Northern Co-op: in the days of the 'divi'

December 2011

photo: ABERDEEN CITY & SHIRE ARCHIVES

by Lorna Dey

There was a time when shopping was a more leisurely and courteous affair than the frenzied and acquisitive pursuit it is today: a chair on hand for the elderly and well-trained staff taking pride in the service they delivered to customers. Falling firmly into this category was the old Co-op in its pre-Norco days.

The Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society was founded 1868, but seven years earlier, in 1861, the Northern Co-operative Company, later becoming Society, began in Aberdeen and operated along the Rochdale principles.

The Rochdale movement is credited with being the first of its kind in Britain, (although Aberdeen Shore Porters Society is arguably the first cooperative with roots extending to 1498) and from the late 18th century a sprinkling of food co-ops were operating around the country.

Working class families, struggling with high priced, low quality food in their local shops, pooled scarce resources to purchase in bulk a few basic items and sold these on to members.

A group of men, including bookseller William Lindsay, discussed the practicalities of setting up a modest co-operative shop in Aberdeen. The existence of several other small co-operative and friendly societies in Aberdeen probably explains the Northern element of its name.

The men met in Dr Bell’s School Room on Frederick Street, with James Valentine in the chair, and agreed the company’s almost 90 articles relating to dividends (divi), accounts and the like. With the guidance of advocates Kennedy & Fraser, the new company was registered under the Joint Stock Companies Act 1856-57 as the Northern Co-operative Company Limited.

A committee of 17 men, including one Alex Strathdee, agreed on a board of nine directors, plus treasurer and secretary. Membership shares were set at £1 and a start-up fund of £1000 was raised.

51 Gallowgate

Next came publicising the enterprise. On 4 May the public ‘warmly received’ the company’s speakers at a public meeting in the Court House. Encouraged, the committee signed a one-year lease on a shop at 51 Gallowgate, at £18 annual rent, to sell groceries and provisions. Their next step was to find a shop manager and the following advertisement appeared in the press:

The Northern Co-op Company (Limited) newly formed for the purpose of trading in provisions and other household necessaries, are in want of a manager to conduct their business in Aberdeen. The qualification, one experienced in purchasing in the wholesale markets and managing a retail trade; also a knowledge of bookkeeping by double entry; a guarantee will be required and to a competent person the salary will be liberal. Applications by 20 May. Looking for ‘moral character’, ‘local man be preferred’.

Applications came in thick and fast – from England as well as around Scotland. Five of the 30 hopefuls were assigned to the ‘first class list’ of candidates and, with the preference being for a local man, Benjamin Troup from Aberdeen was duly appointed at a salary of £80 a year to start work in July. He would require an assistant with a wage set at 10/- to 12 shillings (50–60p)weekly and a youth or apprentice at three shillings and sixpence (17.5p).

The people of Aberdeen flocked into the Gallowgate store so that it soon expanded its stock and the number of Co-op shops increased. In 1917 the company became a society and so it remained until around 1970 when the name changed to Norco. Throughout its existence the Northern Co-operative retained its independence from the Scottish Wholesale Co-operative Society, and finally ceased to trade in 1993.

Central to the concept of co-operative was the dividend which had a variable value. The divi began as tokens issued against purchases, but the difficulty was that the tokens were essentially cash, able to buy goods directly or transferred or sold to non-members. So the Climax check system was introduced: the small paper tokens we remember which carried the precious co-opie number forever ingrained into many a memory. At divi time long queues would build up at the much-loved arcade on Loch Street to receive the cash built up over previous months.

At one time it seemed everyone shopped at the Co-op. Doorstep deliveries of milk from its dairy, first from a fleet of horse-drawn wagons and later milk floats; coal shipped into town on its own steamers; clothing and millinery of every description, affordable with the accumulated divi; confectionary; chemists’ and tobacconists’ goods; furniture; a major baker which once delivered rolls in time for breakfast; shoe shops featuring from 1929 the Pedo-o-scope which cost a whopping £180, to ensure well-fitting footwear; butchers’ shops.

There was a restaurant where for one shilling (5p) you could get three courses of soup, meat with veg and sweet; or high tea of bread and butter, a choice of fillet of haddock or sole and chips, baked beans on toast, Welsh rarebit or savoury omelette and a pot of tea.

The Co-op was a highly successful business importing food and other goods from around the world: Minneapolis flour from a wheat strain appropriately called granite, Siberian pure grass butter, pickled Danish eggs. Once it even had convalescent homes for its employees.

In these pre-supermarket days, before the age of the pre-pack, staff were skilled in their particular areas. Grocers were trained in preparing and preserving foodstuffs – teas were blended, coffee beans roasted, hams smoked and so on. Everything weighed and sold as the customer requested: different sugars dispensed in appropriate bags – grey, brown or blue; coffee in paper twists; tea packets with gummed end labels, glazed papers, brown papers – some supplied by Davidsons of Mugiemoss.

With some of the Co-opie’s best horses commandeered for service during the 1914–18 war, deliveries were restricted to two per week.

More disturbing for Aberdonians was the interruption of rowie production because of lard shortages in 1918. The Co-op committee complained that fat from the North-East was being shipped to Glasgow, creating local shortages, and the group was forced to apply for a licence to collect and melt fat. The body controlling this, the Raw Fat Melters’ Association of Great Britain demanded £20 initial membership and five guineas annually, to which the committee reluctantly agreed.

So profitable was the Co-op that it even provided a loan of £10,000 to the town council in 1930, which was later repaid with interest.

Unsurprising for a company founded on community benefit, it provided New Year treats to hundreds of elderly poor people living in the centre of the city, serving up beef soup, steak and kidney pie, and plum pudding, and it donated bread to the Salvation Army for distribution to poor children.

Charity stretched beyond Aberdeen. During the long and brutal Spanish Civil War the Aberdeen Co-op turned down a request from Dundee Basque Children’s Committee appeal to ‘adopt’ a Basque child from their Montrose home in 1938, but did donate 34 pairs of boots and shoes for the children – repaired ones which had not been claimed.

In the same year it rejected, on legal advice, letting out a yard at Great Northern Road for renovating old motorcycles and vehicles as ambulances for Spain, but agreed to the sale of sixpenny (2.5p) milk tokens through its stores to raise money to buy milk powder and condensed milk for Spain, which was suffering great scarcity.

For many older Aberdonians affection for the old Co-opie ran deep, as did their love of the Loch Street arcade which had become the group’s headquarters and main shopping area, until it was replaced by the ridiculed monstrosity of Norco House.

The arcade fell victim to another misbegotten council improvement, running counter to popular opinion, and for a brief time became a store for the Art Gallery & Museums, home to archaeologists and stray cats before being finally demolished.

Lorna Dey taught history and now researches it at leisure. Originally from the Black Isle, she lives and gardens near Alford . Her first novel, Banana Pier, a political thriller with Doric, written under her pen name Alex Chisholm, comes out in January.

This is an article from the December 2011 edition of Leopard Magazine. To read much more like this every month, subscribe to Leopard Magazine.