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With a detailed covering letter from Michael O'Connor, 20 July 1993. Correspondence and papers re proposed changes to the Asbestos Regulations and T&N's subsequent steps for compliance.

Papers include

• minutes of T&N Chairman's Committee meetings, meetings of Advisory Panel on Problems Arising from the Use of Asbestos, meetings between the Ministry of Labour (renamed Department of Employment and Productivity in 1968) and the Asbestosis Research Council (ARC)
• also records re first prosecution of T&N for breaching the new regulations, 1971
• and what Michael O'Connor (and Nancy Tait with him) termed the "evil day" memorandum of 12 August 1968. This came from the manager of J W Roberts Railways and Insulation Department, advising the Chairman of J W Roberts (A N (‘Sandy’) Marshall) on the probable impact of the provisions made in the draft Regulations on Asbestos re sales of sprayed and other asbestos.The memorandum includes the comment: “If … we demonstrate, by a token effort only of ostensible intention to comply with the regulations, it is conceivable that we can ward off the evil day when asbestos cannot economically be applied …”

Foliated minutes and papers of T&N Ltd Board and Executive Committee meetings. Includes an inventory. Among subjects covered are reports on the Asbestosis Fund, information on employers’ liability insurance for asbestosis, asbestosis cases, research into asbestosis and mesothelioma cases and claims, deaths of asbestos workers, claims and payments, etc.

Photocopy of an account of Turner & Newall Ltd, issued by the directors of T&N "so that the shareholders of the company may be acquainted with the nature and scope of its operations". Appeared while the company was still chaired by Frederick Stirling Newall, who died 1930.

Photocopy of booklet ‘Turner & Newall Ltd’, designed, produced and printed by George Pulman & Sons Ltd, Thayer Street, London. Appeared after the company was registered at a Manchester address, i.e. 1949 or after.

Photocopy of a brief history of Turner Brothers Asbestos Company Ltd, based on a paper delivered to the Rochdale Literary and Scientific Society by Mr N A Morling, 19 February 1959 and published also in ‘Transaction of the Rochdale Literary and Scientific Society’ 24 (1960): 49-64

Photocopy of typescript ‘Turner & Newall: the first fifty years', by L T C Rolt, c.1970. Also includes photocopy of form 'Department of Employment Medical Examination of Asbestos Workers (Asbestos Regulations 1969)', marked "From Ferodo".

Lionel Thomas Caswall Rolt (1910-1974) was an English writer and engineer.

Photocopy of booklet 'Turner & Newall today' (n.d.), an overview of the company’s global achievements and organisation, including emphasis on its deliberate decentralisation (p. 30). Also stressed is that the parent company “is responsible for the operation of the Turner & Newall Ltd Asbestos Fibre Laboratory in Manchester, the only establishment in the world exclusively devoted to fundamental research on asbestos".

Photocopy of a typescript ‘A history of J W Roberts Ltd up to 1964’, n.d.

Photocopy of typescript 'TAC history: origin to end of 1967'

Correspondence 1993-1998, re Michael O’Connor’s move to release copies of Turner & Newall records gathered in preparation of Chase Manhattan Bank v. T&N plc et al., United States District Court, Southern District of New York.

At the time O’Connor was Vice President and Senior Associate Counsel of Chase Manhattan Bank.

Includes

• set of Turner & Newall documents re insulation and shipbuilding, 1944-1950, with an overview
• SPAID documentation on Dr Kevin Browne
• set of Turner & Newall documents re asbestosis widows and press coverage of one of them, Molly Fisher
• press coverage on Chase Manhattan’s case turning to dust, and an inquiry from Nancy Tait with London colleagues, asking could they let her have “the index to Mike O’Connor’s papers”

Closes with Nancy Tait corresponding re O’Connor’s Freedom of Information Award in the UK, 1995, in recognition of “his remarkable efforts to supply British victims of asbestos diseases with documents needed for their compensation claims."

Correspondence with Fiona Bruce (BBC, ‘First Sight’), 1993, re case information on a probable environmental asbestos exposure, received through Chase Manhattan.

So labelled. Correspondence and papers re Turner & Newall pneumoconiosis cases, 1946-1957.

Includes instructions from Nancy Tait, 10 May 1994, to extract case information from this batch of documents, as well as the resulting listing (in tabled form).

"Dr Knox period" is not an exact descriptor. John F. Knox became Factory Medical Officer to Turner Brothers Asbestos Co in 1949 (from 1959 Chief Medical Officer). In 1965 he was appointed Medical Consultant to Turner & Newall, retiring in 1968.

Correspondence and papers chiefly re dust count surveys at TBA Ltd factories, Hindley Green and Rochdale.

Includes copies of minutes of meetings and reports of the Study Group to Investigate Dust Control, 1965-1968. The Group was originally chaired by Dr S Holmes (Head of Physics Research at TBA Co Ltd, Rochdate) and included W P Bamblin, M Nowell, A Austin, F Dobson and A G Spencer.

Correspondence and papers re health and asbestos, in particular crocidolite (blue asbestos) 1959-1982.

The aggregation was triggered by J C Wagner's discovery, in South Africa, of a probable relationship between exposure to crocidolite and mesothelioma. (See Wagner (1959), 'Some pathological aspects of asbestos in the Union of South Africa', in \Proceedings of the Pneumoconiosis Conference held at the University of Witswatersrand, Johannesburg, 1959\, ed. A J Orenstein (London: J&A Churchhill Ltd, 1960): 383–390).

Closes with a 6pp summary ‘T&N’s use and sale of blue asbestos’ (n.d.) and listing of ‘Asbestos and health: possible questions’ by PR company Hill and Knowlton International, London, c.1982.

Further includes photocopies of ‘Bulletin JWR’ (n.d., c.1960s).

Correspondence and papers re asbestos workers at the Havelock/Bulembu asbestos mine, Swaziland. The bulk of the file relates to an epidemiological study of workers at the mine, undertaken jointly by the Medical Research Council Pneumoconiosis Unit at Llandough Hospital, Penarth (Wales), T&N Ltd, Manchester, and the Havelock Mine, Swaziland.

Includes reports of visits to the mine, preliminary reports of the epidemiological study of chrysotile workers. The study was triggered by a report of Peter Elmes, at the time director of the MRC Pneumoconiosis Unit, Penarth, following a visit in 1978.