A HISTORY OF SURREY 



king and the London company arrangements 

 had been made for the erection of six factories 

 in or near the city of London or in the 

 borough of Southwark.* Overman and 

 Edmund Whitwell, another of the new soap- 

 makers, had both sufiFered for their opposition 

 to the Westminster company, and in 1633 

 had been imprisoned in the Fleet by a decree 

 of the Star Chamber.* Overman, it would 

 also appear, had been the ringleader in 1 634 

 of the independent soapboilers in bringing 

 forward propositions for the creation of a 

 new company in which they should be 

 incorporated.' 



One obstacle which had been thrown in 

 the way of the Westminster soap makers 

 may especially interest us because it concerned 

 another industry with which we have had 

 occasion to deal somewhat fully. The 

 obstacle arose from the collision with the 

 saltpetre men, into which the company's 

 agents were led in their quest for wood-ashes. 

 On 18 March 1633-4 the Lords of the 

 Admiralty wrote to the company to com- 

 plain that their deputies for making saltpetre 

 had been prejudiced by the company's agents 

 in this matter, and to urge that the saltpetre 

 men should be permitted to have the pre- 

 emption of wood-ashes. The original ground 

 on which they based their request was that 

 saltjjetre being so necessary a commodity for 

 the king and public it ought to be preferred 

 before the making of soap.* Apparently 

 however they thought better of such an 

 argument, and in the letter they actually 

 wrote stated that there was a sufficiency of 

 ashes both for the saltpetre men and the soap 

 boilers, if only the supply was orderly 

 managed." Eventually on 19 May 1636, 

 the matter seems to have been settled by the 

 potash makers being restrained from gather- 

 ing ashes within twelve miles of any of the 

 saltpetre men's * pitches,* and no ash-gatherers 

 being permitted unless licensed by either the 

 potash makers or the saltpetre men. Strict 

 measures were also to be taken to prevent 

 the export of ashes.' 



After this period until some time within 

 the last century we know of nothing in the 

 manufecture of soap in Surrey that calls for 

 particular notice, although we may assume 

 with every confidence that in Southwark at 

 least the industry has been continuously carried 



' Pat. 13 Chas. I. pt. 39, No. 12. 



» S.P. Dom. Chas. I. ccli. 72. 



' Ibid, cclxiiv. 53 i. 



' Ibid, ccxxviii. fo. 13117. 



' Ibid, cdxiii. i. 



• Ibid, cccxxi. 33, 49. 



on until the present day. Lambeth also, as 

 it was during the events we have just nar- 

 rated, has again been for long an important 

 seat of the industry. In 181 1 there were 

 two considerable soap works there,^ those of 

 Messrs. Phelps & Co. and of Messrs. Hawes, 

 The former had ceased to exist in 1826, for 

 we learn in that year that an extensive 

 building in the Belvedere Road, formerly a 

 soap manufactory, the principal manager of 

 which had been a person of the name of 

 Phelps, had then been recently pulled down. 

 The manufecture, we are further told, had 

 been commenced by several enterprising in- 

 dividuals, but from want of a sufficiently 

 extensive connection the speculation had 

 failed.* Messrs. Hawes' works at the old 

 Royal Barge-house continued on, and in 

 1850 were said to have existed for seventy- 

 five years.' We then find that they com- 

 bined the manufacture of soap with that of 

 candles. In their great boiling-room for hard 

 soap were ten coppers, averaging 8 feet in 

 diameter, which were heated by steam. 

 The boiling by steam had been found to be 

 a great improvement. The quantity of soap 

 made by them had then exceeded 60 tons 

 per week or about 4,500,000 lb. a year. 

 They were said to have been the first to 

 have prepared their own alkali, but since the 

 removal of the duty on salt had given a pre- 

 ponderating advantage in the production of 

 soda to the coal districts, they had relinquished 

 that part of their business. From this cause 

 and from the employment of machinery in 

 the dipping and moulding of candles they had 

 reduced the number of their men from one 

 hundred and sixty during eight months of 

 the year to less than sixty the year through. 

 The quantity of candles they annually turned 

 out at this period was from six to eight hun- 

 dred tons. 



Another Lambeth firm in 1850 was 

 Messrs. Cole & English, of the Belvedere 

 Road, who had been established there since 

 1 813. As some index to the comparative 

 proportions of material and labour employed 

 in the manufacture, we are told that they 

 boiled 120 tons of tallow, 100 tons of kitchen 

 stuff, 50 tons of rosin and 70 tons of alkali, 

 or about four times as much grease as alkali, 

 and employed ten men.^" 



Of the 1 70,000,000 lb. of soap annually 

 made in England in the same year, 46,000,000 

 lb. were produced in London and its vicinity, 



' Lysons, Environs of London (ed. 2), i. 229. 



8 Allen, Hist, of Lambeth (1826), 308. 



9 Brayley and Britten, Hist. ofSurr. v. App. 41. 

 " Ibid. 40. 



404 



