Running off another copy

There are former firms which operated in the East End of St Albans we know quite a lot about, especially those where, seemingly, everyone's mum, grandpa or aunt worked at one time or another.  Then there are companies we know little or nothing about.

Into this second category falls the printing company of Orford Smith.  This is not the same (Thomas)  Smith who came to Fleetville in 1897 and set up his works along Hatfield Road where Morrison's supermarket now trades.  Orford Smith found his plot in Fleetville – or some might call it Camp – two years earlier and thus became the district's earliest major factory.

Orford Smith had a large printing works constructed by Miskin's in Campfield Road.  And because it did not last long in his hands it is also the same building generations of St Albans people have known as the Salvation Army Printing Works, or the Campfield Press.

Orford Smith was fascinated by the new colour printing machines then becoming available (as was Thomas Smith of course, which is why he also brought his works to Fleetville).  Orford Smith's business, however, was a particular kind of colour printing for expensive products, such as reproductions of paintings and the colour plates for inserting into books.  In particular he was able to produce entire special issues of magazines which commemorated events of the day.

Of special importance were the souvenir issues of Illustrated London News (1842 to 2003).

Discovering the output of former printing works is often difficult.  So far I have tracked down just three products printed by Thomas Smith's machines, and to that I can now add one item from the Orford Smith works.  But what an item it is.  Illustrated London News published the souvenir issue celebrating Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.  Sixty pages, and only the advertisement pages were in black; the rest were pages of rich, glorious, pure colour, including gold and silver.

It was painstaking work and very expensive to produce, with up to sixteen passes for separate colours, with three different weights of high quality paper, before being bound into a book.  The result was nothing like one of today's Sunday supplements.  If an extra batch of copies was required the task was as time-consuming as preparing for the main print run.

If you chose to specialise in this high-end printing work, the risks were themselves high.  Very high.  We don't know whether it was this particular job which brought Smith's business crashing to the ground, or an accumulation of contracts, all of which may have cost a lot more than the agreed price.  But by 1899 the building was closed and a long recovery operation lay ahead for the administrators.  It was the result of this which brought the Salvation Army to St Albans.

So, let's enjoy three sample pages from the ILN's souvenir Diamond Jubilee supplement.  As we can see – some supplement!