ABSTRACT
Between 1810 and 1813 John Hall, founder of the Dartford Ironworks in Kent, together with his partner, Bryan Donkin, F. R. S., is said to have purchased for £1,000 a patent process 'for preserving animal and vegetable food'. It is certain that the two partners carried out extensive experi-experiments and that by 1813 they had established the first British canning factory in Blue Anchor Road, Bermondsey. They were later joined by John Gamble. From 1818 onwards Donkin, Hall and Gamble were supplying the Royal Navy with a wide variety of canned foods. In 1818 Peter Durand took out a repetition of his British patent in the United States for canning in tins, and about 1819 two Englishmen, William Underwood and Thomas Kensett, began preserving food in Boston and New York respectively, using Appert's glass-jar method. Baltimore became the centre of oyster-canning, while St. John's in New Brunswick and Eastport in Maine specialized in the canning of lobster and salmon.
