In this series of articles "spotlighting" Bata families, the Bata Record begins with a father, son and daughter in the leather factory, who are popular both personally and from the point of view of being top-line workers in their respective capacities - Charlie, Rhoda and Ken Dawson.
Charlie Dawson (left) is the well-known foreman of Dep 423, and it would be difficult to select a family more appropriate that his to start a series of articles of this nature. Shoemaking is in the very blood and bones of the Dawsons, having been handed down, as it were, from generation to generation. Charlie's father, for example, was a clicker in the days

when the hands were mainly used for that operation, and was still going strong at 76; his mother was an upper machinist.
"So I can say that I come of good stock," said Charlie to the Record. "I soon followed in my father's footsteps and have been in the shoe trade since I was 14. I was apprenticed when I was 16. I worked for several London firms, and was nine years a foreman in a big footwear company in North London."
Charlile came to British Bata as a foreman in 1940, and has done sterling work in the leather factory since that year, with a break between 1948 and 1950 when he did valuable service in setting the Bata workshops at Lea Bridge Industries, Southen, on their feet. Under his leadership, production made an excellent start, and has been continuing, under Floormanager J Kubanek, at an increasing tempo ever since.
All the time he has been at East Tilbury, Charlie has been in charge of a department which has made machine-sewn and stick-on soles designs of ladies' shoes, in which type of footwear he is a specialist. All the workers like him, and, stirred by his inspiration, invariably produce good quality footwear.

Rhoda Dawson (right) is firstwoman of the sewing section of Dept 441, where she stitches backstays, and has been a shareholder since she was 17 - five years ago. She came after leaving school, and is extremely popular with her workmates.
She has the true Dawson enthusiasm for shoemaking. "I love the work," she said, "and should hate to leave it - after all, it is in my blood. I certainly don't want any other kind of job."
In her eight years' service, Rhoda has been absent for wo short spells and has never been late.
She intends to learn all she can about the shoe industry, and her foreman, Ron Leaf, describes her as one of the best workers he has ever had. "She is clean, conscientious and efficient," he said, "and an example to everyone - and I am not saying that just because her father is a foreman."
Before going to Dept 441, Rhoda worked in Dept 422.

In her spare time, she reads or goes to the cinema. The youngest member of the Dawson family, Ken (left), has been in the leather factory just under a year, coming to the school last April, and remaining there for five weeks before being transferred to Dept 473, where he is an inner-sole attacher. He is just 16, and is not way behind his sister in determination to make a career in the shoe trade. "After all," he remarked, "I am a Dawson, and all the Dawsons are shoemakers."
Ken, too, is popular with his workmates, whom he found to be friendly and helpful from the start. Foreman George Ellmore has a high opinion of him, saying that he is keen, clean, quick to learn, and very thorough.
Ever since Ken has ridden a bicycle he has had an ambition to own a motor-cycle, and he is feeling extra cheerful just now, because that ambition will soon be realised.
The Dawsons are among the best known residents of the Bata Estate.