Price's Candles

In 1840, Price's stearin 'composite' candles, produced from a mixture of refined tallow and coconut oil, gained prominence around the time of Queen Victoria's wedding.

The launch of their composite candle coincided with the wedding of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, initiating an ongoing royal connection.

The partners built a candle factory at Vauxhall on the Thames in South West London, a crushing mill just upriver at Battersea, and invested in 1,000 acres of coconut plantation in Sri Lanka.

The initial results were not very successful, but the infant company had a couple of good breaks: in 1831 the candle tax was abolished and by 1835 it had developed better chemical processes to obtain solid fats.

By mixing a strong alkali with vegetable or animal fats he discovered that the solution separated into liquid and solid components.

William Wilson's son, George, experimented with this process by adding a further distillation using a vacuum or high-pressure steam he improved Chevreuil's chemistry.

Price's were now able to refine tallow and vegetable oils to produce a harder, pure white fat called stearin.

Another of George Wilson's innovations allowed Price's to use a second overlooked tropical product—Palm oil, extracted from the palm nut, harvested and processed in West Africa.

Slavery had been abolished in Britain and its colonies by 1833,[2] but a huge and lucrative market for African slaves continued in the United States, Brazil, and Arabia.

Slavery had become immensely unpopular in Britain and 'politically correct' products like Price's palm oil candles and non-slave-produced sugar were very popular.

To a Victorian factory owner, child labour was logical and attractive: it was cheap, flexible, and in some cases carried out intricate tasks that adults were incapable of.

Here Price's eventually built a village of 147 houses with church, institute, shop and library for its workforce of "come downs" (the Battersea families who migrated to the new factory).

As early as 1908 an attempt to drive to the South Pole was made using a car lubricated by Price's Oils as were, more successfully, the Norton motorbikes that won at Le Mans in the 1920s.

nightlight (to be lit in every front and back window and designed to scare off criminals) and candles for coal miners, the navy, engineers, and emigration ships.

Tapered Venetians, spirals, flutes, and candles with self-fitting ends in many colours replaced the utilitarian white, cylindrical products of the mid-century.