Matthew Boulton

[Dennis Williams]

Well, it's perhaps high time we saluted one of Brum's most famous men....Matthew Boulton, and his two equally famous mates...Messrs Watt and Murdock...and taking them each individually....

Matthew Boulton, the son of a silver-stamper, was born in Birmingham on 14th September 1728.



His father also became involved in making toys. At the age of twenty-one he became a partner in his father's business. Jenny Uglow, the author of The Lunar Men (2002), has argued: "Boulton was neat and dark and dapper, with curly brown hair, keen eyes and a broad grin. Frank and humorous, always with an eye to the main chance, he was a man on the make."
Boulton married Mary Robinson, the daughter of wealthy merchant. On the death of her parents she inherited £14,000. Mary died in 1760 and there were no surviving children. His father also died around the same time, leaving the business to his son. Boulton later married Anne, Mary's younger sister. This was forbidden by ecclesiastical law but Boulton still went ahead with the wedding. According to his biographer, Jennifer Tann: "Boulton's marriage, and with it the addition to his fortune, was the cause of a number of letters of congratulations from his friends. Later in his life, alluding to his fortune, he remarked that he had had the option of living the life of a gentleman but chose, rather, to become an industrialist."
Matthew Boulton became a member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham. The group took this name because they used to meet to dine and converse on the night of the full moon. Other members included James Watt, Josiah Wedgwood, Joseph Priestley, Thomas Day, William Small, John Whitehurst, William Withering, Richard Lovell Edgeworth and Erasmus Darwin. The historian, Jenny Uglow, has argued: "The members of the Lunar Society were brilliant representatives of the informal scientific web that cut across class, blending the inherited skills of craftsmen with the theoretical advances of scholars, a key factor in British manufacturing's leap ahead of the rest of Europe. Most had been entranced by mechanics in childhood in the 1730s and 1740s, when itinerant lecturers toured the country displaying electrical and mechanical marvels."

In 1763 James Watt was sent a Newcomen steam engine to repair. While putting it back into working order, Watt discovered how he could make the engine more efficient. Watt worked on the idea for several months and eventually produced a steam engine that cooled the used steam in a condenser separate from the main cylinder. James Watt was not a wealthy man so he decided to seek a partner with money. John Roebuck, the owner of a Scottish ironworks, agreed to provide financial backing for Watt's project.When Roebuck went bankrupt in 1773, he owed Boulton over £1,200. Boulton knew about Watt's research and wrote to him making an offer for Roebuck's share in the steam-engine. Roebuck refused but on 17th May, he changed his mind and accepted Boulton's terms. Watt was also owed money by Roebuck, but as he had done a deal with his friend, he wrote a formal discharge "because I think the thousand pounds he (Boulton) he has paid more than the value of the property of the two thirds of the inventions."

For the next eleven years Boulton's factory producing and selling Watt's steam-engines. These machines were mainly sold to colliery owners who used them to pump water from their mines. Watt's machine was very popular because it was four times more powerful than those that had been based on the Thomas Newcomen design. The first major market for Boulton and Watt engines was in Cornwall.

Boulton continued to produce other goods. In September 1778, Boulton commented "how far it may be prudent in me to stick to Engines or Buttons for I can consider Buttons as a sheet anchor". Jennifer Tann has argued: "It would be incorrect to stereotype Boulton as the entrepreneur and Watt as the inventor, for Boulton made many suggestions for improvements to the engine and Watt also had a good head for business. But there is no doubt that Boulton's flair for marketing was significant for the early success of the business."

It was Boulton who perceived the potential afforded by the growth of the cotton-spinning industry and urged James Watt to develop a rotative engine. By 1781 the new rotary-motion steam engine was ready. Whereas his earlier machine, with its up-and-down pumping action, was ideal for draining mines, this new steam engine could be used to drive many different types of machinery. Richard Arkwright was quick to see the importance of this new invention, and in 1783 he began using steam-engines in his textile factories. Others followed his lead and after fifteen years there were over 500 of Boulton & Watt's machines in Britain's mines and factories.
Eric Hobsbawm, the author of The Age of Revolution (1962) has argued: "Fortunately few intellectual refinements were necessary to make the Industrial Revolution. Its technical inventions were exceedingly modest, and in no way beyond the scope of intelligent artisans experimenting in their workshops, or of the constructive capacities of carpenters, millwrights, and locksmiths: the flying shuttle, the spinning jenny, the mule. Even its scientifically most sophisticated machine, James Watt's rotary steam-engine (1784), required no more physics than had been available for the best part of a century."
Arthur Young pointed out in his book, From Birmingham to Suffolk (1791): "What trains of thought, what a spirit of exertion, what a mass and power of effort have sprung in every path of life, from the works of such men as Brindley, Watt, Priestley, Harrison, Arkwright.... In what path of life can a man be found that will not animate his pursuit from seeing the steam-engine of Watt?"
In 1786 Boulton applied steam power to coining machines. So successful was the process that as well as his supplying the home market, he produced coins for foreign governments as well. As Jennifer Tann pointed out: "A mint to supply copper coinage to the government was established at Soho Manufactory. Towards the end of the eighteenth century Boulton undertook the supply of complete mints for overseas customers, the first one being the imperial mint in St Petersburg. Other orders followed and one of his last commissions before his death was the new Royal Mint in London. It was particularly for his mint interests that he sought out expert engravers and die-sinkers from continental Europe to enhance the level of skill at Soho Manufactory. By means of his mint machinery and the flow-production system in which it was deployed he achieved greater accuracy in the finished product."

Boulton was a supporter of the campaign against slavery. In 1789, along with Joseph Priestley, he joined the deputation to welcome Olaudah Equiano, who came to speak in Birmingham about his experiences as a slave.
Matthew Boulton died of kidney failure at Soho House, Handsworth, on 17th August 1809. James Watt died on 25th August 1819 and was buried beside Boulton in St Mary's Church, Handsworth, on 2nd September.


Soho Manufactury


Inside Boulton's factory


Soho House now

Boulton's old house in Livery street

 

[Dennis Williams]

More on the triumvirate from Mr Chinn...

Boulton, Watt and Murdock

'I shall never forget Mr. Boulton's expression to me' , wrote Boswell after a visit to Soho, ' "I sell here, Sir, what all the world desires to have - POWER" '. Although James Watt invented the steam engine, it was Boulton who best appreciated its revolutionary significance, had the 'Brummy' nerve to back his judgement, and the intensity of commitment needed to convert others to the same point of view. In a sense, the Soho man's missionary zeal was a product and generalization of his own experience. Within a year or two of establishing the manufactory, he had found it necessary to install a second water wheel, and then a horse mill, in an effort to keep his own machinery turning. His initial interest in Watt's steam pump, when the two first met in 1768, was simply that such an engine at Soho would enable him to pump back water from his tail race to the mill pool, and so re-use the precious, power-giving liquid again and again. However, when a little later, Watt's first partner, John Roebuck, found himself running into fmancial difficulties, Boulton at once offered to switch all available resources to the development of the new invention. He wrote to Watt in 1769 proposing the establishment of a special factory for that purpose: "my idea was to settle a manufactory near to my own by the side of our canal where I would erect all the conveniences necessary for the completion of the engines and from which manufactory we would serve all the world with engines of all sizes.

In the event, the trade depression of the early 1770s found Boulton himself in serious fmancial difficulties, and it was to be another twenty-four years before the special manufactory was built. Nevertheless, the Boulton and Watt partnership was sealed in 1774 and the great engineer moved to Birmingham where he was to stay for the rest of his life.
Watt's first separate condenser pumping engine had been erected at Kinneal, Scotland in 1769, the year in which he also took out the patent. Boulton's opening sales drive was on the South Staffordshire and East Shropshire coalfields, where a number of Watt's steam pumps were installed in the late 1770s. Among the first half-dozen, too, was that built in 1777 for the Birmingham Canal Navigation at Smethwick. Moved to Ocker Hill in 1895, this, the oldest extant Watt engine, is now preserved in the Birmingham Museum of Science and Industry. But the main market for steam pumps soon became the copper and tin mines of Cornwall, where William Murdock, another Scottish recruit to the firm, spent nineteen years supervising their installation.

Watt's first engine was ideal for draining mines. But Boulton was a factory, not a colliery owner; so from his point of view it was only a half-way house. What is more, he was convinced that the industrial world at large was eagerly awaiting a steam engine that would turn machinery. Ironically, Watt himself was much less optimistic. When Boulton wrote to him suggesting that the cotton mills would provide a ready market, he replied damply that Lancashire had so much water power that the use of steam would be uneconomic. However, in 1782 Watt's epoch-making Rotary Steam Engine was patented, and its reception was every bit as enthusiastic as Boulton had foretold.

Only a year later, we find Charles Twigg's steam mill at Snow Hill advertising the supply of power for the rolling of metals, the grinding and boring of gun barrels, 'the polishing of steel goods, finishing of Buckles, Buckle Chapes and a variety of other articles usually done by foot lathes'. 'The whole is worked by Steam Engine', the advertisement proudly continued, 'and saves Manufacturers the trouble of sending several miles into the country to water mills'. Before the eighteenth century was out at least six other 'Fire Engines' were at work in Birmingham; and orders were reaching Soho in steadily mounting numbers from industrial enterprises throughout the country.

Having successfully midwifed the rotary engine, Boulton's overriding passion during the mid-eighties was to apply it to the manufacture of coinage. The quantity of British coins at this time was so inadequate and the quality so inferior that counterfeiting - much of it done in Birmingham - was a profitable occupation. Boulton realized that this evil could only be eliminated by producing official coins in such numbers and of such perfection that the making of fakes would cease to be worthwhile. Designing the necessary machinery himself, by 1788 he had six steam-driven coining presses at work in a new purpose-built section of the manufactory known as the Soho Mint. The government was indifferent at first. But after several years of minting overseas currencies and trade tokens - themselves a product of the coin shortage - Boulton was at last awarded a Crown contract. The result was the superb 1797 -99 George III issue of 'cartwheel' pennies and two-penny pieces, over 45 million of which were minted at Soho in two years.
Originally, components for both Watt's steam engines had been manufacturedelsewhere, the engines then being assembled in situ by Soho engineers. By the 1790s, however, the engine business had become so booming that the special engine factory,
which Boulton had always had in mind, could at last be built. This was sited on the Birmingham-Wolverhampton canal, about a mile from the Soho Works. According to Aris's Gazette, the opening ceremonies, which were held on 30th January 1796, included a 'Rearing Feast' given to the engine smiths, and all the other workmen employed in the erection:

When dinner was over, the Founder of Soho entered, and consecrated this new branch of it, by sprinkling the walls with wine, and then, in the name of Vulcan, and all the Gods and Goddesses of Fire and Water, pronounced the name of it SOHO FOUNDRY, and all the people cried Amen... A Ball, with tea, was given in the evening to Venus and the Graces

Six years later there was another bout of junketing at Soho, when the Manufactory was illuminated in celebration of the short-lived Peace of Amiens. Amidst the many oil lamps which decorated the front of the building were the first two gas lights ever to appear in public. The development of gas lighting was one of the pioneer ventures of the third member of the great Soho triumvirate, William Murdock. During his early years in Cornwall, Murdock had concentrated on the design and making of the model locomotive which demonstrated for the first time in this country that steam could be used to propel a vehicle. Unfortunately, this invention came at a time when the development of Watt's rotary engine was already stretching the resources of Soho to the limit. Murdock was a deferential employee and the two partners had little difficulty in persuading him to drop the project, thereby missing for Soho the 'hat-trick' of pioneering all three basic types of steam engine. However, Murdock's experiments with gas were better received, and by 1805 gas lighting plant was becoming one of the major products of the foundry.

From 1765, or a little before, the myriad-sided Matthew Boulton had been the chief mentor of an informal group of outstanding businessmen, scientists and intellectuals, which, largely through his inspiration, became a kind of hot-house of new and stimulating ideas; or 'a pilot project for the Industrial Revolution'. By 1776 this group was known as the Lunar Society, a name which derived from the fact that meetings - at the homes of different members in turn - were usually held on or near the day of a full moon, so making it relatively easy for those attending to find their way home afterwards. Apart from Boulton and Watt, industrialists belonging to the Lunar Society included John Baskerville, Samuel Galton, the Quaker gunmaker, James Keir, the glass and chemical manufacturer, and Josiah Wedgwood, the master potter. Then there were several physicians, like Dr. William Withering, of Edgbaston Hall, the man who first established the possibilities of digitalis as a heart stimulant; and Dr. Erasmus Darwin, botanist, philosopher and poet, whose obsession with 'the struggle for existence' made him a progenitor, not only of Charles Darwin - his grandson - but of the Theory of Evolution. But perhaps the intellectually most distinguished member was Joseph Priestley, minister of the Unitarian New Meeting House in Birmingham from 1780-91, who, as the discoverer of oxygen, nitrogen, ammonia and sulphuric acid, is generally regarded as 'the father of modern chemistry'. 'Dear Boulton,' wrote Erasmus Darwin in April 1778, 'I am sorry the infernal divinities who visit mankind with diseases and are therefore at perpetual war with doctors, should have prevented my seeing all your great men at Soho today. Lord! what inventions, what wit, what rhetoric, metaphysical, mechanical and pyrotechnical, will be on the wing, bandied like a shuttlecock from one to another of your troop of philosophers! while poor I, I by myself, I, imprisoned in a post-chaise, am jogged and jostled, and bumped and bruised along the King's high-road, to make war upon a stomach-ache or a fever!'

The Soho Works was demolished in 1862-3. But the Soho Foundry, although much altered by W & T Avery Ltd. who took it over in 1895, still has remnants of the original premises, including some workmen's cottages, traces of the canal wharves, and of an early gasometer. On Soho Hill, hidden away behind late- Victorian housing, Soho House, where the Lunar Society so often met, is now used as residential quarters by the Police. St. Mary's Handsworth contains a wonderful group of memorials to the three great men. Finally, the twentieth century has paid its tribute with an over life-size conversation piece of the Soho triumvirate in Broad Street, beside which Registry Office newly-weds often have their photographs taken. But for Soho they might not be flocking there in such numbers.


Soho House


Map of the soho House area in Handsworth


Boulton's Portrait


Handsworth Church, where all three men are buried...


Soho House