Joseph Florey heads Adelaide plant making 1000 pairs of shoes daily in early 20th Century
Joseph Florey's Standard Shoe and Leather Company factory in Gawler Place south, Adelaide, in 1902.
Image by Ernest Gall, courtesy State Library of South Australia
Joseph Florey, the father of Howard Florey – one of Adelaide’s four Nobel Prize winners – was manager of the Standard Shoe and Leather Company, a manufacturing and importing business with factories in Adelaide and Melbourne entering the 20th Century.
Standard Shoe and Leather was part of the largest boot manufacturing operation in the southern hemisphere with 1,000 staff nationally. The Adelaide factory had nearly 300 staff and produced 1,000 pairs of footwear a day.
At a time when the issue of sweated labour was at the forefront (Florey had escorted members of a royal commission that looked at conditions in shops and factories in 1892), Standard Shoe and Leather was reported to have no one under the age of 14 employed. The staff were paid weekly for a 48 hours of work (including Saturday 8am to 12.45pm) with a 30-minute lunch break each day.
The Advertiser in October 1907 reported on the company’s annual picnic at Long Gully with Florey toasted as a “keen businessmen and a kind and popular employer”. Florey replied that the company had made “rapid and satisfactory progress” during the year, leading to a large factory being opened in Melbourne.
But,in 1909, the Standard Shoe and Leather Company factory on Gawler Place south in Adelaide was bought by Lewis Cycle Works, makers and importers of cycles, motor cycles and motor cars. Florey appeared in the 1910 Lewis register holding 3,050 of its shares.
Florey had acquired the wealth to move his family in 1906 from Malvern to the historic Coreega House on Carrick Hill Road (formerly Fullarton Road) in Springfield. His son Howard was able to attend the Collegiate of St Peter and then Adelaide University.
Joesph Florey died in 1919 – the same year as Vivian Lewis of Lewis Motor Works.