Qualla: Armley Asbestos Disaster

Armley Asbestos Disaster: Introduction

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Children in Armley used the dust to mark out hopscotch squares. They scooped it into snowballs and threw it at each other. It lay half an inch thick on window sills by mid-morning, blue-white and feather-light, drifting down from the ventilation outlets of the J.W. Roberts asbestos factory on Canal Road. The factory operated from 1906 until 1959. It was one of only two places in the world that processed blue asbestos, the deadliest variety. The disease takes thirty to fifty years to surface, which meant the consequences of those hopscotch squares did not arrive until the 1980s.

Read more: Armley Asbestos Disaster on Qualla

Armley Asbestos Disaster: The Factory and the Dust

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

J.W. Roberts Ltd. had begun in 1855 as a textile firm working cotton, hemp and jute. By 1906 it was making asbestos insulation mattresses for steam locomotive boilers from its Midland Works on Canal Road in Armley, a tight working-class neighbourhood in west Leeds. In 1920 it mer...

Read more: Armley Asbestos Disaster on Qualla

Armley Asbestos Disaster: What the Residents Remembered

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The court testimony from former neighbours is what makes the story unbearable. One man recalled his wife wiping down the window sills at 9.30 each morning, and finding the dust back to half an inch by 10.30 whenever the machines were running. A woman remembered: 'It used to be bl...

Read more: Armley Asbestos Disaster on Qualla

Armley Asbestos Disaster: Hancock and Margereson

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Arthur Margereson had grown up playing near the factory in the 1930s and 1940s, exposed to the dust as a child; by the time of the legal case he had died and was represented by his widow Evelyn. June Hancock had lived on the same streets. By the late 1980s both women were dying o...

Read more: Armley Asbestos Disaster on Qualla

Armley Asbestos Disaster: The Long Failure to Pay

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

June Hancock died on 19 July 1997. After her death the June Hancock Mesothelioma Research Fund was established to support victims and research. Around her case, hundreds more Armley residents came forward. T&N accepted liability for sixty additional claimants and then, in 1998, w...

Read more: Armley Asbestos Disaster on Qualla