadameguerin.wordpress.com/ remembrance-poppy-timeline-for-great-britain/ In 1926, Countess Haig, the wife of Field Marshal Haig, suggested that a factory, employing those men disabled by war, should be started to make poppies for Scotland. The suggestion was taken up by Earl Haig’s “Appeal Organisation” and premises, in the form of an old wood-chopping factory in the grounds of Whiteford House, were acquired. From its early origins in March 1926, of “two workers, a pair of scissors and a piece of paper”, numbers soon rose to twenty-eight by which time, the bulk of the poppies required for Scotland had been made. And there was a waiting list of 117 men who wished to be employed by the factory. A committee of management under the chairmanship of Colonel William Robertson VC came into being and the project began to expand. The collecting tin had been allocated to the British Legion’s Earl Shilton branch, Leicestershire and tins were duly stamped accordingly. Along with Anna Guerin’s French-made poppies they were distributed on the Leicestershire streets – the very first Poppy Day in the UK. During the run up to the end of the decade, the demand for poppies and wreaths was met while, in 1928, the introduction of “stuffed toys and jigsaw puzzles” heralded an expansion of activity into a wide range of hand-crafted goods. Wreaths were made with locally grown laurel leaves, wax poppy seeds and moss which were gathered by Girl Guides. Tins such as these are now incredibly rare to find. Made from old tins – quite often paint ones- by the John Fever Iron Works in London. The company no longer exists and ceased trading in 1969.
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