In treating of “technical literature,” we shall encounter many works
which were rightly described by Charles Lamb as “books which are
not books;” and the present chapter will be interesting rather as
containing biographical notices of men who thoroughly deserved, and
thoroughly achieved, success, than for any bibliographical anecdotes we
can lay before the reader.
The value of technical literature, in a publishing point of view, had
been correctly estimated in the very earliest times of bookselling
annals, and Richard Tottell (or Tothill), an original member of the
Stationers’ Company, and eventually their chairman, had in Edward the
Sixth’s reign, and subsequently in Queen Elizabeth’s, succeeded in
obtaining a patent for law-books; and when, through the petition of the
Stationers’ Company, he was compelled to forego some of the works which
he had thus monopolised, he warily “kept his law-books to himself,
and yielded ‘Dr. Wilson upon Usurie,’ and ‘The Sonnets of th’ Earle
of Surrey.’” Tothill, however, did still publish other books than
those relating to the very remunerative branch of law; for, in 1562,
he produced “Stow’s Abridgment of the Chronicles of England;” and,
in 1590, “Tusser’s Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry.” His name
would, probably, have been unknown, at all events forgotten, had he not
occupied the _Hands and Star_ in Temple Bar, the very same shop which,
two-and-a-half centuries afterwards, Henry Butterworth again rendered
famous as the great emporium of legal books.
Tothill was succeeded by John More (he had been previously represented,
but only for awhile, by Barker and others), and we have already seen
that Samuel Richardson, and Lintott’s granddaughter, had obtained the
patent of King’s Printers for legal books; this brings us up in date
to, at all events, the uncle of the subject of our present memoir.
Henry Butterworth, the most famous of all our law-publishers, was born
on 28th February, 1786, in the city of Coventry. His father was a
wealthy timber-merchant, and his ancestors fairly claimed alliance with
the great county families, though Butterworth Hall, in the township of
Butterworth, near Rochdale, in their possession since Stephen’s reign,
had already fallen into alien hands. The Rev. John Butterworth, his
grandfather, had removed from Rochdale to Coventry; he was well known
as the author of a “Concordance to the Holy Scriptures,” which passed
through several editions, and was the received work upon the subject
until the appearance of Cruden’s more famous “Concordance.”
Young Henry Butterworth was educated at the Public Grammar School,
in Coventry, and afterwards placed under the tutorial care of Dr.
Johnson, of Bristol; but at the early age of fourteen, his education
(inasmuch as book-learning was concerned) was considered at an end,
and he entered the large sugar-refinery of Mr. Stock, of Bristol. But
the hot atmosphere, and the incessant and laborious toil, proved too
much for young Butterworth’s health, though the work had otherwise
been rendered pleasant enough through his master’s kindness. As he had
already shown much business talent and ability, Stock urged Mr. Joseph
Butterworth, his own relation by marriage, and Henry Butterworth’s
uncle, to do something for the lad. Joseph Butterworth accordingly made
overtures to Henry’s family, and though they were loath to send their
son to the distant trials and temptations of the metropolis, the offer
was a tempting one, as it contained a tacit promise of admitting him,
at some future time, to a partnership in the enormous business. Young
Butterworth at once determined to accept the proposal; and on the 5th
December, 1801, he arrived in London by the Bristol coach, having left
Bristol straightway, without even having had an opportunity of bidding
his relatives farewell.
The business carried on at No. 43, Fleet Street, was on a very
extensive scale, and Joseph Butterworth was not only a well-known
member of Parliament, but was an exceedingly wealthy and zealous
philanthropist; and at his uncle’s dinner table young Henry Butterworth
met many eminent and good men who were associated together to fight
in a common cause--among others we may particularize Wilberforce,
Teignmouth, Liverpool, Bexley, Zachary Macaulay, and Robert and Charles
Grant--and from the time of his first introduction he enrolled his name
among these ardent religious and social reformers.
Young Butterworth entered very heartily into the conduct of his
uncle’s business, and, owing to his efforts, its relations were very
vastly extended.
In 1813 he was in a position to marry a lady of birth and fortune, the
daughter of Captain Whitehead, of the Fourth Irish Dragoon Guards, who
not only afterwards entered fully into all his philanthropic projects,
but possessed a refined and cultivated intellect, which found utterance
in a volume of “Songs and Poems,” by E. H. B., published by Pickering
in 1848, which are evidently, as the authoress says of another gift--
“An offering from a heart sincere.
Tho’ small and worthless, what I send,
’Tis hallowed by affection’s tear.”
In 1818, Butterworth found that there was little likelihood of his
admission, as had been previously agreed upon, to a satisfactory share
of his uncle’s business; and having now to consider not only his own
interests, but the welfare of a wife and family, he determined, with
a sense of disappointment, to seek an independent roof, and there to
carry out, on his own account, the art and mystery of law printing.
Before we follow him to his new abode, we will devote a few words
to his uncle’s successful career. Joseph Butterworth, who had, in
connection with Whieldon, founded a very large law-publishing business,
realized, it is said, the largest fortune ever made by law publishing,
and was one of the original founders of the British and Foreign Bible
Society, its earliest meetings being held at his house in Fleet Street.
His son died before him, and his business was sold to Messrs. Saunders
and Benning; and after various fortunes, the shop became the Bible
warehouse of Messrs. Spottiswoode.
Henry Butterworth, supported by his father’s capital, took a lease
of No. 7, Fleet Street, a house which had been, as we have seen
previously, occupied by Tothill and other ancient law publishers. And
from this shop were issued the vellum-bound volumes whose contents
are sacred to all but those assiduously apprenticed to the law.
Butterworth’s position was still further improved by his appointment to
the profitable post of Queen’s law publisher. To the general student
the law-books of the period are as little known as they were to that
worthy country justice who, wishing to learn something definite about
the law he so zealously administered, told his bookseller to send
him forthwith the “Mirror for Magistrates;” and the vastly popular
law-books did not, of course, come within the province of the technical
publisher. Butterworth, however, saw the decline of two works which
had been regarded as time-honoured text-books on the subject--Burn’s
“Justice” and Blackstone’s “Commentaries.” Many booksellers had made
large fortunes out of Burn since the time when the author, wearied
out with carrying his manuscript from shop to shop, had accepted
a nominal fee to get it off his hands; and now Butterworth, by
publishing Serjeant Stephen’s celebrated “Commentaries on the Laws
of England”--the most successful law-work of modern times--erased
Blackstone from the category of legal text-books.
Butterworth, however, though energetic as a publisher, found time
to take part in the government of the city. In 1823 he was elected
as representative of the ward of Farringdon Street Without, but he
afterwards declined to be nominated to the office of sheriff. However,
his connection with the city was still further strengthened by his
appointment as Commissioner of Income and Property Tax, and Land and
Assessed Taxes for London, and also as Commissioner of Roads. On his
first arrival in town he had served in a light volunteer regiment,
recruited to resist the aggression of the great Napoleon; and on his
retirement from the corporation, about the year 1841, he received a
captain’s commission in the Royal London Militia.
We gather something of Butterworth’s general kindness and consideration
to those beneath him in station from the following anecdote:--Shortly
after the passing of the new Poor Law Act in 1834, the guardians of
the West Surrey Union ordered that the annual Christmas dinner for
the workhouse inmates should consist, as wont, of roast beef and
plum-pudding. The Poor Law Board--a new broom--was horrified at this
munificence, and sent down their inspector, Dr. Kay, to inquire into
the proposed extravagance. He offered a compromise by substituting
boiled beef for roast, not that it would be in any degree cheaper,
but that (a satisfactory object, we suppose, to the Board) it would
not be quite so palatable. Butterworth, who was one of the guardians,
was inflexible, and finally sent in his resignation; but as he was
too useful a local authority to be spared, the Board sent back the
resignation, and permitted the paupers to feast upon the disputed beef,
roast.
In his later years Butterworth took much interest in church-building,
and at Tooting, St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West, and his native city of
Coventry, he subscribed large sums for that purpose.
After the death of his wife, which occurred in 1853, he gradually
withdrew from general society, though he still attended the
congenial meetings of the Stationers’ Company. The day of his death
was, curiously enough, the most important day in the law publishing
year--the first day of term--2nd November, 1860. On the previous
evening he had given his annual admonition to those around him in
business to awake up from the lethargy of the long vacation, and on the
following morning it was found that he had passed away, as if in sleep.
For nearly sixty years Butterworth had occupied a leading position
as a publisher and as a citizen, and during that period had won the
friendship and respect of all who came in contact with him. The alms
which his industry enabled him to make were conscientiously, quietly,
and discriminatingly bestowed: and the painted glass memorial window
erected to him in the choir of the Cathedral of St. Paul’s was a
fitting tribute from a very large number of friends and admirers, many
of whom had experienced the kindly assistance of his friendship and
advice.
* * * * *
As we have previously seen, divinity and education were among the
first subjects to attract a special attention, and works relating to
them would otherwise have come within our category of technical books.
No sooner, however, were the lawyers fairly supplied with special
text-books than the doctors began to clamour for the like, and the
publisher who has of all others most zealously administered to their
wants is still happily amongst us.
John Churchill was born about the commencement of the century, and
was apprenticed in the year 1816 to Messrs. Cox and Son, medical
booksellers in Southwark. “The house of business was,” he says,
“immediately adjoining Guy’s and St. Thomas’s Hospitals, and became
the daily resort of the lecturers and numerous students of the schools;
I thus early in life became known to the celebrated men of the day,
little anticipating that eventually I should become the publisher of
Guy’s and St. Thomas’s Hospital Reports, and of so large a proportion
of the works that issued from the medical press.”
At the time when young Churchill entered the profession of medical
publishing, the periodicals, and, of course, the standard technical
works, presented a striking contrast to those at present in existence,
for now the medical profession assert, with the greatest truth, that
their special organs are of far higher intrinsic worth, and of far
better “tone” of thought and expression, than those relating to any
other purely technical subject. For years, however, after Churchill
became a bookseller’s assistant the medical press was only on a par
with the papers relating to the other professions, and was chiefly
represented by the _Medico-Chirurgical Review_, founded by J.
Johnson in 1820, and the _Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal_, a
work we have already come across in our notice of Constable. These
reviews contained no original reports, no strictures on the hospital
appointments then jobbed, like everything else, to men of wealth,
family, and interest. In fact, they consisted of little besides long
and elaborate abstracts of new books.
On Sunday, 2nd October, 1823, the first number of a journal that was
to cause a great revolution in medical literature, and to affect in
no slight degree the whole medical profession, was issued from a
small publishing shop in the Strand. The journal was, of course, the
_Lancet_, and the publisher young Thomas Wakley. Wakley had walked the
united hospitals of Guy’s and St. Thomas’s, and had taken his degree
in 1817. He does not appear to have practised regularly till, about
1822, he took a small shop in the Strand, and with the assistance, in
a pecuniary point of view, of Collard (now the senior partner of the
famous piano factory) determined to start a thoroughly independent
medical journal. The first number contained a report of a lecture
by Sir A. Cooper, printed from memory. The professors and hospital
officers fired up, and for long Wakley had to encounter the same
difficulties and almost the same penalties which Cave had previously
undergone in commencing his reports of Parliamentary proceedings. As a
former student, Wakley attended the lectures, and, like other students,
was seen to take occasional notes. Cooper could not, however, bring
the charge home till he hit upon the device of calling at midnight
at his lodgings, and asking to see the “doctor” upon urgent medical
business, when he surprised him red-handed correcting a proof-sheet of
a lecture. The discovery was so sudden and so undeniable that neither
could refrain from laughter; and eventually Cooper, not ill-humouredly,
offered to allow his lectures to appear if the proofs were first sent
him for revision. Consequently, Cooper, though often criticised in the
_Lancet_, never received a nickname, as did most of the other medical
celebrities of the day. For instance, Brodie was known as the “little
eminent;” Earle, the “cock sparrow;” Mayo, the “owl;” and Halford, the
“eel-backed.”
The _Lancet_, for many years, was hated by that part of the profession
interested in vested rights, and eagerly patronised by general surgeons
and students. The language of the _Lancet_ was as violent as the
many abuses it attacked could justify; and Cobbett, who was a friend
and adviser of Wakley’s, was adopted as a model, while a barrister,
named Keen, used to join the party on printing nights to see that the
free strictures were not legally liable as libels. An active, though
unpaid, member of the staff, was Lawrence, who, however, forsook his
reforming principles when once he became a placeman, and was succeeded
by Wardrop, whose scurrility, wit, and venom did much in giving the
_Lancet_ a lasting reputation for raciness of style and satirical
power. They were shortly afterwards joined by Mr. J. F. Clarke, who
edited the periodical for upwards of forty years, and to whose amusing
and graphic autobiography we are indebted for much of the preceding
details. The success of the _Lancet_ soon enabled Wakley to enter
Parliament as a representative of Finsbury, and he actually combined
together the work of the legislator, the coroner, and the editor, often
toiling unremittingly for eighteen consecutive hours.
By the time the _Lancet_ was thus firmly established, Churchill, long
out of his apprenticeship, had commenced medical publishing on his own
account; and from his famous shop, in New Burlington Street, issued
most of the standard works upon the subject; and, encouraged by the
success of the _Lancet_, he determined to make his establishment the
centre of periodical, as well as more permanent, medical literature. In
1836, was started therefrom the _British and Foreign Medical Review_,
conducted first by J. Forbes, and afterwards by J. C. Conolly. In 1848,
it was merged into the _Medico-Chirurgical Review_, which, from 1824
to 1847, had been under the editorship of H. J. Johnson. These two
were now amalgamated into the _British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical
Review_, which, dating from Churchill’s establishment, has acquired a
professional standing equal to that of the _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly
Reviews_ in more general criticism. In 1839, appeared the first number
of the _Medical Times and Gazette_, which, under the editorial care of
T. P. Healey, and subsequently of J. L. Bushman, has found a very large
and influential _clientèle_.
The medical writers have at present something in common with the early
authors. Their works bring them in more remuneration through eventual
patronage than from habitual sale, but their patronage is that of all
the great public, who are waiting to have their ailments cured. As an
instance of the way in which literature may improve the position of a
medical man, it is stated by Mr. W. Clarke that, through Elliotson’s
clinical reports in the _Lancet_, his income was raised, in one year,
from £500 to £5000. And yet, on the other hand, when he openly gave in
his adherence to the newly-imported doctrine of mesmerism, his large
public and private practice almost entirely deserted him; and as the
legitimate organs were closed to one so abandoned as even to experiment
in “the unknown,” he started a medico-mesmeric journal of his own, the
_Zoist_, which was, of course, not published by Mr. Churchill.
There is necessarily the same want of general interest in medical as in
legal bibliography; and, as in the latter case, works more popularly
known were almost invariably published by the usual popular publishers.
For instance, Dr. Buchan’s “Domestic Medicine”--probably the most
profitable medical book ever written (but not to the author, as he sold
the copyright for five pounds), after being re-written by Smellie--was
issued in 1770, by the ordinary booksellers. During the author’s
lifetime, nineteen editions, each of five thousand, were published, and
the volume was translated into all the modern languages.
If Mr. Churchill’s catalogue can show no book with a popularity like
this, it displays many which, appealing only to a class audience, and
necessarily obliged to keep pace with the discoveries of the day,
have at once retained their high price and yet reached the honour of
numerous editions.
It is probably owing chiefly to this fact of an incessant demand by a
large section of, at all events, one branch of students, that technical
publishing has proved so remunerative, and has escaped, in a great
degree, the risk attached to other departments of the trade.
At the close of the year 1870, Mr. Churchill resolved to give up the
active management of his large business, and issued a farewell circular
to the trade: “After fifty-five years’ active and immediate association
with your profession, I see it my duty to retire into private life.
Be my future days few or many, I shall ever retain a lively sense of
the many friendships I have formed, and of the unvarying proofs of
confidence and regard shown to me through so long a series of years.
My pathway of life has been a happy one, bringing me into daily
correspondence with the _élite_ of the profession, and united with them
in promoting the interests of science and literature, while the success
of my many publications has both gratified and amply rewarded my
exertions. My sons, John and Augustus Churchill, have been eight years
associated with me. I may be influenced by a father’s feelings, but I
believe I can honestly state that, by education, earnest purpose in the
fulfilment of duty, a high sense of integrity guiding and regulating
their transactions, they will be found worthy of your confidence, and
thus maintain the character of the house whose reputation and business
transactions have extended to all parts of the world.” To this honest
expression of well-earned business contentment, we can only add our
wishes that Mr. Churchill’s years of retirement may be as happy as his
years of toil have been useful and beneficial.
Among other technical publishers, Mr. Henry Laurie, whose house dates
from the commencement of English hydrography, and whose numerous
publications are known wherever English navigation has extended,
requires at least a mention here. The oldest existing house of
this nature, but one, in Europe (Gerard Hulst Van Keulen & Co., of
Amsterdam, being the exception), it was founded by R. Sayer, at the
“Golden Busk” (53, Fleet Street), in conjunction with John Senex, the
well-known cosmographer. Here Cook’s original charts were issued; and
it says something for his accuracy that his “Survey of the South Coast
of Newfoundland” has not yet been superseded. On Sayer’s death, the
business was relinquished to Robert Laurie and James Whittle, and, in
1812, the former was succeeded by his son, R. H. Laurie, who, on the
death of Whittle, became sole proprietor. In a short time, the business
extended to the production of illustrations of all descriptions, whilst
the maps produced, under the care of De la Rochette, John Purdy, and
Mr. Findlay, still retained their pre-eminence; the business was,
however, again restricted to hydrography. R. H. Laurie died as recently
as January 19, 1858, leaving two daughters, and the establishment was
continued under the direction of his sole executor, Mr. Findlay.
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_EDWARD MOXON_: