Chocolate Wars: The 150-Year Rivalry Between the World's Greatest Chocolate Makers Read Online Free Page A

Country and leading the family in a new direction as shopkeepers in the town. At the close of the eighteenth century, as Napoleon prepared for his long march over Europe, the Cadburys, like countless others at the time, exemplified the Britain that the French leader dismissed as a mere “nation of shopkeepers.” And just as Napoleon’s scathing remark underestimated his enemy’s real wealth and capacity for war, so it was easy not to see the huge potential emerging from a new generation of shopkeepers whose connections were only just beginning to reach out across the world.
    “Very little is known of his early life,” writes Richard of his grandfather. “He left home in Exeter when he was fourteen on the top of the coach . . . to serve as an apprentice to a draper.” The young Richard Tapper remembered the morning of his leaving: “My father and mother got up early to see me off by the stage . . . and I thought my heart would break.”
    Richard Tapper was apprenticed in 1782 to a draper 150 miles away in Kent who supplied army uniforms to troops fighting in the American War of Independence. Within a year the war ended, troops were demobilized, and the business went bankrupt. Richard
Tapper then secured another opening as an apprentice in Gloucester, where, by the age of nineteen, he was proud to receive wages of £20 a year. After “scrupulously and conscientiously” avoiding any “unnecessary gratification,” he reassured his parents in Exeter, it was possible for him to pay for his own washing and “appear so respectable as to be invited as guest among the first families of Gloucester.” His next move was to London to work for a linen draper and silk dealer in Gracechurch Street. His wages eventually rose to £40 a year, which not only enabled him “to maintain a respectable appearance” but also to “purchase many books.”
    After ten long years mastering the trade, Richard Tapper was longing to start a draper’s business of his own. He was dissuaded from his youthful dream of sailing for America by a family friend who warned him “that the country is still far from settled.” Nor could he seek adventures in Europe with France in the frenzied grip of Robespierre’s Reign of Terror and at war with its neighbors. So in 1794, equipped with enthusiasm and, through the Quaker network, quite a few references, Richard Tapper took the stage to Birmingham with a friend, Joseph Rutter. They had heard of an opening for a “Linen Draper and Silk Mercer” in the town and seized their chance.
    The draper’s shop was soon successful enough for Richard Tapper to buy out his partner and start a family. He married Elizabeth Head in 1796 and seven children followed over the next seven years. Elizabeth still found time to help in the shop, dressing the windows with fine silks and linens and taking an interest in the changing fashions. One year, they were obliged to enlarge their front door to accommodate the fashion for puffed “gigot” sleeves, strengthened with feather pads or whalebone hoops. Records show that Richard Tapper’s business was so successful that in 1816 a second shop at 85 Bull Street was also registered in his name.
    Like many Victorians, the young Richard Cadbury had a fascination with family history and compiled a “family book” on his ancestors complete with news cuttings, sketches, and Quaker records. This provided a vivid portrait of his grandfather’s life. One of the problems Richard Tapper had to deal with in his shop was theft. After repeatedly losing silk that cost up to twelve shillings a yard, he felt he
had to take action but soon came to regret it. He stopped a woman in his shop who had two rolls of silk hidden under her cloak. When he went to court to hear the outcome, to his alarm the judge sentenced the woman to death. “I was appalled,” Richard Tapper told his children years later, “for I never realised what the sentence would be. Without delay I posted to London, saw the