by Ben Russell
6 E. Hopkins, The Rise of the Manufacturing Town: Birmingham and the Industrial Revolution (Stroud, 1998), p. 21.
7 M. L. Mare and W. H. Quarrell, eds, Lichtenberg’s visits to England, as Described in his Letters and Diaries (Oxford, 1938), pp. 98–9.
8 N. Scarfe, ed., Innocent Espionage: The La Rochefoucauld Brothers’ Tour of England in 1785 (Woodbridge, 1995), p. 114.
9 J. Simmons, ed., Letters from England by Robert Southey (London, 1951), p. 197.
10 P. Jones, Industrial Enlightenment: Science, Technology and Culture in Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760–1820 (Manchester, 2008), pp. 73–4.
11 R. B. Prosser, Birmingham Inventors and Inventions (Birmingham, 1881), p. 3.
12 W. Hutton, An History of Birmingham (Birmingham, 1795), p. 90.
13 K. Farrer, ed., Letters of Josiah Wedgwood 1762 to 1770 (Manchester, 1903), p. 110.
14 Bisset, A Poetic Survey Round Birmingham, p. 12.
15 Rita McLean, ‘Introduction: Matthew Boulton, 1728–1809’, in Matthew Boulton: Selling What All the World Desires, ed. S. Mason, exh. cat., Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery (New Haven, CT, and London, 2009), pp. 1–6: p. 4.
16 K. Morgan, ed., An American Quaker in Britain: The Travel Journals of Jabez Maud Fisher, 1775–1779 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 253–5.
17 H. W. Dickinson, Matthew Boulton (Cambridge, 1937), p. 73.
18 Peter Jones, ‘“I had Lords and Ladys to wait on yesterday . . .”: Visitors to the Soho Manufactory’, in Matthew Boulton, ed. Mason, pp. 71–9: p. 73.
19 J. Griffiths, The Third Man: The Life and Times of William Murdoch, 1754–1839 (London, 1992), p. 71.
20 James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (London, 1799), p. 473.
21 Kenneth Quickenden, ‘Matthew Boulton’s Silver and Sheffield Plate’, in Matthew Boulton, ed. Mason, pp. 41–6: p. 45.
22 Jenny Uglow, ‘Matthew Boulton and the Lunar Society’, in Matthew Boulton, ed. Mason (Birmingham, 2009), pp. 7–13: p. 10.
23 H. W. Dickinson, James Watt: Craftsman and Engineer (Cambridge, 1935), p. 54.
24 J. P. Muirhead, The Life of James Watt, with Selections from his Correspondence (London, 1858), p. 301.
25 W. Hutton, An History of Birmingham to the End of the Year 1780 (Birmingham, 1781), p. 78.
26 Prosser, Birmingham Inventors and Inventions, p. 48.
27 J. Money, Experience and Identity: Birmingham and the West Midlands, 1760–1800 (Manchester, 1977), p. 262.
28 British Museum inv. BM5454A.
29 British Museum object inv. BM5454B.
30 A. Rees, entry for ‘Button’, in The Cyclopedia; or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, Science, and Literature (London, 1819), vol. V; Morgan, ed., An American Quaker in Britain, pp. 253–5.
31 Dickinson, Matthew Boulton, p. 48.
32 Mare and Quarrell, eds, Lichtenberg’s Visits to England, p. 113.
33 ‘Birmingham Toys: Manufacturing Techniques’, Revolutionary Players, www.revolutionaryplayers.org.uk, accessed 30 October 2012.
34 Hopkins, The Rise of the Manufacturing Town, p. 8.
35 Raphael Samuel, ‘Workshop of the World: Steam Power and Hand Technology in Mid-Victorian Britain’, History Workshop, III (1977), pp. 6–72: p. 46.
36 Bisset, A Poetic Survey Round Birmingham, p. 155.
37 He was originally commissioned to make a set of wooden legs for Wedgwood when he had one of his amputated in 1768 – a resourceful man. Farrer, ed., Letters of Josiah Wedgwood to 1770, p. 203.
38 Hopkins, The Rise of the Manufacturing Town, p. 9.
39 E. G. Fitzmaurice, Life of William, Earl of Shelburn (London, 1912), vol. I, pp. 276–7.
40 John Turner, ‘The Birmingham Button Trade’, in The Resources, Products and Industrial History of Birmingham, ed. Timmins, pp. 432–51: p. 444.
41 J. S. Wright, ‘The Jewellery and Gilt Toy Trades’, in The Resources, Products and Industrial History of Birmingham, ed. Timmins, pp. 452–62: 456.
42 T. Gill, Technological and Microscopic Repository; or, Discoveries and Improvements in the Useful Arts (London, 1830), vol. VI, p. 279.
43 Ibid., vol. VI, p. 279.
44 Turner, ‘The Birmingham Button Trade’, pp. 432–451: p. 446.
45 Morgan, ed., An American Quaker in Britain, p. 253.
46 J. Tann, ‘Boulton and Wat’s Organisation of Steam Engine Production Before the Opening of Soho Foundry’, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, LXIX (1977–8), pp. 41–56: pp. 44–5.
47 D. B. Barton, The Cornish Engine (Truro, 1969), p. 22.
48 Daniel Treadwell, ‘On the Uses and Improvement of Cast-iron’, in Gill, Technological and Microscopic Repository, vol. VI, pp. 222–7: p. 223.
49 Dickinson, James Watt, pp. 86–7.
50 S. Timmins, ‘The Industrial History of Birmingham’, in The Resources, Products and Industrial History of Birmingham, ed. Timmins, pp. 207–24: p. 221.
51 C. Edwards provides an introduction in Tools and Techniques, 1600–1840, available online at www.bafra.org.uk, accessed 24 October 2012.
52 C. Holtzapffel, Turning and Mechanical Manipulation (London, 1846), vol. I, pp. 327, 358.
53 Ibid., pp. 330–31.
54 Ibid., p. 350.
55 E. Roll, An Early Experiment in Industrial Organisation: Being a History of the Firm of Boulton and Watt, 1775–1805 (London, 1968), p. 56.
56 Holtzapffel, Turning and Mechanical Manipulation, vol. I, p. 197.
57 Ibid., p. 206.
58 Ibid., pp. 196–7.
59 Dickinson and Jenkins, James Watt and the Steam Engine, p. 108.
60 Dickinson, James Watt, p. 110.
61 E. A. Forward, ‘The Early History of the Cylinder Boring Machine’, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, V (1924), pp. 24–38: p. 25.
62 M. Daumas, Scientific Instruments of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, and Their Makers (London, 1972), p. 110.
63 Barton, The Cornish Engine, pp. 131–2.
64 Dickinson and Jenkins, James Watt and the Steam Engine, p. 258; Griffiths, The Third Man, p. 96.
65 Holtzapffel, Turning and Mechanical Manipulation, vol. II, p. 850.
66 Wielding the sledgehammer was usually a full-time job in a forge or engineering works, reserved for the younger, fitter men. In some shipyards the sledges were referred to as ‘Mondays’, presumably because after that day their wielder was incapable of further exertions.
67 Holtzapffel, Turning and Mechanical Manipulation, vol. II, p. 850.
68 Hills, James Watt, vol. II: The Years of Toil, p. 111.
69 Holtzapffel, Turning and Mechanical Manipulation, vol. II, p. 558.
70 Griffiths, The Third Man, p. 44.
71 Dickinson, James Watt, p. 109.
72 Hills, James Watt, vol. I: His Time in Scotland, p. 218.
73 Hills, James Watt, vol. II: The Years of Toil, p. 79.
74 Roll, An Early Experiment in Industrial Organisation, p. 26.
75 Hills, James Watt, vol. II: The Years of Toil, p. 106; Roll, An Early Experiment in Industrial Organisation, p. 62; Dickinson and Jenkins, James Watt and the Steam Engine, p. 266.
76 S. Smiles, Lives of the Engineers: The Steam-engine. Boulton and Watt (London, 1878), p. 200.
77 Roll, An Early Experiment in Industrial Organisation, p. 61.
78 M. T. Wright, ‘The Ingenious Mechanick’, in John Joseph Merlin: The Ingenious Mechanick (London, 1985), pp. 47–84: pp. 48–9.
79 S. Timmins, ‘The Industrial History of Birmingham’, in The Resources, Products and Industrial History of Birmingham and the Midland Hardware District, ed. Timmins, pp. 207–24, p. 221.
80 Griffiths, The Third Man, p. 102.
81 Roll, An Early Experiment in Industrial Organisation, p. 151.
82 E. Robinson and D. McKie, Partners in Science: James Watt and Joseph Black (London, 1970), p. 96.
83 Science Museum inv. 1924–792/627.
84 Hills, James Watt, vol. II: The Years of Toil, p. 191.
85 Roll, An Early Experiment in Industrial Organisation, p. 85.
86 Dickinson and Jenkins, James Watt and the Steam Engine, p. 264.
87 J. Andrew, J. Stein, J. Tann and C. MacLeod, ‘The Transition from Timber to Cast Iron Working Beams for Steam Engines: A Technological Innovation’, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, LXX (1998–9), pp. 197–220: p. 204.
88 Science Museum inv. 1876–1370.
89 Roll, An Early Experiment in Industrial Organisation, p. 43.
90 Ibid., p. 29.
91 Hills, James Watt, vol. II: The Years of Toil, p. 101.
92 Holtzapffel, Turning and Mechanical Manipulation, vol. I, p. 245.
93 Ibid., p. 370.
94 Ibid., p. 202.
95 Ibid., p. 209.
96 Harris, Industrial Espionage and Technology Transfer, p. 206.
97 W. Pole, The Life of Sir William Fairbairn (London, 1877), pp. 46–7.
98 Hills, James Watt, vol. II: The Years of Toil, p. 98.
99 Barton, The Cornish Engine, p. 27.
Chapter Five: Steam Mill Mad? 1781–95
1 N. Scarfe, ed., Innocent Espionage: The La Rochefoucauld Brothers’ Tour of England in 1785 (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 60, 61.
2 J. Simmons, ed., Letters from England by Robert Southey (London, 1951), p. 213.
3 W. H. Chaloner, ‘Manchester in the Latter Half of the Eighteenth Century’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, XLII/1 (1959), pp. 40–60: pp. 41–2.
4 C. Bruyn Andrews, ed., The Torrington Diaries (New York, 1938), vol. II, p. 195.
5 M. W. Thompson, ed., The Journeys of Sir Richard Colt Hoare (Gloucester, 1983), p. 155.
6 K. Morgan, ed., An American Quaker in Britain: The Travel Journals of Jabez Maud Fisher, 1775–1779 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 235–6.
7 W. Hardy, The Origins of the Idea of the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 2006), p. 11.
8 A. Rees, entry for ‘Cotton’, Cyclopaedia of the Useful Arts (London, 1819), vol. X.
9 W. Bowden, Industrial Society in England Towards the End of the 18th Century (London, 1965), p. 122.
10 M. B. Rose, The Lancashire Cotton Industry: A History since 1700 (Preston, 1996), p. 7.
11 R. Kennedy, Mr Jefferson’s Lost Cause: Land, Farmers, Slavery and the Louisiana Purchase (New York, 2003), p. 100.
12 S. Levitt, ‘Clothing’, in The Lancashire Cotton Industry, ed. Rose, pp. 154–86: pp. 154–5.
13 H. J. Voth, Time and Work in England, 1750 to 1830 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 196–7; M. Edwards, The Growth of the British Cotton Trade, 1780–1815 (Manchester, 1967), pp. 32–3; P. Deane, The First Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, 1979), p. 87.
14 T. Carlyle, Chartism (London, 1840), pp. 84–5.
15 R. S. Fitton, The Arkwrights: Spinners of Fortune (Manchester, 1989), p. 210.
16 Arkwright’s prototype machine, capable of spinning four threads simultaneously, survives in the Science Museum collection. Science Museum inv. 1860–4.
17 Rees, ‘Cotton’.
18 S. D. Chapman, ‘The Arkwright Mills: Colquhoun’s Census of 1788 and Archaeological Evidence’, Industrial Archaeology Review, VI/1, pp. 5–26: pp. 5, 8.
19 Bruyn Andrews, ed., The Torrington Diaries, pp. 195–6.
20 Morgan, ed., An American Quaker in Britain, pp. 235, 250.
21 A. E. Musson, ‘Industrial Motive Power in the United Kingdom, 1800–70’, Economic History Review, XXIX/3 (1976), pp. 415–39: p. 429.
22 D. B. Barton, The Cornish Beam Engine (Truro, 1969), p. 23.
23 R. L. Hills, James Watt, vol. III: Triumph Through Adversity, 1785–1819 (Ashbourne, 2006), p. 19.
24 Matthew Boulton purchased 250 kg for one of the trials on the wheel. R. L. Hills, James Watt, vol. I: His Time in Scotland, 1736–1774 (Ashbourne, 2002), p. 432.
25 J. P. Muirhead, The Origin and Progress of the Mechanical Inventions of James Watt (London, 1854), vol. II, p. 102.
26 S. Smiles, The Lives of Boulton and Watt (London, 1878), p. 252.
27 Patent No. 1213, 1779. Specification of Matthew Wasborough: Steam Engines, Propelling Vessels, &c., p. 2.
28 Smiles, The Lives of Boulton and Watt, pp. 228–9.
29 R. L. Hills, Power from Steam: A History of the Stationary Steam Engine (Cambridge, 1989), p. 64.
30 H. W. Dickinson, James Watt: Craftsman and Engineer (Cambridge, 1935), p. 156.
31 H. Hazelton, The Boulton and Watt Engine Book (Birmingham, 1855)
32 J. Kanefsky and J. Robey, ‘Steam Engines in 18th Century Britain: A Quantitative Assessment’, Technology and Culture, XXI (1980), pp. 161–86: p. 176.
33 V.A.C. Gatrell, ‘Labour, Power, and the Size of Firms in Lancashire Cotton in the Second Quarter of the Nineteenth Century’, Economic History Review, XXX (1977), pp. 95–139: p. 125.
34 Gatrell’s claim of manufacturers that ‘some giants were as labour-intensive as some pygmies, some pygmies as power-intensive as some giants’ is telling in this respect. See ibid., p. 113.
35 Chapman, ‘The Arkwright Mills’, p. 10.
36 By comparison the author’s car, with a 1 litre engine, is three times more powerful. A. E. Musson, ‘Industrial Motive Power in the United Kingdom, 1800–70’, Economic History Review, XXIX (1976), pp. 415–39: p. 420.
37 E. Roll, An Early Experiment in Industrial Organisation: Being a History of the Firm of Boulton and Watt, 1775–1805 (London, 1968), p. 62.
38 J. Farey, A Treatise on the Steam Engine: Historical, Practical and Descriptive (London, 1828), vol. I, p. 422.
39 J. Aikin, A Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty Miles Round Manchester (Newton Abbot, 1968), p. 175.
40 Farey, A Treatise on the Steam Engine, p. 275.
41 Musson, ‘Industrial Motive Power in the United Kingdom’, p. 419.
42 He was slightly underestimating. Morgan, ed., An American Quaker in Britain, p. 235.
43 R. L. Hills, Power in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1970), p. 113.
44 Musson, ‘Industrial Motive Power in the United Kingdom’, p. 419.
45 Chapman, ‘The Arkwright Mills’, p. 10.
46 W. Pole, The Life of Sir William Fairbairn (London, 1877), p. 116. Boulton & Watt retaliated by purchasing land next to Murray’s works to prevent him from expanding onto it.
47 Aikin, A Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty Miles Round Manchester, p. 177.
48 A. E. Musson and E. Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1969), p. 424.
49 Farey, A Treatise on the Steam Engine, p. 422.
50 Aikin, A Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty Miles Round Manchester, p. 176.
51 H. W. Dickinson, Matthew Boulton (Cambridge, 1937), p. 115.
52 Kanefsky and Robey, ‘Steam Engines in 18th Century Britain’, pp. 171, 174.
53 R. Gard, ed., The Observant Traveller (London, 1989), p. 73.
54 A. E. Musson and E. Robinson, ‘The Early Growth of Steam Power’, Economic History Review, XI/3 (1959) pp. 418–39: p. 419; E. T. Svedenstierna, Svedenstierna’s Tour of Great Britain, 1802–3 (Newton Abbot, 1973), pp. 173–4.
55 W. Cooke Taylor, Notes of a Tour of the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire (London, 1842), p. 2.
56 J. P. Mayer, ed., Journeys to England and Ireland (New Haven, CT, 1979), p. 107.
57 J. Bischoff, A Comprehensive History of the Woollen and Worsted Manufactures (London, 1842), vol. I, p. 233.
58 M. Edwards, The Growth of the British Cotton Trade, 1780–1815 (Manchester, 1967), p. 51.
59 E. Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain (London, 1835), p. 6.
60 Pole, The Life of Sir William Fairbairn, p. 26.
61 W. Fairbairn, Treatise on Mills and Millwork, Part 1: On the Principles of Mechanism (London, 1871), p. ix.
62 Pole, The Life of Sir William Fairbairn, p. 72.
63 Fairbairn, Treatise on Mills and Millwork, Part 1, p. xii.
64 G. White, ‘A Digest of the First
Part of the Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Committee on Artizans and Machinery’, Hume Tracts (London, 1824), p. 278.
65 It is interesting in this regard that Fairbairn described his one-time boss, John Rennie, as being highly regarded ‘both as an engineer and a millwright’. Pole, The Life of Sir William Fairbairn, p. 88; Fairbairn, Treatise on Mills and Millwork, Part 1, p. xi.
66 R. Buchanan, Practical Essays on Millwork and other Machinery, 3rd edn (London, 1841), vol. I, p. 176.
67 Buchanan, Practical Essays on Millwork, vol. II, p. 545.
68 Pole, The Life of Sir William Fairbairn, p. 117.
69 Ibid., pp. 113–14.
70 Buchanan, Practical Essays on Millwork, vol. I, p. xix.
71 M. Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-century Britain (Oxford, 2005), p. 227.
72 Robert Campbell, The London Tradesman (London, 1747), p. 252.
73 J. P. Muirhead, The Life of James Watt, with Selections from his Correspondence (London, 1858), p. 223.
74 R. L. Hills, James Watt, vol. I: His Time in Scotland, 1736–1774 (Ashbourne, 2002), p. 75; see Watt’s workshop, Science Museum inv. 1924–792/30, for an example.
75 A. Rees, entry for ‘Clock-maker’, Cyclopaedia of the Useful Arts (London, 1819), vol. VIII.
76 Robert Campbell, The London Tradesman (London, 1747), p. 252.
77 W.T.R. Pryce and T. A. Davies, Samuel Roberts, Clock Maker (Cardiff, 1985), p. 61.
78 B. Loomes, Complete British Clocks (Newton Abbot, 1978), p. 84.
79 R. Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet Maker (Oxford, 1992), p. 78.
80 T. Crom, Horological Shop Tools, 1700 to 1900 (Melrose, 1980), p. 41.
81 Loomes, Complete British Clocks, p. 89.
82 P. Mantoux, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century, 2nd edn (London, 1961), p. 296.
83 R. Willis, ‘Machines and Tools for Working Metal, Wood, and Other Materials’, Lectures on the Results of the Great Exhibition Delivered before the Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (London, 1852), pp. 230, 231.
84 Roberts’s advert was on the front page of the first edition of the Manchester Guardian on 5 May 1821. As The Guardian, it is still going strong today.
85 Aikin, A Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty Miles Round Manchester, p. 172.