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ENGINEERS.
THOMAS HAWKSLEY, (1807-1893), was born at Arnold, probably at Arnot Hill, where his father had built a great worsted mill, which was a few years afterwards pulled down. He was educated at the Nottingham Grammar School; articled to Mr. Staveley, Architect and Surveyor, whom he, and Mr. Jalland, afterwards joined in partnership. By incessant toil and private study he qualified himself for greater things, and in 1830 he undertook the construction of Waterworks at the North-western corner of Trent Bridge, with a pumping station, which was said to be the first scheme carried out for giving a constant supply. He lived many years at the house adjoining the Works.
Gradually he became known as a Water-works Engineer, and there was scarcely a town of importance in the kingdom that did not enlist his services, and he constructed more than one hundred and fifty Water-works, some of them being on a very large scale. He also constructed a number of Gas works, and Sanitary and main drainage works—those of Birmingham may be mentioned. His appearance before Parliamentary Committees was frequent; his evidence being always clear and reliable, and his character independent, while his legal knowledge of his subject was considerable.
He was President of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1871-3; of the Mechanical Engineers 1875-7; F.R.S. in 1878, and had many foreign decorations. His capacity for work was enormous. Nothing but the best materials, and most substantial workmanship would be allowed by him. He also sought to combine fitness with elegance, so his pumping stations had due proportion, and were beautified with surrounding shrubs.
EDWARD PARRY, (d. 1920, aged 75) was a civil engineer, Nottingham, and the assistant engineer in the construction of the Nottingham and Melton branch of the Midland Railway. He became County Surveyor for Nottinghamshire. He and another engineer surveyed the Dore and Chinley line, and on behalf of the Midland Railway he acted as engineer in the construction. This required the highest skill, because of the very long tunnel, and the quantity of water in the stone above it, which twice flooded the works. He was the engineer for the construction of the tunnels and railway between Sneinton and Daybrook, called the Surburban Railway. He had the construction of the Great Central Railway between Annesley, through Nottingham and Leicester, as far as Rugby; he therefore left his mark on the district in the bridges, viaducts, tunnels, Victoria Station, etc.
He was, as a young man, a teacher in Castle Gate Sunday School, and in 1880 prepared plans for the School and Lecture Hall there. He was afterwards one of the deacons.
CHRISTOPHER CAMPION, (1818-1894), son of Robert Campion, shopkeeper and milk-seller, York Street, Nottingham, and apprenticed to a Joiner, was a remarkable example of how a man of lowly birth may by observation, reflection, adaptation, energy and perseverance become of great use to the community. During his apprenticeship he developed handiness and skill in a variety of ways, and afterwards when he became a journeyman he worked on a railway job at Macclesfield in blasting tunnels, which of course required great care. Succeeding in his new occupation, he rose to be a foreman railway carpenter, and finally a superintendent of some of the largest engineering jobs in the United Kingdom and France, such as constructing tunnels, bridges, and other kinds of work in which he had no superior, and he was employed by some of the great contractors of the Railway building period, which included the principal tunnels, great viaducts, breakwaters, docks, harbours, piers, etc. He settled at Liverpool, and had sons and daughters, and during the last twenty years of his life he was fond of visiting the scenes of his birth. (Ishmael Wilson, in "Guardian," condensed).
INVENTORS and DEVELOPERS.
Nottingham men should never be allowed to forget that the hosiery frame invented in 1587 was the very first invention in the world of a machine to do the process of hand-work, and it was not followed by a second for one hundred and fifty years, from 1587 to about 1750 when the cotton industry began to move a little, following a preliminary movement in the woollen trade . . . . The cotton trade was the beginning of our modern factory system. It began in Nottingham with Hargreaves and Arkwright, and the first work was carried on in Nottingham." (Professor John A. Todd).
REV. WILLIAM LEE, M.A., was born about 1563, and died in 1610. He was the eldest son of William Lee, of Calverton, and the father must have been fairly well off to give his son an education to fit him to enter, in 1579, at Christ's College, Cambridge, and subsequently he removed to St. John's. In 1582-3 he became B.A., and it is thought, commenced M.A. studies in 1586. It is presumed he then returned to Calverton, or to Woodborough, and that he served as Curate at one or both places, or as supply, for those were the days of absentee vicars. The income of both churches was miserably small, less than £20 in each parish in addition to fees, and the inhabitants in each village numbered lees than one hundred and fifty.
Now for want of information we must let imagination have full play, and look at the pretty picture of his wife nursing the baby, and at the same time knitting for bread, while he ponders on inventing a machine to do the work, and this invention must be largely by the use of wood for lack of iron, and wool for the lack of cotton, and with the most ungainly tools. Disappointment and failure would long precede success, but at last the thing was done. It brought, however, no grist to the mill. He must remove to London, and get Royal patronage, but this quest was in vain. Queen Elizabeth, and afterwards, James I. inspected but withheld any patent rights. The French Ambassador promised for his king, what our monarch withheld, so the machines were removed to Rouen, in Normandy, but the King was assassinated, and all hope was lost. So poor Lee died of a broken heart, and was buried in an unknown grave.
How slowly, improvements are adopted! Here is a benefit for millions, yet one hundred years elapse before a cotton stocking is made, and fifty years later the Calverton stockingers are starving. Two hundred years after Lee's death was the frame-breaking period, and a further fifty years passed before the workmen got a living wage. A little more than three hundred years after Lee's death the hosiery hands at Calverton were in clover. "But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked."
HUNTINGTON SHAW. "Here lieth the Body of Huntington Shaw of Nottingham who died at Hampton Court the 20 Day of October 1710 Aged 51 years. He was an Artist in His way. he designed and executed the ornamental Iron work at Hampton Court Palace." So states a tablet in Hampton Church, as given by Mr. Briscoe in his "Bypaths," p. 128. It appears, however, that the designer was a Frenchman, M. Jean Tigou, who after a long time was paid £1982 for the work, and he is described as a "Smith." It is also stated that the latter part of the inscription was added some time after the first part. It has been suggested that Shaw died of disappointment at not receiving payment for his work. There is no documentary evidence to show Shaw's connection with the work, but we know that often a super-contractor has the work done by another under him: one man gets the credit of building a cathedral, but others have done the real work.
The entrance to the grounds of Watnall Hall has in its iron gates some very fine wrought iron work, surmounted by a gilded eagle's head, which is the crest of the Rollestons. Baron von Hube, in his "History of Greasley," gives an illustration of the work, which he says, "is generally admitted was the work of Shaw."
In the baptismal register of St. Peter's Church, Nottingham, appears "Huntington Shaw, ye sonne of John Shaw and Sarah his wife, was borne June 26th, and baptised July 8th, 1660." (Briscoe).
In the Report of the Manuscripts at Wollaton Hall, Huntington Shawe appears as one of the Assessors of Wollaton parish in 1667 (p. 194) and Mr. W. H. Stevenson, the editor, has a foot note, "Well known as the maker of the beautiful wrought iron gate screens at Hampton Court Palace." There is also a case given (p. 621) wherein Huntington Shaw claims in 1644 that Sutton Passeys, the lost village, was in the parish of Radford, and the "constablery" of Wollaton. These entries cannot refer to the ironworker.
JAMES HARGREAVES, (1718-1778), was a weaver and invented the Spinning Jenny, a contrivance that enabled thespinner to do ten times, and afterwards one hundred times the work done previously. He was driven from Blackburn, where the mob destroyed his home and models, and this was repeated, and so in 1767 he fled to Nottingham, where instead of weaving he worked as a joiner, and Thomas James and he built a small cotton mill, in a little street off Wollaton Street, called for one hundred years Mill Street, but afterwards altered to Bow Street. The mill is still standing, but has been turned into dwelling houses with a new front, although the back remains as of old. Bailey says it was the first cotton mill. Hargreaves obtained a patent, and was offered £3,000 for his invention, but he stuck out for £4,000 and lost it. The Nottingham spinners and hosiers combined and fought him. He brought an action, when it was discovered that before leaving Blackburn he had sold some jennies to obtain clothing for his children, and that rendered his patent void. He continued working in his mill until his death, which in St. Mary's register is recorded as on April 22nd, 1778, aged sixty, and his partner paid the widow £400 as deceased's share in the business.
SIR RICHARD ARKWRIGHT, (1732-92). We will first have a look at Hockley Mill, Nottingham, for it has a tale to tell. It stands in the yard opposite to Coalpit Lane, the approach being between Nos. 60 and 62, Goose Gate, and it extends to Woolpack Lane, a four storey building, erected about 1769, and was then worked by horses going round a circular machine fixed in the yard, in the old fashioned way of a brick grinder, but now, of course, worked by a steam engine. Now let us turn from the building to the man.
RICHARD ARKWRIGHT was born at Preston in 1732, the youngest of a family of thirteen children. His uncle taught him to read, and being apprenticed to a barber, he, in winter months attended a school, and learned quicker than other boys. When about twenty-eight or thirty he commenced business as an itinerant dealer in hair, buying, dressing, by a secret process dyeing, and selling to wig makers, and he supplied a better dressed article than his competitors. While going about among the spinners he began thinking over a contrivance for improved spinning of cotton by passing it between two sets of rollers, the first set moving slowly, and the second quickly, and so drawing out the thread. About 1767 he having employed a watch-maker to make parts of his machine, devoted himself to its completion, but he was very poor, and dare not run the risk of the rage of the mob, and of being treated as Hargreaves had been; so in 1768, he, with two others, followed Hargreaves to Nottingham, and set up in a small way. He applied to Messrs. Wright's Bank to advance him money, but they were not prepared to find all he required; they, however, introduced him to Messrs. Need, Strutt & Woollatt, who were large hosiery manufacturers at Nottingham and Derby, and Jedediah Strutt. the inventor of the Derby rib hosiery machine, and the founder of the house of Lord Belper, being a skilled, thoughtful, conscientious man, went fully into the invention, and saw its possibilities. A partnership was arranged, Hockley mill built, and business carried on as Arkwright, Strutt & Need, a patent having in 1769 been taken out. Arkwright lived at the South east corner entering the yard. A little side light is shown in 1772, when three hundred of the persons employed at "Mr. Arkwright's Mill" walked in procession through the town with streamers, and the head workman clothed from head to foot in white cotton, and they went to the Marshall Hills, in Thorney Wood, (now Westdale Lane, Mapperley), gathering nuts, and returning were regaled with a plentiful supper. Mr. Arkwright must have been popular, for he was made a freeman of Nottingham. He took out an additional patent in 1775, which was strongly contested, and ten years afterwards lost. On Thursday morning, November 5th, 1781, between four and five, the mill was found to be on fire, and burnt for two days, so that all the machinery, roof, floors, and everything except the four walls were destroyed. The mill was described as the property of Mr. John Leaver. It was restored, and in 1790 Arkwright erected a Boulton & Watts' steam engine to work the mill.
We must leave the mill, and note that at Cromford mills were erected in 1771 of great capacity, worked by water power, and Mr. Arkwright went to reside there. In 1786 he was appointed High Sheriff of Derbyshire and was knighted. He had extensive concerns in Lancashire and Scotland, engaged in many profitable speculations; worked from five in the morning to nine at night, amassed a fortune of half a million pounds, and died at sixty. His son succeeded to all his possessions, had an income of £100,000 a year, and died at Willersley Castle in 1843, possessed of nearly seven millions sterling in personal property, besides landed estates, it is said the largest capitalist then in Europe.
Richard Arkwright, during the last ten years of extensive busy life, felt keenly the disadvantage of the neglect of early education, and for some time took two hours a day from his sleep, and paid a man to teach him grammar, spelling, and improved handwriting, but there was one defect he did not cure, for a truly sound judgment would have shown him that life and health and destiny were of greater importance than the amassing of a fortune.
JAMES MURRAY, of Mansfield, was the inventor of the circular saw, which is a labour saving device in the cutting of wood, and of enormous value as applied to timber use and construction. His premises were in Bath Lane, where the works of Messrs. Barringer & Co., Ltd., now stand. The original saw, which is about six inches in diameter, is in the possession of Mr. J. Whitaker, J.P., of Rainworth. Murray was the son of Lord Byron's "Old Joe Murray," who desired to be buried near to his master, having attained the age of eighty-six years.
JOHN LEAVERS, (Bab. 1786-1848), born at Sutton-in-Ashfield, and removed to Radford. He was a framesmith—"a setter up." In a little street between Derby Road and Ilkeston Road, called St. Helen's, is a tablet on a house recording the fact that he resided there in 1813. In an upper room in that house, or in a shed adjoining, since removed, he practically shut himself up for two years experimenting in constructing point net and warp lace machinery. His improvements were of enormous value to the lace trade, one branch of which is called by his name, but of little value to himself, probably owing to his personal habits. He appears to have carried on business in connection with Mr. J. Fisher and others for several years, and then, in 1821, he went to France, and there remained, assumably building lace machines, at Grand Courenne, near Rouen, where he was bandmaster of the National Guard Volunteers, and played with considerable skill on the Prench horn. He appears to have owned at the time of his death a house and workshop with two gardens and a piece of ploughing land, together containing about three-fourths of an acre, situate on the Grand Road of Rouen to Caen, and which the son Edward, living in Nottingham, authorised William, a Manufacturer of cards at Courenne, jointly with "Mrs. Widow John Leavers, their mother," and Sarah, their sister, to mortgage up to 2,000 francs. He died on September 24th, 1848, and was buried with military honours.
As Leavers improved on the skill of Heathcoat, so many other machine builders and users improved on Leaver's invention, and now the modern lace machine is of wondrous complication and ingenuity, producing articles of great beauty, and forming a practical lesson of the triumph of thought, method, skill, perseverance and energy of many minds over several generations—an evolution of brain power and the survival of the fittest.
JAMES FISHER, (about 1775-1849), the son of a Cumberland farmer, went to London in search of employment, which he found in a haberdasher's shop, and afterwards became traveller for the disposal of Buckinghamshire Lace goods. He acquired a knowledge of men, and with a correct taste and judgment of quality and value, he ensured a profit. Punctual himself, he required punctuality on the part of the travellers he employed. After the expiration of Mr. Heathcoat's patent in 1823, he built a factory at Radford, and then began a series of improvements in lace machines, in connection with John Leavers, the nephew of the inventor, and William Crofts, the latter of whom took out eighteen patents, including thirty distinct constructions, on his principals' account, and in 1835 Crofts took out a monster patent, the specifications of which filled 149 pages, and 49 sheets of drawings, costing Mr. Fisher to take out the patents, £4,000 to £5,000.
Mr. Fisher was great in method and business determination. He willed success, and won it, for he came to a well-earned prosperity. He died at Dulwich.
JAMES FISHER, of Scotholme House, was son of the above, and after being a highly educated and talented graduate of Cambridge University, he carried on the factory and machinery for making bobbin net lace at Radford, but some of the other departments declined. He died in 1877, aged seventy.
WILLIAM CROFTS in the decline of life was not in the enjoyment of those pecuniary results which his mechanical talent undoubtedly deserved, but this does not appear to have been due to Mr. Fisher. (Felkin).
Robert Hall, Samuel Hall, Lawrence Hall,
See in Hall Family.
JOHN HEATHCOAT, (d. 1861, aged 78). John Heathcoat was one of the greatest benefactors that Nottingham has had; great not in intention or monetary bequests, but in the invention and development of an industry that has supplied to thousands of people the means of getting an honest livelihood. So the Corporation thought that some acknowledgment should be made of his services, and a cheap way to do this was to name a street after him. Beck Lane could no longer retain its rural name when it had been opened out into a spacious street. Heathcoat had worked in a hosiery machine shop between Broad Street and Beck Lane, so here was a street to be named in his honour. The Corporation painter seems to have thought that "cote" was a better suffix than a tailor's "coat." It was more appropriate and poetical, for does not Milton say:
"Watching where shepherds pen their flocks at eve
In hurdled cotes"? and there it is, "cote " to this day.
John Heathcoat was born at Duffield in 1783, and was in several respects a remarkable youth and man. He had a village school education at Hathern, but he became the intimate friend of a schoolmaster at Keg-worth—named Wootton—and by association acquired knowledge. His father was of limited means as a small farmer, and owner of several machines, and he became blind, but he had a splendid mother, who kept the home agoing. He was apprenticed to a stocking-maker and framemill owner—William Shepherd—and he put his heart into his work, studied machinery, and even at sixteen began to think about inventing a machine. He watched the things about him, and then pondered their meaning. He would have made a good Boy Scout if he had been born a hundred years later, for he saw a woman from Northamptonshire making lace upon a cushion, and "acquainted himself fully with the manner of proceeding in this beautiful, but intricate art," and it became a study how to invent machinery to do the necessary work. When out of his apprenticeship, he became journeyman to Leonard Elliott, a skilled mechanic, whose workshop was between Broad Street and Beck Lane, Nottingham, at twenty-five shillings a week. But Elliott soon saw that he was worth to him three guineas a week, and gave it him, for Elliott said, "he was inventive, persevering, undaunted by difficulty or mistakes, . . . . patient, self-denying, taciturn," but full of confidence that he could and would succeed. He had soon saved sufficient money to buy the business, which Elliott sold to him, with the tools and good will, and here he obtained the confidence of the best machine-owners and mechanics for good work. He is said to have lived on Long Stairs, which is an ascent from Narrow Marsh to what is now called Commerce Square.
Soon after he was twenty-one he married Ann Caldwell, of Hathern, an active, thoughtful, clear-minded woman, a good manager, wife and mother. And now came the pressure of his business and his inventions. "I worked, and I invented," he afterwards related, and there was not only the pressure of business but the difficulty as to secrecy of his work. So he decided to dispose of his business, and his wife's brother, Samuel Caldwell, being a skilled mechanic at Hathern, they two at that place, took out a patent for a new apparatus to be attached to warp frames. Then followed two or three years of study and experiments in overcoming the difficulties encountered, and a second patent was in 1809 taken out, and this was successful. One eventful Saturday—Mrs. Heathcoat is telling the tale years afterwards—her husband returned home and she enquired, as often before, "Well, will it work?" and his reply was "No! I have had to take it all in pieces again." She was constrained for once to sit down and cry bitterly, for great personal self-denial was necessary, but recovering herself her brave heart cheered and encouraged him, and in a few weeks more the desired result came, and at twenty-four years of age he was the inventor of "a machine for the making and manufacturing of bobbin lace . . . . by which means such lace would be made to much greater advantage than by any other mode hitherto practised, at less cost, time and labour, and which he conceived from repeated experiments would be productive of great public utility.* Yet this was one of the most intricate in the whole range of textile mechanism that the world has ever seen.
And now came prosperity, and with it, trials harder to bear than those of adversity. His partner, Charles Lacey, put £40,000 to £50,000 into his pocket, and plunged head over heels, and lost all. The patent was attacked, and infringed in various directions, necessitating extensive law proceedings, costly and irritating, but out of which he came triumphantly, for both judge and jury declared Heathcoat to be the true inventor.† The workmen could earn £5 to £10 a week,‡ but outside was a mass of starving people with little work, low wages, dear bread, and no hope. They had no combination, and no votes. Government did little, or nothing, for them in the direction of education, housing, sanitation, the development of natural resources, or otherwise. All its efforts were directed towards repression, and punishment for wrong-doing. The result naturally was that many of the very poorest of the people became surly, resentful, desperate. Their idea was that machinery having made more goods than would have been made by hand, the excess had diminished what work was left, so the machinery must be smashed, and then the work would be more evenly distributed. For five years this destructive work went on, and culminated in 1816 in the destruction at Loughborough of thirty-seven lace machines in the factory of Messrs. Heathcoat and Boden, and for shooting at and attempting to kill one of the workman six men were hanged and two transported for life. An action was brought against the Hundred of West Goscote, in which Loughborough is situate, and a verdict obtained for £10,000 damages. But Mr. Felkin says, "The magistrates required that the sum when handed over should be expended locally." He does not, however, explain that they had no power to make such a requirement, (or Nottingham Castle would not have remained a ruin). Mr. Heathcoat was disgusted, and said "his life had been threatened, and he would go as far off as possible from such desperate men as these frame-breakers were," so he did not go to the High Court to enforce the order, and the money was never paid. He went to Tiverton, in Devonshire, and bought a large mill there, where the machinery could be driven by the water power from the river Exe running down from the hills, which are haunted by the great red deer in the "Lorna Doone" district. Very soon he had the mill restored and extended, the best of the workpeople transferred from Loughborough to Tiverton, and three hundred machines at work.
We cannot follow Mr. Heathcoat in his inventions and developments, for as of old he kept on inventing and working. He took out a number of patents for various purposes. The business was extended to the Continent, and largely at home, until there were at Tiverton about 2,000 workpeople. Schools for the children were built, and other social efforts made.
In 1832, on the passing of the Reform Bill, Mr. Heathcoat was elected member of parliament for Tiverton, and so remained for twenty-eight years, his colleague during the greater part of that time being Lord Paimerston, who was twice Prime Minister. In politics he was a practical man, a home reformer, free from self-seeking, patriotic and independent. When he retired from Parliament in 1859, his workpeople presented him with a testimonial.
There is in the Art Museum at the Castle, a good portrait of Mr. Heathcoat, painted by William Gush, and presented by Miss Heathcoat. He there looks as when painted, to be about fifty years of age, and the figure is that of an intelligent, gentlemanly, kindly-hearted man. There are also models of his early machines.
Of course Mr. Heathcoat's invention of a machine for making net dealt a crushing blow to the pillow-made net workers of Honiton lace. Mr. Jackson's "History of Hand-made Lace," (page 170) says:—"In the last century the hand-made net was very expensive, and was made of the finest thread from Antwerp; in 1790 this cost £70 per pound, sometimes more. At that time the mode of payment was decidedly primitive; the lace ground was spread out on the counter, and the cottage worker covered it with shillings from the till of the shopman. As many coins as she could place on her work she took away with her as wages for her labour. It is no wonder that a Honiton lace veil, before the invention of the lace machine-made net often cost a hundred guineas." After Heathcoat's invention there was "great depression for twenty years, the art of handmade lace net became nearly extinct.'' Such changes and disasters are inevitable, and there is the consolation that a hundred ladies may now be adorned where one only was before-time, and by the efforts of the Royal family the old industry has to some extent been revived.
SAMUEL CARTLEDGE, (d. 1865), was a Cotton Spinner in Nottingham. He, in 1805, so improved the manipulation of cotton yarn that it became for the first time of service in lace machines, replacing linen yarn, being easier to work, much cheaper, and presenting a, better appearance. Ten years later a meeting of Buckinghamshire lace manufacturers unanimously adopted a vote of thanks to Mr. Cartledge "for his invention of cotton thread used in the manufacture of British lace, and for his introduction of the same to the trade on liberal terms." This improvement was not only of use in Nottingham but Mr. Cartledge had succeeded in making a specially prepared cotton lace yarn to be be adopted in pillow lace in Bucks and Northamptonshire, Honiton and France. This doubled cotton yarn of fine thread, gave a rapid impulse to the demand, and gained for Mr. Cartledge a considerable fortune—a well deserved reward for his ingenuity and persevering enterprise. (Felkin, p 169). Blackner says, "the invention has added thirty thousand pounds annually to the productive labour of the country." (page 249).
Samuel Cartledge, about 1820-30 I suppose, opened out a road called Private Road, reaching from Mansfield Road at Sherwood to Woodborough Road. It is alluded to in 1844 as Mapperley Place, and that name is attached to a little cottage now on Mansfield Road. In 1848 Samuel Cartledge is named as living in Mapperley Place, and described as a brick-maker, which I suppose to mean that a part of the land near the top had been converted into a brickyard. He imposed a singular condition on all the houses on Private Road, namely, that they should be "stone coloured and slated." Stone coloured meant that the bricks should be covered with cement or stucco. It was then the badge of gentility. Bricks were badly made, and twisted in burning, and the treatment of fine clay for front bricks little understood by workmen, so the bricks were in building-covered so as to look like stone, but Ruskin taught, "To cover brick with cement, and to divide this cement with joints that it may look like stone, is to tell a falsehood." ("Seven Lamps: The Lamp of Truth," p. 82), and Ruskin has been blamed but obeyed.
THOMAS R. SEWELL, (d. 1879, aged 86), Carrington, was a self-taught artizan, who became a lace manufacturer. He improved every opportunity of obtaining general, and especially scientific knowledge, by using which, he acquired considerable skill in mathematical, chemical, and other branches of science and art. "He drew his own patterns, many of which were in excellent taste, embodying ideas derived from the careful study of the enrichments of Greek architecture." He took out patents for various inventions, for which see Mr. Felkin's "History." With suavity of manner and integrity of character, he was highly esteemed. In the evening of his life he went to Australia. His gravestone is in Carrington churchyard.
THOMAS HUMBER was a moulder who lived at 65, Northumberland Street, Nottingham, and in a wooden building in the back yard, began in 1868, with the aid of his wife, his work at bicycle making. The invention was a French one, and Humber thought he could improve upon it. The Velocipede was shown in a Paris Exposition in 1867, and Humber's development was called the Boneshaker. "The Spider" wheel bicycle was another of Humber's improvements. In 1887 a company was formed.
SIR ARTHUR L. LIBERTY, (1843-1917), the son of Mr. A. Liberty, Lace Manufacturer, Nottingham, was born in Bucks, but educated at Mr. George Herbert's University School, in Waverley Street, Nottingham. At sixteen he went into a business house in London, where Oriental fabrics were sold. Deeming them much superior to the ordinary English manufactured goods, he made himself fully acquainted with the materials, methods, artistic designs, vegetable dyes, and colouring of the articles, and became manager of the shop. Meanwhile, he formed the acquaintance of artists such as Whistler, Rossetti, Watts, Burne-Jones, William Morris, and others, and visited their studios. In 1875 he started business on his own account, taking half a shop in Regent Street, and inducing manufacturers to produce the superior goods he designed, from the finest textile materials, as manufactured in the East, with soft delicate colours and artistic designs. This half shop grew into a number of shops, factories, works, etc., and the business developed into a limited company.
Arthur Liberty became lord of the Manor of Lee, in Bucks, and patron of the living; a member of the Bucks County Council, J.P., D.L., was High Sheriff in 1899, and liberally supported a number of institutions tending to the religious, intellectual, and social advancement of the people. He was knighted by the King "for his worthy action in founding an original School of Art, whereby the manufacturer is educated, and the ration enriched."
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* Felkin, page 197.
† Felkin, page 207.
‡ page 204.