Camp Coffee: Glasgow's Liquid Coffee Essence

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

The basic facts about the firm are solid. Grace's Guide reproduces partnership notices and the 1909 registration of R. Paterson and Sons Limited from National Records of Scotland files, and the Dictionary of Scottish Architects and Canmore record the Charlotte Street works. The weak point is the product's origin. No source we have found prints a dated first advertisement, a first sale or a patent for Camp, and the sources contradict one another on the launch year, on when the founder Robert Paterson died, and on when his son Campbell died. Much of the popular history comes from company material. Carol Foreman's Made in Scotland (2nd edn, 2010) is a useful, illustrated account drawn largely from such sources; its specific details are used here with attribution, and its claims about market share are treated as shared.

Vinegar, cordials and "Cuddle-me-Dearie"

established R. Paterson & Sons began as a vinegar business. Grace's Guide dates the firm to 1849 and describes Robert Paterson as a vinegar merchant. His son Campbell, born in 1851, joined in 1868, and the business widened into sauces and wines. In 1893 Campbell was still described as a wholesale vinegar merchant; by the 1901 census he was a coffee essence manufacturer living at Woodend House, Cathcart, with his wife and seven children.

shared Carol Foreman, in Made in Scotland (2nd edn, 2010), places the original business in Hutcheson Street and says Campbell sold its vinegar as "Paterson's Golden Grain Vinegar". She adds that he introduced cordials and fruit wines, and that raspberry vinegar was a speciality, sold to spirit shops where it was mixed with whisky. That mixture, she says, was known as "Cuddle-me-Dearie". The name is repeated widely; we have not seen an independent contemporary source for it.

What Camp is

established Camp is a concentrate. A spoonful in a cup, topped up with hot water or hot milk, makes a drink. Grace's Guide gives the recipe as water, sugar, 4 per cent coffee essence and 26 per cent chicory essence; the current retail label lists chicory extract at 25 per cent and dried coffee extract at 4 per cent. It is therefore chiefly a chicory drink with a coffee flavour, and it is heavily sweetened.

established Chicory is the roasted and ground root of the chicory plant. It was used throughout the nineteenth century in Britain and Europe to stretch, flavour and cheapen coffee, and coffee-and-chicory mixtures were sold openly. Foreman says Paterson's blended several types of coffee and added chicory "to give greater flavour and extra strength". That is the company's own description; chicory also made the product much cheaper to produce than pure coffee.

shared Canmore's record of the works suggests the essence was probably made by percolating coffee and concentrating the liquid under vacuum. Foreman says the process was protected by a patent and that workers were sworn to secrecy. We have not traced a patent; the brand was protected by registered trade marks, and the word "Camp" was registered in 1906.

established The selling point was speed. Before soluble powdered coffee, making coffee at home meant roasting or buying roasted beans, grinding them and brewing. A bottled essence cut that to a spoonful and a kettle. Canmore notes that Camp remained popular as a quick drink until powdered coffee extracts appeared, which were easier to use and tasted closer to coffee.

When was it launched?

shared There is no agreed date. Wikipedia, the museum label at Archaeological Services Inc. in Ontario, and many food writers give 1876. Carol Foreman gives 1885. Grace's Guide quotes a family memorial describing Campbell Paterson as the "founder of Camp Coffee in Glasgow in 1888". Grace's Guide also says the coffee drink was started after Robert Paterson's death, which it places in 1874; a grave record for Robert Paterson at the Southern Necropolis gives his dates as 1820 to 1882 and says Camp followed his death. These cannot all be right.

established What can be dated is the factory. Canmore says Paterson founded the Charlotte Street works in 1891 "to make liquid coffee essence in bottles", and the Dictionary of Scottish Architects records additions in 1893, 1898 and 1908. By the 1890s the product was established enough to need a purpose-built works. The 1876 date is plausible but unproven, and this article treats the launch as falling somewhere between the mid-1870s and late 1880s.

shared Foreman also says the name came from Campbell Paterson himself, short for Campbell. That explanation is offered with "apparently" in her text. The military "camp" pictured on the label is the more obvious reading, and both may be true.

The military origin story

traditional The best-known story is that the Gordon Highlanders, or Highland soldiers bound for India, asked Paterson's for a coffee that could be made quickly in the field. Grace's Guide records the claim that the drink was made at the Gordon Highlanders' request. Cooking reference sites repeat it with "reputedly". None of the sources gives a document, a letter, an order or a regimental record.

shared Wikipedia's article calls the military-origin belief a legend based mainly on the label. Foreman does not tell the Gordon Highlanders story at all. She says instead that by about 1898 Paterson's was exporting to every British dependency, and that soldiers carried Camp in their kitbags. Her phrasing is a figure of speech, not evidence of army supply contracts.

established What is certain is that the brand was built around a military, imperial image from the start, and that it sold widely in the Empire. Bottles embossed "Paterson's Camp Coffee & Chicory, Glasgow" have been found on a nineteenth-century farmstead in Ontario, thousands of miles from Glasgow.

The label

established The original label, credited on Wikipedia to the artist William Victor Wrigglesworth, shows a kilted officer seated outside a tent. A turbaned Sikh stands beside him holding a tray with a bottle of Camp and a jug of hot water. On the bottle in the picture is the same label, so the image repeats inside itself. A flag above the tent reads "Ready Aye Ready".

shared Foreman says the officer's head was thought to be modelled on Major-General Sir Hector MacDonald, the crofter's son from the Black Isle who rose from the ranks of the 92nd (Gordon) Highlanders. She says the uniform was drawn deliberately so as not to match any one regiment, and that portraying a general was avoided for fear of objections from the War Office. The MacDonald link is repeated widely and cannot be confirmed.

shared According to Foreman, the War Office refused in 1954 to allow a soldier in uniform to be registered as a trade mark when the company tried to register the Highlander alone; a few years later the registration was accepted. She also says the motto "Ready Aye Ready" was not the motto of any one family, but a battle cry used by several clans. Wikipedia notes that it was also the motto of the 59th Scinde Rifles of the British Indian Army. In the label's context, "aye" means "always": the drink is always ready.

established The image was changed twice. Grace's Guide says the tray was removed after 1955. Wikipedia describes this as an attempt to avoid showing the Sikh as a servant, though he still stood while the officer sat. Since about 2006 the Sikh has been shown seated beside the officer, with his own cup and saucer. Grace's Guide links the redesign to accusations of racism, and local heritage writers record protests by race equality groups. The 2006 date is widely given; we have not seen the company's own announcement.

established The label is a period piece of imperial advertising. It presents the Raj as a scene of ease and service, with a Scottish officer at its centre. The changes made since the 1950s show the owners adjusting that picture rather than abandoning it.

Advertising

shared Foreman describes Camp's Victorian and Edwardian advertising in detail: postcards playing on the slogan "Ready Aye Ready", a 1909 advertisement that reworked Glasgow's coat of arms with St Mungo drinking Camp, and exhibition stands built as castellated forts from Camp packing cases. She says the firm's early advertising had a military theme and that show cards in the 1930s still did. The Wellcome Collection holds a yellow 1937 pictorial envelope from R. Paterson & Sons advertising "'Camp' Coffee: for strength and flavour".

shared Foreman claims that, though there were "well over one hundred" makers of coffee essence in Britain, Camp's sales equalled those of all the others put together, and that Scotland made about 80 per cent of the market. These figures come from company sources and cannot be checked. She also says high American tariffs on essence and bottles kept the firm out of the United States, while Canada, Australia and New Zealand were strong markets.

The firm and the works

established In 1904 the partnership changed: another partner, Walter Paterson, retired, and Campbell Paterson continued the business with his sons Robert, born 1876, and James Davidson Paterson, born 1879, under the same firm name. In 1909 R. Paterson and Sons Limited was registered as a private company at 77 Charlotte Street, Glasgow, with capital of £63,001, to take over the coffee business. The firm also had a London office at 36 East Cheap.

established The Camp Coffee Works occupied 77–81 Charlotte Street and 115 Greendyke Street, near Glasgow Green. The Dictionary of Scottish Architects lists a Greendyke Street block by Alexander Skirving in 1893, a Charlotte Street block by Gavin Paterson in 1898, and a large three-storey addition by William Baillie in 1908. The industrial historian John R. Hume photographed the buildings in 1968. Canmore records that the works closed in the 1970s and that the site was later demolished and redeveloped.

shared Grace's Guide quotes a memorial saying Campbell Paterson died in Jersey in 1927. Foreman says he died in the Channel Islands in 1920. The 1927 date matches Wikipedia's dates for him (1851–1927).

Wartime and after

shared Foreman says Camp's popularity was confirmed in both world wars, when the firm cut sales rather than reduce quality while coffee was scarce. She also says that output trebled between 1939 and the early 1950s, despite the arrival of instant coffee, and that the company had become a public one by then. These are company claims. They fit the general pattern of wartime and post-war Britain, where coffee was scarce and tea dominated, but we have not seen independent figures.

shared A later boost came in 1975. Wikipedia, citing The Independent, says that when a frost in Brazil doubled coffee prices, Camp became a popular alternative to instant coffee in Britain.

Later owners

established In 1974 R. Paterson and Sons took over Jenks Brothers Foods, forming Paterson Jenks; Grace's Guide cites The Times of 28 June 1974. In 1984 McCormick & Company of the United States bought Paterson Jenks, which it described as a publicly held British company, together with the Schwartz spice business. Camp became part of McCormick's British business.

shared Foreman says that by 2010 Camp was no longer made in Scotland. Other sources say it is made in Paisley. We have not been able to confirm where it is made today.

Camp today

established Camp is still on British shelves. It is now used mostly in baking, for coffee cake, coffee icing and buttercream, where its strong, sweet flavour suits. Some people still drink it with hot milk, as it was originally intended.

• Camp contains far more chicory than coffee: about 25 per cent chicory essence to 4 per cent coffee.
• The label once showed a picture of the bottle inside the picture of the bottle.
• According to Foreman, the War Office objected in 1954 to a uniformed soldier being registered as a trade mark.
• "Ready Aye Ready" was also the motto of the 59th Scinde Rifles of the British Indian Army.
• The Camp Coffee Works stood beside Glasgow Green until the 1970s.
• Paterson's raspberry vinegar was reportedly mixed with whisky in Glasgow pubs as "Cuddle-me-Dearie".
• A 1909 advertisement turned Glasgow's coat of arms into a Camp advertisement, with St Mungo holding a cup.
• Camp bottles turn up in excavations as far away as rural Ontario.

• Myth: Camp was invented for the Gordon Highlanders in India. The story is widely told, but no letter, order or regimental record has been found. It seems to have grown from the label.
• Disputed: Camp was launched in 1876. Sources give 1876, 1885 and 1888. The works were built from 1891, so the product was established by then.
• Myth: Camp was the first instant coffee. It was an early bottled coffee essence, one of many made in Britain in the late nineteenth century. Soluble powdered coffee is a different product.
• Disputed: the officer on the label is Sir Hector MacDonald. The likeness is often claimed, including by Foreman, but has not been documented.
• Disputed: Campbell Paterson died in 1920. Foreman says 1920; a family memorial cited by Grace's Guide says Jersey, 1927.
• Disputed: Camp outsold all other coffee essences combined. This is a company claim reported by Foreman, without independent figures.