Introduction

In December 1882 Edward Briggs, a Bradford worsted manufacturer, wrote to the British consul at Warsaw announcing his intention to build a factory in Russian Poland. By the end of the following month, the industrialist and his partners had purchased a 75-acre estate of undeveloped land at Marki outside Warsaw where they laid the foundations of a business which would endure for generations. With blueprints drawn up in Bradford, under the supervision of a Polish architect, the venture capitalists built a state-of-the-art worsted-manufacturing plant and British-style model industrial village. While construction was underway they recruited 100 Polish girls from the surrounding countryside and, provided with decent clothes and shoes, dispatched them to England to learn factory skills. ¹