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Price's Patent Candle Factory

From London's Ghost Acres


Price's Patent Candle Company began manufacturing candles in 1830 as Edward Price and Co. William Wilson and his partner saw a gap between the expensive beeswax candles and cheap but poor quality tallow candles, and built a factory at Vauxhall intending to create that niche product. Instead of using those traditional candle-making materials, Edward Price and Co. created candles made out of Coconut Oil from Ceylon. They then made advancements to produce stearine from tallow and vegetable oils, and the process was also applied to other animal waste materials. Stearine made a candle that burned brightly without smoke or smell, and the new stearine composite candles were very popular. By 1847, when Edward Price and Co. became Price's Patent Candle Company, they were using Palm Oil harvested in West Africa to make candles. The increase in use of palm oil was significant because it provided an economic alternative to the thriving slave trade in Africa. Price's Patent Candle Company still produced their popular stearine candles, but the waste materials from the process of creating stearine became an issue. George Wilson, son of William Wilson, took some of these by-products, like glycerine and oleine, and began promoting them with various uses. In 1854, after oil was discovered in Burma, Price’s Patent Candle Company began distilling crude oil into benzene (advertised as a cleaning product), kerosene, and Paraffin Wax. By the turn of the century, 90% of candles were made from Paraffin Wax. A large amount of kerosene was exported to the United States of America before oil was discovered in Pennsylvania in 1859. Price’s Patent Candle Company lost their American market for kerosene, but continued to import crude oil from both the United States of America and Russia after discovering that kerosene and the waste oil leftover from the distillation process could be used as lubricating oils. As production increased, Price's Patent Candle Company built more factories. By 1855, they had two factories in London and a factory in Liverpool that was closer to their West African imported Palm Oil. Price's Patent Candle Company then became even more popular due to their religious and education programs set up for the child workers at their factories, which were unheard of at the time. In the early 20th century the company began building factories worldwide to be even closer to the raw materials.

http://www.prices-candles.co.uk/history/historydetail.asp


Operation

1830


Location

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Located in

London


Produced

Candles, Soap, Lubricating Oils, Glycerine, Oleine, Kerosene


Used Raw Materials

Tallow, Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Paraffin Wax


Ownership

From To Owner
1830 1919 Price's Patent Candle Company


Industry

From To Industry
1830 The date "{{{to_date}}}" was not understood.The date "{{{to_date}}}" was not understood. Soap, Candle and Related Fat Based Industires