Benjamin Hawes

Sir Benjamin Hawes (1797 – 15 May 1862) was a British Whig politician.

He was a grandson of William Hawes, founder of the Royal Humane Society, and son of Benjamin Hawes of New Barge House, Lambeth, who was a businessman and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London; his mother was Ann Feltham, sister of John Feltham. He had a younger brother, who also was called William. There was another brother, Thomas, and a sister Sarah, married name Curtis. Barge House, where Hawes lived in the 1830s, was in the Christ Church area of Lambeth, at the corner of Commercial Road and Broad Wall.

Hawes was educated at William Carmalt's school at Putney, and when of age in 1818 entered into partnership with his father and uncle, in the business of soap-boiling. He spent relatively little of his life in the industry, but was later known in parliament as "Hawes the Soap-Boiler".

The Hawes Soap Works stood on the site of the royal barge house of the 16th century, later used as a glassworks; it is also described as being on Upper Ground Street, Blackfriars. To the west of Blackfriars Bridge, it was the largest soap factory in London in its time, during a period in the 19th century. The Topographical History of Surrey of the 1840s, by Edward Wedlake Brayley, stated that the works had been in existence for 75 years. In the 1820s manufacturers on Merseyside were beginning to compete seriously with those of London, and issues of process and duty on raw materials (such as kelp, barilla for alkali, and common salt) were affecting business decisions. The Hawes family were engaged in lobbying Parliament. Benjamin Hawes as MP spoke for the reduction of soap duties.

In 1820 Josias Parkes gave evidence to a parliamentary select committee that his firm had supplied steam power to the boiler of the Hawes Works. The works then installed its own gas oil plant. In 1824 Benjamin Hawes the elder gave parliament evidence of the company's use of gas lighting. He went on to be chairman of the Gas Light & Coke Company. His younger son William innovated with "Hawes' soap", the product of the "cold process" for soap manufacture, and was granted a patent in 1839.

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