[Regia-NA] OT - Inventor of "Swarfega" dies

[Kim Siddorn]

    From London tabloid, The Times,  via alt.obituaries


Audley Bowdler Williamson, the inventor of Swarfega, was
born on February 28, 1916. He died on November 21, 2004,
aged 88.

Inventor of Swarfega, the emerald gel famed for its
phenomenal efficacy against engine oil, grease and grime of
all kinds.

OIL-STAINED mechanics, greasy bikers and grubby petrol heads
the world over owe their social lives and a debt of
happiness to "AB" Williamson. He was the inventor of
Swarfega, the cool, strangely seductive emerald-green gel
with a wonderful ability to cleanse even the blackest,
grimiest hands, wrists and forearms. For half a century it
has been the end-of-the-day ritual for numberless mechanics:
a scoop of the fingers into a battered grimy pot of the
translucent gel, rub and rinse, and clean, socially
acceptable skin reappears as if by magic.

Audley Bowdler Williamson was born in Heanor, Derbyshire, in
1916. His father and his father's two brothers, who had
operated a horse-drawn haulage business for the Nottingham
silk trade, returned from the First World War convinced that
motorised transport was the future.

They started with lorries and soon moved into buses, running
the business from the yard beside their home, and so
Williamson was familiar with the oily business of motor
mechanics from an early age. He attended Heanor Grammar
School and in 1934, at the age of 18, he joined a local
firm, Dalton's -known to all as Silkolene for its
lubricants -as a trainee chemist.

In 1941 he set up a company, Deb, in Belper, just north of
Derby -he took the name from "debutante" to signify that
both the company and its products, all developed by him,
were new to the market. Williamson had high hopes for his
first product, a mild detergent called Deb Silkware
Protection. The war had diverted silk to parachute
production, but Williamson was confident that when the
hostilities were over, silk stockings would be back in a big
way. Alas, the Americans arrived with nylons and destroyed
the silk stocking market -and the need for Deb Silkware
Protection.

Falling back on his early memories of oily-handed motor
fitters washing their hands with petrol, paraffin and
sand -and suffering from cracked skin and dermatitis -he
decided to develop a skin cleaner which would remove engine
oils and grease, but leave the body's natural oils intact.
And so, in 1947, Swarfega was born; it was the first hand
cleaner of its type in the world.

The name derives from "swarf" -the fine, oily tangle of
metal shavings produced when machining components, and hence
unwanted oil and grease in general -and "ega", as in "eager
to clean".

Swarfega burst upon a postwar era which was just succumbing
to mass motoring and masses of motor mechanics -and soon
became a household word.

Deb gradually increased its product range to include other
skincare and workplace cleaning products, from car shampoos
to engine degreasants. And as Britain's heavy engineering
industries declined, the company diversified its products to
target such markets as hospitals and other large
institutions. It now also produces Suprega, an "orange
Swarfega" which uses citrus oils instead of the
petroleum-derived solvents in the famous original. At
present the company's annual worldwide turnover is more than
£60 million.

This steady success allowed Williamson, after his retirement
in 1986, to follow his lifelong socialist principles and
contribute his money and management skills to a number of
philanthropic initiatives. These include the Belper Civic
Association and the Ryklow Charitable Trust, which support
environmental and wildlife conservation activities.

Williamson's wife Kathleen, whom he married in 1943, died
two years ago. He is survived by their three sons.

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

All politicians are like nappies . . . . .

You need to change them regularly - and for the same reason.