Messrs Bullers’ most formidable rival in the making of insulators is the firm of Doulton’s Limited; and this last firm carry on also several other variations of the staple trade. Sir Henry Doulton (1820-97)[213] began by making sewage pipes at Lambeth. His trade increased, and he started branch works for making these things at St Helens and at Rowley Regis and Smethwick in South Staffordshire. Between 1867 and 1873, however, he diverted his attention to the more ambitious “Electric” and “Sanitary” ware, and also to the characteristic stoneware known as “Doulton’s.” This new stoneware caught the public fancy, and to it he devoted his Lambeth works. He continued to make the drain pipes at Rowley Regis, and at Burslem he bought in 1877 Pinder & Bourne’s works in Nile Street for his other manufactures. Here Doulton’s produce high-class china and earthenware as well as sanitary and electric pottery and employ nearly 1,300 hands. Sir Henry Doulton was knighted in 1887, the only potter ever so honoured, and died in 1897. In 1899 his son, Henry Lewis Doulton, converted the business into a limited company.[214]
But the branch of the trade known as sanitary pottery owes most of its development in Staffordshire to Mr Thomas William Twyford. His father Thomas Twyford started making plumbers’ ware about 1860, and when he died in 1872 both the Abbey Works and the Bath Street Works in Hanley were making basins and closet-pans of an elementary kind. But no real advance took place till the eighties. In 1885 the wash-out Pedestal closets were introduced, made entirely of earthenware, and in 1889 the latest “deluge” type followed. Those who can remember the old dirty enamelled iron pans will recognize the debt that sanitary science owes to the enterprise of Twyford.
All Twyford’s sanitary pottery was in 1887 concentrated at the present Cliff Vale Works, and experiments were at once set on foot for yet another branch of manufacture. This was the production of very large clay pieces coated with a smooth white surface and suitable for baths and lavatories. The common or fire clay is coated while in the plastic state with a porcelain enamel, which on firing gives a surface enamel polished as marble and more adhesive than any enamel on metal. Very large pieces are coated in this way, and the earthenware article has since 1890 been replacing alike the enamelled metal of Wolverhampton and the marble of Italy. Messrs Twyford’s chief rivals in Staffordshire are the firm of John Taylor Howson of Hanley.
From an artistic point of view the only improvements of recent times are—beside M. Solon’s pâte-sur-pâte and Doulton’s stoneware—the lustre ware of Mr William Burton and the “flambé” ware of Mr Bernard Moore. Mr Burton’s factory unfortunately lies outside Staffordshire, but much of his work, both public and private, is still done in North Staffordshire. He and Mr Moore are the most enterprising chemists and experimenters of the present race of master-potters, and their efforts have also been accompanied by a marked improvement of taste in enamelled earthenware and porcelain.
There remains one modern improvement to point out. It is in the health of the potters. For generations potter’s asthma and lead poisoning have taken their toll of the workers on the pot-banks, but within the last ten years changes have been made, unfortunately only as a result of State interference, which are very sensibly affecting the rate of mortality in the industry.
It was not till 1864 that the Factory Acts interfered in the potting industry. In that year women, young persons and children in the pottery trade first came under the protection of the State. Their hours were limited to ten a day, and Saturday became a statutory half-holiday. This meant a half-holiday for all workers on the pot-banks. Half-time employment has never been considerable in the Potteries, and since the passing of the Education Acts it has gradually and entirely died out. Later Factory Acts have applied to Potteries as well as to other factories, but it was when the Bill of 1891 got into committee that the potting trade became specially and vitally interested in these Acts.
During the passage of the 1891 Factory and Workshop Bill the working potters managed to get added to it a provision empowering the Home Office to make, after due investigation, special rules for the conduct of “dusty processes” in dangerous trades, including potting. As soon as the Act passed, a committee was appointed, and on their recommendation special rules were drawn up, making for greater cleanliness in the dusty and dangerous processes. The employers objected, and a conference followed in 1894 under the presidency of Mr G. W. E. Russell. Nevertheless the rules, slightly modified, were approved and became law.
These special rules, however, were concerned more with general dusty evils and affected potter’s asthma rather than the lead poisoning question. But in 1898 Prof. Thorpe and Dr Oliver drew up their celebrated report on lead poisoning for the Home Office—a report which for a time threw the whole trade into the most furious excitement. The doctors averred that glaze could be made without lead, or without lead in any but the innocuous “fritted” state. What the employers said was emphatic and contradictory. They threatened to close down the whole trade, and no doubt the report was hasty and ill-considered. For four years the controversy raged, and at last in 1902 an arbitration court was held before Lord James of Hereford. Under his award a new set of special rules were drawn up. These rules, besides enforcing sanitary provisions such as those for monthly medical inspection of workers “in the lead,” compelled those manufacturers who continued to use lead in a dangerous state to compensate those of their workers who suffered from lead poisoning, a liability now generally embodied in the 1907 Workmen’s Compensation Act.
When one remembers the intense hostility to this Home Office interference, it is curious to see how satisfactory and easily the rules have worked in practice. Potter’s asthma is nearly extinct, and lead-poisoning cases in the Potteries have fallen from an average of 362 a year in the period 1896-8 to 93 a year over the years 1905-7.[215] About 5 per cent of the cases result in death. The chief credit for this new departure should be attributed to William Owen of the Potters’ Union, and to the Duchess of Sutherland and Sir Charles Dilke.