Joseph Huntley, a Quaker schoolmaster from Oxfordshire, established a biscuit bakery in Reading in 1822. After 1829 his son Thomas became a partner and the firm was known as Joseph Huntley & Son. On the retirement of his father in 1838 Thomas Huntley operated alone and under his own name, and then in 1841 went into partnership with fellow Quaker George Palmer, later MP for Reading, as Huntley and Palmer. By 1846 Palmer had begun to transform the business, developing the first continuously running machine for making fancy biscuits and setting up a properly organised factory. Other members of the Palmer family became partners, and by the end of the nineteenth century the firm, now called Huntley and Palmers, was the largest biscuit business in the world and among the forty most important industrial companies in Britain. Huntley and Palmers cakes and biscuits were a household name and the distinctive tins, made by the firm Huntley, Boorne and Stevens (founded by another member of the Huntley family), were recognised worldwide. In 1898, after George Palmer's death, the private company Huntley and Palmers Ltd was established, which in 1921 combined with the firm of Peek Frean, each becoming subsidiary units of the Associated Biscuit Manufacturers Ltd. The Liverpool firm of W.&R. Jacob & Co. joined the group in 1960. In the late 1960s re-organisation took place, and from 1969 the three units disappeared as independent trading entities, being replaced by the division known as Associated Biscuits Ltd. Huntley and Palmers' Reading factory was finally closed down in 1972. Associated Biscuits Ltd was bought out by the American multi-national Nabisco in 1982. The company was renamed as Jacob's Bakery Ltd in 1989 and acquired by BSN (Boussois Souchon-Neuvesel), which in 1994 changed its name to Danone.
From the guide to the Records of Huntley and Palmers, 1837-1995, (Reading University: Special Collections Services)
