A couple of extracts below which illustrate one link between Twigg and Boulton. (Source: 'A Ramble Round Old Birmingham' Mises Institute). It suggests Twigg did metal rolling for Boulton's Soho Works, that Boulton was an 'old friend and client' of Twigg and that Twigg was in serious debt by 1793 (hence confirming the need for the sale of the mill and other property in 1796):
"Charles Twigg and Co., Rollers of metal, Grinders and Borers of Gun Barrels, at the Steam Mill, Snow Hill. N.B. — This mill is erected for the above purposes, and also for the polishing of steel goods, finishing buckles, buckle chapes, and a variety of other articles usually done per foot lathes. The whole is worked by a steam engine, and saves manufacturers the trouble of sending several miles into the country, to water mills (quoted in Aitken 1866, pp. 242–3)"
"Twigg’s fate shows how, in those crueler times, even relatively progressive businessmen could be dealt a bad hand. In 1793 he found himself heavily in debt; and over the course of the next five years, as he explained to Matthew Boulton, he’d had “to relinquish every Species of Property to satisfy those Gentlemen to whom I was indebted.” At last, to avoid ending up in debtors’ prison, and to provide for his wife and seven children, he was compelled to announce his bankruptcy in the Gazette, which meant selling off his last important asset: the rolling mill. It was on this occasion that he penned a despondent note to Boulton, his old client and friend, lamenting his fate, while reminding him to credit his account for rolling he’d done for Soho just before going south (MBP 257/147); and that sad note is the last we hear of the now-forgotten sponsor of the world’s first rotary-motion steam engine".
"Charles Twigg and Co., Rollers of metal, Grinders and Borers of Gun Barrels, at the Steam Mill, Snow Hill. N.B. — This mill is erected for the above purposes, and also for the polishing of steel goods, finishing buckles, buckle chapes, and a variety of other articles usually done per foot lathes. The whole is worked by a steam engine, and saves manufacturers the trouble of sending several miles into the country, to water mills (quoted in Aitken 1866, pp. 242–3)"
"Twigg’s fate shows how, in those crueler times, even relatively progressive businessmen could be dealt a bad hand. In 1793 he found himself heavily in debt; and over the course of the next five years, as he explained to Matthew Boulton, he’d had “to relinquish every Species of Property to satisfy those Gentlemen to whom I was indebted.” At last, to avoid ending up in debtors’ prison, and to provide for his wife and seven children, he was compelled to announce his bankruptcy in the Gazette, which meant selling off his last important asset: the rolling mill. It was on this occasion that he penned a despondent note to Boulton, his old client and friend, lamenting his fate, while reminding him to credit his account for rolling he’d done for Soho just before going south (MBP 257/147); and that sad note is the last we hear of the now-forgotten sponsor of the world’s first rotary-motion steam engine".
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