Innovations from the front-line to food storage
The pioneering work of Pasteur, Lister and others in the 1860s on “germ theory” was at last becoming accepted.
Over the next 20 years, George Fowler’s inventive mind was to be spurred on by his knowledge of germ theory and infection control. His experiences of army food in India led to a desire to improve diet and food hygiene for the troops, particularly the sick and wounded.
At the Royal Military Exhibition in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea in 1890, Sgt Major George Fowler was awarded a Diploma of Merit for “an improved cooking apparatus suitable for hospital diets and rations.” He went on to develop and patent the Fowler Camp Oven.
The Maidstone Company, Volunteer Medical Staff Corps encamped at Netley in 1893, where it was recorded: “The feature of the camp was Sergeant Major Fowler’s patent camp kitchen, which was used in camp for the first time, and gave complete satisfaction.”
The Fowlers were already thinking ahead to the time when George would finally leave the Army, and so he had also been working on his ideas of domestic food preservation.
This was not a new concept. John Kilner had been producing jars since 1842.
By 1898 George Fowler had invented and patented a clip system which held the glass lid onto the jar during the sterilising process and a boiling pan to hold the jars.
As George was still a serving officer, a company was estab- lished at 19 Knightrider Street, Maidstone under Elizabeth’s maiden name, E. Lee and Co.
In 1900 the Royal Horticultural Society awarded a Silver Banksian Medal to Messrs. Lee for their invention of a preserving apparatus.
When George died in 1923 his daughters carried on the business until the company was finally taken over by Sharps Kreemy Toffees of Maidstone in the late 1950s. The name of Fowler in connection with bottling and preserving was set to continue until 1983.
George Fowler had licensed the use of his patents to his nephew, Joseph, on the understanding that he would emigrate. Fowler’s Vacola bottling company was established in Australia in 1915 and continued until 1983 when it became part of Hooper Baillie Industries.