Mandarin Phosphates

Adelaide and Jamestown, South Australia : F. Humphris & Sons Ltd., [after 1902, and probably before 1920]. Chromolithographed bottle label, 71 x 94 mm; a fine example.

Frederina Humphris (née Gotte, 1841-1925), the widow of Edmund Humphris, continued her husband’s Jamestown enterprise, known as “The Emu Factory”, after his death in 1880. The Emu Factory was one of the mid-north of South Australia’s major commercial ventures, manufacturing beer, wine, tomato sauce, and butter, amongst a variety of other products. In 1902 the firm became a limited company, trading under the name of F. Humphris and Sons Ltd., under the management of two of Frederina’s sons, Ralph E. and Frederick W. Humphris. The company had opened a factory at spacious premises on Carrington Street, Adelaide, in September 1901, where most of its sauces, pickles and other non-dairy products were bottled. In 1932 the Emu Factory finally closed and the business was taken over by the Jamestown Butter and Trading Company, a subsidiary of R. J. Finlayson & Co..