Abel Hoadley

Abel Hoadley (10 September 1844 – 12 May 1918) was the inventor of the popular Australian confectionery bar, the Violet Crumble.

He was born in Willingdon, East Sussex, England, the son of Peter Hoadley (blacksmith) and Elizabeth Ann Wheeler. Hoadley arrived in Australia in 1865. His first business was manufacturing and selling jams and pickles, with produce fresh from his own orchard in Burwood East. In 1889, Hoadley opened a jam factory in South Melbourne, Victoria, trading as A. Hoadley & Company.

Hoadley soon began a more lucrative business of manufacturing confectionery (in the Rising Sun Preserving Works in 1895), which was not dependent on seasonal ingredients. When he produced his first chocolate assortment, he packed it with a piece of honeycomb. The honeycomb became so popular that Hoadley decided to produce an individual honeycomb bar. This was not an easy task; as the pieces of honeycomb cooled, they absorbed moisture and started sticking together. Eventually, this hygroscopic nature of honeycomb led Hoadley to dip the honeycomb bars in chocolate, in order to keep the honeycomb dry and crunchy. Thus, in 1913, the Violet Crumble bar was created.

Hoadley wanted to call his new bar just Crumble, but learned that it was an unprotectable name. He thought of his wife (Susannah Ann née Barrett) and her favourite flower, the violet, and registered the name Violet Crumble, using a purple wrapper with a small flower logo. The confectionery bar was an instant success at the time and has remained popular into the twenty-first century.

The original orchard site in the Melbourne suburb of Burwood East was sold at less than market price to the Methodist Church Central Mission for the establishment of a Boys' Training Farm, which later became the Tally Ho Boys' Home. The site now houses residential development, Crossway Baptist Church, the National Archives of Australia and the Tally Ho Business Park.

Hoadley and Susannah had fourteen children. He died at the age of 73 in his home, "Bella Vista", in the Melbourne suburb of Kew, Victoria. The Hoadley company was acquired by Rowntree's in 1970 and then by Nestlé in 1988.