Henry Jones (baker)

Henry Jones (1812 - July 12, 1891) was a baker in Bristol, England, who was responsible in 1845 for inventing self-raising flour.

Jones was born in Monmouth, and established a bakery in Broadmead, Bristol. He was granted a patent for self-raising flour in 1845, and by the end of 1846 its runaway success led to him being appointed purveyor of patent flour and biscuits to Queen Victoria. He was granted a patent in the USA a few years later, and in 1852 the first gold medal for the new flour was issued to a Chicago firm using the Bristol formula.

It took Jones some years to convince the British Admiralty of the benefits of using the new flour in preference to the hard biscuits to which sailors were accustomed. Finally, in 1855, his flour was approved for use of participants in the Crimean War, partly at the behest of Florence Nightingale [1].

From 1864, he lived at Church House, Caldicot, Monmouthshire, where he died in 1891[2].