BIRMINGHAM.
A run of nineteen miles brings us to what the inhabitants call the Hardware Village, a healthy, ugly town, standing upon several hills, crowned with smoke, but free from fog.
The old railway station stands at the foot of one of these hills, leaving a drive of a quarter of a mile through a squalid region, almost as bad as the railway entrance into Bristol, before entering into the decent part of the town; but the new station, now in course of rapid completion, will land passengers behind the Grammar School, in New Street, the principal, and, indeed, only handsome street of any length in Birmingham.
At the old station there is an excellent hotel, kept by Mr. Robert Bacon, who was so many years house steward to the Athenæum Club, in Pall Mall; and at the refreshment-rooms a capital table d’hote is provided four times a-day, at two shillings a-head, servants included, an arrangement extremely acceptable after a ride of 118 miles.
At the new station similar refreshment-rooms are to be provided, and it is to be hoped that the architect will plan the interior first, and the exterior afterwards, so that comfort may not be sacrificed, as it usually is in English public buildings, to the cost of an imposing portico and vestibule.
As a railway starting point, Birmingham has become a wonderful place. In addition to those main lines and branches passed and noted on our journey down, it is also the centre at which meet the railroads to Derby and Sheffield; to Worcester, Cheltenham, Gloucester, and Bristol; to London through Oxford, by the Broad Gauge Great Western, to Shrewsbury and Chester through Wolverhampton, beside the little South Staffordshire lines, which form an omnibus route between Birmingham, Walsall, Dudley, and Lichfield, and other iron nets “too tedious to describe.”
To a stranger not interested in manufactures, and in mechanic men, this is a very dull, dark, dreary town, and the sooner he gets out of it the better. There are only two fine buildings. The Town Hall, an exact copy externally of the Temple of Jupiter Stator at Rome, built of a beautiful grey Anglesey marble, from the designs of Messrs. Hansom and Welch, who also undertook to execute it for £24,000. It cost £30,000, and the contractors were consequently ruined. A railway company would probably have paid the difference; but, in such cases, communities have no conscience, so the people of Brummagem got the Hall of which they are justly proud “a bargain.”
The interior is disappointing, and wants the expenditure of some more thousand pounds in sculptures and decorative details, to bring it into harmony with its noble external effect. The great room, 145 feet in length, by 65 feet in width and height, will contain upwards of 8,000 persons.
Musical meetings are held here periodically, for the benefit of certain charities; but the sight best worth seeing, is the Hall at the period of an election, or of political excitement, crowded with a feverish army of workmen, cheering, groaning, swaying to and fro, under the speeches of their favourite orators. Then in this Pagan temple may be seen a living specimen of a Brummagem Jupiter, with a cross of Vulcan, lion-faced, hairy, bearded, deep-mouthed swaggering, fluent in frank nonsense and bullying clap-trap, loved by the mob for his strength, and by the middle classes for his money. The lofty roof re-echoes with applause.
The temple, the man, and the multitude, all together, are well worth a journey to Birmingham to see.
There is also the Free School of King Edward VI., in New Street, a stately pile, built by Barry, before he had become so famous as he is now; which supplies first-rate instruction in classics, mathematics, modern languages, and all branches of a useful English education, after the plan introduced into our public schools by Dr. Arnold, to the sons of all residents, at an extremely cheap, almost a nominal rate. Ten exhibitions of £50 each for four years at Oxford or Cambridge are open to the competition of the scholars.
The salary of the Head Master is £400 a-year, with a residence, and the privilege of boarding eighteen pupils. Of the Second Master, £300. Beside Under Masters.
These liberal appointments have secured a succession of competent masters, and cannot fail to produce a permanent and favourable change in the character of young Birmingham. The diffusion of sound classical learning was much needed to mitigate the coxcombical pretensions of the half-educated, and the vulgar coarseness of the uneducated. The inhabitants of manufacturing towns are apt to grow petty Plutocracies, in which after wealth, ignorance and assumption are the principal qualifications. Brass turns up its nose at iron, and both look down upon tin, although half an hour in the world’s fire make all so black as to be undistinguishable.
Besides this, which we may term the High School, there are four schools supported out of King Edward VI.’s foundation, where reading, writing, and arithmetic, are taught.
The funds on which these magnificent ecclesiastical establishments are supported, arise from lands in the neighbourhood which originally produced only £21 a year, and were part of the estates of the Guild of the “Holy Cross.” After being occupied first as fields and then as gardens, the rise of manufactures and extension of the town of Birmingham, converted a great portion into building land. The present revenue amounts to about £11,000 per annum, and are likely to be still further increased.
Twenty years ago, school lands which are now leased for terms of years, and covered with buildings, were occupied as suburban gardens at trifling rents. Eventually the Birmingham Free School will enjoy an income equal to the wants of a university as well as a school. Meagre accounts of the income and expenditure of this noble foundation are published annually, under the regulations of an Act of Parliament passed in 1828; but no report of the number of scholars, or the sort of education communicated, is attached to this balance sheet. It would be very useful; and we hope that the self-elected corporation, who have the management, will see the propriety of supplying it.
Birmingham also possesses a chartered college, “Queen’s College,” similar to that at Durham; first established as a medical school by the exertions of the present dean, Mr. Sands Cox, since liberally endowed by the Rev. Dr. Warneford to the extent of many thousand pounds, and placed in a position to afford the courses in law, physic, and divinity, required for taking a degree at the University of London. Also a Blue Coat School, and School for the Blind.
In a picturesque point of view there are few towns more uninviting than Birmingham; for the houses are built of brick toned down to a grimy red by smoke, in long streets crossing each other at right angles,—and the few modern stone buildings and blocks of houses seem as pert and as much out of place as the few idle dandies who are occasionally met among the crowds of busy mechanics and anxious manufacturers. What neatness—cleanliness—can do for the streets, bell-pulls, and door-knockers, has been done; the foot-pavements are, for the most part flagged, although some of the round pebble corn-creating footways still remain in the back streets. One suburb, Edgbaston, is the property of Lord Calthorpe, and has been let out on building leases which entirely exclude all manufactories and inferior classes of houses. The result has been a crop of snug villas, either stucco or polished red brick; many of them surrounded by gardens and shrubberies, and a few of considerable pretension. Of this suburb the Birmingham people think a great deal; but, as it is built upon a dead flat in long straight lines, its effect is more pleasing to the citizen after a hard day’s work, than to the artist, architect, landscape gardener, or lover of the picturesque.
Birmingham is, in fact, notable for its utility more than its beauty,—for what is done in its workshops, rather than for what is to be seen in its streets and suburbs. Nowhere are there to be found so numerous a body of intelligent, ingenious, well educated workmen. The changes of fashion and the discoveries of science always find Birmingham prepared to march in the van, and skilfully execute the work needed in iron, in brass, in gold and silver, in all the mixed metals and in glass. When guns are no longer required at the rate of a gun a minute, Birmingham steel pens become famous all over the world. When steel buckles and gilt buttons have had their day, Britannia teapots and brass bedsteads still hold their own. No sooner is electrotype invented, than the principal seat of the manufacture is established at Birmingham. No sooner are the glass duties repealed than the same industrious town becomes renowned for plate glass, cut glass, and stained glass; and, when England demands a Palace to hold the united contributions of “The Industry of the World,” a Birmingham banker finds the contractor and the credit, and Birmingham manufacturers find the iron, the glass, and the skill needful for the most rapid and gigantic piece of building ever executed in one year.
In order to appreciate the independent character and quick inventive intelligence of the Birmingham mechanic, he should be visited at his own home. A system of small independent houses, instead of lodgings, prevails in this town, to the great advantage of the workmen.
It is only within a very few years that the working classes have had, in a local School of Design, means of instruction in the principles of taste, and arts of drawing and modelling; while, until the patent laws are put upon a just foundation, their inventive faculties can never be fully developed. When the artizans of Birmingham have legislative recognition of their rights as inventors, and free access to a first-rate school of design, their “cunning” hands will excel in beauty as well as ingenuity all previous triumphs.
The wealthier classes have, from various causes, deteriorated within the last sixty years, while the workmen have improved within that time. Men who have realized fortunes no longer settle down in the neighbourhood of their labours. They depart as far as possible from the smoke of manufactures and the bickerings of middle class cliques, purchase estates, send their sons to the universities, and in a few years subside into country squires. Professional men, as soon as they have displayed eminent talent, emigrate to London; and the habit, now so prevalent in all manufacturing towns, of living in the suburbs, has sapped the prosperity of those literary and philosophical institutions and private reunions, which so much contributed to raise the tone of society during the latter half of the last century. The meetings of an old Literary and Philosophical Society have been discontinued, and the News Room was lately on the brink of dissolution. Instead of meeting to discuss points of art, science, and literature, the middle classes read the Times and Punch, and consult the Penny Cyclopædia. The literary and scientific character which Birmingham acquired in the days when Boulton, Watt, Priestly, Darwin, Murdoch, and their friends, met at the Birmingham Lunarian Society, to discuss, to experiment, and to announce important discoveries, have passed away never to return; and we are not likely to see again any provincial town occupying so distinguished a position in the scientific world. The only sign of Birmingham’s ancient literary pre-eminence is to be found in several weekly newspapers, conducted with talent and spirit far beyond average. It is an amusing fact, that the sect to which Priestly belonged still trade on his reputation, and claim an intellectual superiority over the members of other persuasions, which they may once have possessed, but which has long been levelled up by the universal march of education. The richer members publish little dull books in bad English on abstruse subjects, and, like Consuelo’s prebendary, have quartos in preparation which never reach the press.
In fact, the suburban system of residence and the excessive pretension of superiority by the “pots over the kettles” have almost destroyed society in Birmingham, although people meet occasionally at formal expensive parties, and are drawn together by sympathy in religion and politics.
Nothing would induce an educated gentleman to live in Birmingham except to make a living, yet there are residing there, seldom seen out of their factories, men of the highest scientific and no mean literary attainments.
There are a number of manufactories, which, in addition to their commercial importance, present either in finished articles, or in the process of manufacture, much that will interest an intelligent traveller.
GLASS.—Messrs. F. & C. Oslers, of Broad Street, have attained a very high reputation for their cut and ornamental, as well as the ordinary, articles of flint glass. The have been especially successful in producing fine effects from prismatic arrangements. Their gigantic chandeliers of great size, made for Ibrahim Pacha, and the Nepalese Prince, were the steps by which they achieved the lofty crystal fountain, of an entirely original design, which forms one of the most novel and effective ornaments of the Crystal Palace. The manufactory as well as the show-room is open to the inspection of respectable strangers.
Messrs. Rice and Harris are also extensive manufacturers of cut and coloured glass; and Messrs. Bacchus and Sons have been very successful in their imitations of Bohemian glass, both in form and colour. Messrs. Chance have acquired a world-wide reputation by supplying the largest quantity of crown glass in the shortest space of time for Paxton’s Palace. These works, in which plate and every kind of crown glass is made, are situated at West Bromwich. The proprietors have benevolently and wisely made arrangements for the education of their workmen and their families, which are worthy of imitation in all those great factories where the plan, which originated in Lancashire, has not been already adopted. A letter of introduction will be required in order to view Messrs. Chance’s establishment, of which we shall say more when noting the social state of the Birmingham operatives.
PAPIER MACHÉ.—Messrs. Jennens and Bettridge’s works are so well known that it is only necessary to refer to them for the purpose of saying that in their show-rooms some new application of the art which they have carried to such perfection is constantly to be found. Pianos, cradles, arm-chairs, indeed complete drawing-room suites, cornices, door-plates, and a variety of ornaments are displayed, in addition to the tea-trays and tea-chests in which the art of japanning first became known to us.
Although Messrs. Jennens and Co. have the largest establishment in Birmingham, there are several others who produce capital work; among them may be named Mr. Thomas Lane and Messrs. M’Callum and Hodgson, who both exhibited specimens of great merit at the last Birmingham Exhibition of manufactures.
But metals afford the great staple of employment in Birmingham, and we shall avail ourselves, in describing the leading trades, and touching on the social position of the workmen, of the admirable letters on Labour and the Poor in Birmingham which appeared in the Morning Chronicle in the course of 1850. [{81}]
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BIRMINGHAM BUTTONS.—“A Brummagem Button” is the old-fashioned nickname for a Birmingham workman. The changes of fashion, and the advances of other manufactures, have deprived that trade of its ancient pre-eminence over all other local pursuits; but the “button trade,” although not the same trade which made great fortunes in a previous generation, still employs five or six thousand hands, of which one-half are women and children.
In the middle of the eighteenth century a plain white metal button was made, which may occasionally be seen in remote rural districts, on the green coats of old yeomen, wearing hereditary leather breeches. At that period the poorer classes wore coarse horn or wooden buttons, chiefly home made, and the tailor made, as well as the clothes, buttons covered with cloth. By degrees very handsome gilt buttons came into wear, and continued to employ many hands, while the blue coat which figures in the portraits of our grandfathers remained in fashion.
In 1826, the Florentine, or covered button, now in almost universal use, which is manufactured by machinery with the aid of women and children, was introduced, and by 1829 the gilt button trade had been almost destroyed.
The change produced great distress, vast numbers of persons were thrown out of work, who could not at once turn to any other employment. In 1830 a deputation from the gilt button trade waited upon George IV. and the principal nobility, to solicit their patronage. The application succeeded, coloured coats with metal buttons came into fashion, and dandies of the first water appeared in bright snuff-coloured, pale green, and blue coats, such as are now only worn by Paul Bedford or Keeley, in broad farce. In 1836 a cheap mode of gilding, smart for a day, dull and shabby in a week, completely destroyed the character of gilt buttons, and brought up the Florentine again. This change was, no doubt, materially assisted and maintained by Bulwer’s novel of “Pelham,” which set all young men dressing themselves up like crows with white shirts.
In 1840 a deputation to Prince Albert attempted another revival of the gilt button trade, and at the same time the silk stocking weavers waited on the Prince to endeavour to drive out the patent leather boots, and bring in the low shoe. Both attempts failed. At present there are symptoms of a turn of fashion toward coloured coats and bright buttons, which may be successful, because the fashionable world abhors monotony. The flame coloured coats, long curls, and pink under waistcoats of George IV., were succeeded by the solemn sables of an undertaker; the high tight stock made way for a sailor’s neckcloth. For a time shawl waistcoats, of gay colours, had their hour. Then correct tight black yielded to the loosest and shaggiest garments that could be invented. Perhaps the year 1852 may see our youth arrayed in blue, purple and pale brown.
But a very little consideration will prove that these artificial changes, although they may benefit a class, are of little advantage to the community. If a man gives 10s. more for a coat with gilt buttons than for one with plain buttons, he has 10s. less to expend with some other tradesman.
The Florentine Button, first invented in 1820, and since much improved, is a very curious manufacture. It is made—as any one may see by cutting up a button—of five pieces; first, the covering of Florentine, or silk; second, a cover of metal, which gives the shape to the button; third, a smaller circle of mill-board; fourth, a circle of coarse cloth, or calico; fifth, a circle of metal, with a hole punched in the centre, through which the calico or cloth is made to protrude, to form the shank, to be sewed on to the garment.
“Ranged in rows on either side of a long room of the button factory, (says the correspondent of the Morning Chronicle) are from 50 to 100 girls and young women, from the age of fourteen to four or five and twenty, all busily engaged, either at hand or steam presses, in punching out metal circles slightly larger than the size of the button which is to be produced. Before each press the forewoman is seated, holding in her hand a sheet of zinc or iron, about two feet long, and four inches broad. This she passes rapidly under the press if worked by hand, and still more rapidly if worked by steam, punching and cutting at the rate of from fifty to sixty disks in a minute. As they are cut they fall into a receptacle prepared to receive them. The perforated sheets are sold to the founder to be melted up, and made into other sheets. In other rooms younger women are engaged in cutting up Florentine cloth, or other outside covering material, paste board and calico. Of these a young woman can punch 57,000 a-day, and of metal, 28,000 a-day. The upper discs are submitted by another set of girls to presses from which each receives a blow that turns up an edge all round, and reduces it to the exact size of the button. The lower disk is punched for the shank to come through, stamped with the maker’s name, or the name of the tailor for whom the buttons are made, and coated with varnish, either light or black.
“The five pieces then pass into a department where a woman superintends the labours of a number of children from seven to ten years of age.
“These little creatures place all five pieces, one after another, in regular order, in a small machine like a dice-box, constructed to hold them, which is placed under a press, when a firm touch compresses the whole together in the neat form, which any one may examine on a black dress coat, without stitch or adhesive matter.”
This patent was the subject of long litigation between rival inventors, to the great benefit of the lawyers, and loss of the industrious and ingenious.
Within the last twelve months Messrs. Chadbourne, button-makers, of Great Charles Street, have adapted this Florentine button to nails for furniture and carriages.
The Patent Linen sewn-through Button is another recent invention, which has superseded the old wire button for under garments, than which it is cheaper, neater, and more durable. It is composed of linen and circles of zinc.
Horn Buttons, with shanks, which are extensively used for cloth boots and sporting jackets, are made from the hoofs of horned cattle, which are boiled, cut, punched, dyed, stamped when soft, and polished by brushes moved by steam power; the chief part of the work being done by women and children.
Pearl Buttons have become an important part of the Birmingham manufactures, partly on the decline of metal buttons. They are extensively used on coats and waistcoats, where gilt buttons were formerly employed.
The shell used in the manufacture of buttons, studs, card counters, etc., is the mother of pearl, the Concha margaritifera of naturalists. Five kinds of shell are employed:—First. The Buffalo Shell, so named because it arrived packed in buffalo skins; it comes chiefly from Panama, is the smallest and commonest, and sells to the trade at about £15 a ton.—Second. The Black Scotch, from the Sandwich Islands, whence it is sent to Valparaiso and to Sydney, New South Wales, worth from £15 to £30 a ton. The large outer rim is of a blackish, or rather greenish, tint, the centre only being white. The outer rim was formerly considered worthless, and large quantities were thrown away as rubbish. Change of fashion has brought the prismatic hues of the dark pearl into fashion for shooting-coats, waistcoats, and even studs. It used to be a standing story with a Bristol barber that a square in that city had been built on thousands of pounds worth of tobacco stalks, thrown away as useless, until it was discovered that that part of the plant was capable of making a most saleable snuff. And so in Birmingham; the Irvingite Church, on New Hall Hill, is said to be built on hundreds of tons of refuse shell, which would now be worth from £15 to £20 per ton. The third shell is the Bombay, or White Scotch, worth from £20 to £50 per ton. The fourth comes from Singapore, and is brought there to exchange for British manufactures by the native craft which frequent that free port. It is a first-rate article, white to the edge, worth from £80 to £90 per ton. The fifth is the Mother of Pearl Shell, from Manilla, of equal value and size, but with a slight yellow tinge round the edge.
Pearl buttons are cut out and shaped by men with the lathe, polished by women with a grinding-stone, and sorted and arranged on cards by girls.
Glass Buttons were formerly in use among canal boatmen, miners, and agricultural labourers, in certain districts. They are now chiefly made for the African market. The process of making them and studs is well worth seeing.
Beside the buttons already enumerated, they make in Birmingham the flat iron and brass buttons, for trowsers; steel buttons, for ladies’ dresses; wooden buttons, for overcoats; agate buttons, for which material is imported from Bohemia; and, in fact, every kind of button and stud, including papier maché.
The manufacture of brass shanks is a separate trade, and the writer of the letters already quoted, states the annual production at, or upwards of, three millions per working day. Of these, part are made by hand, but the greater number by a shank-making machine, wrought by steam power, and only requiring the attendance of one tool-maker.
“The machine feeds itself from a coil of brass or iron wire suspended from the roof, and cuts and twists into shanks, by one process, at the rate of 360 per minute, or nearly 75,000,000 per annum. Some button manufacturers employ one of these machines; the majority buy the shanks.”
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GUNS AND SWORDS.—According to Hutton, the historian of Birmingham, the town was indebted for its occupation in supplying our army with fire-arms, to an ancestor of a gentleman who now represents a division of Warwickshire, a Sir Roger Newdigate, in the time of William III.
The story, however, seems only half-true. Hutton would imply that the first muskets manufactured in England were made in Birmingham. It seems more likely, that the connexion with William III. arose from the desire of that monarch to have the flint-lock, which was superseding the match-lock on the Continent, made in his own dominions.
At any rate, the revolution of 1688, which the romantic anti-commercial party of Young England so deeply regret, gave Birmingham its gun trade, as well as Hampton Court its asparagus beds.
When Walpole gave us peace, the attention of the manufacturers was directed to fowling-pieces, and from that time forward Birmingham has contained the greatest fire-arm factory in the world, although, of course, subject to many fluctuations. Twenty years ago, “A long war soon,” was as regular a toast at convivial meetings of Birmingham manufacturers, as at any mess-room or in any cock-pit in her majesty’s service.
The government has made several attempts, by establishing manufactories with public money and under official control, to become independent of Birmingham, but the end has invariably been great loss and pitiful results in the number of arms produced.
We hope to live to see the time when our navy will be built as economically as our guns are made—by private contract—and our public ship-yards confined to the repairing department.
During the war which ended at the battle of Waterloo, the importance and prosperity of the gun-makers were great. It was calculated that a gun a minute was made in Birmingham on the average of a year, but the Peace threw numbers out of work and reduced wages very considerably.
Time has brought the trade to a level; indeed, it is one of the great advantages of Birmingham, that the prosperity of the town does not rest on any one trade; so that if some are blighted others are flourishing, and when one fails the workmen are absorbed into other parallel employments.
The gun trade now depends for support on the demand for—first, cheap muskets for African and other aboriginal tribes; secondly, on cheap fowling-pieces, rifles, pistols, blunderbusses, etc., for exportation to America, Australia, and other countries where something effective is required at a moderate price; thirdly, on the home demand for fowling-pieces of all qualities, from the commonest to those sold at the West End of London, at fancy prices; fourthly, on that for fire-arms required by our army and navy; and, lastly, on occasional uncertain orders created by wars and revolutions on the Continent.
There are a vast number of guns, or parts of guns, made in Birmingham, which bear the names of retailers in different parts of the kingdom. Even very fashionable gun-makers find it worth their while to purchase goods in the rough state from Birmingham manufacturers on whom they can depend, and finish them themselves.
This is rendered easy by the system. No one in Birmingham makes the whole of a gun. The division of labour is very great; the makers of the lock, the barrel, and the stock, are completely distinct, and the mechanics confine themselves to one branch of a department. The man who makes the springs for a lock has nothing to do with the man who makes the nipple or the hammer; while the barrel-forger has no connexion with the stock-maker or lock-maker.
The visitor who has the necessary introductions, should by no means omit to visit a gun-barrel factory, as there are a good many picturesque effects in the various processes, beside the mechanical instruction it affords.
The following is the order of the fabrication of a common gun:—
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.
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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.
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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 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.
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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 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.
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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.
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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 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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 mediæval 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 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.