Candle Soap Making

Charles Upfold (15 December 1834 - 14 March 1919), Justice of the Peace (9 September 1887), was an English soap manufacturer of great prominence in Australia. more...

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Family & background

Charles Upfold was born in Grove Street, Walworth Common, (both now gone), Surrey (today Walworth, London), then a prosperous middle-class district. His father, John Upfold, was a fellmonger. Charles was baptised in Sir John Soane's new St.Peter's Church of England at Walworth, on 7 January 1835. An excellent photograph of this splendid church can be found on page 206 of London's Churches by Christopher Hibbert.

Charles Upfold served his apprenticeship as a soap maker with John Knight & Co. at their Wapping soapworks in London, just across the river from the parishes where Charles's father resided and worked. Knight's Castile soap is still sold today. His sister, Eliza, married John Knight junior. Charles was later a Director of Knights.

Charles appears on the UK 1851 Census Return, with his parents and married sister Eliza at 11 Brandon Street, parish of St.Mary Newington, London, (then in Surrey), where he is described as a "soap maker".

Business in New South Wales

In 1860 he was already engaged in business in New South Wales and upon his marriage at West Maitland, New South Wales in 1864 (to Sarah, née Blundell, from Finchley), he was described as a "soap maker". When his first son, John, was born in 1865 at Morpeth, New South Wales, Charles was described as a soap-boiler, aged 27 years and born at Walworth, London, England. When his son Robert was born in 1869, Charles was described as a "soap manufacturer".

That year Charles Upfold purchased the soap and candle factory of Frederick Nainby at Wickham and Honeysuckle Point, Newcastle, and in the Newcastle Chronicle of 16 May 1869 there is a reference to the "Great Northern Soap and Candle Works, proprietor, Charles Upfold." By the following year Upfolds plants were producing 9,420 hundredweight of soap and 600 cwt of candles. By 1872 soap production had increased to 21,000 cwt. Most was exported, much to China. That year Upfold expanded his Australian trading links by establishing a Sydney office at 50 Clarence Street.

By 1873 Charles Upfold was an Alderman of the newly incorporated Municipality of Wickham, a position he held for some years as evidenced by his further nomination for the Tighe's Hill Ward published in the Newcastle Morning Herald on 21st January 1888.

In 1877 Charles Upfold was back in London and visiting factories in England. The following year the New South Wales Official Post Office Directory, has listed under the now entirely separate heading of "Wickham", "Charles Upfold, soap manufacturer" (p.621). Interestingly, also in Wickham in the same directory were Charles's three brothers-in-law, Albert, James, and John Blundell, who came from Finchley, Middlesex, (north London), and were clearly all working for Charles as their occupations are given as soap-boilers.

Read more at Wikipedia.org