A touch of romance provides added interest to the story of this week’s Bata family - one of it’s members went to sea, and, when he came back, started to work in the leather factory where he met the girl who eventually became his wife. That man was Ted Murrell, (right) foreman of Dept 431, whose wife, father, and mother all work at East Tilbury. Ted, a popular foreman, with a cheery word for everyone, started in the leather factory school 18 years ago, and his first regular operation was stitching monoliths - regarded by many people as the best “buy” in the factory. Next, he went on a conveyor on the top floor, staying there until he joined the Royal Navy, where he served on drifters, trawlers, and minesweepers, for five years.

Until recently there was a fifth Murrell with British Bata - Joyce, Ted’s sister, who left after joining the ATS and subsequently marrying.

He did not say anything about meeting Florence (right) - his wife - in the leather factory, but Florence did. “I came, in the first place, two or three years before Ted arrived here,” she explained. “He joined the conveyor on which I was working, we fell in love, and married. When he joined the Navy, and on the birth of our son Len, who is now 11, I left.”
Florence cleans women’s Californias in Dept 422, and is one of the few part-time workers in the leather factory. “I look forward to coming to the workshop every afternoon,” she said, “and love working because I am among friends.”

“They are made of special steel,” he said “and I must have forged hundreds of thousands of them in my time. I was originally a boilermaker’s blacksmith, and the work at East Tilbury is the cleanest anyone could wish. I never regretted coming here, and it is a fine place for a young person,e specially one with applications and initiative.”
Nellie (right) is on the preparing table in Dept 405, and she, too, says that British Bata is a happy place in which to work, happy for people of all ages, she stressed.

Bill Murrell, (left) Ted’s father, has been a Bataman for nearly 20 years, starting with a course at Zlin in September 1934, and coming to East Tilbury shortly afterwards. He has been making cutting knives all his Bata time, and is a chargehand in the cutting-knife shop of the engineers’ department.

He was no stranger to the sea because - his father let this cat out of the bag - he went there in search of excitement, after he had become bored with work in a post office, and before he came to British Bata.
On his return from war service, Ted worked for two months as a checker, and was then promoted to foreman of his present department, which, for all the nine years in which he has had charge of it, has been on the same production - leather and crepe-soled sandals.
“Making the same footwear all the time does, I suppose, help,” he said to the Bata Record, “but that does not mean that good work is not needed, and I have always had it from my operators.”
Although Ted is an expert on sandals, he has a good store of knowledge about other footwear as well, his keenness and interest is not being confined to his own department.
Off duty, Ted is an enthusiastic motorist, and he and his family go out in the car as much as possible - camping, picnicing, holidays - everything which makes motoring such a worth-having hobby.