Place Name
Remembering the local Hackney company of Lewis Berger and Sons, paint and colour manufacturers. The family began leasing premises in Shepherd’s Lane for Berger’s paint factory, in 1780. Some 20 years earlier a German colour chemist called Louis Steingenberger emigrated from Frankfurt in Germany to London. Within six years he had established a dye and pigment making business in Shadwell, under his anglicised name, Lewis Berger. Crucially he had perfected a new process for making the colour Prussian Blue, which was used for many military uniforms at the time. The Berger family lived in nearby Shepherd’s Lane from around the 1840s.
