Tom Haldenby
Thomas Shaw Haldenby (1886-1964) of Rolls-Royce
1885 June 2nd. Born at North Cave, Yorkshire, the son of John Haldenby and his wife Elizabeth Shaw
1900 Joined Royce as an apprentice
1901 Living at Duke's Yard, South Manchester (age 15 born North Cave, Yorkshire), Tool Making. With his parents John (age 54 born Walkington, Yorkshire), Horse Keeper and Elizabeth (age 54 born Manchester). Also has brother Joseph (age 18) and sister Annie (age 22). [1]
1913 Moved to the Experimental Department
1946-52 General Manager of Rolls-Royce
1964 December 4th. Died aged 79 at Derby
1966 Obituary.[2]
Hy - the man who built wartime R-R
THERE are people to whom time builds a memorial in the minds of men. There are others, no less devoted to a cause, to whom time builds no memorial: such a man was Mr T. S. Haldenby (Hy) whose death, on December 4, was reported in our last issue.
Tom Haldenby's cause was Rolls-Royce. He embraced it after he left school, when he was apprenticed to Henry Royce in 1900 and four years before Sir Henry's first motor car left the Cooke Street factory. He was still utterly devoted to his cause when he died.
Like other Cooke Street men, Hy learnt his job the hard way under the observant eye of Henry Royce and he remained completely faithful to the principles instilled by his perfectionist teacher. He achieved one unique distinction at Cooke Street. After Henry Royce had built his first car Hy took it on the road before anyone else. 'I had a little private drive, even before Henry Royce,' he confessed at his retirement.
Gruelling test
Hy helped to prepare the Silver Ghost for the still-famous non-stop reliability trial in 1907 when 15,000 miles were covered; he was also one of the drivers engaged in car testing in France 'when we drove 500 miles a day every day for 20,000 miles and searched out every weakness.'
He served for a time in the London showrooms and was later manager of the Lillie Hall depot in London, returning to Derby in 1913 to take charge of the Repair Department. Subsequently, with Ernest Hives, he assumed joint control of the Experimental Department.
During the first World War Hy was in control of the Madsen gun project (MAR). With Claude Johnson he went to Denmark to negotiate manufacturing rights with the Dansk Rekyl-Riffel Syndicat. Returning with the blue prints and a specimen weapon their ship was stopped by a U-boat and boarded. All passengers were ordered on deck. Hy, with the gun and blue-prints under his bed, decided to stay below. The gamble came off, for a British destroyer was sighted and the U-boat promptly disappeared.
Specialization
Subsequent to the war, when the emphasis returned to cars, Hy was one of the team to visit America during the short-lived attempt to manufacture there. At this time Hy was Assistant General Manager. He progressively specialized in the firm's civil engineering projects and the supervision of machinery and tools — fields in which he displayed outstanding ability, and it is in this connection that he will be best remembered by many people still in the Company.
He started the Sinfin Sites at Derby when he built the first test bed in that area, at what is now Sinfin A Site. It was a modest start — an open-ended tin shed. Little did Hy dream of the extent to which Sinfin would develop.
His ability and knowledge of construction work was to prove of inestimable value to the firm. Hy was to retain special responsibilities in this field even when he became General Manager in 1946. By 1936 war clouds were gathering in Europe and Rolls-Royce was on the verge of an explosive expansion, an expansion that was, by any standard, a prodigious undertaking.
Between 1935 and the completion of the East Kilbride factory in 1953 Hy was personally concerned with adding some seven million square feet of space to the R-R organization. Before the Crewe factory was finished the Hillington factory at Glasgow had been started and was to be followed by the expansion at Derby and a vast amount of work associated with dispersals.
Colleagues tributes
Mr J. Valentine, now retired from the position of Plant and Equipment Engineer at Crewe, who led Hy's team at Crewe when the factory was built, and Mr S. P. Thomas, Aero Engine Division Chief Plant and Equipment Engineer, who was one of the men responsible, under Hy, for work on the Scottish factories, were among the Rolls-Royce people to whom R-R News talked about Hy. Others were Mr H. J. Swift, former General Manager, Aero Production, whose job was to produce the engines when Hy had provided the means; Miss W. Gibson, for 11 years Hy's secretary; Mr W. T. Peskett, Co-ordinating Plant Engineer, Derby; Mr B. Pope, ex-Cooke Street; Mr C. P. Jones, former General Manager (Derby Factories); and Mr G. R. Strangeways, Rolls-Royce London Representative, who formerly worked for Hy.
From their comments emerged a picture of a man who was exacting in his standards yet fair and considerate; thorough in anything which he undertook; a man with an uncanny ability to spot almost instantly a defect in a plan, a building or a piece of mechanism and know what was needed to put it right; and a man who inspired enthusiasm and who helped and supported his team to the hilt.
These are some of the people who knew Hy better than most. Though they agree that Hy was 'difficult to understand' they add, 'Once you understood him you found that Hy was kind, considerate and helpful and had a dry sense of humour.'
Behind a cynical facade there was an immense amount of commonsense. To those who worked closely with Hy he was recognized as good company whether on the golf course, where he had a handicap in single figures, or playing poker well into the night at Crewe and Glasgow. Such occasions were always enlivened by Hy's dry humour.
A wee drap
Space does not permit us to recount escapades in which both Hs and Hy were involved during the years when they were growing up together. They both remained young at heart and even in their years of discretion they were to be seen smuggling cases of beer and whisky into an hotel on the outskirts of Glasgow, in what was then a 'dry' area
Those experts and professionals not directly employed by Rolls-Royce who worked with Hy bear out the tributes paid to him by his R-R colleagues.
Mr G. H. Buckle, head of G. H. Buckle and Partners, Consulting Engineers, first met Hy at Crewe in 1938. 'Hy drove me to the side of a field where we shared some sandwiches,' Mr Buckle recalls. He said, "This is the site for the Crewe aero-engine factory. The whole of the responsibility for its construction and equipment has been entrusted to me by a Mr Hives, who you will possibly later know as Hs. At least a substantial part of it has got to be in operation in one year".
`He led me to understand that he did not think much of architects, consulting engineers, and people generally associated with the building industry, but he had somehow or other found out that I had served a five-year apprenticeship as a mechanical engineer and this made life very much easier for me ...
`Hy's outwardly sarcastic and ever-cynical approach masked a heart of gold. Nothing ever met the specification, and if he passed the comment that something was "not too bad" one knew that it was praise indeed.
`I can only remember one occasion when we had the laugh on Hy. We were staying near Barnoldswick; it was a cold winter's night and we thought it would be wise to drain the car radiators. After a great deal of messing about with the assistance of torch-bearers and a variety of spanners, Hy succeeded in opening the drain cocks on his Bentley. In the morning it was standing over a small pool of anti-freeze!
`He loved technical jokes. A contractor gave notice that an area containing plant in the Standards Room could not meet the specification requirements, because, it was alleged, there was no thermal-break in the floor; if this was provided all would be well. Hy had an inch wide strip painted round it in cork-loaded paint. The contractor then re-tested and was quite satisfied.
`Hy was very, very loyal to all those who worked for him, even the people such as myself who were not wholly bound by the discipline of Rolls-Royce. Although he would give individual members of the team a very sound talking-to in private, he would always uphold them in public.'
Mr J. A. Tomlinson, Chairman and Managing Director of Ford and Weston Limited, was associated with Hy from the latter's early days at Derby. He remembers, as a boy, Hy having his first meeting with the late Mr T. R. Weston. Hy wore a smart double-breasted blue suit and a black and white check cloth cap.
`Mr Haldenby's knowledge of civil engineering was exceptional and was allied with a keen intelligence,' Mr Tomlinson said. 'He had an almost uncanny ability to acquire knowledge of skills in which he had no training.
`I will remember Tom Haldenby as a forthright, able and likeable man.'
In similar vein is this tribute from Mr Adrian Gee, a director of Gee, Walker and Slater Ltd., who also have a long association with Rolls-Royce.
`My association with the late Mr T. S. Haldenby, whilst over a good many years, was particularly memorable for the period of the building of the Crewe factory.
`Although we were all regarded as specialists in our particular field, one could not be other than impressed by the wide knowledge Mr Haldenby had of all aspects of the building industry, and by the way in which he readily understood the many problems to be overcome. He so enthused all concerned that were we to have failed in our task, we should have felt his confidence in us had been misplaced.
Inspiration
`As a man one could not fail to regard him with the highest respect for his understanding, his integrity, and for his desire always to be fair. One felt that he enjoyed his work, and his inspiration made those around him feel that to try to satisfy him was very much worthwhile. He will be remembered by many.'
The names of Hs, Hy and Sft (might this be Harry J. Swift?) will always be thought of together in connection with the tremendous expansion, since 1938, of the Company's operations. Hy's active work for Rolls-Royce came to an end in 1952, when he and Mr Swift retired at the same time.
In a tribute to Hy and Sft, Lord Hives said: 'They were with Rolls-Royce when Rolls-Royce quality was first conceived and put into our products. They have played their part in the development of the Company from a small concern to a large organization which is internationally respected. They have left their mark in the progress the Company has made and they will always be remembered.'