Samuel Gawith Snuff

The Company

The Samuel Gawith company is located in Kendal, in the South Lakeland area of the North West of England. They have been manufacturing snuff and pipe tobacco since 1792. They still continue to use the same traditional methods and, indeed, some of the original machinery that was second hand when the company started.

The History of Samuel Gawith Co.

The history of the company begins, interestingly, not with a Gawith at all, but an enterprising Kendalian by the name of Thomas Harrison, who, aware of the popular interest, and associated commercial potential, of snuffs and tobaccos, removed himself to Glasgow to learn the trade of snuff making. He returned to Kendal in 1792 with not only knowledge of snuff making, but the means, also.

He had bought approximately 50 tons of second hand machinery, estimated to be manufactured around 1750, and transported it via packhorse, to a mill at Mealbank, on the river Mint, a few miles North East of the centre of Kendal. Although the building disappeared about fifty years ago, some of the machinery is still intact and in day-to-day use at the Brown House today. Indeed, in 1965, the industrial trade magazine "Design and Components in Engineering" judged it to be the oldest piece of industrial machinery still in regular production use - "The reason we feel confident in accepting the estimate of (at least) 210 years as being the age of the machine is that the central drive bevel wheels have wedged wooden teeth. Had cast iron gear wheels been available they would most probably have been chosen as the central drive members, and since they were available about 1760 it is safe to assume that the machine dates back to about 1750".

But enough about machinery, and back to the people who created the company. Shortly after establishing his new business, Thomas Harrison appears to have entered business with Thomas Brocklebank, a "chymist and druggist" of Kendal. At that time chemists would frequently sell tobacco and snuff (as opposed to those today who dispense nicotine patches!), so we can presume that the partnership was split evenly between production and retail. In this same year, 1793, Thomas Harrison's namesaked son was born and effectively took over the business after his father's death. Possibly it was this Thomas Harrison who bought 27 Lowther Street, around 1830, as both family residence and factory, as was the habit of the time.

By 1837, Thomas Harrison the second's eldest child, Jane, reached 18 and had fallen in love with a "plumber and glazier" of Kendal, one Samuel Gawith. Apparently against her father's wishes, the two married "over the anvil" at Gretna Green on 15 January 1838.

In 1841, Thomas Harrison died, leaving the premises, and his share in Harrison and Brocklebank, to Jane and her sister Ann. Consequently Samuel and Jane moved into Lowther Street, the former relinquishing his earlier trade and working alongside the elderly Thomas Brocklebank.

About the snuff

The people at Samuel Gawith's grind and manufacture snuff, also known as nasal snuff. They do it from the raw materials of tobacco leaf and stalk, using age old methods and machinery, some of which dates back to circa 1740.

They produce a variety of snuffs, from the very light and fine (such as Irish "D" Light) to dark, coarse and moist (such as our world renowned Kendal Brown, or K.B.), perfumed, or mentholated, or plain old "tobacco-ey", enough to suit most tastes.