Industrial Biography

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Coke Furnaces. Charcoal Furnaces.

In England ......73 producing 67,548 tons 20 producing 8500 tons
In Scotland......12 " 12,480 " 2 " 1000 "
---- ------ -- ----
85 " 80,028 " 22 " 9500 "

At the same time the annual import of Oregrounds iron from Sweden
amounted to about 20,000 tons, and of bars and slabs from Russia
about 50,000 tons, at an average cost of 35L. a ton!
...]

We will endeavour as briefly as possible to point out the important
character of Mr. Cort's improvements, as embodied in his two patents
of 1783 and 1784. In the first he states that, after "great study,
labour, and expense, in trying a variety of experiments, and making
many discoveries, he had invented and brought to perfection a
peculiar method and process of preparing, welding, and working
various sorts of iron, and of reducing the same into uses by
machinery: a furnace, and other apparatus, adapted and applied to the
said process." He first describes his method of making iron for
"large uses," such as shanks, arms, rings, and palms of anchors, by
the method of piling and faggoting, since become generally practised,
by laying bars of iron of suitable lengths, forged on purpose, and
tapering so as to be thinner at one end than the other, laid over one
another in the manner of bricks in buildings, so that the ends should
everywhere overlay each other. The faggots so prepared, to the amount
of half a ton more or less, were then to be put into a common air or
balling furnace, and brought to a welding heat, which was
accomplished by his method in a much shorter time than in any hollow
fire; and when the heat was perfect, the faggots were then brought
under a forge-hammer of great size and weight, and welded into a
solid mass. Mr. Cort alleges in the specification that iron for
"larger uses" thus finished, is in all respect's possessed of the
highest degree of perfection; and that the fire in the balling
furnace is better suited, from its regularity and penetrating
quality, to give the iron a perfect welding heat throughout its whole
mass, without fusing in any part, than any fire blown by a blast.
Another process employed by Mr. Cort for the purpose of cleansing the
iron and producing a metal of purer grain, was that of working the
faggots by passing them through rollers. "By this simple process,"
said he, "all the earthy particles are pressed out and the iron
becomes at once free from dross, and what is usually called cinder,
and is compressed into a fibrous and tough state." The objection has
indeed been taken to the process of passing the iron through rollers,
that the cinder is not so effectually got rid of as by passing it
under a tilt hammer, and that much of it is squeezed into the bar and
remains there, interrupting its fibre and impairing its strength.

It does not appear that there was any novelty in the use of rollers
by Cort; for in his first specification he speaks of them as already
well known.*
[footnote...
"It is material to observe", says Mr. Webster, "that Cort, in this
specification, speaks of the rollers, furnaces, and separate
processes, as well known. There is no claim to any of them
separately; the claim is to the reducing of the faggots of piled iron
into bars, and the welding of such bars by rollers instead of by
forge-hammers."--Memoir of Henry Cort, in Mechanic's Magazine, 15
July, 1859, by Thomas Webster, M.A., F.R.S.
...]
His great merit consisted in apprehending the value of certain
processes, as tested by his own and others' experience, and combining
and applying them in a more effective practical form than had ever
been done before. This power of apprehending the best methods, and
embodying the details in one complete whole, marks the practical,
clear-sighted man, and in certain cases amounts almost to a genius.
The merit of combining the inventions of others in such forms as that
they shall work to advantage, is as great in its way as that of the
man who strikes out the inventions themselves, but who, for want of
tact and experience, cannot carry them into practical effect.

It was the same with Cort's second patent, in which he described his
method of manufacturing bar-iron from the ore or from cast-iron. All
the several processes therein described had been practised before his
time; his merit chiefly consisting in the skilful manner in which he
combined and applied them. Thus, like the Craneges, he employed the
reverberatory or air furnace, without blast, and, like Onions, he
worked the fused metal with iron bars until it was brought into
lumps, when it was removed and forged into malleable iron. Cort,
however, carried the process further, and made it more effectual in
all respects. His method may be thus briefly described: the bottom of
the reverberatory furnace was hollow, so as to contain the fluid
metal, introduced into it by ladles; the heat being kept up by
pit-coal or other fuel. When the furnace was charged, the doors were
closed until the metal was sufficiently fused, when the workman
opened an aperture and worked or stirred about the metal with iron
bars, when an ebullition took place, during the continuance of which
a bluish flame was emitted, the carbon of the cast-iron was burned
off, the metal separated from the slag, and the iron, becoming
reduced to nature, was then collected into lumps or loops of sizes
suited to their intended uses, when they were drawn out of the doors
of the furnace. They were then stamped into plates, and piled or
worked in an air furnace, heated to a white or welding heat, shingled
under a forge hammer, and passed through the grooved rollers after
the method described in the first patent.

The processes described by Cort in his two patents have been followed
by iron manufacturers, with various modifications, the results of
enlarged experience, down to the present time. After the lapse of
seventy-eight years, the language employed by Cort continues on the
whole a faithful description of the processes still practised: the
same methods of manufacturing bar from cast-iron, and of puddling,
piling, welding, and working the bar-iron through grooved
rollers--all are nearly identical with the methods of manufacture
perfected by Henry Cort in 1784. It may be mentioned that the
development of the powers of the steam-engine by Watt had an
extraordinary effect upon the production of iron. It created a
largely increased demand for the article for the purposes of the
shafting and machinery which it was employed to drive; while at the
same time it cleared pits of water which before were unworkable, and
by being extensively applied to the blowing of iron-furnaces and the
working of the rolling-mills, it thus gave a still further impetus to
the manufacture of the metal. It would be beside our purpose to enter
into any statistical detail on the subject; but it will be sufficient
to state that the production of iron, which in the early part of last
century amounted to little more than 12,000 tons, about the middle of
the century to about 18,000 tons, and at the time of Cort's
inventions to about 90,000 tons, was found, in 1820, to have
increased to 400,000 tons; and now the total quantity produced is
upwards of four millions of tons of pig-iron every year, or more than
the entire production of all other European countries. There is
little reason to doubt that this extraordinary development of the
iron manufacture has been in a great measure due to the inventions of
Henry Cort. It is said that at the present time there are not fewer
than 8200 of Cort's furnaces in operation in Great Britain alone.*
[footnote...
Letter by Mr. Truran in Mechanic's Magazine.
...]

Practical men have regarded Cort's improvement of the process of
rolling the iron as the most valuable of his inventions. A competent
authority has spoken of Cort's grooved rollers as of "high
philosophical interest, being scarcely less than the discovery of a
new mechanical Power, in reversing the action of the wedge, by the
application of force to four surfaces, so as to elongate a mass,
instead of applying force to a mass to divide the four surfaces." One
of the best authorities in the iron trade of last century, Mr.
Alexander Raby of Llanelly, like many others, was at first entirely
sceptical as to the value of Cort's invention; but he had no sooner
witnessed the process than with manly candour he avowed his entire
conversion to his views.

We now return to the history of the chief author of this great branch
of national industry. As might naturally be expected, the principal
ironmasters, when they heard of Cort's success, and the rapidity and
economy with which he manufactured and forged bar-iron, visited his
foundry for the purpose of examining his process, and, if found
expedient, of employing it at their own works. Among the first to try
it were Richard Crawshay of Cyfartha, Samuel Homfray of Penydarran
(both in South Wales), and William Reynolds of Coalbrookdale. Richard
Crawshay was then (in 1787) forging only ten tons of bar-iron weekly
under the hammer; and when he saw the superior processes invented by
Cort he readily entered into a contract with him to work under his
patents at ten shillings a ton royalty, In 1812 a letter from Mr.
Crawshay to the Secretary of Lord Sheffield was read to the House of
Commons, descriptive of his method of working iron, in which he said,
"I took it from a Mr. Cort, who had a little mill at Fontley in
Hampshire: I have thus acquainted you with my method, by which I am
now making more than ten thousand tons of bar-iron per annum." Samuel
Homfray was equally prompt in adopting the new process. He not only
obtained from Cort plans of the puddling-furnaces and patterns of the
rolls, but borrowed Cort's workmen to instruct his own in the
necessary operations; and he soon found the method so superior to
that invented by Onions that he entirely confined himself to
manufacturing after Cort's patent. We also find Mr. Reynolds inviting
Cort to conduct a trial of his process at Ketley, though it does not
appear that it was adopted by the firm at that time.*
[footnote...
In the memorandum-book of Wm. Reynolds appears the following entry on
the subject: --
"Copy of a paper given to H. Cort, Esq.
"W. Reynolds saw H. C. in a trial which he made at Ketley,
Dec. 17, 1784, produce from the same pig both cold short and tough iron
by a variation of the process used in reducing them from the state of
cast-iron to that of malleable or bar-iron; and in point of yield his
processes were quite equal to those at Pitchford, which did not
exceed the proportion of 31 cwt. to the ton of bars. The experiment
was made by stamping and potting the blooms or loops made in his
furnace, which then produced a cold short iron; but when they were
immediately shingled and drawn, the iron was of a black tough."

The Coalbrookdale ironmasters are said to have been deterred from
adopting the process because of what was considered an excessive
waste of the metal--about 25 per cent,--though, with greater
experience, this waste was very much diminished.
...]

The quality of the iron manufactured by the new process was found
satisfactory; and the Admiralty having, by the persons appointed by
them to test it in 1787, pronounced it to be superior to the best
Oregrounds iron, the use of the latter was thenceforward
discontinued, and Cort's iron only was directed to be used for the
anchors and other ironwork in the ships of the Royal Navy. The merits
of the invention seem to have been generally conceded, and numerous
contracts for licences were entered into with Cort and his partner by
the manufacturers of bar-iron throughout the country.*
[footnote...
Mr. Webster, in the 'Case of Henry Cort,' published in the Mechanic's
Magazine (2 Dec. 1859), states that "licences were taken at royalties
estimated to yield 27,500L. to the owners of the patents." ...]
Cort himself made arrangements for carrying on the manufacture on a
large scale, and with that object entered upon the possession of a
wharf at Gosport, belonging to Adam Jellicoe, his partner's father,
where he succeeded in obtaining considerable Government orders for
iron made after his patents. To all ordinary eyes the inventor now
appeared to be on the high road to fortune; but there was a fatal
canker at the root of this seeming prosperity, and in a few years the
fabric which he had so laboriously raised crumbled into ruins. On the
death of Adam Jellicoe, the father of Cort's partner, in August,
1789,*
[footnote...
In the 'Case of Henry Cort,' by Mr. Webster, above referred to
(Mechanic's Magazine, 2 Dec. 1859), it is stated that Adam Jellicoe
"committed suicide under the pressure of dread of exposure," but this
does not appear to be confirmed by the accounts in the newspapers of
the day. He died at his private dwelling-house, No.14, Highbury
Place, Islingtonn, on the 30th August,1789, after a fortnight's
illness.
...]
defalcations were discovered in his public accounts to the extent of
39,676l., and his books and papers were immediately taken possession
of by the Government. On examination it was found that the debts due
to Jellicoe amounted to 89,657l, included in which was a sum of not
less than 54,853l. owing to him by the Cort partnership. In the
public investigation which afterwards took place, it appeared that
the capital possessed by Cort being insufficient to enable him to
pursue his experiments, which were of a very expensive character,
Adam Jellicoe had advanced money from time to time for the purpose,
securing himself by a deed of agreement entitling him to one-half the
stock and profits of all his contracts; and in further consideration
of the capital advanced by Jellicoe beyond his equal share, Cort
subsequently assigned to him all his patent rights as collateral
security. As Jellicoe had the reputation of being a rich man, Cort
had not the slightest suspicion of the source from which he obtained
the advances made by him to the firm, nor has any connivance whatever
on the part of Cort been suggested. At the same time it must be
admitted that the connexion was not free from suspicion, and, to say
the least, it was a singularly unfortunate one. It was found that
among the moneys advanced by Jellicoe to Cort there was a sum of
27,500L. entrusted to him for the payment of seamen's and officers'
wages. How his embarrassments had tempted him to make use of the
public funds for the purpose of carrying on his speculations, appears
from his own admissions. In a memorandum dated the 11th November,
l782, found in his strong box after his death, he set forth that he
had always had much more than his proper balance in hand, until his
engagement, about two years before, with Mr. Cort, "which by degrees
has so reduced me, and employed so much more of my money than I
expected, that I have been obliged to turn most of my Navy bills into
cash, and at the same time, to my great concern, am very deficient in
my balance. This gives me great uneasiness, nor shall I live or die
in peace till the whole is restored." He had, however, made the first
false step, after which the downhill career of dishonesty is rapid.
His desperate attempts to set himself right only involved him the
deeper; his conscious breach of trust caused him a degree of daily
torment which he could not bear; and the discovery of his
defalcations, which was made only a few days before his death,
doubtless hastened his end.

The Government acted with promptitude, as they were bound to do in
such a case. The body of Jellicoe was worth nothing to them, but they
could secure the property in which he had fraudulently invested the
public moneys intrusted to him. With this object the them Paymaster
of the Navy proceeded to make an affidavit in the Exchequer that
Henry Cort was indebted to His Majesty in the sum of 27,500L. and
upwards, in respect of moneys belonging to the public treasury, which
"Adam Jellicoe had at different times lent and advanced to the said
Henry Cort, from whom the same now remains justly due and owing; and
the deponent saith he verily believes that the said Henry Cort is
much decayed in his credit and in very embarrassed circumstances; and
therefore the deponent verily believes that the aforesaid debt so due
and owing to His Majesty is in great danger of being lost if some
more speedy means be not taken for the recovery than by the ordinary
process of the Court." Extraordinary measures were therefore adopted.
The assignments of Cort's patents, which had been made to Jellicoe in
consideration of his advances, were taken possession of; but Samuel
Jellicoe, the son of the defaulter, singular to say, was put in
possession of the properties at Fontley and Gosport, and continued to
enjoy them, to Cort's exclusion, for a period of fourteen years. It
does not however appear that any patent right was ever levied by the
assignees, and the result of the proceeding was that the whole
benefit of Cort's inventions was thus made over to the ironmasters
and to the public. Had the estate been properly handled, and the
patent rights due under the contracts made by the ironmasters with
Cort been duly levied, there is little reason to doubt that the whole
of the debt owing to the Government would have been paid in the
course of a few years. "When we consider," says Mr. Webster, "how
very simple was the process of demanding of the contracting
ironmasters the patent due (which for the year 1789 amounted to
15,000L., in 1790 to 15,000L., and in 1791 to 25,000L.), and which
demand might have been enforced by the same legal process used to
ruin the inventor, it is not difficult to surmise the motive for
abstaining." The case, however, was not so simple as Mr. Webster puts
it; for there was such a contingency as that of the ironmasters
combining to dispute the patent right, and there is every reason to
believe that they were prepared to adopt that course.*
[footnote...
This is confirmed by the report of a House of Commons Committee on
the subject Mr. Davies Gilbert chairman), in which they say, "Your
committee have not been able to satisfy themselves that either of the
two inventions, one for subjecting cast-iron to an operation termed
puddling during its conversion to malleable iron, and the other for
passing it through fluted or grooved rollers, were so novel in their
principle or their application as fairly to entitle the petitioners
[Mr. Cort's survivors] to a parliamentary reward." It is, however,
stated by Mr. Mushet that the evidence was not fairly taken by the
committee--that they were overborne by the audacity of Mr. Samuel
Homfray, one of the great Welsh ironmasters, whose statements were
altogether at variance with known facts--and that it was under his
influence that Mr. Gilbert drew up the fallacious report of the
committee. The illustrious James Watt, writing to Dr. Black in 1784,
as to the iron produced by Cort's process, said, "Though I cannot
perfectly agree with you as to its goodness, yet there is much
ingenuity in the idea of forming the bars in that manner, which is
the only part of his process which has any pretensions to novelty....
Mr. Cort has, as you observe, been most illiberally treated by the
trade: they are ignorant brutes; but he exposed himself to it by
showing them the process before it was perfect, and seeing his
ignorance of the common operations of making iron, laughed at and
despised him; yet they will contrive by some dirty evasion to use his
process, or such parts as they like, without acknowledging him in it.
I shall be glad to be able to be of any use to him. Watts
fellow-feeling was naturally excited in favour of the plundered
inventor, he himself having all his life been exposed to the attacks
of like piratical assailants.
...]

Although the Cort patents expired in 1796 and 1798 respectively, they
continued the subject of public discussion for some time after, more
particularly in connection with the defalcations of the deceased Adam
Jellicoe. It does not appear that more than 2654l. was realised by
the Government from the Cort estate towards the loss sustained by the
public, as a balance of 24,846l. was still found standing to the
debit of Jellicoe in 1800, when the deficiencies in the naval
account's became matter of public inquiry. A few years later, in
1805, the subject was again revived in a remarkable manner. In that
year, the Whigs, Perceiving the bodily decay of Mr. Pitt, and being
too eager to wait for his removal by death, began their famous series
of attacks upon his administration. Fearing to tackle the popular
statesman himself, they inverted the ordinary tactics of an
opposition, and fell foul of Dundas, Lord Melville, then Treasurer of
the Navy, who had successfully carried the country through the great
naval war with revolutionary France. They scrupled not to tax him
with gross peculation, and exhibited articles of impeachment against
him, which became the subject of elaborate investigation, the result
of which is matter of history. In those articles, no reference
whatever was made to Lord Melville's supposed complicity with
Jellicoe; nor, on the trial that followed, was any reference made to
the defalcations of that official. But when Mr. Whitbread, on the 8th
of April, 1805, spoke to the "Resolutions" in the Commons for
impeaching the Treasurer of the Navy, he thought proper to intimate
that he "had a strong suspicion that Jellicoe was in the same
partnership with Mark Sprott, Alexander Trotter, and Lord Melville.
He had been suffered to remain a public debtor for a whole year after
he was known to be in arrears upwards of 24,000L. During next year
11,000L. more had accrued. It would not have been fair to have turned
too short on an old companion. It would perhaps, too, have been
dangerous, since unpleasant discoveries might have met the public
eye. It looked very much as if, mutually conscious of criminality,
they had agreed to be silent, and keep their own secrets."

In making these offensive observations Whitbread was manifestly
actuated by political enmity. They were utterly unwarrantable. In the
first place, Melville had been formally acquitted of Jellicoe's
deficiency by a writ of Privy Seal, dated 31st May, 1800; and
secondly, the committee appointed in that very year (1805) to
reinvestigate the naval accounts, had again exonerated him, but
intimated that they were of opinion there was remissness on his part
in allowing Jellicoe to remain in his office after the discovery of
his defalcations.

the report made by the commissioners to the Houses of Parliament in
1805,*
[footnote...
Tenth Report of the Commissioners of Naval Inquiry. See also Report
of Select Committee on the 10th Naval Report. May, 1805.
...]
the value of Corts patents was estimated at only 100L. Referring to
the schedule of Jellicoe's alleged assets, they say "Many of the
debts are marked as bad; and we apprehend that the debt from Mr.
Henry Cort, not so marked, of 54,000L. and upwards, is of that
description." As for poor bankrupt Henry Cort, these discussions
availed nothing. On the death of Jellicoe, he left his iron works,
feeling himself a ruined man. He made many appeals to the Government
of the day for restoral of his patents, and offered to find security
for payment of the debt due by his firm to the Crown, but in vain. In
1794, an appeal was made to Mr. Pitt by a number of influential
members of Parliament, on behalf of the inventor and his destitute
family of twelve children, when a pension of 200L. a-year was granted
him. This Mr. Cort enjoyed until the year 1800, when he died, broken
in health and spirit, in his sixtieth year. He was buried in
Hampstead Churchyard, where a stone marking the date of his death is
still to be seen. A few years since it was illegible, but it has
recently been restored by his surviving son.

Though Cort thus died in comparative poverty, he laid the foundations
of many gigantic fortunes. He may be said to have been in a great
measure the author of our modern iron aristocracy, who still
manufacture after the processes which he invented or perfected, but
for which they never paid him a shilling of royalty. These men of
gigantic fortunes have owed much--we might almost say everything-- to
the ruined projector of "the little mill at Fontley." Their wealth
has enriched many families of the older aristocracy, and has been the
foundation of several modern peerages. Yet Henry Cort, the rock from
which they were hewn, is already all but forgotten; and his surviving
children, now aged and infirm, are dependent for their support upon
the slender pittance wrung by repeated entreaty and expostulation
from the state.

The career of Richard Crawshay, the first of the great ironmasters
who had the sense to appreciate and adopt the methods of
manufacturing iron invented by Henry Cort, is a not unfitting
commentary on the sad history we have thus briefly described. It
shows how, as respects mere money-making, shrewdness is more potent
than invention, and business faculty than manufacturing skill.
Richard Crawshay was born at Normanton near Leeds, the son of a small
Yorkshire farmer. When a youth, he worked on his father's farm, and
looked forward to occupying the same condition in life; but a
difference with his father unsettled his mind, and at the age of
fifteen he determined to leave his home, and seek his fortune
elsewhere. Like most unsettled and enterprising lads, he first made
for London, riding to town on a pony of his own, which, with the
clothes on his back, formed his entire fortune. It took him a
fortnight to make the journey, in consequence of the badness of the
roads. Arrived in London, he sold his pony for fifteen pounds, and
the money kept him until he succeeded in finding employment. He was
so fortunate as to be taken upon trial by a Mr. Bicklewith, who kept
an ironmonger's shop in York Yard, Upper Thames Street; and his first
duty there was to clean out the office, put the stools and desks in
order for the other clerks, run errands, and act as porter when
occasion required. Young Crawshay was very attentive, industrious,
and shrewd; and became known in the office as "The Yorkshire Boy."
Chiefly because of his "cuteness," his master appointed him to the
department of selling flat irons. The London washerwomen of that day
were very sharp and not very honest, and it used to be said of them
that where they bought one flat iron they generally contrived to
steal two. Mr. Bicklewith thought he could not do better than set the
Yorkshireman to watch the washerwomen, and, by way of inducement to
him to be vigilant, he gave young Crawshay an interest in that branch
of the business, which was soon found to prosper under his charge.
After a few more years, Mr. Bicklewith retired, and left to Crawshay
the cast-iron business in York Yard. This he still further increased,
There was not at that time much enterprise in the iron trade, but
Crawshay endeavoured to connect himself with what there was of it.
The price of iron was then very high, and the best sorts were still
imported from abroad; a good deal of the foreign iron and steel being
still landed at the Steelyard on the Thames, in the immediate
neighbourhood of Crawshay's ironmongery store.

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