I was delighted to see an article I wrote for London Historians – about the history of canned food – in this months Newsletter.
For those who are in any way interested in the history of London the London Historian website is a fascinating place to visit – and indeed to join the group, headed by Mike Paterson. He can be contacted at London Historians, 24 Ashfield Road, Salisbury, Wilts SP2 7EW
With thanks to Mike I set out the article I wrote, about a remarkable engineer and inventor who, just about, qualifies as a Georgian even if his influence was mostly felt during the Victorian era.
Portrait of Bryan Donkin
Throughout the eighteenth century there were a number of ways to preserve foodstuffs – in particular with salting, smoking, sugaring and pickling processes. However, the scene really changed after 1813 with the development of the tin can – or more accurately, the wrought-iron can, plated with tin on the inside.
For the general public the change that canning brought to the domestic scene took half a century and it wasn’t until the Great Exhibition of 1851 that the public really began to appreciate the huge range of foodstuffs available in all seasons, thanks to canning.
It had all started with the French Government seeking ways to improve army rations during the Napoleonic Wars. A massive reward of 12,000 francs was offered to anyone finding a way of preserving meat and other foodstuffs so as to enable troops to remain actively engaged during winter months, when fresh supplies were limited.
In 1806 a French confectioner called Nicolas Appert came up with the idea of airtight food preservation, using glass bottles which were sealed after being filled. The actual science behind the idea was not worked out until Louis Pasteur came up with an explanation of what we now know as pasteurisation, during the 1860s. Appert was awarded the prize, but glass bottles were never going to be an ideal solution.
Medal commemorating Philippe de Girard
Another Frenchman, the inventor Philippe de Girard, came up with the idea of lining an iron can with tin (so that the contents never came into contact with the iron casing, causing corrosion) but the end of the Napoleonic Wars meant that the idea was never fully investigated.
Instead, de Girard came to Britain and asked the merchant Peter Durand to act as his patent agent. In practice, Durand obtained the patent, numbered 3372, from George III on 25 August 1810 in his own name – and promptly sold the patent rights to businessmen Bryan Donkin (1768 – 1855) and John Hall for one thousand pounds. History gives Durand the credit for the canning process but in reality he didn’t deserve it. Donkin and Hall were the ones who experimented with ways of producing the cans in a factory environment. Meat was generally half-cooked before being put in the can whereas vegetables were put in raw. The can would then be boiled in water until all contents were fully cooked, before being capped either with a cork plug, a screw-cap with a rubber seal, or eventually with a soldered lid.
Production got underway in 1812 and was never easy as the cans were all hand-made, extremely heavy and costly to produce. Also, they needed special care in sealing the lid so that the contents were not contaminated by the lead solder used in the process. Donkin’s employees could each produce a maximum of six cans an hour. meaning that the daily output of the factory was extremely low. Right from the start, quality was seen as vital: each can was numbered and spent one month stored at between 90°C and 110°C before distribution.
One of the earliest cans manufactured by Donkin, Hall & Gamble
Donkin was an extraordinarily talented inventor and engineer. He also came up with the idea of the steel pen nib, thereby making the quill pen obsolete.
Advertisement for Donkin & Co’s steel pen.
Rather more complicated, he invented a way of making paper by machine and developed another machine which could then store the paper in a continuous roll. He also assisted Charles Babbage in resolving problems encountered in the manufacture of Babbage’s Difference Engine but it is in the field of canning where he was especially important.
Donkin’s canning endeavours were assisted by some clever marketing. In April 1813 the company sent samples of their products to the Duke of Wellington. He described the meat as tasty and recommended that it should be adopted by both the Army and the Navy. In June 1813 the firm submitted samples of their tinned beef at a dinner held by the Duke of Kent and attended by both the Prince Regent and the Duke of York and by their mother, Queen Charlotte. They all apparently enjoyed the experience and enthusiastically asked for more details.
By the end of 1813 Donkin’s company, operating from premises in Blue Anchor Lane, Bermondsey, had secured contracts to supply tinned goods to both the British army and the Royal Navy, albeit on a small scale. In particular, agents were appointed along the South Coast, including Portsmouth, so that naval ships could be provisioned with canned goods before embarking on long voyages.
Initially the canned food was intended to speed the recovery of any sailors who fell ill. William Warner, surgeon on board the ship Ville de Paris, writing in 1814 that it ‘forms a most excellent restorative to convalescents, and would often, on long voyages, save the lives of many men who run into consumption [tuberculosis] at sea for want of nourishment after acute diseases’. He continued: ‘My opinion… is that its adoption [i.e. canned food] generally at sea would be a most desirable and laudable act’.
By 1821 the firm had naval contracts to supply 9000 pounds in weight of beef, mutton, carrots, parsnips and soup. Soon, canned food was being taken on Arctic explorations, such as the one led by Sir William Parry in 1824 while searching for the North-West Passage. Suddenly, foodstuffs could be preserved, not for months but years.
Detail from Sir Joshua Reynold’s portrait of Sir Joseph Banks. Image: National Portrait Gallery.
On behalf of the Royal Society Sir Joseph Banks opened a can two and a half years after it had been sealed and declared it to be in a perfect state of preservation. Later, Banks was to remark that canning one of the most important discoveries of the age.
The domestic scene would have to wait another forty years before canning reached the kitchen – not least because no-one had invented the can opener! For the first five decades each can had to be opened with a hammer and chisel or, in the case of cans used by the army, with the point of a bayonet. It was not until 1855, when Englishman Robert Yates came up with a simple hand-held implement with a piercing blade and saw, that cooks could ‘have a stab’ at opening the tins, which by then were made of steel rather than wrought iron. In 1870 William Lyman developed the rotary cutter design with a wheel, making it safer and easier to open the cans.
The story continues with two entrepreneurs called Edmund Crosse and Thomas Blackwell. Both had been apprenticed in 1819 to the firm of West & Wyatt, operating out of premises at 11 King Street, Soho, and which specialised in handling seal and whale oils as well as dealing in pickles, sauces, condiments and salted fish. Crosse and Blackwell went into partnership, bought out West & Wyatt for £600 and moved the business upmarket by diversifying into packaged groceries. They received a Royal warrant (for ‘oilery in ordinary’) from Queen Victoria just after she came to the throne in 1837 and two years later they relocated the business to 21 Soho Square. Before long they had expanded into the canning industry and in 1864 took over the business established by Donkin & Hall fifty years earlier. The company expanded its London factory to include premises in Charing Cross Road and it wasn’t until 1921 that the link with London ended when all manufacturing moved to Branston in Staffordshire where, of course, Branston Pickle had been developed some considerable time earlier.
An early newspaper advertisement promoting food canning.
Not all canning companies had the high standards set by Donkin and followed up by Crosse & Blackwell. One supplier of tinned goods to the Admiralty was a certain Stephen Goldner who had secured a contract to supply the Navy with tinned foodstuffs in 1845. The contract was greatly expanded in 1847 when the Navy introduced a rule that preserved meat should be served on a set day each week. Complaints about quality started to appear and therefore in January 1852 a group of meat inspectors gathered at the Royal Clarence Victualling Yard in Portsmouth to test a batch of Goldner’s cans. It transpired that not only had Goldner cut costs by establishing his factory in what in now Romania, where labour costs were minimal and totally lacking in supervision, but he did not even draw the line at using equine and even canine ingredients in with his prime beef! Worse, the meat was generally rotten, with some of it taken from animals which were clearly diseased. In some cases the cans were not sealed correctly and the result was an appalling scene as hundreds of cans of putrid meat had to be thrown into the sea. Only 42 out of 306 cans which were opened were found to be edible, and the contents of those cans were distributed to the poor.
Unfortunately for the canning industry the story was picked up and publicised by the Illustrated London News. As a result of the case, the public associated tinned food with getting food poisoning and it took another ten years for the industry to recover. By the 1860s public concerns had diminished and it was recognised that canning was a value-for-money way of providing nutritious meals for an ever-increasing population. By 1865 Britain’s first mechanised meat-canning factory had been established and the tin can has never looked back. Soon there was corned beef with its side-opening key. There were sardines in cans with lids which could be rolled back with an integral key and in 1901 Heinz introduced their tins of baked beans to the eager British public.
So do spare a thought for Bryan Donkin – nowadays rarely remembered for his achievements. He was buried in the Nunhead Cemetery in Southwark.
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