Joseph Crosfield and Sons

Joseph Crosfield (5 October 1792 – 16 February 1844) was a businessman who established a soap and chemical manufacturing business in Warrington, which was in the historic county of Lancashire and is now in the ceremonial county of Cheshire. This business was to become the firm of Joseph Crosfield and Sons.

Joseph Crosfield was born in Warrington, the fourth son of George Crosfield and his wife Ann née Key. The Crosfield family had been Quakers since the time of George Fox and this tradition was maintained by George and subsequently by Joseph. George Crosfield was a wholesale grocer in Warrington who also had interests in a sugar-refining business in Liverpool. The family moved to Lancaster in 1799 for George to develop a sugar-refining business there, while still keeping an interest in his grocery business in Warrington under the care of his assistant, Joseph Fell. Nothing is known of Joseph's early life in Lancaster. From September 1807, a time close to his 15th birthday, he was apprenticed for 6 years to Anthony Clapham, a druggist and chemist in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. By 1811 Anthony Clapham was also a soap manufacturer.

In 1814, Joseph's apprenticeship having finished, at the age of 21 he decided to establish his own soap making business in Warrington. At this time soap manufacturing was growing rapidly in the Mersey valley. This was largely because of the recently developed canals and river navigations in the area which allowed for easier transport of the raw materials into the factories and for the distribution of the finished products. A number of new large soaperies had recently been established in the nearby towns of St Helens, Runcorn and Liverpool.

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