Charles Henry Garton (1859 - 1934)

Born 1859 in Bristol, England.

Ancestors

Son of William Garton and Ellen Miller (Littleton) Garton

Husband of Juliet (Westlake) Garton — married 1884 in South Stoneham, Hampshire, England.

Descendants

Died 19 Jun 1934 at about age 75 in Banstead, Surrey, England.

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Biography

Charles Henry Garton was the second of the five sons of William Garton (1832–1905), who, in the Census of 1861, described himself as a General Carrier. William then gradually diversified into brewing (Census 1871) and sugar refining (Census 1881). His father, also William Garton (1795–1833), had been a brewer in Bristol, and after William ’s early death his wife, Susannah Foley (1796–1880), kept the family brewery going, eventually with the help of her eldest son Charles Garton (1823–92), the brother of William, the uncle of Charles Henry Garton.

In 1847, Charles established Garton, Hill & Co. Ltd in Canute Rd, Southampton, and in 1855 this company, using Charles Garton’s patent, began to produce saccharin, a grape sugar (glucose) made out of cane sugar that was otherwise known as “invert sugar” and could be used in brewing, wine-making, distilling and jam-making. This invention, which had taken years of experiment and £30,000 of investment, brought about a revolution in the brewing industry especially, since it enabled brewers to move away from heavy, soporific beers and produce much lighter brews. In 1871, William , who had joined the family firm almost immediately after the plant was acquired in 1847, bought the Anglo-Bavarian Brewery in Shepton Mallet (est. 1864), England’s first lager brewery, whose name derived from the fact that it employed German brewers. The Gartons’ Southampton factory closed in 1882 when Garton and Sons moved its “Saccharum Works” to York Rd, Battersea, London SW11. Here, in 1893, it changed its name to Garton, Hill & Co. Ltd.; it finally closed in 1920.

In parallel with these developments, the Frenchman Alexander Mambré (later Manbré) (1825–1904) established his Saccharine Co. Ltd for turning starch into solid glucose sugar in London’s Spitalfields in 1855; it then moved to Hammersmith in 1876, a mere two miles away from the Gartons’ factory. But as, by 1918, the Manbré Saccharine Co. was in difficulties, Manbré was bought out and in 1919 the company changed its name to Manbré Sugar and Malt Ltd, with A. Boake (1844 [Ireland]–1925) as its Chairman (he left £227,881 3s.) and Albert Eustace Berry (1876–1961) as its Managing Director. By 1924, the two Hammersmith-based firms were making almost exactly the same thing – sugar and glucose for brewing, jam-making, and the manufacture of confectionery – and both firms were almost equally profitable (£247,149 and £212,982 in 1926, with their joint profits for 1920–26 averaging at £460,000 p.a.). In 1926, a proposal for an amalgamation turned into an outright sale when Manbré Sugar and Malt Ltd bought out the Gartons’ company for £2,300,000 and took over their Battersea works. The firm prospered, and when in September 1926 the new company, now calling itself Manbré and Garton, issued nearly 800,000 shares of various kinds, they were expected to yield between 7% and 11% profit.

During World War Two, Manbré and Garton developed a new and more rapid method for the production of penicillin in its Battersea factory using corn-steep liquor, and although it was badly damaged by a flying bomb in 1944, it was producing again in two days. The firm existed until 1976, when it was taken over by Tate and Lyle. Charles Henry had been the Chairman of the family firm (Garton, Sons & Co.) and became a Director of Manbré and Garton Ltd; he also became a Director of the brewers Thomas Wethered and Sons Ltd, which had been operating in the Marlow area since the late eighteenth century.

In 1893, Charles Henry used his increasing wealth to acquire Banstead Wood House, designed in 1884 by the architect Richard Norman Shaw RA (1831–1912) for the merchant banker the Hon. Francis Baring (1866–1938) in a style that is often – unfairly – described as “Stockbroker Tudor”, together with a 483-acre estate, near Chipstead, Surrey, which by 1900 had a domestic staff of ten (including a butler). The new owners’ relationship with the village of Banstead has been described as “feudal maybe, patriarchal certainly, but above all matriarchal”, and the Revd Arthur W. Hopkinson (1874–1960), Vicar of Banstead from 1918 to 1930, at a time when Banstead was rapidly changing from a one-street village into part of Greater London, has left us the following explanation for this description. Hopkinson was full of praise for the Garton family because it “stood for a great deal in the life of the parish”, and he recorded how they provided him, as Vicar, “with daily gifts of flowers, or fruit, or game, […] trips to dinner and the theatre in Town [… and] holidays in the Holy Land, in Algiers, on Dartmoor”, where, for some years, they owned a house at Throwleigh. He also tells us how Charles Henry, who chaired Banstead Parish Council from 1911 to 1927, provided the villagers with land for allotments during the war and subsequently, in 1931, gave the Banstead Parish Recreation Committee some valuable land in Garratts Lane to use as a playing field and recreation ground.

On his death, Charles Henry left his sons Charles Leslie and Arthur Stanley £2,709,702 net (c.£140 million in 2005), of which £1,406,910 was paid in tax, and individual bequests to seven hospitals; his funeral was attended by hundreds of mourners. When Juliet Garton died a few weeks after her husband, she, too, left nearly £3 million.

Sources

• "England and Wales Marriage Registration Index, 1837-2005," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:2DVY-N7H : 13 December 2014), Juliet Westlake, 1884; from "England & Wales Marriages, 1837-2005," database, findmypast (http://www.findmypast.com : 2012); citing 1884, quarter 3, vol. 2C, p. 101, South Stoneham, Hampshire, England, General Register Office, Southport, England.

• "England and Wales Birth Registration Index, 1837-2008," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:26Y9-T3C : 1 October 2014), Charles Henry Garton, 1859; from "England & Wales Births, 1837-2006," database, findmypast (http://www.findmypast.com : 2012); citing Birth Registration, Bristol, Gloucestershire, England, citing General Register Office, Southport, England.

• "England and Wales Census, 1881," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q274-TMY6 : 13 December 2017), Charles Garton in household of William Garton, Hound, Hampshire, England; from "1881 England, Scotland and Wales Census," database and images, findmypast (http://www.findmypast.com : n.d.); citing p. 48, Piece/Folio 1217/27, The National Archives, Kew, Surrey; FHL microfilm 101,774,550.

• "England and Wales Census, 1901," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X9XR-1GW : 20 May 2019), Charles H Garton, Banstead, Surrey, England, United Kingdom; from "1901 England, Scotland and Wales census," database and images, findmypast (http://www.findmypast.com : n.d.); citing Carshalton subdistrict, PRO RG 13, The National Archives, Kew, Surrey.

• "England and Wales Census, 1911," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XW8S-Q19 : 7 July 2019), Charles Henry Garton, Banstead, Surrey, England, United Kingdom; from "1911 England and Wales census," database and images, findmypast (http://www.findmypast.com : n.d.); citing PRO RG 14, The National Archives of the UK, Kew, Surrey.

• "England and Wales, National Index of Wills and Administrations, 1858-1957," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:7XZK-8W2M : 27 August 2019), Charles Henry Garton, 11 Jul 1934; citing Probate, London, England, United Kingdom, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, Great Britain.; FHL microfilm .

• Obituary of Herbert Westlake Garton [1] gives details of Charles and some of his descendants

DNA

• Paternal and Maternal relationships are both confirmed by an autosomal AncestryDNA test match between Edward Mynors and AB, his 3rd cousin . Their most-recent common ancestors are William Garton and Ellen Littleton, the great great grandparents of both Edward Mynors and AB. Predicted relationship from AncestryDNA: 3rd Cousin, based on sharing 103 cM across 6 segments.