London’s Lost of Condom Industry

Latex condom arrived long after the industrial revolution — they were invented in the 1920s. Lionel Alfred Jackson founded the London Rubber Company at 3 Mincing Lane, and started importing condoms to the UK from manufacturers in Germany and America.

Interestingly, the company usually supplied condoms to barbers, rather than chemists because of the social stigma that surrounded the product. Most men were much more comfortable buying a condom from another man, rather than a female shop assistant in a chemist.

At 1932 year, the London Rubber Company set up its first factory at Shore Road in Hackney. It named its new product Durex. The name comes from three key words for the product: DUrability, REliability and EXcellence. In 1937 it moved to Chingford where it stayed for the next 57 years.

Originally the condom business was booming, but it went through a downturn with the proliferation of the contraceptive pill. This forced the company to sell of one of its London condom factories — by now there were a few — based between Stockwell and Brixton. Fears over AIDS and HIV led to another boom in condom sales, with huge publicly-funded campaigns to get young people to use the condoms. This meant there were good times once again in Chingford.

We chatted to someone who worked at the London Rubber Company’s factory in Chingford. He was an accountant, so his day to day didn’t involve much latex, but he was given a grand tour of the factory when he started. These women became a focal point in the attempts the Health Education Authority made to get young people to use condoms during the HIV crisis. The advertisement supposed shows that if these older women aren’t embarrassed by condoms, then young people have no reason to be.

The Chingford factory closed in 1994, the work moved to regions where corporation taxes and labour costs were far cheaper, such as the Far East. The closing of the factory resulted in the loss of 600 jobs — sorry, Mrs Dawson. Nowadays, almost the entire condom industry is based in Asia, such as China, Malaysia, Thailand, and India.

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