Poppy Factory Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, who had created the Haig Fund to assist ex-servicemen and which still raises funds through the UK's annual poppy appeal. It grew from two employees in a former wood-chopping factory in the grounds of Whitefoord House to employ over 100 people by the mid-1930s, with a waiting list of over 300. In addition to the main task of making poppies, the employees made other goods by hand which were sold at three shops in Edinburgh and by a travelling shop throughout Scotland. The factory moved to its current premises, a former printing works,
Poppy goddess depiction and use of poppies in the Greco-Roman myths is the symbolism of the bright scarlet colour as signifying the promise of resurrection after death and that the poppy was the emblem of the goddess Demeter. According to Theocritus for the Greeks Demeter was still a poppy goddess bearing sheaves and poppies in both hands ("Idyll" vii 157). Karl Kerenyi asserted that poppies were connected with a Cretan cult which was transmitted to the Eleusinian mysteries in Classical Greece: "It seems probable that the Great Mother Goddess who bore the names Rhea and Demeter, brought the poppy with her from