Chivers jelly: breaking the mould in WW2

Did you know that jellies made by Histon’s Chivers factory played a vital role in the war effort? Lucy Callington tells the 80-year-old tale of how ingenious British prisoners of war found an unexpected use for the humble jelly cube…

In January 1946, Captain A.T. Casdagli sent a letter to the then manager of Chivers Factory. In it, the captain – an ex-prisoner of war (POW), held in Crete, during World War Two (WW2) – detailed an unusual use for Chivers’ jellies during the war – as resourceful prisoners learnt how to melt down jelly cubes to make ink, used to make maps to aid their escape efforts.

The letter was passed by Chivers to the Village Society who have saved it for posterity. HI HUB is delighted to publish an abridged copy of the letter here – which provides a fascinating record of a tale of classic British ingenuity:

Dear Sir,

This letter is written to you to fulfil a pledge made in an Officers’ prisoner of war camp in Germany in April 1944. It concerns your jellies.

It was discovered that your jelly cubes [which] came to us in Red Cross parcels had the properties of duplicating gelatine if properly treated. I personally saw maps printed in 1941 off your cubes.

In April 1944, I formed part of the official mapping and printing team at Oflag XII.B – a senior Officers camp.

Our problem was to produce as many maps of the area around our camp, on as large a scale as possible, in the shortest time. This policy was adopted for several reasons – the three main being the possibility of one day being left by our German guards on the approach of the Allied Troops and hence the necessity of knowing our exact whereabouts; secondly, the possibility that there might be fighting in our area and the need for knowing the position of Allied troops; and thirdly, normal routine escaping plans.

We also undertook the printing of forged identity cards, passes and German censor stamps.

“Escaping committee”

Now for the practical side. Whenever Chivers jellies arrived in Red Cross parcels they were removed from our ‘tin store’ by the British Officer in charge of the cookhouse and handed to the escaping committee.

The crystals were of no use to us and only the gelatine cubes could be used. The procedure was to melt down the cubes from three or four packets in a tin without the addition of any water – then pour off the liquid into a specially manipulated tray and allow to set hard.

When the gelatine had set, it was necessary to wash the surface with warm water to remove the sugar which comes to the top and renders the surface sticky. Before this was discovered, many hours of work were wasted by maps being torn through having stuck to the jelly.

We produced our copying ink by powdering down lead from copying pencils, added water and then boiled the liquid to make it as concentrated as possible.

The master copy of the map to be printed was traced in the ink on to a very thin strong paper (the best we ever had was the wrapping of some religious pamphlets sent to our camp from Switzerland). The master copy completed, the next and by far the most difficult operation was to roll it out on the jelly without smudging it.

Trial and error eventually proved that the best way was to roll the master copy onto a pencil, place the pencil at one end of the tray and with an even pressure unroll the map onto the surface of the jelly. After this all was plain sailing.

A perfect impression was the left on the jelly and under good conditions and if the weather was not too hot, 25 serviceable maps could be produced from one master copy – on occasion as many as 30 were obtained.

Normally, the greatest care had to be taken to prevent [our captors] from observing our movements and literally hundreds of man hours were spent on these operations and ‘stooging’, in other words being on guard at certain points to give warning of approaching guards.

“Inestimable value”

Incidentally, we found that the Lemon Jellies reacted much better than Raspberry or other flavours!

We used to say that when we were liberated and home again, we would write to Chivers and tell them to what use their jelly cubes were put, and of what inestimable value they were to us in this work.

This letter is entirely unofficial, but I thought it might interest you to know of our activities in prison as far as your firm was concerned. We often wondered if you had any suspicion that your jelly cubes were being put to this use.

I hope you will excuse this rather long rambling letter – it all seems rather childish now but at the time it was of vital importance to us and certainly the maps we produced were most wanted.

I remain yours sincerely,

A.T. Casdagli
(Ex-pow No 3311 Crete 1941-1945)

With thanks to Eleanor Whitehead. Histon and Impington Village Society meets at Histon Methodist Church for talks of local interest starting at 7.30pm on the last Tuesday of the month. Visit www.histonandimpingtonvillagesociety.com

READ ALSO: Set in stone: The story of the Peace Memorial; and Andrew St Joseph: memories of the Manor