Entrepreneur set to become first woman on a £20 note ‘exploited and starved her staff’

The decision by Royal Bank of Scotland to make Kate Cranston (1849 – 18 April) the first woman - other than the Queen or Queen Mother - to feature on a Scottish £20 note has run into strong criticism after it emerged that tea room matron was said to have exploited her young workers.

RBS took the decision based on what it said was her image as a pioneering entrepreneur for the establishing of her Willow Tea Rooms on Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street, which sparked a quiet social revolution by giving women a place where they could meet unchaperoned in stylish surroundings.

But, The Times newspaper has now uncovered evidence which suggests the young women who worked in the luxurious Charles Rennie Mackintosh-designed surroundings were forced to “fast” as they endured gruelling 78-hour weeks.

The news casts an uncomfortable - and possibly costly - question over RBS’s description of Cranston as a woman who “embodied entrepreneurship and really made a difference” when they announced her last month as the face of their latest polymer notes.

The accusations of Cranston’s cruel practices are sourced by the newspaper from a document called Miss Cranston’s Establishments: Rules for Girls more than 80 years after her death.

The rule book, which was circulated in 1911, reveals that those employed in the tea rooms were required to work 13 hours a day, six days a week and were given only ten minutes for a stingy lunch break.

The book said: “Lunch is to consist of a cup of cocoa or glass of hot milk and a biscuit. To ensure promptitude, time must be given to the manageress before and after.”

Cranston’s staff were given “half an hour each for breakfast, dressing and dining” before shifts in the morning and a 15-minute tea break in the afternoon.

The rule book adds: “When employees are off duty through illness, Miss Cranston does not hold herself bound to pay wages but she will consider each case on its merits, taking into account ability, length and regularity of attendance and general faithfulness. Should any girl lose an hour in any one week she will forfeit her next Saturday off.”

And if modern observers might be inclined to view the conditions as typical of the age, the newspaper points out that Cranston’s working conditions were, in fact, heavily criticised at the time.

An article published in Forward, a left-leaning Glasgow newspaper, in 1911, claimed that the lack of a lunchtime meal meant that her employees were little more than “professional fasters”.

Reacting to the findings, Pauline McNeill, the Labour Party’s equalities spokeswoman and a Glasgow MSP, cast doubts on the wisdom of RBS’s decision to select Cranston for the notes which are due to enter circulation next year.

“ was undoubtedly an impressive woman and successful entrepreneur,” she said. “However, considering that newspapers were calling on authorities to intervene against the exploitation of Kate Cranston’s employees at the time, she may not have been the best choice given the many other great women RBS could have chosen.”

It contrasted the meals enjoyed by middle-class tea room customers with the near starvation endured by the working-class waitresses and called for the authorities to intervene.

The paper wrote: “The imaginary banquets of the Arabian Nights are all very well in their way, but obesity and overindulgence such as Miss Cranston promotes carries the joke to the other extreme. Has the public prosecutor no powers?”

The Times said RBS had declined to comment on its revelations but last month Malcolm Buchanan, chairman of its Scottish board, said: “Her (Cranston’s) legacy touches so many aspects of Scottish life that we, as a nation, are justifiably proud.”

Ruth Reed, the bank’s senior archivist, said: “Kate Cranston was proposed and quite rightly as she is a great example of how good entrepreneurship has a positive knock-on effect in so many other ways.

“Then there is the fact that the tea rooms were a place where women could meet unchaperoned. It is hard to imagine how revolutionary that was.”