Pathology

[alistairmac]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the responses.

I agree with the comments about phones, after my father died, we didn't have a phone for several years and when we got one it was a shared line for the first couple of years. When my mother eventually got a phone, we were almost the only family on our street to have one and the neighbours would often come round to use it. They usually paid for the calls, but it used to annoy my mother that they never paid for wrong numbers.

However, I still think it is strange that if my father did not have one and was not in the London phone book between 1933 and 1961, especially as most of that time he was supposed to be running his own pathology practice. Although I guess that he could have been in partnership with someone else and that person was listed.

Thanks for checking the newspapers Alan and for the links. I will have a look at them.

Grasse was/is a major centre for the perfume/essence industry. Most of the major companies had operations there I believe. I'm not sure what happened to Lautier Fils, I think they were taken over by one of the big groups.

Cheers
Alistair

[AndrewP]

Grasse was/is a major centre for the perfume/essence industry. Most of the major companies had operations there I believe. I'm not sure what happened to Lautier Fils, I think they were taken over by one of the big groups.

Hi Alistair,

A brief timeline of Lautier fils is given at http://www.patronsdefrance.fr/Database/ ... D=CoAc3651.

The online French to English translation by Bing makes the main paragraph to be as follows:

• Biographical sketch : Lautier family is a business of Distiller by the end of the 18th century. The family business grew during the 19th century and passed, on the death of Joseph Morel-Lautier in 1895, under the direction of his sons Alphonse, Paul and François Morel. Products and new methods appear. The "Lautier sons" company, which is headquartered in Grasse, purpose is the manufacture and sale of contents first perfumery. It is covered by the Rhône Poulenc group in the 1950s, and then by the American Florasynth in 1981, and then by the Group Bayer, in 1995, which merged it with its aromas Haarmann and Reimer division. Becomes Symerise.

All the best,

AndrewP

[alistairmac]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for the website link and the translation. It's interesting to see what happened to the company.

Incidentally, I reckon company history can sometimes be as fascinating as tracing your family roots. I used to work for a firm supplying hardware to stores like B&Q in the UK. I traced it's history back to a music shop in Cheltenham in the mid 1800s. The story had everything including worker riots, a direct bombing hit in WW2, dodgy mining interests in South Africa and briefly owning the rights to the Mary Quant brand.

Cheers
Alistair