W.H. Burford, Thomas Walker leading quality soap/candle makers in Adelaide from 1840s
Aftermath of the 1919 fire at W.H. Burford and Sons soap, candle and related products factory in Sturt Street, Adelaide.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
The early South Australian colony built such expertise is soap and candle making that judges at the Adelaide exhibition in 1845 declared that it was unnecessary and unprofitable to import those items any more.
Thomas Walker in Wakefield Street,and William Burford in Grenfell Street set up soap and candle factories in Adelaide in 1840-41.
Walker’s soaps were praised by the 1845 exhibition judges as the quality equal of England’s Paton and Charles, with product from Burford’s and Wright and Linn’s Hindmarsh factory not far behind. The top soap maker was one of South Australia’s first eminent horticulturalists, Anthony Hopkins Davis of Moore Farm.
Burford started his factory on the corner of Grenfell Street and East Terrace (where Tandanya Aboriginal institute now stands) in a tin shed in a vacant field. But encroaching homes would start the complaints that dogged all soap and candle makers: the smell from boiling down tallow (rendered animal fat).
W.H. Burford and Sons took over Apollo Soap Ltd in Adam Street, Hindmarsh, in 1887 and, when it burnt down, Frearson’s Printing Works, also in Adam Street. Next move was in 1900 to Sturt Street, Adelaide, premises of competitor Tidmarsh & Co. An expanded factory with the latest technology to cut the smell failed to stop the protests from neighbours.
After another fire, the final move was to a former smelter at Dry Creek in the 1920s when Burfords, who also set up in Western Australia, merged with J. Kitchen of Melbourne and Lever Brother of Sydney and were bought out by Unilever (Australia) in 1957.
Thomas Walker's enterprise was producing about 2,000 pounds of candles in 1876 but it hit a block when it put plans to Woodville Council to build a factory at Ridleyton. This was resisted by residents, especially in the popular middle-class suburb of Croydon, anticipating the the bad smell from the factory.
