Poppy Factory

Miss Moina Bell Michael, an American War Secretary with the YMCA in New York City, was so moved by Colonel John McRae's poem to buy poppies with money she collected from her work colleagues, and sold them to friends to raise funds for ex-Servicemen. Her French colleague, Madame Guerin, came to the British Legion HQ in London suggested the sale of artificial poppies in August 1921, in order to help the ex-Service community in Britain.

The first donations for artificial poppies were given in Britain on 11 November 1921, raising £106,000 – an equivalent spending power of more than £3.1million in today’s terms, a huge sum for the time.

Major George Howson, a young infantry officer, had formed the Disabled Society to help disabled ex-Service people from World War One. Howson suggested to the Legion that Society members should make poppies, and the artificial flowers were designed so that someone who had lost the use of a hand could assemble them with one hand – a principle that has endured. He founded a small factory in Bermondsey in 1922, which led to the foundation of the Poppy Factory at Richmond, Surrey in 1926, where poppies are still made today.

More than 34 million poppies, 107,000 wreaths and sprays, 800,000 Remembrance Crosses and other Remembrance items will be made at the Poppy Factory in Richmond, Surrey, this year.

The Poppy factory made whole variety of other items too. In this 1933 photograph employees can be seen making rosettes for other occasions.

The information on this page was taken, with kind permission, from the North Staffordshire County Website. Follow the link to see the original page The Poppy Factory.