A spoonful of sugar
Bryan Mawer’s website was inspired by a German sugarloaf maker, Alan Crosby learns
This month I’m looking at a wellestablished website which is always expanding as new material is added. Bryan Mawer has spent years researching the sugar-refining trade, and has published a definitive book on the subject in conjunction with the Anglo- German Family History Society. But though his site is amazingly wide-ranging there’s still so much to be discovered. He has posted many requests for further information and ideas for continuing research.
Sugar-refining began in London in the 1540s, when cane sugar first reached these shores. It expanded rapidly in the 18th century, peaked in the years before the First World War, and has now almost vanished. But in its heyday, this was a major business in many large towns and ports of Great Britain and Ireland. And crucially much of the knowhow came from Germany. Large numbers of German sugarbakers and refiners and their families migrated to the British Isles in the 18th and 19th centuries. Census returns from 1851 and 1861 highlight the German origins of many families in the trade.
Bryan’s website is very comprehensive – a shining example of the range and variety of sources available to build up the history of a trade and its workforce. He gives details of letters, testimonials, census entries, fire insurance documentation, title deeds, parish records, wills and inventories, reminiscences, handbooks and the physical evidence of moulds, jars and ‘sugar loaves’. The history of sugar-refining, its buildings and architecture and that vital German connection are all covered, and there are separate essays on, for example, the industry in Liverpool and other centres.
For family historians there’s fascinating material, including a database of over 41,000 names culled from many archival sources. A portrait gallery of photographs and paintings rubs shoulders with technical descriptions of the processes involved. Sections are devoted to architectural images, checklists of fires (this was a very dangerous trade and conflagrations were frequent), and a lengthy list of newspaper reports relating to sales.
There can’t be many history websites with so much information. I discovered that in my city, Preston, there was a sugarhouse in Back Lane. I’d never heard of it before... something for me to explore further! And the database is fully searchable by name, so if you have German forebears or ancestors in the trade this is the place to start your research. I asked Bryan, for whom this site has been a labour of love, what triggered his own interest in the subject. He told me that it was all down to Herman!
When pursuing his own family history, he came across Herman Almeroth, a 4x great grandfather in Whitechapel, London. Bryan’s uncle told him that Herman was “a sugarloaf maker from Germany”. Further research showed that Herman had married in Stepney in 1793; had eight children (only three survived to adulthood); laboured in a sugarhouse until he could afford his own business, which he began in Mile End New Town in 1806; and died in 1812, aged 50, of ‘ livergrown’ – the temperature in a sugarhouse was so unbearably high that the men worked almost naked and drank beer rather than water.
Tracing more about Herman’s origins, Bryan began recording information about other sugarbakers, where they lived and worked. With warm encouragement from the Anglo- German FHS, a small database went online in 2000 with just under a thousand names, and at that point the research for the website took over from the family history. The database is now over 40 times larger... and he’s still not found Herman’s origins!
Sugar-refining began in London in the 1540s, when cane sugar first reached these shores