Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: This parade of multiple off-model Felix fellows advertises the East London Toy Factory at 45, Norman Road, E. 3. It is unused and undated. A quick look around and I found this out about the history of this factory on the site Grace’s Guide:

WWI. Sylvia Pankhurst opened a new toy factory as an answer to the dozens of tiny failing workshops where women were paid a pittance. Toys were no longer being imported from Germany, so Sylvia’s factory employed 59 women to fill the gap. It was a haven for them. First they turned out wooden toys and then dolls: black, white and yellow, followed by stuffed cats, dogs and bears. One day, Sylvia took a taxi full of her wares to Selfridges new store in Oxford Street and cajoled Gordon Selfridge himself to become a stockist. 

A further listing says that in 1922 East London Toy Factory was noted for exhibiting Soft Animals with Voice…and Riding Animals on Wheels. By 1947 they were listed with Animals with Electric Eyes. Hotsy totsy I say!  An undated ad on another site declares, East London Toy Factory, Ltd, high-class soft toys, artistic rag dolls, mascots, fancy toys and all kinds of novelties. Fancy toys and novelties indeed – let’s talk! I am not absolutely positive, but I think there is a very good chance that my Felix below is a East London Toy Factory fellow. As far as I can find out, they did not place a maker’s mark on them. The company was liquidated in 1952.

Sylvia Pankhurst was a real pip. In addition to opening the East London Toy Factory, which as above, employed women and at a higher wage (not to mention supplying off-model Felix dolls to the masses) Sylvia Pankhurst was a suffragette, born of a family of reformers and left wing activists. She started life as a painter, illustrating the plight of poor women and families and then she became an activist and reformer with a vengeance. In addition to the toy factory, she opened food distribution centers, and a free clinic. Shown below, she is being arrested for protesting WW1.

Subsequently, she moved to the countryside and lived with her Italian anarchist paramour where they opened a cafe and she wrote what one website calls subversive literature. (This seems to mean Communist.) She was against marriage and taking a man’s name and when she gave birth to a son when she was 45 – it is unclear if it was the child of the Italian lover of if she had moved on by then – her refusal to marry resulted in her mother never speaking to her again. (So much for being a liberal parent – I guess there were limits in 1927.) Later in life Pankhurst was a supporter of Ethiopian independence and moves there in 1956. Continuing in the same lifelong vein, she opens the first teaching hospital there and supports anti-imperialist causes. Sylvia Pankhurst dies in Ethiopia, where she is given a state funeral, in 1960 at the age of 78. Clearly I am not able to do her full justice here, but there are robust sites devoted to her that are well worth the read. Fascinating! I am very pleased that Felix took me down this particular road, and I offer it to you today as a slightly unusual Mother’s Day fare.