EGGS & TOMATO AS THE BRIDGE FROM MOTHER S RUIN TO MODERN ISRAEL

See Also: CRICKET Cricket Clubs, Middlesex C.C.; GIN; MILLS Tide Mills

The Nicholson family became gin-makers during the first half of the 18thC. Their business evolved into being J.& W. Nicholson. The firm's distillery was located in Clerkenwell. Its brands included Lamplighter Gin.

William Nicholson served as the chairman of the business. He also sat in Parliament as an M.P.. He switched his political allegiance from the Liberal Party to the Conservative one. The latter was more inclined towards servicing the interests of the drinks lobby than was the former.

Nicholson was also a prominent amateur cricketer. In 1864 he furnished the 18,333 that it cost the Marylebone Cricket Club to buy the freehold of Lord's Cricket Ground. Fifteen years later he was elected to be the Club's President. Subsequently, he lent the organisation a further 21,000. This enabled it to build the Lord's Pavilion (1890). There were other occasions when his financial generosity aided the M.C.C.'s activities.

Until the late 19^thC the Club's colours were a light sky blue. The livery of J. & W. Nicholson was centred upon the colours red and yellow. Although there appears to be no written evidence, it is believed by some that the egg and tomato stripes of the M.C.C. tie are an informal acknowledgement of Nicholson's considerable munificence towards his favourite past-time.

The River Lea divides Middlesex from Essex. Three Mills Island is located in the lower reaches of the watercourse. A trinity of tidal mills stand on the ait. Their grinding stones are caused to move by a series of paddle wheels that rotate either backwards or forwards according to which way the water in the river is flowing. Originally, the mills seem to have ground corn for flour. This would have been used to bake bread for the City of London's inhabitants.

Serving the needs of gin-making became a much more profitable trade than furnishing bakers with flour. By 1820 the Three Mills complex had become the largest single distilling operation in England.

In 1872 William Nicholson bought the island.

For most of the First World War the United States was neutral. However, its government allowed American business to profit from the conflict by selling goods to the Allies. The German Navy deployed a large proportion of its U-boat submarine fleet in the Atlantic Ocean. There, the vessels attacked the convoys that sought to sail across the expanse.

The submersibles proved to be vulnerable to projectiles in which the charge was cordite. However, production of the explosive was hampered by the limited availability of acetone, which was one of its core constituents. This was because the solvent was created by means of a very inefficient process that involved the destructive distillation of large quantities of wood and there were numerous alternative pressing calls for any timber that was felled.

C.P. Scott was the editor of The Manchester Guardian. It was his practice every Tuesday to have a lunch to which he would ask interesting people. Upon one occasion during the summer of 1916 he invited Professor Chaim Weizmann of the University of Manchester. During the meal the migr academic mentioned to the newspaperman that four years earlier he had devised a bacterial fermentation technique that had the potential to enable acetone to be produced in large quantities. This statement was of minimal interest to the host.

A week or so later Scott was in London. There, he met with David Lloyd George, who was then serving as the Munitions minister. The politician told the newspaperman that there was a serious shortage of acetone. Scott recalled his recent conversation.

Weizmann was recruited by the government to see whether or not his process could be implemented upon an industrial scale. He conducted his experimental work at the Lister Institute. It was decided that the Nicholsons gin distillery on Three Mills Island should act as the production site for the solvent. The academic needed an abundant supply of cellulose. Usually, this was produced from grain. However, as with wood, there were vital alternative uses for the commodity. It was appreciated that what was needed was another source of the carbohydrate for which there were no rival demands. Conkers proved to be the answer.

That autumn children were asked to collect all the horse chestnuts that they could. From these an abundance of acetone was produced. The U-boats in the Atlantic soon began to find that they had become far more vulnerable than they had been. Resources were able to move more plentifully eastwards across the ocean.

Britain and France were hoping to carve up between themselves the mass of the Ottoman Empire when the war ended. The pair intended that the former would receive control of Baghdad and the latter of Damascus. However, as 1917 began to close, such a division looked unlikely since the Allied military situation was not good. The Americans were proving to be slow to mobilise, Russia had fallen prey to her revolution, portions of the French Army were mutinous, and the Battle of Passchendaele was proving to be particularly bloody.

In parallel to his scientific work, Weizmann was one of Europe's leading champions of Zionism. In the decade before the war he had lobbied the government about the possible creation of a Jewish state within one the British Empire's dominions. Uganda had been discussed as a possible site. His solution of the cordite production problem gave him better access to the corridors of power in Whitehall. Along these, he exercised his considerable personal charm. The Cabinet began to consider the possibility of a Jewish territory. There were other factors at play, notably that President Woodrow Wilson's inner circle included a number of Zionists.

On 31 October 1917 the Cabinet resolved that Britain would seek to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The 2nd Baron Rothschild was widely perceived as being the most prominent Jew in Britain. On 2 November the Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour sent a letter to the peer that stated His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.

Many Jews proved to be hostile towards the Declaration. This was because it allowed anti-Semites to term them foreigners in their own country. Some Jewish Britons did not wish to be viewed as being British Jews.

In 1949, in the wake of the Holocaust, the modern state of Israel came into being. Professor Weizmann was elected to serve as the new country's first president.

Location: Three Mill Lane, Bromley-by-Bow, E3 3DU

Nicholson & Company, 193-205 St John Street, EC1V 4LZ (orange, grey)

The Lister Institute, Chelsea Bridge Road, SW1W 8RH. (In 1985 a private hospital took over the building.) (purple, grey)

The Argyll Arms, 18 Argyll Street, W1V 1AD (blue, brown)

The Blackfriar, 174 Queen Victoria Street, EC4V 4EG (orange, red)

The Coal Hole, 91-92 Strand, WC2R 0DW (blue, purple)

The Tottenham, 6 Oxford Street, W1N 9FL (purple, pink)

Williamson s Tavern, 1 Groveland Court, EC4M 9EH. There are plenty of other Nicholson's pubs. (blue, pink)

Website: www.housemill.org.uk www.nicholsonspubs.co.uk www.lords.org/mcc/the-club/about-the-mcc

David Backhouse 2024