John went to London to be apprenticed at the teahouse of Sanderson Fox and Company. While in London he went to see the warehouses of the East India Company, and watched the sale of commodities such as coffee and cocoa. He wrote to his father that he was convinced that there was potential in the exotic new bean, although he was not yet clear what that potential was.
In 1824 the twenty-three-year-old John returned to Birmingham and set up a tea and coffee shop of his own on Bull Street, next door to his brother Benjamin’s draper’s shop. His father lent him a small sum of money and said he must ‘sink or swim’, as there were no further funds. John proudly announced the opening of his shop in the local paper, Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, on 1 March. After setting out his considerable experience ‘examining the teas in the East India Company’s warehouses in London’, he drew the public’s attention to something new: a substance ‘affording a most nutritious beverage for breakfast . . . Cocoa Nibs prepared by himself’.
John Cadbury’s tea and cocoa shop in Bull Street, Birmingham, in 1824.
John Cadbury took advantage of the latest ideas to draw business to his shop, starting with the window. While most other shops had green-ribbed windows, John’s had innumerable small squares of plate glass, each set in a mahogany frame, which it was said he polished himself each morning. This alone was such a novelty that people would come to see it from miles around. On peering through the glass, prospective customers would be intrigued to see a touch of the Orient in the heart of smoky Birmingham. The many inviting varieties of tea, coffee and chocolate were displayed amongst handsome blue Chinese vases, Asian figurines and ornamental chests. Weaving his way through all this exotica was a Chinese worker in Oriental dress. Those who ventured inside were greeted by the rich aroma of coffee and chocolate; John ground the cocoa beans himself in the back of the shop with mortar and pestle. Word of John Cadbury’s quality teas and coffees soon spread amongst the wealthiest and best-known families in Birmingham: his customers included the Lloyds, Boultons, Watts, Galtons and others.
Meanwhile, through the Quaker network, John met Candia Barrow of Lancaster. The Barrows and the Cadburys had already developed very close ties through marriage. In 1823 John’s older sister Sarah had married Candia Barrow’s older brother. This was followed in 1829 by the marriage of John’s older brother Benjamin to Candia’s cousin, Candia Wadkin. So in June 1832, when John married Candia Barrow, it was the third marriage in a generation to link the two Quaker families. It proved to be a very happy union.
As John’s shop prospered, he could see for himself the growing demand for cocoa nibs. He took advantage of the large cellars under the shop to experiment with different recipes, and created several successful cocoa powder drinks. So confident was he of the future of this nutritious and wholesome drink that he decided to take a further step: into manufacturing.
In 1831, John rented a four-storey building in Crooked Lane, a winding back street at the bottom of Bull Street, and began to test produce cocoa on a larger scale. The idea of using machines to help process food was in its infancy, but to help him with the roasting and pressing of beans he installed a steam engine, which evidently was a great family novelty. According to his admiring aunt Sarah Cash, everyone in the family ‘had thoroughly seen John’s steam engine’. After ten years he had developed a wide variety of different types of cocoa for his shop: flakes, powders, cakes, and even the roasted and crushed nibs themselves.
Candia at the time of her marriage to John Cadbury.
Meanwhile, Candia and John started a family, and moved to a house with a garden in the rural district of Edgbaston. Their first son, John, suffered intermittently from poor health. Richard Cadbury, their second child, was born on 29 August 1835, and was followed by a sister, Maria, and then George, born on 19 November 1839. The arrival of two more sons, Edward and Henry, would complete the family.
To the boys’ delight their parents placed a strong emphasis on the enjoyment of an outdoor life. Their house had a square lawn, recalled Maria. ‘Our father measured it round, 21 times for a mile, where we used to run, one after another, with our hoops before breakfast, seldom letting them drop before reaching the mile, and sometimes a mile and a half, which Richard generally did.’ Only then were they allowed in for breakfast, ‘basins of milk . . . with delicious cream on top and toast to dip in’. After this early-morning ritual, John set off to work. ‘I can picture his rosy countenance full of vigour,’ says Maria, ‘his Quaker dress very neat with its clean white cravat.’
A memorable delight for the boys was the arrival of the railway in Birmingham. Britain was in the grip of railway fever, and the Grand Junction Railway steamed into Birmingham from Manchester in 1837. Within a year, a line opened that covered the hundred miles between Birmingham and London. The treacherous two-day journey to the capital by horse and coach was reduced to a mere two hours by steam train. The coming of the railway made a deep impression on the growing family. ‘I got a railway train, first second and third class carriages, with an engine and tender,’ seven-year-old Richard wrote enthusiastically to his brother in 1842. For his father, however, it opened up whole new possibilities for trade.
At the age of eight, Richard was sent away to join his older brother John at boarding school. George studied with a local tutor who had a decidedly individualistic view on the best way to deal with boys. He aimed to instil mental and physical fortitude with a diet of classics and combative sports, including occasional games of ‘Attack’ which he devised himself, and which involved arming the boys with sticks. Somehow George came through the experience with a sound knowledge of French and Virgil, and a keen appreciation of home life. He remembered his childhood as ‘severe but happy’, with an emphasis on discipline and a lifestyle that was ‘bare of all self indulgence and luxury’.
Both George and Richard formed vivid impressions of trips to see their mother’s family at Lancaster. Their maternal grandfather, George Barrow, in addition to running a draper’s shop, had created a prosperous shipping business with trade to the West Indies. His grandchildren were allowed to climb the tower he had built in the grounds of his house, from where they had a stunning view of Morecambe Bay and on occasion his returning ships, sometimes banked up three at a time on the quayside beyond. Sea captains came to visit, and would regale the children with tales of wide seas and foreign lands, the wonders of travel and the horrors of the slave trade.
By 1847 John Cadbury’s Crooked Lane warehouse had been demolished to make way for the new Great Western Railway. Undeterred, John expanded his manufacturing into the Bridge Street premises, and was soon joined by his older brother Benjamin. By 1852 the two brothers were in a position to open an office in London, and they later received a royal accolade as cocoa manufacturers to Queen Victoria. It was around this time that they dreamed up a plan to create a model village for their workers, away from the grime of the city; they even designated one of their brands of cocoa ‘The Model Parish Cocoa’.
In 1850, when he was almost fifteen, Richard joined his father and uncle at Bridge Street, and was doubtless aware of their grand ambitions. With his father often away, he threw himself into the trade with ‘energy and devotion’, observed one relative. Richard kept his father informed of day-to-day events: ‘James is very steady at the engine, keeps it at a regular pace and in beautiful order and is careful not to waste any money over it. The girls do their work cheerfully, but want a good deal of looking after . . . ’
The pressures of learning the trade did not stop Richard indulging his love of sport. He and George were passionately fond of skating, and would often rise at 5 a.m. so as to be on the ice before dawn. ‘Only those who have made the effort know the exhilaration of skating in the early morning and watching the light gradually break and the beauty of the sunrise,’ wrote George. One young friend of his sister Maria remembered that Richard