Henry Jones (c. 1812 – 12 July 1891) was a baker in Bristol, England, who was responsible in 1845 for inventing self-raising flour.
He established a family business called Henry Jones (Bristol) Ltd. His flour meant that hard tack could have been removed from sailors of the British Navy but the admiralty resisted for some years.
He was granted a patent in the USA on 1 May 1849,[1] and in 1852 the first gold medal for the new flour was issued to a Chicago firm using the Bristol formula.
It took Jones some years to convince the British Admiralty of the benefits of using the new flour in preference to the hard biscuits to which sailors were accustomed.
[2] Finally, in 1855, his flour was approved for use of participants in the Crimean War, partly at the behest of Florence Nightingale.