Gerards Soap Works, Basford


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Interesting article but even they (who should be able to get it right) are inconsistent in naming the company. It was Gerard's (a total of two "r"s) not Gerrard's. A picky point, perhaps, but it used to cause much figurative shaking of fists amongst the hierarchy in the company.

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I seem to recall a major fire in the middle 70s ish which I watched from my bedroom on Bobbers mill Road. I understand it caused much damage. 

 

Another thing I remember about Gerards, they had swimming pool sized areas of water with some kind of chemical stuff going off next to the factory which really ponged. I have no idea about what the function was at all. 

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The fire in the mid-'70s was at a small paint factory located at the back of Gerard's and not Gerard's itself. I have written about that fire in another thread: https://nottstalgia.com/forums/topic/2312-cussons-soap-factory-outside-views/?page=3&tab=comments#comment-548689  post dated January 18.

 

Regarding the water ponds, those were cooling pools for water released from the soap manufacture (a very hot process) before it was cleaned and returned to the soapmaking. The water wasn't deep but it was smelly because of the stale fat residues it contained.

 

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Ian, the fat in those silos was tallow - beef fat of grades other than edible (read into that what you wish!). Some of the silos contained coconut oil - Gerard toilet soap base was made from a fat blend of 80% tallow and 20% coconut oil.

Shortly after I left Gerard's there was an 'incident' in which a 500-tonne tallow tank (located near to the small laboratory block where I worked) which was thought to be empty was opened via the lower manhole. 500 tonnes of hot beef fat poured on to the yard. It was said to have set in a six-inch deep layer over most of the yard and completely fouled up the weighbridge.

The fat farm supervisor/manager was quickly dismissed!

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32 minutes ago, jonab said:

Ian, the fat in those silos was tallow - beef fat of grades other than edible (read into that what you wish!). Some of the silos contained coconut oil - Gerard toilet soap base was made from a fat blend of 80% tallow and 20% coconut oil.

Shortly after I left Gerard's there was an 'incident' in which a 500-tonne tallow tank (located near to the small laboratory block where I worked) which was thought to be empty was opened via the lower manhole. 500 tonnes of hot beef fat poured on to the yard. It was said to have set in a six-inch deep layer over most of the yard and completely fouled up the weighbridge.

The fat farm supervisor/manager was quickly dismissed!

Was it true the Nazi's made soap from Jew's fat produced from the crematoria ?

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I read that somewhere too catfan, and some of the womens SS skinned tattoo's of people when they were still alive to make lamp shades

 

Rog

 

 

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I think the Nazi's making soap from the fate of Jews is an urban myth. The offenders wanted as little contact with their prisoners as possible. To wash in them would, in my mind, be unthinkable.

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Yes & no. they did but not on an industrial scale. Only to scare the jews in the concentration camps. But on an experimental level yes.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_made_from_human_corpses

 

http://auschwitz.org/en/museum/news/human-fat-was-used-to-produce-soap-in-gdansk-during-the-war,55.html

 

 

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Re the revolting subject of Jewish PoWs being made into soap, I doubt this was a practical proposition as all concentration camp inmates were on the point of starvation and there would have been very little fat in them to provide the necessary ingredient to make soap.

I'm still of the opinion that the story is more of a myth than fact. Using the corpses of their own soldiers, on the other hand, seems slightly more feasible as they would have been very well fed, thus providing plenty of raw material. Even so, how many bars of Imperial Leather do you think could be made from one SS officer (that is a rhetorical question, I don't expect an answer). Cows and/or coconuts are much more likely to be used for the purpose.

 

It should be also borne in mind that the big German chemical companies such as BASF and Henkel were working on developing synthetic detergents during this period to remove the reliance on the traditional raw materials of soap.

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I read the article and even the Jewish Yad Vashem museum has said it did not happen, it was a rumour used to frighten Jews.

There was soap made from human fat but the corpses were mainly from civilian institutions, only a tiny number were rumoured to came from a Polish camp and none of it was on an industrial scale.

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Thankyou kind sir, I was particularly interested in these "vats/tanks" you spoke of, there was similar vats/tanks at the Raleigh cycle factory when I had a spell there, they were rubber lined,and were underground, they were connected to the cleaning tanks at groundlevel,the cycle frames were dipped in these tanks to clean them,the tanks were in a line and the frames hanging on long rails were dipped into each tank,the tanks containing, hot water, some sort of acid, some sort of alkaline,cyanide and more hot water, each year the underground tanks needed emptying of liquid (done via a pump) and the residue had to be removed by hand, I used to climb inside these tanks suited and booted and cleaned them out using a plastic shovel and bucket,this was raised to ground level by someone on the other end of a rope and emptied (don't know where), why am I waffling on you say, I just wondered if your tanks needed the same treatment and if so did you use your own staff or contractors?

Rog

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I don't know the details about the tank maintenance other than what I have already passed on - not my department! What I do know is that the tanks were above ground (they could be seen from Wilkinson St.) and had manholes top and bottom where maintenance men could gain entry - as you say suited and booted. Not a pleasant job as the tanks were heated (to keep the fat molten) and the fat itself smelled something dreadful. Added to that, there was always a layer of water at the bottom which was particularly foul smelling.

The spillage incident I mentioned takes a lot of imagining the scale of the spill. If the tank was full it contained 500 tonnes of fat which is equal in volume to 25 normal petrol road tankers!

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