Workers at the Sandilands Chemical Works, ca.1910

Workers at the Sandilands Chemical Works, ca.1910

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Traditional skills were mobilised in the service of new industries as well as old ones. This photograph shows a group of the woodworkers and metalworkers employed at the Sandliands Chemical Works near Aberdeen. The range of tools suggests that the men and their apprentices were responsible for maintenance as well as running the factory’s machines. At the centre of the photograph is a blacksmith’s anvil and the boy to the right holds an elaborate bellows. A cooper stands to the left of the photograph next to a group of stacked barrels, while other men hold hammers, specially adapted wrenches or traditional woodworking tools.

Sandilands Chemical Works opened in 1848 to process the bi-products of the adjacent Aberdeen Gas Works, though by the end of the century it had diversified into the production of various organic chemicals. The works was owned and run by John Miller, one of three l brothers who were influential in Scotland’s early chemical industries. George Miller & Co ran the Rumford Street Oil Works in Glasgow, and James Miller the Forth and Clyde Oil Works also in Glasgow. All their businesses were dependent on local supplies of coal or gas and the availability of a capable workforce. In 1892 The Scotsman estimated that 1000 to 1300 men worked in the principal branches of Scotland’s chemical industries across five major works and that 220 men worked in the Clydesdale district alone. Yet, much of the workforce was itinerant or temporary with young men forced by circumstances from Ireland making up an estimated 75% of Scotland’s chemical workers and only 5% of the workforce coming from the Scottish Highlands (11th May 1892, p.11).

The Sandilands works was known locally as ‘Stinky Millers’ probably due its more noxious products which included asphalt, distilled coal-tar, naptha, benzole, vitriole, manure, sulphuric acid and ammonia. Chemicals were important to the development of several Scottish industries, as components in fertiliser (ammonia water), as a solvent used in the rubber industry (naptha), or in the development of new textile dyes or processes in clothing manufacture. The bitumen, a form of semi-liquid petroleum, produced at Sandilands was used to seal the surfaces of Scotland roads and railways.

The skilled artisans in this photograph probably enjoyed better working conditions than those employed as general labourers at the works. Chemicals were a new industry where twelve hour working across seven days was common practice. A witness reporting an 1862 Labour Commission enquiry noted ‘that the only men exempt from Sunday work were joiners, plumbers, coopers and engineers’ (The Scotsman, 11th May 1892). Poor ventilation, inadequate protection and dangerous conditions were common hazards for chemical workers, one man was killed and two were injured in an accident installing an elevated water tank at Sandilands in 1915.

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