Dennis Williams
Gone but not forgotten
As some may have already twigged, these vignettes are takem from earlier postings I did as separate entities about two years ago. The hacker did the damage with the photos and cuttings, so rather than spend hours plonking them back on, I thought I would gather them up and put them all in a single thread. There are new entries and some revamping, but I'm sure you won't mind that. Here's one of the most fascinating, and sadly mostly forgotten, geniuses of Brum - John Wyatt, who I called the Unlucky Genius...some of these facts were unearthed by the Thylacine, and he is delighted to share them once more...
Chapter 1: The Not So Good News
Around 1750, in a warehouse in Upper Priory, John Wyatt worked on an invention that eventually sent him to a debtor’s prison, but was later to earn a knighthood and a fortune for Richard Arkwright. The invention? The Spinning Machine.
Born in 1700 at Weeford, near Lichfield, the eldest of eight brothers and a relative of Dr Johnson’s mother Sara Ford, John Wyatt was a carpenter by trade, but around 1730 he first attracted attention outside Weeford when attempting to develop a machine for “cutting files”.
A Birmingham gunsmith, Richard Heeley, advanced money against ownership of the completed machine, but lost his rights when he ran out of cash. Enter a Mr Lewis Paul of London who stepped in to rescue the project, only for him to suffer the same fate; and within a year the machine rights reverted back to Wyatt once more, and the idea for the cutting machine finally withered on the vine when he went into serious debt, and consequently prison, trying desperately to finish the project.
Next came his ill-fated spinning machine. Initially in the mill shed at New Forge (Powells) Pool, Sutton Coldfield, and later in a workshop in Upper Priory, Wyatt spun the first thread of cotton yarn ever produced by mechanical means when he elongated cotton threads by running them through rollers and then stretching them through a faster second set of rollers with the help of two donkeys walking round an axis. Sound like a plan?
Unfortunately the patent for the spinning machine was in the name of Wyatt’s old partner, Lewis Paul, who, not heeding the old adage ‘once bitten twice shy’, and presumably still having faith in Wyatt’s ingenuity, if not his ability to deliver the finished article; dredged up more cash from the Duke of Shrewsbury to finance this newer device. But, like most creative souls, having no personal financial interest in this machine once it became a working model, Wyatt left Paul to it, and went off to take employment with Matthew Boulton.
The rest is history, unfortunately for him, as Richard Arkwright developed it further and became rich and famous for his trouble. There is a rumour he was once heard to say Me transmitte sursum, caledoni! – (Beam me up, Scotty!)
Chapter 2: The Better News
Among the other fruits of Wyatt’s inventive genius were lightening conductors and lathes. In 1749-50 he made four ‘fire extinguishing’ machines for Birmingham, but his major contribution to industrial progress was his compound-lever weighbridge. For this at least, he found a measure of well deserved fame.
Arising from the need to weigh iron as well as the wood used in the smelting process, his plans were already forming while he was in prison for debts incurred with his spinning machine. The bitterest, sweetest conundrum you could imagine.
Installed in 1741, outside Birmingham Workhouse, the ‘Town Machine’ as it was called, brought Snow Hill a ‘first’ in the world. By drawing a cart on to a platform it transformed the weighing of heavy loads from the cumbersome steelyard method, which necessitated lifting cart and contents by chain. Wyatt’s weighbridges were installed far and wide based on his principle, and I think Avery’s still continue to make weighbridges at the Soho Foundry to this day. And the History of Weighing, for those that just ‘can’t wait to weigh’, is amply catered for on their website:
https://www.averyweigh-tronix.com/aboutus/
John Wyatt died on 29 November 1766 and was buried in the graveyard of Birmingham’s new church, St Philip’s, in the shadow of the newly built Blue Coat School, now Regent House, where his headstone can still be seen. There is no mention of whether he died a rich man, or a pauper. Interesting to find out? I desperately hope that good triumphed over bad in his case. Anyway, we salute a true unsung working Hero of Birmingham on this Thread at least.
Exits left - hoping for the usual avalanche of small detail, photos, reminiscences, references and maps that make this Forum so uniquely entertaining and educational. Go to it folks, and thanks for listening those that got this far…
And as a P.S. some forty years later, another ‘first’ was added, when Richard Ketley, proprietor of the Golden Cross Inn just below Bath Street, founded the first known Building Society in Britain. See how many wonderful contributions to Birmingham’s fortunes the good old pub contributed?
Prosser's Birmingham Inventors and Inventions (1881) devotes pages 7-12 to the invention of spinning by rollers. Since I have been unable to locate an e-text of this invaluable work, I am taking the liberty of quoting two extracts pertinent to John Wyatt's part in the invention and his later life.
R B Prosser. Birmingham Inventors and Inventions. Birmingham: the Author, 1881 and Wakefield: S R Publishers, 1970 (ISBN 0854095780):
Some discussion has arisen with regard to the share which Wyatt had in the invention, and though he was undoubtedly of great assistance to Paul, some are inclined to attribute the whole of the credit to him. This is, however, a point on which we need not enter, more especially since Paul's claims were ably set forth some years ago in a paper by Mr Robert Cole ... It is certain that the invention took its rise in the town, and that is sufficient for our present purpose.
After the final break up of the spinning concern, Wyatt seems to have found employment as a workman under Boulton. He died November 29, 1766, aged sixty-six, and was buried in St Philip's Churchyard, in the triangular plot opposite to the Rectory and the Bluecoat School, about midway between them, and near the railing. To show the esteem in which he was held, Boulton himself attended the funeral, and so did Baskerville — "the latter in a splendid suit of gold lace!" The gravestone was restored a few years ago by Mr John Rabone.
And in 1757 Rev John Dyer of Northampton recognised the importance of the Paul and Wyatt cotton spinning machine in this poem:
A circular machine, of new design
In conic shape: it draws and spins a thread
Without the tedious toil of needless hands.
A wheel invisible, beneath the floor,
To ev'ry member of th' harmonius frame,
Gives necessary motion. One intent
O'erlooks the work; the carded wool, he says,
So smoothly lapped around those cylinders,
Which gently turning, yield it to yon cirue
Of upright spindles, which with rapid whirl
Spin out in long extenet an even twine."
Jeffrey Wyatt, architect to King George IV (reigned 1820-1830), was our John Wyatt's great-nephew.
The Wyatt family appears to be particularly prolific and complex, as is shown by this fact-rich account from one of the genealogy websites. We have already learned that John Wyatt the inventor was the eldest of eight brothers, sons of John Wyatt (1675-1742) and Jane Wyatt née Jackson. One of the brothers was Benjamin Wyatt (1709-1772), a farmer, timber merchant, building contractor and sometime architect, who was the progenitor of a very large architectural dynasty. Jeffrey or Jeffry Wyatt (1766-1840) was Benjamin Wyatt's grandson and probably the most prominent member of the Wyatt dynasty. He changed his surname to Wyattville (or Wyatville) in 1824 and was knighted in 1828, being usually known as Sir Jeffry Wyattville.
Reference: Kenneth Allinson's Architects and Architecture of London (Oxford: The Architectural Press, 2008), which should be approached with caution, since it says of Benjamin Wyatt (1709-1772) that he "was best known as an inventor of spinning machines".
Chapter 1: The Not So Good News
Around 1750, in a warehouse in Upper Priory, John Wyatt worked on an invention that eventually sent him to a debtor’s prison, but was later to earn a knighthood and a fortune for Richard Arkwright. The invention? The Spinning Machine.
Born in 1700 at Weeford, near Lichfield, the eldest of eight brothers and a relative of Dr Johnson’s mother Sara Ford, John Wyatt was a carpenter by trade, but around 1730 he first attracted attention outside Weeford when attempting to develop a machine for “cutting files”.
A Birmingham gunsmith, Richard Heeley, advanced money against ownership of the completed machine, but lost his rights when he ran out of cash. Enter a Mr Lewis Paul of London who stepped in to rescue the project, only for him to suffer the same fate; and within a year the machine rights reverted back to Wyatt once more, and the idea for the cutting machine finally withered on the vine when he went into serious debt, and consequently prison, trying desperately to finish the project.
Next came his ill-fated spinning machine. Initially in the mill shed at New Forge (Powells) Pool, Sutton Coldfield, and later in a workshop in Upper Priory, Wyatt spun the first thread of cotton yarn ever produced by mechanical means when he elongated cotton threads by running them through rollers and then stretching them through a faster second set of rollers with the help of two donkeys walking round an axis. Sound like a plan?
Unfortunately the patent for the spinning machine was in the name of Wyatt’s old partner, Lewis Paul, who, not heeding the old adage ‘once bitten twice shy’, and presumably still having faith in Wyatt’s ingenuity, if not his ability to deliver the finished article; dredged up more cash from the Duke of Shrewsbury to finance this newer device. But, like most creative souls, having no personal financial interest in this machine once it became a working model, Wyatt left Paul to it, and went off to take employment with Matthew Boulton.
The rest is history, unfortunately for him, as Richard Arkwright developed it further and became rich and famous for his trouble. There is a rumour he was once heard to say Me transmitte sursum, caledoni! – (Beam me up, Scotty!)
Chapter 2: The Better News
Among the other fruits of Wyatt’s inventive genius were lightening conductors and lathes. In 1749-50 he made four ‘fire extinguishing’ machines for Birmingham, but his major contribution to industrial progress was his compound-lever weighbridge. For this at least, he found a measure of well deserved fame.
Arising from the need to weigh iron as well as the wood used in the smelting process, his plans were already forming while he was in prison for debts incurred with his spinning machine. The bitterest, sweetest conundrum you could imagine.
Installed in 1741, outside Birmingham Workhouse, the ‘Town Machine’ as it was called, brought Snow Hill a ‘first’ in the world. By drawing a cart on to a platform it transformed the weighing of heavy loads from the cumbersome steelyard method, which necessitated lifting cart and contents by chain. Wyatt’s weighbridges were installed far and wide based on his principle, and I think Avery’s still continue to make weighbridges at the Soho Foundry to this day. And the History of Weighing, for those that just ‘can’t wait to weigh’, is amply catered for on their website:
https://www.averyweigh-tronix.com/aboutus/
John Wyatt died on 29 November 1766 and was buried in the graveyard of Birmingham’s new church, St Philip’s, in the shadow of the newly built Blue Coat School, now Regent House, where his headstone can still be seen. There is no mention of whether he died a rich man, or a pauper. Interesting to find out? I desperately hope that good triumphed over bad in his case. Anyway, we salute a true unsung working Hero of Birmingham on this Thread at least.
Exits left - hoping for the usual avalanche of small detail, photos, reminiscences, references and maps that make this Forum so uniquely entertaining and educational. Go to it folks, and thanks for listening those that got this far…
And as a P.S. some forty years later, another ‘first’ was added, when Richard Ketley, proprietor of the Golden Cross Inn just below Bath Street, founded the first known Building Society in Britain. See how many wonderful contributions to Birmingham’s fortunes the good old pub contributed?
Prosser's Birmingham Inventors and Inventions (1881) devotes pages 7-12 to the invention of spinning by rollers. Since I have been unable to locate an e-text of this invaluable work, I am taking the liberty of quoting two extracts pertinent to John Wyatt's part in the invention and his later life.
R B Prosser. Birmingham Inventors and Inventions. Birmingham: the Author, 1881 and Wakefield: S R Publishers, 1970 (ISBN 0854095780):
Some discussion has arisen with regard to the share which Wyatt had in the invention, and though he was undoubtedly of great assistance to Paul, some are inclined to attribute the whole of the credit to him. This is, however, a point on which we need not enter, more especially since Paul's claims were ably set forth some years ago in a paper by Mr Robert Cole ... It is certain that the invention took its rise in the town, and that is sufficient for our present purpose.
After the final break up of the spinning concern, Wyatt seems to have found employment as a workman under Boulton. He died November 29, 1766, aged sixty-six, and was buried in St Philip's Churchyard, in the triangular plot opposite to the Rectory and the Bluecoat School, about midway between them, and near the railing. To show the esteem in which he was held, Boulton himself attended the funeral, and so did Baskerville — "the latter in a splendid suit of gold lace!" The gravestone was restored a few years ago by Mr John Rabone.
And in 1757 Rev John Dyer of Northampton recognised the importance of the Paul and Wyatt cotton spinning machine in this poem:
A circular machine, of new design
In conic shape: it draws and spins a thread
Without the tedious toil of needless hands.
A wheel invisible, beneath the floor,
To ev'ry member of th' harmonius frame,
Gives necessary motion. One intent
O'erlooks the work; the carded wool, he says,
So smoothly lapped around those cylinders,
Which gently turning, yield it to yon cirue
Of upright spindles, which with rapid whirl
Spin out in long extenet an even twine."
Jeffrey Wyatt, architect to King George IV (reigned 1820-1830), was our John Wyatt's great-nephew.
The Wyatt family appears to be particularly prolific and complex, as is shown by this fact-rich account from one of the genealogy websites. We have already learned that John Wyatt the inventor was the eldest of eight brothers, sons of John Wyatt (1675-1742) and Jane Wyatt née Jackson. One of the brothers was Benjamin Wyatt (1709-1772), a farmer, timber merchant, building contractor and sometime architect, who was the progenitor of a very large architectural dynasty. Jeffrey or Jeffry Wyatt (1766-1840) was Benjamin Wyatt's grandson and probably the most prominent member of the Wyatt dynasty. He changed his surname to Wyattville (or Wyatville) in 1824 and was knighted in 1828, being usually known as Sir Jeffry Wyattville.
Reference: Kenneth Allinson's Architects and Architecture of London (Oxford: The Architectural Press, 2008), which should be approached with caution, since it says of Benjamin Wyatt (1709-1772) that he "was best known as an inventor of spinning machines".
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