The sheets for barrels are made from scraps of steel and iron, such as old
coach-springs, knives, steel chains, horse shoes and horseshoe nails, and
sheets of waste steel from steel pen manufactories.
These, having been sorted, are bound together, and submitted first to such a
furnace, and then to such a steam hammer as we described in our visit to
Wolverton, until it is shaped into a bar of tough iron, which is afterwards
rolled into sheets of the requisite thickness.
From one of these sheets a length sufficient to make a gun barrel is cut off
by a pair of steam-moved shears, of which the lower jaw is stationary and the
upper weighs a ton, of which plenty of examples may be seen in every steam
engine factory.
The slip of iron is made red hot, placed between a pair of rollers, one of
which is convex and the other concave, and comes out in a semicircular trough
shape; again heated, and again pressed by smaller rollers, by which the
cylinder is nearly completed. A long bar of iron is passed through the
cylinder, it is thrust into the fire again, and, when red hot, it is
submitted to the welder, who hammers it and heats it and hammers it again,
until it assumes the form of a perfect tube.
Damascus barrels are made by incorporating alternate layers of red hot steel
and iron, which are then twisted into the shape of a screw while at white
heat. The bar thus made is twisted in a cold state by steam power round a
bar into a barrel shape, then heated and welded together.
These are the barrels which present the beautiful variegated appearance which
gives them the name of Damascus.
The barrels, whether common or twisted, are then bored by a steel rod, kept
wet with water or oil, and turned by steam. The process occupies from two to
three hours for each barrel.
The next operation is that of grinding the outside of the barrel with
sandstone wheels, from five to six feet in diameter when new, driven by
steam. These stones chiefly come from the neighbouring district of Bilston;
in four months' work, a stone of this size will be reduced to two feet.
The employment is hard, dangerous from the stones often breaking while in
motion, in which case pieces of stone weighing a ton have been known to fly
through the roof of the shop; unwholesome, because the sand and steel dust
fill eyes, mouth, and lungs, unless a certain simple precaution is taken
which grinders never take.
After grinding, a nut is screwed into the breech, and the barrel is taken to
the proof house to be proved.
The proof house is a detached building, the interior of which is lined with
plates of cast iron.
The barrels are set in two iron stocks, the upper surface of one of which has
a small gutter, to contain a train of powder; in this train the barrels rest
with their touchholes downwards, and in the rear of the breeches of the
barrels is a mass of sand. When the guns, loaded with five times the
quantity of powder used in actual service, have been arranged, the iron-lined
doors and windows are closed, and a train extending to the outside through a
hole is fired.
Some barrels burst and twist into all manner of shapes; those which pass the
ordeal are again examined after the lapse of twenty-four hours, and, if
approved, marked with two separate marks, one for viewing and one for
proving. The mark for proving consists of two sceptres crossed with a crown
in the upper angle; the letters B and C in the left and right, and the letter
P in the lower angle. For viewing only, V stands instead of P underneath the
crown, the other letters omitted.
After proving, the jiggerer fastens the pin, which closes up the breech.
In the mean time the construction of the lock, which is an entirely different
business, and carried on in the neighbouring towns of Wednesbury, Darleston,
and Wolverhampton, as well as in Birmingham, has been going on.
The gun lock makers are ranged into two great divisions of forgers and
filers, beside many subdivisions.
The forgers manufacture the pieces in the rough, the filers polish them and
put them together. In the percussion lock, there are fifteen pieces; in the
common flint lock, eight.
By a process patented about eleven years ago, parts of a gun lock formerly
forged by hand are now stamped with a die. The use of this invention was
opposed by the men, but without success.
The barrel and lock next pass into the hands of the stocker.
The stocks, of beechwood for common guns, of walnut for superior, of which
much is imported from France and Italy, arrive in Birmingham in a rough
state. The stocker cuts away enough of the stock to receive the barrel, the
lock, the ramrod, and shapes it a little.
The next workman employed is the screw-together. He screws on the heel
plate, the guard that protects the trigger, puts in the trigger plate, lets
in the pipes to hold the ramrod, puts on the nozzle cap, and all other
mountings.
After all this, a finisher takes the gun to pieces, and polishes, fits all
the mountings, or sends them to be polished by women; the lock is sent to the
engraver to have an elephant and the word "warranted," if for the African
market, put on it; a crown and the words "tower proof," if for our own
military service; while the stock is in the hands of the maker off and
cleanser, it is carved, polished, and, if needful, stained.
Common gun barrels are polished or browned to prevent them from rusting, real
Damascus barrels are subjected to a chemical process, which brings out the
fine wavy lines and prevents them from rusting.
All these operations having been performed, the barrel, the lock, and the
stock, are brought back by the respective workmen who have given them the
final touch, and put together by the finisher or gun maker, and this putting
together is as much as many eminent gunmakers ever do. But, by care and good
judgment, they acquire a reputation for which they can charge a handsome
percentage.
For these reasons, with local knowledge, it is possible to obtain from a
Birmingham finisher who keeps no shop, a first-rate double gun at a very low
figure compared with retail prices.
Belgium and Germany compete with Birmingham for cheap African guns, and even
forge the proof marks. Neither in quality nor in price for first-rate
articles can any country compete with us.
* * * * *
SWORDS AND MATCHETTS.--The sword trade of Birmingham is trifling compared with
that in guns. The foreign demand has dwindled away until it has become quite
insignificant, and the chief employment is afforded by our own army and navy.
Nevertheless, good swords are made in Birmingham, which is the only town in
England where any manufacture of the kind exists, although the blades often
bear the names of more fashionable localities.
It is among the traditions of the Birmingham trade, that in 1817, when our
Government was about to transfer its orders for swords to Germany, in
consequence of the inferiority of English swords, a Mr. Gill claimed to
compete for the contract; and that in order to show what he could do, he
appeared before the Board of Ordnance with a sword, which he tied round his
thigh, and then untied, when it immediately became straight. In the end Mr.
Gill was the means of retaining the sword trade in Birmingham.
Sword-grinding is worth seeing. Sword-makers find their principal employment
in producing Matchetts, a tool or weapon very much like the modern regulation
cutlass, but stronger and heavier, with a plain beech-wood handle, worth
wholesale from 6d. to 9d. each. They are used in the East and West Indies,
Ceylon, and South America, for cutting down sugar-canes and similar uses. We
take the name to be Spanish; it is used by Defoe and Dampier. We only
mention the article as one of the many odd manufactures made, but never sold
retail, in England.
* * * * *
STEEL PENS.--All the steel pens made in England, and a great many sold in
France, Germany, and America, whatever names or devices they may bear, are
manufactured in Birmingham. In this respect, as in many others of the same
nature, the Birmingham manufacturers are very accommodating, and quite
prepared to stamp on their productions the American Eagle, the Cap of
Liberty, the effigy of Pio Nono, or of the Comte de Chambord, if they get the
order, the cash, or a good credit. And they are very right; their business
is to supply the article, the sentiment is merely a matter of taste.
There are eighteen steel pen manufacturers in the Birmingham Directory, and
eight penholder makers. Two manufacturers employ about 1,000 hands, and the
other seventeen about as many more.
We can most of us remember when a long hard steel pen, which required the
nicest management to make it write, cost a shilling, and was used more as a
curiosity than as a useful comfortable instrument. About 1820, or 1821, the
first gross of three slit pens was sold wholesale at 7 pounds 4s. the gross
of twelve dozen. A better article is now sold at 6d. a gross.
The cheapest pens are now sold wholesale at 2d. a gross, the best at from
3s.6d. to 5s.; and it has been calculated that Birmingham produces not less
than a thousand million steel pens every year. America is the best foreign
customer, in spite of a duty of twenty-four per cent; France ranks next, for
the French pens are bad and dear.
Mr. Gillott, who is one of the very first in the steel-pen trade, rose by his
own mechanical talents and prudent industry from a very humble station. He
was, we believe, a working mechanic, and invented the first machine for
making steel pens, which for a long period he worked with his own hands; he
makes a noble use of the wealth he has acquired; his manufactory is in every
respect a model for the imitation of his townsmen, as we shall show when we
say a few words about the condition of the working population; a liberal
patron of our best modern artists, he has made a collection of their works,
which is open to the inspection of any respectable stranger.
The following description of his manufactory, which is not open to strangers
without special cause shown, will be found interesting in a social as well as
a commercial and mechanical point of view.
* * * * *
GILLOTT'S STEEL-PEN FACTORY.--In the first department, sheets of steel
received from Sheffield are passed through rolling mills driven by steam,
under charge of men and boys, until they are reduced to the thinness of a
steel pen, to the length of about thirty inches, and the breadth of about
three inches. These steel slips are conveyed to a large roomy workshop, with
windows at both sides, scrupulously clean, where are seated in double rows an
army of women and girls, from fourteen to forty years of age, who, unlike
most of the women employed in Birmingham manufactories, are extremely neat in
person and in dress. A hand press is opposite each; the only sound to be
heard is the bump of the press, and the clinking of the small pieces of metal
as they fall from the block into the receptacle prepared for them. One girl
of average dexterity is able to punch out one hundred gross per day. Each
division is superintended by a toolmaker, whose business it is to keep the
punches and presses in good working condition, to superintend the work
generally, and to keep order among the workpeople.
The next operation is to place the blank in a concave die, on which a slight
touch from a concave punch produces the shape of a semitube. The slits and
apertures which increase the elasticity of the pen, and the maker's or
vendor's name, are produced by a similar tool.
When complete all but the slit, the pens are soft and pliable, and may be
bent or twisted in the hand like a piece of thin lead. They are collected in
grosses, or great grosses, into small square iron boxes, and placed by men
who are exclusively employed in this department in a furnace, where they
remain until box and pens are of a white heat. They are then taken out and
immediately thrown hissing into oil, which cures them of their softness, by
making them as brittle as wafers. On being taken out they are put in a sieve
to drain, and then into a cylinder full of holes, invented by Mr. Gillott,
which, rapidly revolving, extracts the last drop of moisture from the pens,
on a principle that has been successfully applied to drying sugar, salt, and
a vast number of other articles of the same nature. By this invention Mr.
Gillott saves in oil from 200 to 300 pounds a-year.
The pens having been dried are placed in other cylinders, and polished by
mutual friction, produced by reverberatory motion. They are then roasted or
annealed, so as to procure the requisite temper and colour, whether bronze or
blue. The last process is that of slitting, which is done by women, with a
sharp cutting tool. One girl, with a quick practised finger, can slit as
many as 28,800 pens in a day. They are now ready for the young girls whose
duty it is to count and pack them in boxes or grosses for the wholesale
market.
It has lately been stated by one of a deputation to the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, on the subject of the paper duties, that steel pens for the French
market are sent in bags instead of arranged on cards to the loss of paper
makers and female labour, in consequence of the heavy excise duty on card
board.
* * * * *
BRASSWORK.--Birmingham is by far the greatest producer of ornamental and
useful brasswork. In the directory will be found a list which affords some
idea of the number and varieties of the brass trade, as all these employ a
certain number of working hands, varying from two or three apprentices to
many hundred skilled workmen. It includes bell-founders, bottle-jack makers,
brass founders, bronze powder makers, brass casters, clasp makers, coach lamp
furniture, ornament makers, cock founders, compass makers, copper-smiths,
cornice pole makers, curtain ring, bronze wire fender, gas-fitting, lamps,
chandeliers (partly brass, partly glass), ecclesiastical ornament, lantern,
letter-clip, mathematical instrument, brass and metallic bedstead, military
ornament, brass nail, saddlers' ironmonger, (chiefly brass), scale, beam, and
weighing machines, stair rod, moulding and astrigal, brass thimble makers,
tube, brass and copper-wire drawers, wire workers and weavers, and many other
trades less directly connected with brass.
New articles are made in this metal every day. One manufacturer, who first
hit upon the hand-clip for papers, made a very handsome sum by it. The
Registration of Designs Act has been a great stimulus to certain branches of
this trade. Lucifer boxes are quite a new article, unknown the other day,
now manufactured in thousands for all quarters of the globe, Germany, Russia,
Holland, India, Australia, California. Then there are ornaments for South
American and Cuban saddles and harness; rings for lassos, and bells for
sheep, cattle, and sledges, brass rings, as coins for Africa; and weights for
weighing gold in California.
Among the branches of the brass trade which have become important, since the
increase of emigration about 5000 ship lamps have been made in one year, at a
cheap rate; and within the last five years brass egg cups have been sent in
enormous numbers to Turkey, where they are used to hand round coffee. South
America is a great mart for cheap brass ware.
Of this trade, it may be said, in the words of a vulgar proverb, "as one door
shuts another opens."
The use of china and glass, in conjunction with brass for house furniture and
chandeliers, has also created a variety, and afforded an advantageous impetus
to the trade.
Mr. Winfield is one of the manufacturers in brass whose showrooms are open to
the public. He also has claims on our attention for the wise and
philanthropic manner in which he has endeavoured to supply the lamentable
deficiency of education among the working classes.
He holds a very leading position as a manufacturer of balustrades, tables,
window-cornices, candelabra chandeliers, brackets, curtain-bands, and above
all of metal bedsteads, which last he has supplied to some of the chief royal
and princely families of Europe, besides Spain, Algeria, and the United
States. In all these works great attention has been paid to design as well
as workmanship, as was amply proved both at the local exhibition in 1849,
where a large gas bracket, in the Italian style, of brass, with Parisian
ornaments, excited much admiration; and in 1851, in Hyde Park, where we
especially noted an ormolu cradle and French bedstead in gilt and bronze,
amid a number of capital works of his production.
Mr. Winfield is patentee of a curious process for drawing out the cylinders
used in making bedsteads.
Messrs. Messengers and Sons have one of the finest manufactories in
ornamental iron, brass, and bronze, for lamps, chandeliers, and table
ornaments. For a long series of years they have spared no expense in
obtaining the best models and educating their workmen in drawing and
modelling. In their show-rooms will be found many very pleasing statues in
gold-colour, in bronze, and copies from antique types of vases, lamps,
candelabra, etc.
Messrs. Salt and Lloyd are also eminent lamp makers, and generally exhibit,
beside table-lamps, the last and best carriage-lamps.
Messrs. Ratcliffes are another enterprising firm.
All such of these manufactories as have show-rooms open to strangers, will be
found by an inquiry at any hotel; for although Birmingham is a large town,
everybody knows everybody, and the cab drivers will usually be found
competent to guide through the voyage of investigation.
Next, after brass, we will take steel, divided into heavy and light steel
toys.
* * * * *
HEAVY STEEL TOYS.--Heavy steel toys are the name by which, by a sort of
Brummagem Bull, a variety of articles which are the very reverse of toys, and
which are often not made of steel at all, are designated. Heavy steel toys
are tools or articles of an implement nature, used in domestic economy.
The list includes nearly 600 articles. Among these are included the tools of
carpenters, coopers, gardeners, butchers, glaziers, farriers, saddlers,
tinmen, shoemakers, weavers, wheelwrights, as well as corkscrews, sugar-
tongs, sugar-nippers, boot-hooks, button-hooks, door-scrapers, calipers,
printing-irons, dog-collars, chains, whistles, tinderboxes, and tobacco-
stoppers.
Hammers occupy a leading place, of which there are two or three hundred
varieties, belonging to different trades, each of which is divided into eight
or ten different weights. Birmingham has the largest share of the heavy toy
trade, although there are extensive manufacturers in Sheffield and
Wolverhampton. Fine edge tools are chiefly and best made at Sheffield.
This trade increases annually in importance, as it consists of articles which
are greatly in demand in new countries; and new markets are opened by every
new colonising enterprise of the Anglo-Saxon race. The manufacture includes
a great deal of wood-work for handles, as well as iron and steel. For
although many axes are made for the American market, after special patterns,
and with national mottoes, no handles are ever sent, as the backwoodsmen have
better wood for their purpose at command. Our axe handles are stiff; a
backwoodsman must have a flexible handle or haft.
The Germans once tried to compete with us in the home market, but the attempt
was a failure.
As an instance of the odd accidents that affect the Birmingham trade, about
three years ago, when flounces were in fashion, a great demand sprang up for
pinking irons, previously only used for ornamenting the hems of shrouds. A
workman informed the correspondent of the Morning Chronicle that he had
earned about 3 pounds a week for two years at making them.
The scientific tools of housebreakers are known to be made by certain
journeymen in the steel toy trade. On the other hand, hand-cuffs, leg-irons,
and similar restraining instruments are manufactured for home use and
exportation.
Occasionally, London and Liverpool houses in the Brazilian or Cuban trade
have ordered suits of chains, intended for the use of slave-ships. These are
cheap, coarse, painted black, and horrid looking. Among the orders on the
books of a manufacturer, were several dozen pair of hand-cuffs for ladies.
* * * * *
THE EDGE TOOL MANUFACTURE, which is increasing in Birmingham, probably in
consequence of the repeated strikes at Sheffield, added to the superior
position of Birmingham as regards coal, and the markets of London, Liverpool,
and Bristol, is often carried on in conjunction with that of steel toys.
There are forty-five different kinds of axes; fourteen for the American
market, twelve adzes, twenty-six bills and bill-hooks, and upwards of seventy
hoes for different foreign countries--Spain, Portugal, South America, the
United States, and Australia, which will soon consume as much hardware as
America did fifty years ago.
* * * * *
LIGHT STEEL TOYS.--These include chatelains, watch chains, keys, seals,
purses, slides, beads, waist buckles, dress swords, steel buttons for court
dresses, bodkins, spectacle frames, knitting and netting implements, and
steel snuffers. Shoe and knee buckles, which were once universally worn,
alone employed five thousand persons in their manufacture, when it was the
staple trade of the town. The expense and inconvenience of shoe buckles sent
them out of fashion. Dragoons hung in the stirrup, and cricketers tore the
nails of their fingers in picking up cricket balls, from the inconvenient
buckle.
The trade is extremely fluctuating, and depends very much on inventive taste
in which we are manifestly inferior to the French. Some articles we can make
better than they can, but they are always bringing out something new and
pretty. In small beads they undersell us enormously, while in beads of 1/6th
of an inch in diameter, and upwards, we can undersell them.
A visit to a manufactory of light steel toys will afford a great deal of
amusement and instruction.
* * * * *
MEDALLING.--DIE SINKING.--Here again are trades by which Birmingham keeps up
its communication with all the civilised, and part of the uncivilised world.
The first great improvements in coining the current money of the realm
originated at Soho, near Birmingham, at the manufactories of two men whose
memory Englishmen can never hold in sufficient respect--Matthew Boulton and
James Watt. They were the inventors of the machinery now in use in the Royal
Mint; for a long period they coined the copper money, as also some silver
money for the United Kingdom, as well as money of all denominations for many
foreign countries, tokens, and medals innumerable. They made coins for the
French Convention.
During the war, when money was scarce and small notes were in circulation,
many tradesmen, and several public establishments issued "tokens," which
were, in fact, metal promissory notes, as they were seldom of the intrinsic
value stamped on them. By this expedient retailers advertised themselves,
and temporarily increased their capital. Some successful speculators made
fortunes, others were ruined by the presentation of all their metal notes of
hand at periods of panic.
At any rate, the manufacture of these articles had a great deal to do with
the education of workmen for the medal manufacture which is now so
extensively carried on.
The dies from which coins and medals are struck, are, of course, all executed
by hand, and the excellence of each coin or medal depends on the skill of
each individual workman; therefore there has been no great improvement in
execution--indeed, some medals and coins struck two thousand years ago, rival,
if they do not excel, the best works of the present day. The improvements of
modern mechanical science are all in the die presses, and in producing cheap
metal. These improvements have enabled Birmingham to establish a large trade
in cheap medals, which are issued in tens of thousands on every occasion that
excites the public mind. Jenny Lind and Father Mathew were both excellent
customers of the medallists in their day.
The medallists are not confined to the home market; France has been supplied
with effigies of her rival Presidents, Louis Napoleon and Cavaignac, and we
should not be surprised to find that some day a contract has been taken for
the medals which the Pope blesses and distributes. Schools and Temperance
Societies are good customers, and occasionally a good order comes in from a
foreign state or colony, for coins. In 1850 Mr. Ralph Heaton made ten tons
of copper coin for Bombay, called cock money, so called because bearing a
cock on the obverse, from dies purchased at the sale at Soho.
The late Sir Richard Thomason was a considerable manufacturer of medals, and
a very curious collection may be seen at the showrooms of his successor, Mr.
G. R. Collis, who carries on the same trade, and is consul for a number of
countries between Turkey and Timbuctoo.
The most important part of the die-sinking trade, is that for making patterns
in brass, mixed metal, and iron in curtain bands, pins, lamp pillars,
cornices, coffin furniture, and all articles in which stamping has superseded
the more expensive process of hammering out.
Within the last twenty years, and notably within the last ten years, public
taste has required an increased amount of ornament in all domestic
manufactures; stimulated by this demand, great improvements have been made in
stamping, and excellence in the art of die-sinking has become more widely
diffused. The Birmingham die-sinkers admit that they are inferior to the
French in design, while in the execution of cutting heavy steel dies, they
are decidedly superior. Die-sinking is an art, like painting or sculpture,
which requires personal aptitude to enable an apprentice to acquire
excellence.
It is carried on in Birmingham by men who work themselves, employing two or
three journeymen. The names of these artists seldom appear. A London or
Parisian tradesman undertakes an order which is passed to some noted
Birmingham House, which transmits it to a hard-handed man in a back street.
* * * * *
COFFIN ORNAMENTS.--The manufacture of ornaments for coffins is a very
important part of the trade, and it is curious to find, that even in this
last concession to human vanity, there is a constant demand for new designs.
Who is it that examines and compares the ornaments of one coffin with that of
another? We never heard of the survivors of a deceased examining an
undertaker's patterns. And yet, a house which consumes forty tons of cast
iron per annum for coffin handles, stated to the gentleman to whose letters
we are indebted for this information, "Our travellers find it useless to show
themselves with their pattern books at an undertaker's, unless they have
something tasteful, new, and uncommon. The orders for Ireland are chiefly
for gilt furniture for coffins. The Scotch, also, are fond of gilt, and so
are the people in the west of England. But the taste of the English is
decidedly for black. The Welsh like a mixture of black and white. Coffin
lace is formed of very light stamped metal, and is made of almost as many
patterns as the ribbons of Coventry. All our designs are registered, as
there is a constant piracy going on, which it is necessary to check."
Dies are cut in soft metal and then hardened.
Die-sinking is one of the arts so interesting in all its branches, from the
first design to the finished coin or ornament, that every intelligent
traveller should endeavour to see it.
* * * * *
PLATERS, GILDERS, AND ELECTRO-PLATERS.--Large fortunes have been made in
Birmingham by plating copper, "in the good old times;" but Sheffield was,
until within the last ten years, the principal seat of the manufacture.
Sheffield plate was a very superior article, and for years would look and
stand wear like silver. Plating was effected by laying a thin film of silver
on a sheet of copper, which was afterwards shaped into tea or coffee
services, forks, spoons, candlesticks, trays, tea urns, and other articles
for house use. It was also applied to harness, saddlery, and every thing
formerly made of silver alone. A great impetus was given to this trade by
our intercourse with the continent at the close of the war, which sent steel
pronged forks out of fashion. The first inroad upon the plates on copper was
made by the invention of white metal, called German silver. The next was the
discovery of the art of plating by galvanic instead of mechanical agency, now
known as electro-plating. The result of the application of electric power to
plating, however, has been to transfer a large share of the Sheffield plate
business to Birmingham. It is a curious fact that a veterinary surgeon (of
the name of Askew) invented the first German silver manufactured in England,
and that a Dr. Wright, of the same town, discovered the practicability of
electro-plating about the same time that several other persons had discovered
that metal could be deposited by a galvanic current, but had not thought of
applying it practically to manufactures.
The old system of plating is still carried on both in Sheffield and in
Birmingham; improvements have been introduced by the employment of a white
metal instead of copper as the foundation, and by grafting on, as it were,
silver tips to forks and silver edges to prominent ornaments; but the balance
of advantage in economy and facility are so greatly in favour of the electro-
plating process, that, no doubt, when the patents under which it is now
worked expire, its use will become universal.
Since the first patent was published, important improvements have been made
in France, Germany, and America, which the original patentees have
incorporated. Copperplates cast from wood cuts and stereotypes can be
reproduced with great facility and economy, and the exact touches of an
artist in clay or wax can be reproduced in metal without the translation of
casting. Nothing is too small or too large,--the colossal statue of an Amazon
on horseback spearing a lioness, by Kiss, the Berlin sculptor, exhibiting in
the Hyde Park Exhibition of 1851, was copied in zinc and bronzed by this
process; and, by the same means, flowers, feathers, and even spiders' webs
have been covered with a metal film.
At present, a handsome electro-plated teapot, exactly resembling silver, may
be purchased at what a Britannia metal one cost fifteen years ago.
Messrs. Elkington and Mason, the purchasers of the secret from the original
discoverer and authors of valuable improvements, are at the head of one of
the finest and most interesting silver and electroplating establishments in
the kingdom.
In commencing this new manufacture, the commercial difficulties they had to
overcome, in addition to those of a practical and mechanical nature, were
very formidable.
The Messrs. Elkingtons originally intended to confine themselves to plating
for the trade. But the prejudice against the new process was so great, that
the manufacturers of the needful articles could not be induced to try it.
Messrs. Elkington were, therefore, very unwillingly, compelled to invest a
capital in becoming manufacturers of plated forks, spoons, cruets,
candlesticks, tea services, and all the et ceteras of imitation silver. The
additional venture did not serve their purpose. The retail dealers, equally
prejudiced, refused or neglected to push off the new plate. More anxiety and
more expenditure of capital followed, for the patentees were obliged to
establish retail establishments in several cities in this country, America,
and our Colonies. The struggle ended in complete success; the use of electro
plate has become universal, and the manufacture is not confined to Messrs.
Elkington, but is carried on, under licence from the Patentees, by a vast
number of firms. The result, however, has been, as already stated, to
transfer a good deal of the plated trade of Sheffield to Birmingham, for the
former town has slowly and unwillingly adopted the new method, which has
deprived its manufacturers of their ancient pre-eminence. Electro-plating
has not, as was imagined on its first discovery, lessened the demand for
manual labour in the plate trade; on the contrary, it has largely increased
it, while extending the sale of a superior, and superseding an inferior,
class of goods.
Although for all ordinary articles, such as forks, spoons, teapots, etc.,
there are, no doubt, many manufacturers in Birmingham quite equal to Messrs.
Elkingtons, their manufactory is especially worth visiting; because, in the
first place, the whole manufactory is open, and conveniently arranged for the
inspection of visitors; and, in the next place, the firm pay great attention
to the artistic merit of their more expensive work. They spare no expense to
obtain copies from the best antique models, and original designs from living
artists, beside keeping up a staff of draughtsmen and modellers.
In the manufactory may be seen the whole history of a plated dinner service,
from the pickle fork to the epergne, or vase, which crowns the centre of the
table at a grand banquet.
In one room men are at work in cutting out forks and spoons from flat sheets
of white metal, which is afterwards shaped, ornamented, engraved, and then,
if to be covered with silver, subjected to the action of a current of
electricity, produced by an immense pair of magnets--if to be coated with
gold, to the action of galvanic batteries; this process requires explanation
which must be sought in works, like Mr. Alfred Smee's, especially devoted to
the subject. Then comes the burnishing, by the action of leather-covered
wheels and wire brushes, in steam-driven motion, and then the burnishing by
hand, which is chiefly performed by young girls and women. And an agreeable
and profitable occupation it seems to be.
The manufacture of such articles as teapots is equally interesting. In the
process of joining such parts as the handle and spout by hard solder, that is
to say, solder as difficult to melt as the main body of the object, one of
the most valuable inventions for chemical processes, the blow-pipe, is
employed with the aid of two other great scientific aids of modern times. The
flame of the blow-pipe is made by a stream of gas, and driven, instead of by
a man's breath, by a steam blast, so that the mechanic has a power and a
facility of manipulation which would be unattainable under the old system of
working with a lamp and puffed out cheeks. There is great matter for
reflection in the sight of the hundreds of ingenious industrious workmen and
workwomen under one roof, employed mainly through the agency of three powers,
which, if not discovered, were utilised in the last years of the eighteenth,
and early years of the nineteenth century--Steam, Gas and Electricity.
In one series of the workshops of this same establishment, a considerable
manufacture of genuine silver plate is carried on, and it is curious to find
mechanics engaged in hammering out or chasing plate, using exactly the same
tool that was employed in the fifteenth century, or perhaps in Roman times.
No improvement has, or, as it would appear, can be, effected; all superiority
now, as then, depending on the workmen.
A great deal of ornamental work, of a stereotype character, is done by
stamping instead of chasing. The steel dies for this purpose form a very
costly stock in trade. A single pair of dies for a sacramental cup will
sometimes cost 150 pounds.
Among the modern improvements, we must not fail to note the patent seamless
teapots of Britannia metal, and white metal, electrotyped--capital things for
bachelors, the spouts are not likely to melt off on the hob.
The show rooms of this establishment contain, in addition to the ordinary
contents of a silversmith's shop, a number of exquisite copies in gold,
silver, and bronze electro-plate of cups and vases of Greek and Etruscan
execution, and of chased work by Benvenuto Cellini, and other master
goldsmiths of the fifteenth century.
The Messrs. Elkington have doubled their trade since the Birmingham
Exhibition in 1848, and there is reason to believe that, instead of
displacing labour as was anticipated, this invention has increased the number
and the wages of the parties employed.
* * * * *
The Britannia Metal manufacture is closely allied to the plate trade; an
ingenious improvement, well worth examination, has recently been introduced
by Messrs. Sturgis of Broad Street, by which teapots are cast whole, instead
of having the spouts and handles soldered on.
* * * * *
The Gilt Toy and Mock Jewellery Trade, once one of the staple employments of
Birmingham artizans, has dwindled away until it now occupies a very
insignificant place in the Directory. Bad cheap articles, with neglect of
novelty and taste in design, ruined it. In cheap rubbish foreigners can
always beat us, but the Birmingham gilt toy men made things "to sell" until
no one would buy.
* * * * *
FOX AND HENDERSON'S MANUFACTORY.--The London works conducted by Messrs. Fox,
Henderson, and Co., who have become known to all the world by their rapid and
successful erection of the Crystal Palace, are situated at Smethwick, about
four miles from Birmingham on the Dudley Road. They were established after
the commencement of the London and Birmingham Railway, for the manufacture of
iron and machinery required in the construction of railways.
The shops, which are of large dimensions, are built in a quadrangle,
enclosing a large area or open space, which is employed as a yard for
material or finished goods as may be accidentally required. The first place
into which the stranger is shown is called the Truck shop, and will
accommodate three hundred carriage builders and carpenters. Adjoining it is
the Boiler Makers' shop, or, more properly, a shop for workers in plate-iron,
for boilers are not made in the establishment, but iron doors, navy casks,
and wrought iron railway carriages are produced in this department. These
shops form one side of the quadrangle.
The forges, which are very numerous, occupy the first department of another
side of the range of buildings. The forges, as is now usual, are supplied
with air by the motion of a fan worked by the engine, and by the side of them
many strong and stalwart arms are wielded with as much skill and ingenuity as
distinguished some of the smiths of the middle ages. The Mechanical
Engineering shops join the forges, and in them will be found many of those
beautiful self-acting tools for which this age is so remarkable. There are
drilling, planing, screwing, and slotting machines of various designs and
adapted to different purposes, as well as numerous expensive and very perfect
lathes. Here the switches used for conducting trains from one line to
another are made, as well as all kinds of machine work. Connected with this
is the Turntable shop, which is, to a stranger, as interesting as any part of
the establishment, from the magnitude of the machinery and the ease with
which gigantic masses of iron are carried about by the traveller to and from
the planing and other machines. The Wheel shop, which is next visited, is
chiefly used for the manufacture of railway carriage wheels, of which, as
must be well known, there are many varieties. The Foundry and Anchor
manufactory must not be omitted in an enumeration of the departments.
The other two sides of the quadrangle are occupied by saw-pits, painters'
shops, stores, offices, and all the conveniences required for carrying on a
business which frequently gives employment to eleven or twelve hundred men.
The reputation of Messrs. Fox, Henderson, and Co., has been long established
among engineers for the construction of railway bridges, iron roofs, and
works of a similar kind; but it has been made European, if not universal, by
the rapidity and skill with which they have constructed the Industrial
Exhibition.
Strangers, if introduced, are permitted to see the works.
Besides the manufactures we have enumerated and described, there are many
others of more or less importance; and new inventions and the spur of
enterprise are creating new manufactures in Birmingham every day.
There are manufacturers of steam-engines and other machinery, of stoves,
grates, and other iron foundry. One firm (Messrs. Hardman Iliffe) employs a
great number of workmen in making every kind of church furniture, from the
most approved mediaeval models and the designs of Mr. Pugin. Another executes
stained-glass windows. Saddlery and harness, or parts of saddles and whips,
employ a certain number of hands; and not only imitation but a good deal of
real jewellery is made. There is one large and curious manufactory of gold
chains.
In a word, there is no town in the world in which the execution of work,
however new or complex, in metal, wood, horn, or ivory, can be so certainly
effected as in Birmingham.
There are not many merchants in Birmingham, in the large sense of the term.
The chief mercantile business is done by parties termed factors, who in
effect are, if not actually, the agents of great merchants. These "factors"
purchase what they need for their wholesale customers from the manufacturers.
About 2,000 of the Birmingham manufacturers are what are termed garret-
masters; they work themselves, and employ a few hands. The "factor" buys as
few as half-a-dozen tea-pots, or a hundred gross of pearl buttons, from these
little men, until he makes up his number. His business partakes more of the
character of retail than wholesale, and the grinding--technically
slaughtering--system of the factors of Birmingham has an unfavourable
Yankeefying effect on their character.
The principal mercantile houses are in direct communication with American
houses, if not actual partners or agents. A panic in New York finds an
immediate echo in Warwickshire and Staffordshire, just as a fall or rise of
cotton in New Orleans is immediately felt in Lancashire.
It is worth observing, that in some instances great transactions are carried
on with wonderfully little show in Birmingham, and no state. We could not
give a better instance of the difficulty of "judging by appearances" than in
the following sketch from nature.
There is a broad street of tall mean houses, which, except at the workmen's
dinner hour, seems always empty.
In this street is a large house of a dirty, faded appearance; the cobwebbed
windows blocked up; the door with a broken knocker and a sad want of paint.
It is evidently the ci-devant residence of a Birmingham manufacturer of the
old school, before the suburbs of Edgbaston and Handsworth sprang up, now
turned into a warehouse or receptacle for lumber. As to apply to the front
door would be useless, you turn up a dark passage at the side, and reach
another dingy door, which gives way with a rattle at your touch, and closes
with a rattle and a bang; passing through you ascend a flight of creaking
deal stairs, and reach a suite of low rooms, about as imposing in appearance
as a deserted printing-office. A few juvenile clerks--the very converse of
the snug merchants' clerks of the City of London--are distributed about. A
stranger would not give 50 pounds for the furniture, capital, and credit, of
the whole concern.
And yet, in this strange place, is conducted a trade of many tens of
thousands per annum, with branches in all the principal towns of Germany,
Spain, Portugal, South America, and British India!
A rapid idea of the Birmingham hardware trade may be obtained from the
extensive show-rooms of Messrs. Herbert, in the Bull-ring.
If we have failed to do justice to any branch of manufacture, we have a very
sufficient excuse in the difficulty we experienced in obtaining access to
manufactories, or even information as to what was worth examination.