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© Vestry House Museum and the London Borough of Waltham Forest, Author provided Lucian Landau, the inventor of Durex condoms, at the entrance to British Latex Products, 1932. I was able to triangulate his account with the rest of my evidence, and the pieces fell into place. Incredibly, Landau had written the story of his involvement with London Rubber.
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I checked the British Library on the off-chance it held some reference to Landau and was thrilled to find a rare copy of his self-published autobiography. This piqued my interest: Landau must have been somebody important if he was on the patents. But Landau wasn’t mentioned in the few official documents archived at Vestry House Museum, or in the company magazine London Image, which had been supplied to me by ex-London Rubber employee Angela Wagstaff. The memorable name “Lucian Landau” had popped up in correspondence between London Rubber and the Family Planning Association (held at Wellcome Collection) and on patents.
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But as no company archive for London Rubber is available to researchers, my investigation has involved forensic detective work, with discoveries often coming about through hunches. My style of research involves the painstaking examination of documents. But surely there was more to this story? McGill-Queen's University Press It was Jackson who, in 1929, patented the Durex trademark (standing for “Durability, Reliability, and Excellence”). They have long been attributed to a man called Lionel Alfred Jackson, a third-generation Russian-Jewish immigrant who founded London Rubber in 1915. The one question I really wanted to answer was who actually invented Durex condoms. Turning this work into a book gave me the opportunity to deepen my research. I was fascinated by the idea that thousands of ordinary Londoners made their living from condoms, and set about researching the topic for my PhD. © Private collection of Jessica Borge, 2018, Author providedĪs a social historian with an interest in businesses, I had been intrigued by London Rubber ever since a friend pointed out the then-derelict factory in Chingford in the late 1990s, after production was moved to Asia. 1960s Durex Gossamer condom, photographed by Jessica Borge in 2018. By the mid-1940s, London Rubber had the biggest production capacity in Britain, and by the mid-1960s, the world. In 1932 the firm underwent a game-changing switch from wholesaling to fabrication, when it started manufacturing in-house under the Durex brand. The origins of Durex go back to the London Rubber Company, which began trading in 1915 and specialised in importing modern, disposable condoms for re-sale in Great Britain. Yet until recently, the young man who invented Durex’s mass-produced condom had been forgotten – even by the manufacturer itself. The global condom market is predicted to grow to over US$11 billion (£8 billion) by 2023, and Durex is in the privileged position of being the world’s most popular brand. Around 975 Durex condoms are sold every minute.