Mr. Anstice was seldom free for long periods from that physical suffering which fills up so large a space in human experience; but he knew how to enjoy life, and did so more than most men, but he never quailed before its sternest duties. His sun may be said to have gone down at noon: he died in the zenith of his fame, and people mourned as for a father or a friend; for with that great tenderness and Christian generosity which distinguished him, he made many his debtors. Others at a riper age, not less laden with the goods of life, whose cup equally overflowed with prosperity, have lived and passed away, and as the grave closed over them the little world in which they moved scarcely missed them or thought of them after the funeral-bell had ceased to toll; but it was felt that such a man could not pass away without his memory being perpetuated in some form, and the present handsome building called the Anstice Memorial Institute was the result of a deep and wide-spreading feeling to do honour to his name. A brother ironmaster, the present Mr. W. O. Foster, who presided at the inauguration, said they had erected that building to one very much respected and beloved amongst them, but who had been removed from their midst. He would not attempt to pourtray the many virtues of his character in the presence of his family, nor dwell upon his many merits. He enjoyed his acquaintance for many years. He must say to know him was to love him, and whilst his virtue was fresh in their recollection it was their high privilege to dedicate that building to his memory, and to hand down to posterity his name in association with it.
The Madeley Wood works are now carried on by William Reynolds Anstice and two of John Anstice’s sons, Captain John Arthur Anstice, J.P., and Lieut. Edmund Anstice.
With regard to William Reynolds, previously alluded to, it may be well to add the following, together with some interesting notes and additions, kindly supplied by his nephew, William Reynolds Anstice, Esq., the senior partner in the Madeley Wood Works.
William Reynolds, the proprietor of these works, died at the Tuckies House, in 1803, and was followed to his grave in the burial-ground adjoining the Quakers’ chapel, in the Dale, by a very large concourse of friends and old neighbours, thousands lining the way and following in the procession.
It may here be mentioned that the first use to which Watt’s fire engine as it was called, was put at Bedlam, as at Coalbrookdale, Benthall, Ketley, and many other places, was not to blow the furnaces direct, but to pump water to drive the water-wheel, which at Bedlam, worked a pair of leather-bellows, which themselves supplied the blast. The race in which the old wheel worked is still observable, as also are the arches which supported the reservoir into which water was pumped from the Severn.
With regard to the prophetic utterances of Mr. Reynolds, already given, we have received the following from W. Reynolds Anstice, Esq.
“The exact words, as I have often heard them repeated by my father, were ‘The time will come, &c: when all our principal towns will be lighted with Coal Gas—all our main roads will be railroads worked by steam locomotive engines, and all our coasting navigation will be performed by steam vessels.’ He had no idea, evidently that steam navigation would extend beyond this, but steam locomotion was an idea at that time not unfamiliar to engineers. William Murdock, Watt’s right-hand man, had made a working model of a road-locomotive as early as 1784. Trevithick had constructed working models much resembling modern locomotives in construction, in and before the year 1800. In 1802, the Coalbrookdale Company were building for him a railway-locomotive, the engine of which was tried first in pumping water, and its performance astonished everyone. In a letter of his to Mr. D. Giddy, dated from Coalbrookdale, 22nd August, 1802, he says: ‘The Dale Company have begun a carriage at their own cost for the railroads, and are forcing it with all expedition. There was a beautifully executed wooden model of this locomotive engine in my Uncle, William Reynolds’ possession, which was given me by his Widow, the late Mrs. Reynolds, of Severn House, after his death. I was then a boy, fond of making model engines of my own, and I broke up the priceless relic to convert it to my own base purposes, an act which I now repent, as if it had been a sin.’
“The Coalbrookdale engine is, I believe, the first locomotive engine on record, intended to be used on a railroad. The boiler of it is now to be seen in use as a water tank, at the Lloyds’ Crawstone Pit, and the fire-tube and a few other portions of it are now in the yard at the Madeley Wood Works. I never heard how it came to be disused and broken up.”
Shortly before William Reynolds’s decease, he had had a large pleasure boat built, which was intended to be propelled by steam, and the cylinders of the engines intended for it, beautifully executed by the late James Glazebrook of Ironbridge, are now at the Madeley Wood Offices, but the engines were not finished at his (W. Reynolds’s) death, in 1804, and I never saw any drawing or model of them. The boat lay within my recollection, moored in the river Severn, just above Mr. Brodie’s Boring Mill, at the Calcutts, in a state of much disrepair, and I believe, ultimately fell to pieces or was carried away by a flood.
William Reynolds had a very complete private Laboratory at his residence, at Bank House, which was lighted with gas. William Murdock had, however, as early as 1794, applied gas to the lighting of his own house, in Cornwall, and in 1798, a portion of the Soho Works were lit with gas of his making.—In 1803, the whole of the Works were thus lighted, and from that time its use gradually extended.
Mr. Miller, of Darswinton, had a steam pleasure boat at work in 1788, and in 1801, the “Charlotte Dundas” steam boat was built at Glasgow by Symmington, and this is the first authentic case of steam-boat navigation on record.