3-053-564 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sugar-making at the Counterslip Refinery, Bristol, 1873. '...the largest refinery in England [is] that of Messrs. Finzel and Sons...the mass of sugar...[is] raised by means of lifts to the mixing-room, where a long detachment of workmen receive the products of the mechanical portion of the factory and deftly mingle it with wooden shovels. The mixing-room presents a very striking, and even a picturesque, appearance; for it is a vast lofty hall, in which are elevated a number of high stages or galleries built of timber, and bound at the edges with iron. These stages mark off a great square space on the floor below, which itself has some distinguishing divisions, and into which the crystallised sugar is shot from the perambulators in which it is conveyed along the upper galleries. The cataract of white crystals pouring down from the iron-bound edges of this upper gallery to augment the heaps below, amidst which the white dresses of the men offer an opaque contrast, suggests a confused recollection of early reports of Cape diamonds and rock crystals...The hands here receive a higher rate of wages...since it is essential to secure competent workmen to conduct the processes for obtaining this highly-crystallised sugar'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.