Table Of ContentTears of the Tree
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Tears of the Tree
THE STORY OF RUBBER — A MODERN MARVEL
JOHN LOADMAN
AC
AC
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ISBN0–19–856840–1(Hbk.) 978–0–19–856840–7
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For Lina
Marriage for over thirty-five years to someone with a
passion for rubber must often have been difficult!
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Acknowledgements
Thebasicframeworkofthisbookgrewoutofoverthirtyyearsof
reading and collecting snippets from colleagues at the Tun Abdul
Razak Research Centre (TARRC). The library there offered a
range of early twentieth century books on rubber technology
which were an invaluable source of primary data. Second-hand
bookshops and internet searches for referenced books slowly
filledinthegaps,asdidthedisposalofbooksandjournalssuchas
the India Rubber Journal and India Rubber World to the Plastics
Historical Society (PHS) by universities which had no space in
their libraries (or syllabuses) for old science books.
More recently, information and illustrations have come to me
fromawiderangeofsources.Manyoftheillustrationscomefrom
two locations, the photo-archives of the TARRC and the PHS.
The latter set of some 700 glass lantern slides has an interesting
historyinthat itwasaccumulated andcataloguedinthe1920sby
theResearchAssociationofBritishRubberManufacturers,where
it remained, virtually unknown and forgotten, until it was about
tobethrownawayinthe1990s.Luckily,thearchivistofthePHS,
ColinWilliamson,savedthemandtheyweredonatedtothePHS.
Acknowledgement is given to both of these sources for the use
of their collections and to Colin for scanning many of the slides
onto a compact disk for me. Other illustrations have a range of
histories. Those of the ball courts were supplied by my niece,
Nesta Waters, whilst Ridley’s letter to Turrill, dated 8 July
1950,wasinitiallylocatedinthe‘MiscellaneousCorrespondence
Collection’ of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew by Hew
Prendergast, and was supplied to me by Michele Losse and
viii Acknowledgements
Julia Steele. The final paragraph is published with the permission
of the Trustees of the Royal Botanical Gardens. The photograph
of H. M. Stanley was unaccountably missing from the two large
collections mentioned above and was supplied by the Royal
Geographical Society, whilst the illustration of the principles
of injection moulding was supplied by REP UK. Permission to
reproducethemisacknowledged.WongFotJawkindlye-mailed
me the photograph of the 1877 Hevea tree in Kuala Kangsar. The
cartoon showing ‘imps’ attacking a piece of rubber in Fig. 13.4
wasdrawnbymyoldTARRCcolleague,PeterLewis,andisused
withhispermission.Thistrulyisacaseofonepicturebeingbetter
than one thousand words.
The early history of the steamship Amazonas was found in the
Maritime Navy List Maritime Directory by Bryan Smalley, who
gave me its identification number—70893—from which later
records could be traced. Details of the voyage to and from South
America in the summer of 1876 including the crew agreement,
records, and release documents were located at the Maritime
HistoryArchive oftheMemorial UniversityofNewfoundland by
Paula Marshall, whilst the Amazonas’ ‘bill of entry’ was found in
the Liverpool Records Office by another retired colleague and
friend, Dr Arthur Edwards.
Particular thanks are due to Frank James, a descendant of
Thomas Hancock’s brother, John, and the family archivist who
providedmewithmuchbiographicaldetailoftheHancockfamily.
It was he who set me on the trail of the more than 700 lantern
slidesmentioned above.Itwasduringthissearchthat Icontacted
Jackie McCarthy at the Rubber and Plastics Research Association
(Rapra) who, whilst searching unsuccessfully for the slides with
Sheila Cheese, came across a dust-covered box containing
numerousdocumentsandcorrespondencerelatingto,orwritten
by, Thomas Hancock which had been ‘loaned’ to the forerunner
Acknowledgements ix
of Rapra in the early years of the twentieth century and had lain
‘lost’ ever since. My thanks are extended to Carole Lee at Rapra
for giving the documents to me to be returned to Frank James.
My thanks are also due to Ted Rogers of the Hackney Borough
Archives who was able to trace the location of Hancock’s home,
Marlborough Cottage, from census and land registry records,
although its well-established name was not found in any of the
documentation.ThisenabledthePHStoplaceaplaqueonasiteof
greatsignificancetothewholeoftheindustrialisedworld.Iwould
also like to thank Ovidio Lagos, who is currently writing a bio-
graphyofJ.C.Arana,forsupplyingmewithaportraitoftheman
himself. Finally, my thanks go to my friends at the TARRC,
particularly Gail Reader for her help in many ways and David
CawthraforsupplyingmewiththecoverphotographoftheHevea
tree being tapped.
If any illustrations have ‘sneaked through’ without being
accredited,IhopeIwillbeforgivenandtheoriginalownerwillbe
content to see his or her work published here.
