Dennis Williams
Gone but not forgotten
Moving on to another famous Brummie - Birmingham's first Tycoon and his link with another Dynasty, The Lloyds...another lengthy tale I'm afraid..
Part 1. The Taylors
Birminghams first big factory owner was John Taylor, merchant, snuff-box and button maker. Little is known about Taylor's early life, although he was born about 1711 and it is thought that he worked for some time as a cabinet maker. As with several other key figures of the Industrial Revolution, not enough information has survived for us to fully understand and appraise the man; more than enough to have engendered a legend.
Hutton, although a contemporary, speaks of Taylor in almost mythical terms: “Him we may deem the Shakespeare or Newton of his day. He rose from minute beginnings to shine in the commercial hemisphere, as they in the poetic and philosophical…to this uncommon genius we owe the gilt button, the japanned and gilt snuff boxes, with the numerous race of enamels. From the same fountain issued the painted snuff-box”. He obviously liked his bit of old snuff did William…
Taylor was born about 1711, and started his industrial career as an ordinary artisan, he built up an extraordinary business which emplyed over 500 workers. Some of these may have been engaged on a domestic basis but many undoubtedly worked in his factory, which was situated in Crooked Lane, off Dale End. Suitable labour does not always seem to have been easy to find. On one occasion he is said to have sent a “bell man” out into the Streets of Brum to advertise job vacancies. The very first chugger?
Consider the words of an American bloke who wrote this lovely book about the world of spondulicks… https://www.amazon.co.uk/Good-Money-Birm ... 947&sr=8-1
“Returning to Union Street, and proceeding along its far side, we pass the Wesleyan Church — a fairly recent structure that replaced one consecrated by Wesley himself — and turn left onto Crooked Lane. It was at the lower end of this narrow alley that John Taylor, the other co-founder of Taylors & Lloyds Bank and Birmingham's most famous button maker, got his start gilding metal buttons. Eventually Taylor, who "appeared to possess an exhaustless invention" as well as an incredible knack for discerning the public's likes and dislikes, relocated to Union Street, where his factory produced about £800 worth of buttons every week, and where the metal sweepings alone are said to have been worth £1,000 per year.
When Taylor passed away in 1775, he was worth £200,000. Needless to say, his example inspired many others, including Boulton (who referred to him, reverently, as "the Squire"), giving a big boost to the button industry, which grew rapidly in the course of the next two decades. Of course, very few approached Taylor's degree of success, while many failed altogether, as Hutton said: "Trade, like a restive horse, can rarely be managed; for, where one is carried to the end of a successful journey, many are thrown off by the way".
At his death he left a private residence Bordesley Hall on which he had spent £10,000 (later in 1791 the Rioters burned it down) to his son (also John), and extensive landed estates in Yardley, Sheldon, Coleshill and several other rural parishes, as well as his £200,000 fortune.
Among the few personal memorials of this first Birmingham tycoon are three accounts in the Birmingham Library. On one page we find his paying £8. 8s to “Polly Dalton for London Journeys”: on another investing £60 on “the Elmdon Turnpike”. But perhaps more evocatively, on page 37 of the first volume, there is a mysterious jotting concerning “aq.fortis (nitric acid), oly.vitrol (sulphuric acid), Glober Salts (mild laxative), Gilt mettle”, etc.
Lord Shelburn, a famous 18th century politician who visited Taylor’s works in 1766, was impressed by three things: The employment of an alloy, or mixed metal so mullient or ductile as easy to suffer stamping, the heavy reliance on machinery, and the way the division of labour was used to speed up production
“thus a button passes through fifty hands, and each hand perhaps passes a thousand a day; likewise, by this means, the work becomes so simple that, fives times in six, children of six to eight years old do it as well as men, and earn from ten pence to eight shillings a week.”
Taylor used three distinct processes in the finishing and decorating of his wares. Gilt plating which he is himself thought to have introduced into Birmingham; japanning or enamelling; and painting. One employee regularly earned £33.10s per week by painting 3,360 snuff boxes at the rate of a farthing each.
He produced, among others, a style which was very popular, and the demand for which became enormous. They were of various colours and shapes, their peculiarity consisting entirely in the ornamentation of the surface. Each had a bright coloured ground, upon which was a very extraordinary wavy style of ornament of a different shade of colour, showing streaks and curves of the two colours alternately, in such an infinity of patterns, that it was said that no two were ever found alike. Other makers tried in vain to imitate them; "how it was done" became an important question. The mystery increased, when it became known that Mr. Taylor ornamented them all with his own hands, in a room to which no one else was admitted. The fortunate discoverer of the secret soon accumulated a large fortune, and he used to chuckle, years after, as he told that the process consisted in smearing the second coat of colour, while still wet, with the fleshy part of his thumb, which happened to have a peculiarly open or coarse "grain." It will be seen at once that in this way he could produce an infinite variety.
Yet Taylor was important not only to Birmingham's manufacturing, he was also crucial in providing much-needed money for others who wanted to develop their own ideas and make them a reality...
Enter the Lloyds...
Part 1. The Taylors
Birminghams first big factory owner was John Taylor, merchant, snuff-box and button maker. Little is known about Taylor's early life, although he was born about 1711 and it is thought that he worked for some time as a cabinet maker. As with several other key figures of the Industrial Revolution, not enough information has survived for us to fully understand and appraise the man; more than enough to have engendered a legend.
Hutton, although a contemporary, speaks of Taylor in almost mythical terms: “Him we may deem the Shakespeare or Newton of his day. He rose from minute beginnings to shine in the commercial hemisphere, as they in the poetic and philosophical…to this uncommon genius we owe the gilt button, the japanned and gilt snuff boxes, with the numerous race of enamels. From the same fountain issued the painted snuff-box”. He obviously liked his bit of old snuff did William…
Taylor was born about 1711, and started his industrial career as an ordinary artisan, he built up an extraordinary business which emplyed over 500 workers. Some of these may have been engaged on a domestic basis but many undoubtedly worked in his factory, which was situated in Crooked Lane, off Dale End. Suitable labour does not always seem to have been easy to find. On one occasion he is said to have sent a “bell man” out into the Streets of Brum to advertise job vacancies. The very first chugger?
Consider the words of an American bloke who wrote this lovely book about the world of spondulicks… https://www.amazon.co.uk/Good-Money-Birm ... 947&sr=8-1
“Returning to Union Street, and proceeding along its far side, we pass the Wesleyan Church — a fairly recent structure that replaced one consecrated by Wesley himself — and turn left onto Crooked Lane. It was at the lower end of this narrow alley that John Taylor, the other co-founder of Taylors & Lloyds Bank and Birmingham's most famous button maker, got his start gilding metal buttons. Eventually Taylor, who "appeared to possess an exhaustless invention" as well as an incredible knack for discerning the public's likes and dislikes, relocated to Union Street, where his factory produced about £800 worth of buttons every week, and where the metal sweepings alone are said to have been worth £1,000 per year.
When Taylor passed away in 1775, he was worth £200,000. Needless to say, his example inspired many others, including Boulton (who referred to him, reverently, as "the Squire"), giving a big boost to the button industry, which grew rapidly in the course of the next two decades. Of course, very few approached Taylor's degree of success, while many failed altogether, as Hutton said: "Trade, like a restive horse, can rarely be managed; for, where one is carried to the end of a successful journey, many are thrown off by the way".
At his death he left a private residence Bordesley Hall on which he had spent £10,000 (later in 1791 the Rioters burned it down) to his son (also John), and extensive landed estates in Yardley, Sheldon, Coleshill and several other rural parishes, as well as his £200,000 fortune.
Among the few personal memorials of this first Birmingham tycoon are three accounts in the Birmingham Library. On one page we find his paying £8. 8s to “Polly Dalton for London Journeys”: on another investing £60 on “the Elmdon Turnpike”. But perhaps more evocatively, on page 37 of the first volume, there is a mysterious jotting concerning “aq.fortis (nitric acid), oly.vitrol (sulphuric acid), Glober Salts (mild laxative), Gilt mettle”, etc.
Lord Shelburn, a famous 18th century politician who visited Taylor’s works in 1766, was impressed by three things: The employment of an alloy, or mixed metal so mullient or ductile as easy to suffer stamping, the heavy reliance on machinery, and the way the division of labour was used to speed up production
“thus a button passes through fifty hands, and each hand perhaps passes a thousand a day; likewise, by this means, the work becomes so simple that, fives times in six, children of six to eight years old do it as well as men, and earn from ten pence to eight shillings a week.”
Taylor used three distinct processes in the finishing and decorating of his wares. Gilt plating which he is himself thought to have introduced into Birmingham; japanning or enamelling; and painting. One employee regularly earned £33.10s per week by painting 3,360 snuff boxes at the rate of a farthing each.
He produced, among others, a style which was very popular, and the demand for which became enormous. They were of various colours and shapes, their peculiarity consisting entirely in the ornamentation of the surface. Each had a bright coloured ground, upon which was a very extraordinary wavy style of ornament of a different shade of colour, showing streaks and curves of the two colours alternately, in such an infinity of patterns, that it was said that no two were ever found alike. Other makers tried in vain to imitate them; "how it was done" became an important question. The mystery increased, when it became known that Mr. Taylor ornamented them all with his own hands, in a room to which no one else was admitted. The fortunate discoverer of the secret soon accumulated a large fortune, and he used to chuckle, years after, as he told that the process consisted in smearing the second coat of colour, while still wet, with the fleshy part of his thumb, which happened to have a peculiarly open or coarse "grain." It will be seen at once that in this way he could produce an infinite variety.
Yet Taylor was important not only to Birmingham's manufacturing, he was also crucial in providing much-needed money for others who wanted to develop their own ideas and make them a reality...
Enter the Lloyds...
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