WE published this charming photograph last week, and asked if anyone knew where it was taken. It was sent to us by Ken Davison who found it among old photos belonging to his aunt, Agnes Brown, who is front row, second from right. Ken told us she worked in the shirt-making trade with Albert Slater in Sun Street, Bradford.

Now Albert’s grandaughter, VIVIEN NOWELL has been in touch to say the photo is of a day out for the factory workforce. She writes: I can confirm it is a Linlithgow trip, we think 1933 or 34. I have little detail of this trip but can tell you that he organised trips every year and when my father took over running the factory he continued the tradition.

My grandfather Albert and grandmother Martha are in the front with their daughter Margaret on the right. Their two sons are at the back. Grandfather’s first job was at Stead and Simpson, watching the boots hung up outside to make sure nobody stole them. Then he worked for the National Cigar Company and learned to roll cigars on a hand-rolling machine. He claimed to play football for Bradford City in 1903. But he realised it wasn’t worth it when he broke his leg. Some newspaper references support this, the team was called Manningham United I think.

He then decided to set up business on his own. He had saved £36 and took out a loan for a further £9. His first premises were a small room on Brook Street where he dealt in fents (fabric remnants), basically black cloth of the type old ladies wore.

He avoided fighting in the First World War because, I believe, he was a one-man business. He then met his first wife and she started to sew the fabric and sell aprons and they built up a business together making sateen aprons and undergarments. He continued to manufacture aprons in the premises they acquired in Sun Street Bradford.

He was a great entrepreneur and supported pupils in the Cathedral school. He often bought struggling artists paintings to help them survive. He remembered Amos Nelson suggesting that if he had cash flow problems he could send out his cheques to pay creditors in the wrong envelopes to gain some time. By all accounts he was a good employer, providing cheap wholesome meals from the canteen and heating the factory with an ancient coke boiler. He would tell new employees to call him father. He also said that once you come to work at Slaters you stay. He even had a small pension fund for retirees.

His early life was move after move due, I think, to evictions . He remembered the Brokers men setting the furniture on the pavement and his mother sitting on the only thing left - a mattress, baby in arms weeping.

Long before equality laws, due to my grandfather’s early life, he believed in helping those less fortunate than himself and employed Agnes (who was deaf) along with others with disabilities .

Albert’s daughter had an interesting life; she and her husband were persuaded in their 30s to go out to a colony in South America and grow oranges. Albert visited and wrote a pamphlet about it. He also visited Germany in the 1930s. That’s another tale too.