Automobile Biographies / An Account of the Lives and the Work of Those Who Have Been Identified with the Invention and Development of Self-Propelled Vehicles on the Common Roads

by Lyman Horace Weeks

Francis Maceroni

Born in Manchester, England, in 1788. Died in London, July 25, 1846.

The father of Francis Maceroni was Peter Augustus Maceroni who, with two brothers, served in a French regiment in the American Revolution. After that conflict was ended he went to England and settled in Manchester, where he was Italian agent for British manufacturers.

Francis Maceroni was educated in the Roman Catholic school, in Hampshire; at the Dominican Academy, in Surrey, and at the college at Old Hall Green, near Puckerbridge, Hertfordshire. During a period of ten years, from 1803 to 1813, he lived in Rome and Naples as a young gentleman of elegant leisure. In 1813 he began the study of anatomy and medicine, but had not gone far in those pursuits before his vagrom disposition took him in another direction. He became aide-de-camp to Murat, King of Naples, with the rank of Colonel of Cavalry. His service with Murat took him on missions to England and France, and for a time he was a prisoner of the French authorities.

After two years of this military service, he returned to England, and retained his residence there for the rest of his life. He did not remain at home long, however, for he was with Sir George MacGregor at Porto Bello, in 1819; became a brigadier-general of the new republic of Colombia, and in 1821 saw service in Spain with General Pepe.

Returning again to England, he came before the public as an advocate of a ship canal across the Isthmus, between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and also promoted a company, called The Atlantic and Pacific Junction and South American Mining and Trading Company, with a capital of one million pounds sterling. The company collapsed in the commercial panic of 1825, and this soldier of fortune in 1829 went to Constantinople to assist the Turks against the Russians. In London again in 1831, Maceroni was engaged for the rest of his life in the cause of highway steam locomotion, in which he accomplished a great deal.

Maceroni was second only to Walter Hancock as an inventor and builder of steam road carriages and as a promoter of travel by those vehicles. From 1825 to 1828 he was with Goldsworthy Gurney in London, but his real activity did not begin until 1831, when he became associated with John Squire. In 1833, Maceroni and Squire took out a patent for a multi-tubular boiler, which they applied to a steam carriage that one writer of that day described as “a fine specimen of indomitable perseverance.” It often traveled at the rate of from eighteen to twenty miles an hour. The engines were placed horizontally underneath the carriage body, the boiler was arranged at the back, and a fan was used to urge the combustion of the fuel, the supply of which was regulated by the engineman, who had a seat behind. The passengers were placed in the open carriage body, and their seats were upon the tops of the water tanks. There were two cylinders seven and one-half inches in diameter, the stroke being fifteen and three-quarter inches. The diameter of the steam pipe was two and one-quarter inches, and that of the exhaust pipe was two and three-quarter inches.

The carriage attracted a great deal of attention, and much was written about it in the newspapers of the time. Once the trip was taken to Harrow-on-the-Hill, a distance of nine miles, in fifty-eight minutes, without the full power of steam being on at any time. For several weeks in the early part of 1834 the carriage was running daily from Oxford Street to Edgeware. Several trips were made to Uxbridge, when the roads were in very bad condition, but the journey from the Regent’s Circus, Oxford Street, a distance of sixteen miles, was often performed in a little over an hour. A trip to Watford was made, and one of the passengers thus described the experience from Bushby Heath into the village of Watford:

“We set off from the starting place amid the cheers of the villagers. The motion was so steady that we could have read with ease, and the noise was no worse than that produced by a common vehicle. On arriving at the summit of Clay Hill, the local and inexperienced attendant neglected to clog the wheel until it became impossible. We went thundering down the hill at the rate of thirty miles an hour. Mr. Squire was steersman, and never lost his presence of mind. It may be conceived what amazement a thing of this kind, flashing through the village of Bushy, occasioned among the inhabitants. The people seemed petrified on seeing a carriage without horses. In the busy and populous town of Watford the sensation was similar—the men gazed in speechless wonder; the women clapped their hands. We turned round at the end of the street in magnificent style, and ascended Clay Hill at the same rate as the stage coaches drawn by five horses.”