The Beneke family in Deptford

 

Working down the Lewisham side of the creek and Creek Street from where the APT building is now, in the past we would have come to a massive chemical works lying between Harold Wharf and the railway.  This works is marked on maps and plans as belonging to F.C.Hills and we will meet him in the coming weeks. But first we have to look at three German brothers and the origins of this works.  Their name was Beneke – often also spelt Benecke – and they were established business and family men in their 40s.

In 1806 the City of Hamburg was invaded and taken over by the French –Napoleon Bonaparte -   Hamburg’s merchants had joined the ‘Vigilantes’ militia and fought back.   One of these merchants was Johann Beneke. He came from Hanover where his father had an oilcloth factory but he was interested in chemistry and dyes and so he had opened a factory to make acetic acid in Hamburg with a younger brother.  In 1813 there was an uprising of local people against the French and after a series of incidents the French regained control. At a battle in the suburb of Williamsburg, Johann Beneke was captured and taken to prison at Dinon in France. After four months there incarcerated there he managed to escape but back in Hamburg all his property had been destroyed.  I also think that Beneke was probably Jewish and that there was a new regime of discrimination in Hamburg - but I have not found this mentioned in accounts of Johann’s life. 

When Johann was arrested his brother Wilhelm fled to England with his eldest son where he founded a verdigris factory on the banks of Deptford Creek.  Verdigris is the green stuff which appears on copper and it would have been used to make a dye. Accounts of the Beneke’s Deptford works always refer to it as a ‘verdigris works’ – but in fact they made a wide variety of other chemicals. 

Johann joined Wilhelm in Deptford and they developed the factory over the next ten to twelve years.  Neither of them liked the English weather and in 1828 their partnership was dissolved and they returned to Germany. Wilhelm became ill and moved to Heidelberg where he wrote a number of important books, mainly about insurance.  Johann went to Goslar – today a World Heritage site with a huge industrial museum at nearby Rammelsberg.  In Goslar Johann was involved in a new chemical works but he would eventually return to England with new technologies.  After Johann and Wilheim left England the Deptford works was taken over by Wilhelm’s son Friedrich. His son, Carl Victor was born in Deptford in 1831 – and we’ll come back to him later.

Now, I don’t know what the Beneke’s were making at Deptford but, because of the research I did for my PhD on the gas industry, I know that they were buying a lot of waste ammoniacal liquor from the early gas works in London.  I have many, many accounts of this and to be honest I don’t know what they were doing with it.   I also know that they had some financial arrangements with the Pearson family who had the nearby copperas works and that some, or all, of the works was eventually leased to them.  Also that both Wilhelm and Friedrich took out patents for various chemical processes.  In 1830 they had extended their works to include the ‘old’ gas works site in Norway Street – which later beaame the Victoria Iron Works.  But after four years they retreated back across the Creek.   There was also a joint patent and an attempt to set up an ‘oil machine’ business in Kingston on Hull with Henry Blundell, whose firm eventually beaame Crown Paints.

Meanwhile in Goslar Johann worked as a metallurgist and beaame head of a vitriol – sulphuric acid – factory.  He also had a brief say in Russia where he set up a verdigris factory – but came back because he didn’t like the weather there, either.  Both brothers seem to have taken themselves off to various German spa resorts to recover after being exposed to ‘foreign’ weather. 

In Goslar Johann had developed new ways of making sulphuric acid. I just want to flag up the importance of sulphuric acid.  Disraeli is said to have described the production of sulphuric acid as a barometer of a nation’s degree of industrialisation. Britain was producing 600,000 tons by 1870—more than any other country. There were various ways of making it and up until the early 19^th century it had often been made as a product of copperas works – like the one in Deptford.  We should note that the Deptford copperas works seems to have closed down around the time that Johann returned to England in the 1830s.  

I don't know what exactly the Beneke’s were doing at their Deptford works. It is said in some German sources that he made sulphuric acid using pyrites which would ‘usually be thrown in the river’ and what were they doing with all that ammoniacal liquor?

They certainly made money out of it and perhaps we should also look at Ruskin Park in Denmark Hill where family members - probably Friedrich - lived in a big house which was eventually demolished so the park could be built...  One of the features of the park is the Mendelssohn sundial, which has recently been restored .It was erected to commemorate the visit of the composer Felix Mendelssohn to the area.  Great composer or not Mendelssohn found it convenient to stay with relations when he visited London – and of course some of his famous compositions relate to Camberwell, nearby to Denmark hill and Ruskin Park.

Mendelssohn’s family also visited Camberwell and Friedrich Beneke’s son, Carl Victor, was to marry Mendelssohn’s daughter, Marie Helene.   They lived in London, and their son, Paul, was to become Professor of Philology at Oxford – who is said to have ‘known the railway timetable backwards’.

I wanted to finish with another Paul – Felix Mendelssohn’s second son - and perhaps demonstrate how chemical works run in families.  I remember a conversation with a member of a music society devoted to Mendelssohn’s work who just refused to believe that his hero could have had anything to do with something as murky as the chemical industry 

Paul Mendelssohn had studied science at Heidelberg University where he was a friend of Bunsen (of the burner). He later studied under Hoffman – who developed the basics of the aniline dye industry.   He then went, as Johann Beneke had done, to Rammelsburg and there set up a partnership with Alexander Martious to make the new and revolutionary aniline. They called themselves Akttien-Gesellschaft fur Anilin-Fabrikattion - and for short that’s AGFA – a well known firm, still with us today

In the 1841 census Friedrich William describes his occupation as a ‘merchant’.  From at least 1840 he had leased the Deptford chemical works to one, Frank Clarke Hills.