The Cadbury brothers’ need to produce a popular product was becoming critical. Lacking the money to invest in the moulding machinery that was necessary to mass-produce such luxurious temptations as a chocolate bar, Richard and George struggled on producing cocoa as a drink mixed with questionable starches to absorb the fat. Their new products, Iceland Moss, Pearl Cocoa, Breakfast Cocoa and others, had failed to make an impact, and their losses continued to mount.
In response to yet another grim stocktaking, it fell to Richard to tackle the overdue accounts. ‘We made the lowest class of goods,’ George wrote later, and consequently they had some of the ‘least desirable custom’, who were not always ready or willing to settle their debts: ‘The small shopkeepers were constantly failing.’ Some went under without paying, putting Cadbury at risk of going under as well.
The public showed little appetite for cocoa mixed with lichen.
The brothers had resolved, whatever happened, not to take on any liabilities that they could not meet, or to turn to their father John for additional funds. Not unusually for the time, their only sister, Maria, now in her late twenties, had postponed any thoughts of marriage to devote herself to caring for their father. Inevitably she provided a focal point for family news. Their oldest brother John, after a brief attempt at farming in the West Country, had made the bold decision to emigrate to Australia, and had sailed from the East India Docks in London on 17 December 1863 on the ninety-day journey for Brisbane. Their younger brother Edward was embarking on a home-decorating business, and the youngest, Henry, was still at school. Maria, gentle, patient and unassuming, provided encouragement with a maternal eye.
Richard and George continued to work relentlessly, spending long days on the road selling their cocoas to reluctant grocers and returning to the warehouse to pack the orders themselves if hands were lacking. The shortage of money was proving a strain at home. Richard’s oldest son, Barrow, later recalled a family outing to Pebble Mill, ‘where there was a pretty stream’. His mother, Elizabeth, suddenly felt unwell, but his parents elected ‘to tramp all the way back again when his father would have given so much, had he been able, to take her home in a cab’.
The struggle was also taking its toll on the brothers’ relationship. Richard and George often took very different views about how to proceed. With their offices next door to each other, they were careful to keep any disagreements private, debating their options until one had convinced the other of the best way forward. To their staff they appeared united – according to Elizabeth they won the nickname ‘the Cheeryble Brothers’, after the philanthropic twins in Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby.
All the brothers’ industry and virtue made no difference. At the end of four years they were facing disaster. ‘All my brother’s money had disappeared,’ George admitted. ‘I had but 1,500 left – not having married.’ There were insufficient funds left of their inheritance to develop a business that was in desperate need of capital for mechanisation. ‘I was preparing to go out to the Himalayas as a tea planter,’ said George. ‘Richard was intending to be a surveyor.’
The Cadbury business was all but dead.
Chapter 5
Absolutely Pure and Therefore Best
George Cadbury was considering one final reckless gamble. It would consume every last penny of his inheritance, but as long as he did not fall into debt or the great disgrace of bankruptcy, he felt it was a risk that had to be taken.
The more he learned about the Dutch manufacturer Coenraad van Houten, the more intrigued George became. Dixon Hadaway told him that van Houten’s refined, de-fatted cocoa was now so popular it was on sale in regional centres like Leeds and Liverpool, as well as London. Gradually George began to realise that this was the model he should follow. Refined cocoa surely held the key to the future.
George discovered that the secret of van Houten’s success lay with an invention he had developed with his father, Casparus, more than thirty years earlier. The van Houtens knew that established methods of boiling and skimming the bean resulted in an indigestible cocoa consisting of over 50 per cent cocoa butter. After experimenting with various designs of mechanical grinders and presses, they eventually perfected a hydraulic press that reduced the cocoa fat to less than 30 per cent. This meant that the often unappealing extras that had formerly been used to mop up the fat were no longer required. The result was a purer, smoother drink that tasted more like chocolate and less like potato flour.
The Dutch process remained secret, and no one in England, not even Fry, had discovered a way to manufacture a purer cocoa. George pondered this possible opportunity. Could this be the way to get ahead of their English rivals? Would the Dutch be prepared to sell the brothers their machine? If they had it, could they turn the factory around by using the cocoa butter produced by the refining process to create fancy chocolates like the French? Suddenly George could see a business future that made sense. Instead of using the bean to create one type of product, a fatty and adulterated cocoa, he could create two different products – pure cocoa and eating chocolate – using the most appropriate bit of the bean for each. A whole new set of possibilities opened up – if he could get only hold of van Houten’s machine.
‘I went off to Holland without knowing a word of Dutch,’ said George, and ‘saw the manufacturer with whom I had to talk entirely by signs and the dictionary’. George, plainly dressed, earnest, frustrated by the language barrier and absolutely sure that the odd-looking machine would save the Cadbury factory, was desperate to charm and persuade van Houten, and take home the prize.
Despite the difficulties in communication, van Houten succumbed, and a Dutch de-fatting machine was sold to the English Quaker gentleman. The records do not reveal the price that was agreed, but it is likely that it accounted for much of George’s remaining funds of around £1,000. He made arrangements to ship the monstrous machine back to Bridge Street. It arrived by canal, and the sturdy cast-iron apparatus, a full ten feet high, was then laboriously transported to the chocolate works. Worse, it was very greedy: its giant hopper had to be fed with a large amount of beans. The brothers had to find a way to shift their new drinking cocoa in volume, and fast.
Van Houten’s cocoa press.
Their preparations were hit by a double tragedy in the family. In January 1866 their younger brother, twenty-two-year-old Edward, died unexpectedly after a short illness. When their older brother, thirty-two-year-old John, wrote home in May from Brisbane to express his grief at the loss, Maria was alarmed to see that his writing appeared unsteady, and the letter was unsigned. Doctors in Australia diagnosed him as suffering from ‘colonial fever’, a form of typhus. News of his death on 28 May followed almost immediately.
George Cadbury in 1866, when the business was close to failure.
Richard Cadbury with his son Barrow in 1866.
The unexpected loss of two brothers in such quick succession made Richard and George feel their responsibilities even more keenly than before. The survival of the family business, and any hopes of future prosperity, depended on this last throw of the dice.
In