| Length of the boiler, 20 ft.; width, 8 ft. | |
| A triangular flue pan, 80 ft.; width, 8 ft. | |
| A triangular steam pan, 101·6 in.; width, 8 ft. forming a surface of 1,612 superficial ft. of brine. | |
| The quantity of coal consumed was 8½ tons. | |
| The quantity of fine salt produced was | 356 cwt. |
| Ditto of common and fishery | 404 „ |
| Making | 760 cwt. |
“Being a product of four and a half tons of salt for every ton of coals consumed.”
It will be convenient here to explain what became of these several Furnival properties, and then describe very briefly the stages which led to the inventor’s incarceration in Horsemonger Lane Gaol and caused him to address his Statement of Facts to the Government. In April, 1825, he sold his works at Anderton to the British Rock and Salt Company, which continued to ship salt until 1829. The Marston property appears to have been worked until 1847. The Wharton works were managed by Trustees until 1839, when they were taken over by the National Patent Salt Company, which became one of the most important firms in the Winsford trade. In 1875, Justice Manisty, the surviving leaseholder, transferred his interests to Stubbs Brothers, who, in 1888, disposed of the business to the Salt Union.
Furnival had no sooner established himself as a salt-maker at Anderton than the old salt proprietors, “who had contrived in the past to ruin all, or any one who should dare to enter the lists against them,” became seriously alarmed at the apparent magnitude of his plans and the great improvements which threatened both their exorbitant profits and their hitherto unchallenged monopoly. Furnival, to employ a colloquialism, proceeded to “back himself both ways.” Having more than once proved his strength by breaking up “the Coalition” (which the old proprietors had formed to regulate the output and price of salt), and bringing down the price of common salt from 20s. to 8s. per ton, he offered to erect his patent apparatus at his own cost and risk on the works of his wealthy rivals, and to allow them two-thirds of the saving effected by its application. According to Furnival’s unsupported but uncontradicted account, they ridiculed his offer, declaring that they wanted none of his patents, that they could command their own profits in defiance of him, and that they would never sanction any improvements or innovations in the trade.
Furnival, who had secured patents for France and the Netherlands, thereafter gave his English competitors a rest and proceeded to erect salt-works at Rotterdam and Ghent capable of taking nearly 60,000 tons of rock salt annually from the British market. But the English salt refiners prompted their Dutch and Belgian confrères to bring official discredit upon the enterprise, and Furnival and his partner were compelled to abandon their works, which had cost them £13,000 to erect, and to forgo the £33,000 they were to have received for their patent rights.
Furnival returned to England and set up his salt-works at Wharton, where he “produced some of the finest rock-salt in the kingdom.” The old proprietors decided that no sacrifice was too great that would have the effect of crushing this competitor. They lowered the price of rock-salt 50 per cent., and kept manufactured salt so low that every establishment was worked at a loss. A meeting of proprietors, convened to consider the situation, resolved that while “they deeply lamented the low price of salt, they considered, at the same time, that it would not be prudent to raise the price until Mr. Furnival was disposed of.” The salt manufacturers admitted, in a circular published in 1829, that this cutting-out operation had, in four and a half years, involved the trade in a loss of £282,194 14s., but it had the effect of frightening away Furnival’s financial supporters, and landed him in further misfortunes.
WORKING IN DANGEROUS GROUND AFTER SUBSIDENCE, DUNKIRK LAKE, NORTHWICH
In 1826, Furnival had entered into a contract with a Peter Bouvain to erect a salt-works in the Isle of Rhé, but the month that was required to prove the capabilities of the patent plant was sufficient to demonstrate the commercial worthlessness of the Frenchman, and Furnival cut his loss and returned to England. Bouvain brought a claim against him for the loss of prospective profits and obtained a judgment for £8,000, against which Furnival appealed to the Court of Cassation in Paris. Before the case was heard, Furnival was inveigled to the Netherlands by a forged invitation, purporting to come from a wealthy Belgian salt-refiner, driven over the frontier, arrested in France at the suit of Bouvain, and thrown into gaol. Finding that legal redress was unobtainable, Furnival escaped from prison after four months’ incarceration, and in January, 1830, was again in Cheshire. He was engaged in a bitter and protracted altercation with his two sets of tenants in the Wharton salt-works in August, 1832, when he was arrested for the non-payment of his debt of £8,180 to Bouvain, and lodged in Horsemonger Lane Gaol. In January, 1833, he brought an action for perjury against Bouvain, who fled to France to escape the warrant that was issued for his arrest, but this moral victory brought Furnival neither release nor amelioration of his lot, and he found himself “foully and unjustly charged by a band of conspirators, defeated in every attempt to obtain justice, and left without a hope or prospect of being able to vindicate himself, or extricate himself from a confinement more close than that awarded to a felon.” The end of Furnival need not occupy us; he came into the salt trade in 1822 with a sufficiency of financial backing, an unusual stock of confidence and energy, and a patent which “created a sensation through the whole salt trade”; we take our leave of him eleven years later in a debtors’ gaol—a victim to the methods which the Cheshire salt proprietors invariably adopted in ridding themselves of an obtrusive competitor.