Sir Edward John Lees Hallstrom (25 September 1886 – 27 February 1970) was one of Australia's best-known philanthropists and businessmen of the mid-20th century. Hallstrom is best known for his long association with the Taronga Zoo and for his "Silent Knight" brand of refrigerators.
Early life and family background Born at High Park station, near Coonamble, New South Wales, Hallstrom was the eighth of a family of nine children born to William Hallstrom, a saddler from England of Swedish extraction, and his Australian wife Mary Ann (née Colless).
The accepted biographical narrative is that, at the age of four, his father's farm failed and the family moved to Waterloo, an inner-city suburb of Sydney. The actual events before the move were complicated. In 1888, Hallstrom's father had sued a neighbour concerning damage caused by a dam on the neighbour's property. Not long before he won £500 in damages, a suspicious fire destroyed a shed on his property, containing uninsured grains and goods, said to be worth over £300. In February 1890, his father was arrested, after another fire that caused damage to insured property worth £500—another man's shed containing property belonging to William Hallstrom—was found to be willfully caused. Charged with arson, he was acquitted at trial, in March 1890, after one of the witnesses against him had admitted to perjury. Soon after his acquittal for arson, William Hallstrom was arrested and committed for trial, on a charge of subornation of perjury. The charges were probably dropped, as there seems to have been no trial. By early April 1890, William Hallstrom was selling off his farm horses.
Not long afterwards, the family moved to Sydney, settling at Waterloo. There, Hallstrom formed a friendship with the young William McKell, whose early life and family circumstances have some striking similarities to Hallstrom's own. McKell became first a boilermaker and was involved in the Labour Movement, later studied law and became a barrister, entered politics and was later a Premier of New South Wales, and eventually became Governor-General of Australia. Although Hallstrom himself would never be a supporter of the Australian Labor Party, their friendship was lifelong.
Hallstrom's parents separated—actually his father, William Hallstrom, seems to have deserted the family—and, by the age of 10, Hallstrom was working, performing a variety of jobs to help supplement the family's income, as were his siblings. Hallstrom never spoke of his father, but did have memories of difficult times and the struggle to keep the farm.
Largely self-taught and having left school at thirteen, Hallstrom applied himself well to both his studies and his work. Hallstrom is said to have taught himself by reading books, including the English publication, Harmsworth Self-Educator, a copy of which he kept until his death. Hallstrom was apprenticed, as a cabinet maker and eventually took charge of a furniture factory. Hallstrom later founded a business of his own, manufacturing bedsteads.
He was of a Methodist background. John and Mary Lees, pioneers of the Methodist denomination in Australia, were ancestors on his mother's side. Hallstrom was a lifelong teetotaller, and neither smoked nor gambled.
Early flying
Hallstrom was a member of the Australian Aerial League, led by George Augustine Taylor. Beginning on 5 December 1909, at the sand hills near the entrance to Narrabeen Lakes, he took turns—along with Taylor, Taylor's wife Florence Mary Taylor, and two others—to make short non-powered flights, in a glider that Taylor had built, based upon the box-kite designs of Taylor's close friend, Lawrence Hargraves. It was intended that the glider would be fitted with an engine to become the first Australian-made aeroplane, but the engine was not delivered, and that honour went instead to John Duigan.
The flights on 5 December 1909 are regarded as the first flights of a heavier-than-air aircraft in Australia, and are commemorated by three replicas of Taylor's glider, one of which is in the collection of the National Museum of Australia.
Family Hallstrom met his first wife, Margaret Elliott Jaffrey, on a trip to Queensland. She was a talented artist, and shared his enthusiasm for birds and animals. They were married at her parents' home in the Brisbane suburb of New Farm, on 6 April 1912. After their reception, the newly weds left for Sydney on RMS Osterley. The couple had one son and three daughters.
Bedstead manufacturer Hallstrom's business, in Abattoir Road, Pyrmont—set up by late 1920 and possibly as early as late 1918—flourished initially. Hallstrom claimed to have made the first innerspring mattresses in Australia.
Hallstrom set up a sawmill to mill his own hardwood timber, at Micalong (near Tumut), in 1921, reportedly at a cost of £3,500. The sawmill was sold to others in mid 1922, after being idle for several months. The costly, short-lived expansion into saw milling probably had put Hallstrom's privately owned business under some financial strain. Hallstrom registered a public company, E. J. L. Hallstrom Ltd, in November 1923, with capital of £10,000 in £1 shares, to acquire the business in November 1923, although it is likely that Hallstrom, or his family, owned most if not all of the new shares.
The never properly explained death of one of his wire-mattress makers, at the Pyrmont factory, in July 1923, both attracted nationwide attention and litigation that eventually reached the High Court, which directed the matter to arbitration under the Workmen's Compensation Act. The arbitration confirmed an award of £500 to the widow, in 1925, and that, with legal costs, crippled the business financially. E. J. L. Hallstrom Ltd, which had by then moved to Moore Street, Leichhardt, was voluntarily wound up in early 1926. Hallstrom was made bankrupt in February 1926. It seemed as if Hallstrom's business career was at an early end.
Eight difficult years While Hallstrom bedstead business prospered, Hallstrom and his family had been living in the suburb of Roseville, and he was well off enough to own a motor car. The financial difficulties that followed were described as "eight difficult years" by his daughter Esme. During that time, Hallstrom became bankrupt, the life of relative prosperity ended, and the family moved often; first to Balgowlah, and then to Gore Hill, Dee Why, and Willoughby.
Esme says that the family fortunes began to improve once Hallstrom was employed at the same factory, in Redfern, where he had worked as a foreman before commencing his own bedstead business. He had been sought out by his former employer, when he heard that Hallstrom was in difficulty. In 1915, Hallstrom had been named as the inventor on a patent, but the patent had been assigned in the name of one Louis Joseph, a manufacturer of bedding, who had a bedding factory in Shepherd Street, Redfern;Australian Patent 18,205/15 "Improvements in stretcher beds." Application dated: 20th December 1915 Applicant (Actual Inventor) EDWARD JOHN LEES HALLSTROM, Applicant (Assignee of Actual Inventor) Louis JOSEPH. Application and Provisional Specification Lodged 20th December 1915. Application and Provisional Specification Accepted 11th January, 1916. Complete Specification Lodged 1st September, 1916. Complete Specification Accepted 15th Jan.1917. Acceptance Advertised (Sec. 50) 23 Jan. 1917. it is almost certain that he was Hallstrom's benefactor in difficult times. Hallstrom was said to have remained grateful to him, for the rest of his days, something that may have influenced his own later philanthropy.
The business also manufactured wooden cabinets of ice chests, something that stimulated Hallstrom's interest in refrigeration. While working at the factory, he developed an insulated wooden ice chest design, with a top-access door, that would reappear in his earliest refrigerators.
The difficult years ended around 1932, when Hallstrom was released from bankruptcy, having already begun small-scale manufacturing of refrigerators around 1930. He was able to purchase both the building that became his factory and Figtree House at Northbridge, which would become his home. Although it was on a large block of waterfront land, the house, built in 1875, was old and isolated, located in an area yet to be developed, and without a water, gas or electricity supply.
Inventor Initially, refrigeration was not the only area to catch Hallstrom's interest; he dabbled in aviation and claimed to have invented a new type of shell to strike ships below the waterline. His first three Australian patents, in 1913, 1915, and 1926, were to do with the design of beds.Australian patents 11,426/13, 18,205/15, and 4,063/26. However, it was his interest in refrigeration that would have the most tangible results. Self taught, he read up on the subject, including reading every patent on refrigeration taken out since Federation.
During the 1920s, electric refrigerators were available, but were expensive and so relatively uncommon. In towns, iceboxes, also called ice chests in Australia, were common but required home deliveries of blocks of ice, at intervals dictated by the weather conditions. Residents of rural areas, remote or yet to be electrified, had little choice other than the Coolgardie safe, an evaporative cooler of limited effectiveness. An affordable and effective refrigeration solution for the rural parts of the country was needed, and presented a great business opportunity.
Various sources state that Hallstrom invented his Icy Ball refrigeration device in 1923. However, there is a problem with that early date; there is concurrence that the invention took place in the backyard shed of his home at Dee Why, but in 1923 Hallstrom was not yet living at Dee Why. Hallstrom's daughter Esme put the year as both 1926 and 1927, in her account of the family. She also states that John (born 1915), although in his teens, learned the skill of oxy-welding to assist his father's work. Later an accomplished artist herself, Esme made a sketch of the family with the refrigeration apparatus, presumably from memory, which accurately rendered a device quite similar to that later patented by Hallstrom—heated by what appears to be a Primus stove—and she described its operation in a way that is like that of an Icy Ball. His biographer, Audrey Tate, gives the year of the manufacture of his first refrigeration device as 1928.
Another kerosene-powered refrigerating device, also called an Icy Ball, was invented by Canadian engineer, David Forbes Keith. Keith had filed two Canadian patent applications relating to absorption refrigeration, in 1921Canadian Patent 207395 REFRIGERATING APPARATUS and 1922.Canadian Patent 221285 APPARATUS FOR REFRIGERATING Later, while consulting to the Crosley Radio Corp, he reused concepts from his earlier patents to design the Icy Ball. After Keith filed for a U.S. patent (1,740,737), on 27 June 1927, it was mass-produced in the United States by Powel Crosley Jr., but the US patent was only granted on 24 December 1929. It was being sold in Australia, by December 1927.
Yet another early, imported, kerosene-powered refrigeration device was the "Gnome ice producer"—its original German brand name was "Gnom"—which was on sale in Australia, by June 1926, even before the Crosley Icy Ball U.S. patent had been filed. Essentially, its operating procedure was the same as an Icy Ball. From around late 1927—possibly as early as June 1926—a more advanced kerosene-powered model, with an upright cabinet, referred to as a "Gnome refrigerator" was on sale, until at least 1931; its semi-automatic operating procedure was similar to Hallstrom's later 1934 model.