MESSES R. K. MURRAY AND SON'S CONFECTIONERY BUSINESS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1583, 25 March 1882, Page 22

MESSES R. K. MURRAY AND SON'S CONFECTIONERY BUSINESS.

(from otago daily times.)

One of the most notable of our local industries is Messrs R. K. Murray and Son's Confectionery and Biscuit Manufactory, Maclaggan street ; and it has, like a good many other Dunedin businesses, this point of interest, that it has kept pace with the growth of the town. When Mr R. K. Murray, soon after his arrival in the Colony, first began sugar-boiling in-Maclaggan street (on the premises now occupied by Mr Patrick), Dunedin was a small straggling township. This was in 1858, before the Gabriel's Gully rush, and when the " old identities " were still struggling for a bare subsistence ; for though they had come to a fertile country, they brought very little money with them, and they were consequently compelled to submit to a good deal of inconvenience, not to say downright hardship, during the first years of their Colonial life. Dunedin was not nearly such a fashionable place then as it is now. Blue jumpers for the men and plain roundabouts for the women were the order of the day; or if the latter made any pretensions to dress, it must have been on the stock of such relics of old Home fashions as they had stowed away in their trunks and boxes before embarking, albeit in much fear and trembling, for the unknown land. But better times— i.e., in a pecuniary point of of view, for there was a charm in the early settlor life, for the loss of which we are hardly compensated even by the fashion and comfort of these loan-contracting days — better times, we say, wore not so far off as the more dospondent of the first colonists were apt to fear — such times as not even the most sanguine amongst them could have ventured to predict. With the discovery of gold in Gabriel's Gully, Otago entered on a wonderfully prosperous career, and the small muddy township grew so rapidly that in a few years it considered itself justified in adopting the title of city. In 1859 Mr Murray removed to Rattray street, where ho carried on business, with the exception of an interval of about six years, till towards the end of last month, when the retail branch of the concern and his private hotel, so well known to Otago settlers, passed into other hands. The manufacturing part of his business had meanwhile outgrown^ the capabilities of his Rattray street establishment. He accordingly transferred this branch to his two sons, Messrs R. G. Murray and J. K. Murray (the former of whom had been for some years a part ncr in the Rattray street business), and they having purchased the lease of a couveniem

piece of ground in Maclaggan street, immediately began building the large andcommodious factory which now forms so prominent an object in that part of the town. It is a twostorey building, but the walls, which are of brick and cemented, have sufficient thickness and strength to carry another storey, if such should be required. It has a frontage of 60 feet on Maclaggan street, and of 102 feet on Clarke street. This business is carried on under the style of R. K. Murray and Son. A few months ago they were induced to erect a jam factory at the back of their new building ; but as the making of jams, jellies, and other preserves is a genuine branch of the confectioner's art-r-although it is perhaps not commonly con- ■ sidered to be such— they have thus merely ex- ; tended, or rather completed, their confectionery works ; and although this is then* first preserving season, we understand that they are already the largest producers of this description of sweetmeats in the Colony. How could We do without sugar and ram, especially sugar? asked Cowper in' his "Pity for poor Africans." Teetotalers, indeed, and a great many people besides that have not taken the pledge, protest that they get on well enough without rum, and we have no doubt that their protestations are perfectly honest ; but we have never heard of anybody, since the abolition of slavery in our West Indian Col6nies, who solemnly abjured to the use of sugar, except Mr Banting, and it may be charitably presumed that the monstrous obesity of that once-famous pampheteer had slightly affected his intellect. This article of commerce has in fact become so much a necessary of life that its name is even used as a slang term for money, which in these degene- ' rate times is accounted the one thing needful. The inhabitants of the golden age doubtless had honey in superabundance, for it is a vulgar error to suppose that they lived solely on herbs and acorns : honey, however, soon palls upon the palate ; and the produce of the busy bee cannot for a moment be compared with the produce of the sweet cane, especially when it has undergone the wonderful transformations of the confectioner's art. The products of this art, so toothsome, so various, and so pretty withal, constitute in truth one of the triumphs , of our modern civilisation. Sugar is of course , the basis, to speak scientifically, of most of these products, and of many of them it is, with the exception of the flavouring and colouring matter, the sole constituent. Of this sort are what are called the boiled sugars— rock, or sticks, drops, barley-sugar, sugar-candy, &c, > &c. ; delicacies with which we have all been more or less familiar from our childhood, and i for which many of the " children of a larger growth " never lose their relish. The sugar is boiled in pans over furnaces (of whioh there . are four in Messrs R. K. Murray and Son's ', factory) ; after which it is poured out on re- % frigerators or metal tables, and then worked up, 1 coloured and flavoured, and so prepared for receiving its ultimate form, or rather forms ; for there is no end to the variety of shapes into : .which our latter-day lollies are moulded. The drops, which constitute the largest class of • these sweetmeats, are made by passing the prepared sugar through brass rollers or cylinders, » each set of these cylinders haying separate \ patterns engraved by the hand in correspond1 ing parts— i.e., one-half of the shapes or patterns on one roller, and the other half on .the ■ other roller. There are 60 sets of such'! rollers ' . in use ;-they are, like all- the other machinery in the factory, driven by steam, and are, besides, the only steam-power rollers of the kind in the Colony. The quantity of sweetmeats manufactured in this way by Messrs R. K. Murray and Son is close upon a ton per day. i • : j Sugar-oandy is made in what are called wells — vessels of galvanised iron, just like large buckets, only they have no, handles and 'are pierced with small holes in the sides for fastening the threads on which the melted sugar is crystallised, and which have caused many a child to wonder how they ever got there. There are eight of these vessels, which, when filled with syrup and placed in a chamber ■ heated to 200 degrees, produce in the aggregate about half a ton of sugar-candy— an old- * fashioned but most delicious as well as valuable sweetmeat. In'the;confectirig-room proper there are two revolving and two oscillating pans, all steamjacketed. These hot jackets are, of course,' a -wonderful improvement on the old charcoal fire, over which the pan used to be suspended, and kept in motion with the hand, and even on , the later expedient pan endless metallic band, Bet of rollers, and coil of steam-pipes. The heat is constant and equable, and, as the pans are worked by steam, the motion is also constant and equable, whilst the method employed ,1,18 of the utmost simplicity. In these pans' are made what are specifically called comfits or sugar plums — i.e. the seeds of caraway, coriander, &c, or cloves, almonds, &c, enveloped in sugar. The nuclei of the comfits are thrown into the pan along with a quantity of sugar syrup ; more syrup is gradually added, while the seeds, by means of the heat and motion, both produced by steam, are coated equally, and the sugar plums brought to the required size. , It is thus that the celebrated Scotch mixtures are made, and so perfect are these simple appliances of the confectioner — simple, but the result of long experience and much ingenuity — that it is as easy to coat the , smallest seed, or even the minutest particle of sugar, as a clove or an almond. In this room there are also eight pans for melting gum, ; chocolate, &c, besides the sugar-mills and silk- ' dressers, and the lozenge-doughing machines. '' JLozenges are quite a distinct class of sweet1 meats. The sugar in this case is ground, not melted— ground in French mills, and silk- • dressed. Gum and essential oils are then added, and the whole compounded in a mixing machine. When sufficiently mixed, it is rolled out into sheets on marble slabs ; after which it is cut into the several shapes by smart girls. The conversation lozenges, which are always in great demand, are next stamped, also with the hand; and finally the whole batch, if we may so express it, is consigned to the kiln to be dried. The output of lozenges is about five" cwt. a day. Akin to the lozenges in shape, though not in composition, are the jujubes. The basis of this gort is gum, which is dissolved in a mechanical melter and then mixed with syrup and placed in shallow vessels, where it is kept ' till the water is evaporated. The cuttingmachine next reduces it into small, diamondshaped masses ; and these lozenges— like confections—are for the most part further conf ected in the crystallising pan. In the jujube room, pastilles, crystallised liqueurs, and chocolate creams are also manufactured. The biscuit-making is carried on by the most approved methods ; but we have not space to describe the operation of the mixing-machines, pan-break, break-rollers, pinning-machine, and cutting-machine. Suffice it to say that biscuits of excellent quality, and of all kinds and sizes, from little kmckknacks to the large teeth-defying description used on board ship, are turned out in Messrs R. K. Murray and Son's factory. Of the larger sorts the .produce is about a ton per day. We forgot to mention that the soles of the ovens are of the celebrated lake stone from Scotland. We have already said that the motive power is steam, the whole of the machinery peipg driven by a horizontal engine— a beauti-

ful piece of mechanism, as may be guessed from the fact that it gained tho prize-medal at the Melbourne Exhibition. It is from the workshop of Messrs Marshall, Sons, and Co., Gainsborough, England. The boiler was made by Messrs R. S. Sparrow and Co., and was exhibited at the late Industrial Exhibition in this city. It is worth noting that the waste heat from the ovens and furnaces is, by a peculiar arrangement of flues, utilised for making steam. There are also many other arrangements and conveniences which our limited space prevents our describing, such as tho steam-lift, tho packing-room, butter-room, egg-room, &c. ; but we may say m a word that Messrs R. K. Murray and Son s Confectionery and Biscuit Manufactory is the largest and most complete establishment of the kind in New Zealand. The same may be said of c the jam factory, which is attached to the larger building. The four preserving-pans, which form the principal furniture of this department of the works, have now been in constant use for over two months, and when we add that they are each capable of boiling 2501b. of jam or jelly twice an hour, our readers will have some idea of the proportions whioh this new industry has ' already assumed in our good city. This season the jams are raspberry, strawberry, gooseberry, blackberry, black currant, cherry, damson, Orleans plum, greengage, peach, and apricot ; the jellies red currant, quince, and apple. In the whole of the works between 50 and GO hands are employed. We are sure our readers will agree with us in wishing that this new venture of Messrs R. K. Murray and Son may prove entirely successful. It is an industry peculiarly suited to the Colony, and ought to defy competition on the part of outsiders.