Alizarin

 

Researching Deptford Creek has never failed to turn up things to surprise me.  I thought that by now I would have got to the Thames, done the East India Company and General Steam – and that would be it. But I see new sites and workplaces all the time and when I start looking more closely to see who they are I realise see they are people with activities I just can’t miss out.

My latest find is a works for company called is ‘The Alizarin and Anthracene Co.’ which was apparently, in Stowage between General Steam and William Walker’s shipyard (oh! And William Walker’s shipyard is another site I wasn’t aware of!).  This was in the late 1870s when such chemicals were cutting edge – a cutting edge so sharp it was leading to a lot of international skulduggery. This has been covered in numerous academic theses and reference books – but this company doesn’t feature in any of those works or the lists of those involved in researching and making these chemicals. So what's it all about?

Basically it is about dyes. Alizarin is a red dye and was traditionally made from a plant source – Madder. In the 19^th century it was discovered that it could be made at a fraction of the cost from Anthracene, which was itself a derivative of coal tar. The story of these synthetic dyes is repeated in most histories of dye stuffs and of the chemical industry.  Much of it resulted from scientists who worked in and moved between academic and commercial organisations in Europe. The most influential was Wilhelm von Hoffman.  The competition between companies, scientists and nations was intense.

The story has often been told of William Perkin, a carpenter’s son from Stepney, who while studying under Hoffman at the Royal College of Chemistry in 1856 discovered in his laboratory/garden shed how to make the dye – sometimes called aniline purple – and thus revolutionised the manufacture of dyes and  fashion – by producing vivid and dramatic colours through fast dyes available to all.  He was seventeen.   He somehow got the capital to open a factory at Greenford in West London and made his fortune. More discoveries continued - many by Perkin himself – factories opened, companies were founded and a major industry was launched.

Perkin’s firm also was the first to manufacture alizarin. He was later to give a detailed account of his work on the dye in the 1860s.  He patented his process in June 1869 a day later than a similar patent taken out by workers at a Berlin College  - the competition was that intense. Agreements followed but Perkin's process was to prevail, during the time when the Germans were immersed in the Franco-Prussian War.  So far – so well known.

So what has this factory in Stowage got to do with all this?  My problem is that I just don’t know.  As we will see, the end the result seems to be more to do with Health and Safety than dyes.  I have found no name connected with this factory that seems to have any connection with the many scientists working on these synthetic dyes.  The factory is not listed among others working in this area at the time.  It is a subject  area in which although I might not understand the chemistry, I did once know several people who had studied the structure of the industry – and I know where to look to find it  But – no, nothing!

The firm seems to have dated from the early 1870s. An advertisement of 1874 describes a wharf, dock, foreman’s cottage and ‘numerous substantial buildings erected and occupied by the Anthracene Company”.  It had Walker’s shipyard on one side of it and General Steam on the other. 

So who did it belong to? Who had set it up?  Only one name can be found associated with it – that of the major shareholder someone who held 338 shares among 400 available.  There is no sign of a scientist who has talked a rich man into backing his project, just the one shareholder, Emmanuel Antonius Mavrgordatos.  He came from a family whose members were described as having ‘ a status equal to a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire and also recognized as Princes of the Russian Empire.;’  He was born in Istanbul and seems to have returned there regularly although he actually seems to have been Greek. Someone with almost the same name was the Greek Foreign Minister in this period. He is described as a ‘merchant’, with no mention as to the merchandise, and also sometimes as a ‘banker’.  He is said to have come to London to join the firm of Mavrogordato and Scanavi of Finsbury Square – also described as ‘merchants’. There is a report of them being involved in a court case with a firm called Anglo Greek Shipping, and I don’t find a shipping interest a surprise at all.

One thing stands out for me which relates to his status in London – that is that he chaired the steering committee for the construction of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Divine Wisdom – St.Sophia’s in Bayswater.  That says to me ‘wealthy, trusted, elite, community leader’.  He is also said to have been the world’s first expert bridge player in the Club de Constantinople, Pera, Turkey and also in Manchester.  Otherwise in the posher newspaper his name appears in the guest lists of those sorts of events where everyone else is a princess or an ambassador, or something similar.  

So what was this cultured wealthy man doing in scruffy old Stowage. Again, I don’t know but he had walked into the most enormous row. 

The local papers in 1883 are full of reports endless meetings and prosecutions of the company – all of them lengthy and detailed.  I have no idea how many there are – a lost count and they all say the same things anyway. They are all complaining of stacks and stacks of containers of petroleum on site.  The issue had originally been raised by the General Steam Navigation Company who were eventually to launch a prosecution.  It was said there were 8,000 casks of petroleum stored on the wharf and a short distance from them were 2000 bundles of jute.  M. Skinner, the local collector of rates and an auctioneer pointed out that surrounding streets were densely populated.    Mr. Livingston, the Metropolitan Board of Works Petroleum Tester said the wharf was licensed for 12 months to have 3000 barrels of petroleum, but that the Board could do nothing unless the temperature of the petroleum reached a certain point.

The great Doctor Frederick Abel, no less, was asked to inspect and give evidence - he took his time and some hearings were delayed.  He doesn’t seem to have thought lots of petrol was dangerous – and I suppose that in comparison with the explosives he dealt with at Waltham Abbey and Woolwich it was relatively safe!  General Steam said the matter was too urgent to wait for him to turn up but eventually he did inspect and report. What he said was a bit ambivalent and not really what General Steam wanted to hear. Sir Frederick said that a ‘fired up timber stack would be more destructive than a blowing petroleum tank because the flames would rise higher and be more diffuse. Many people had seen petrol alight in dark clouds within which red flashes appear which develop into flame. Complainants conceded that the spontaneous combustion theory did not hold and that the company managed the Stowage Wharf ‘with all the care and caution that can be exhibited.  The danger was if the jute caught fire.

The eventual verdict of the prosecution by General Steam was that there was insufficient case for it to go before a jury but no costs were awarded, thus vindicating the case against the firm.  The Kentish Mercury went on to say that ’public opinion has already determined that the prosecution was in the interest of the public …. The question of those 'millions of gallons of petrol was not raised one day too soon’ …………. and the General Steam Co was behind the public interest. They did not believe Professor Abel that the timber stacks was more dangerous than the petroleum.  Reports were however going to the Metropolitan Board of Works and to the City Corporation's Common Council.

Strangely, while all this was going on, the Alizarin and Anthracene Co was being wound up. But no one seems to have mentioned that. In due course new rules needed to be made on the storage of petroleum and other inflammables.

It is really not clear what the purpose of this company was in terms of its manufacture, its limited range, and its low number of shareholders.  There was some international background. In 1881 the Alizarin Convention had been set up to regulate prices and allocate trade shares.   It consisted of nine German firms and just one British – Burt, Boulton and Hayward across the River at Prince Regents Wharf,  and who had already bought up Perkin’s Greenford works.  A group of Scottish firms got together to buy up the Burt Boulton and Hayward works at Silvertown and they prospered, but eventually following the 1917 TNT explosion at Silvertown, they moved to Manchester and eventually became part of ICI.    Through the 1880s and 1890s many court battles were fought on patent and other rights and the German firms dominated international markets.  Profits from Alizarin could be used to underwrite research into a growing range of synthetic dyes. German firms sold not only to the United States but increasingly in Asian and far eastern markets but by the start of the Great War the Swiss had taken over these German traders.

I don’t know what this works at Stowage was all about  and I have no idea what Emmanuel Mavrgordatos real intentions  were, but I did wonder if they were something to do with this world of international finance and dealings with which he was no doubt very familiar