“Upon points of affection it is only for the parties themselves to form just opinions of what is really necessary to ensure the felicity of the marriage state. Riches appear to me not at all necessary, but competence, I think is; and after this more depends upon the temper of the individual than upon personal, or even intellectual circumstances. The finest spirits, the most exquisite wines, the nectars and ambrosias of modern tables, will be all spoilt by a few drops of bitter extract; and a bad temper has the same effect in life, which is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness, and small obligations given habitually, are what win and preserve the heart, and secure comfort.”
CHAPTER X.
THE SAFETY LAMP.
Shortly after Davy’s return to England his sympathy was enlisted in a cause which enabled him to display all the attributes of his genius, and to achieve a triumph which, while greatly enhancing his popular reputation, added no little to his scientific fame. To show him how he might be useful, was at all times a certain method of securing his interest; for, like Lavoisier, he was even more the friend of humanity than of science, and to make science serviceable to humanity was, he considered, the highest object of his calling.
During the early years of this century the country was repeatedly shocked by the occurrence of a succession of disastrous colliery explosions, especially in the north of England, attended by great destruction of life and property and widespread misery and destitution. The development of our iron-trade, the improvements in the steam-engine, and the more general application of machinery to industry had greatly stimulated the opening out of our coal-fields; and the working of coal was being extended with a rapidity that greatly aggravated the evils and dangers at all times inseparable from it. In the early days of coal-getting, when the pits were shallow and the workings comparatively near the shafts, fire-damp, although not unheard of, was little dreaded, and explosions were rare—so rare, indeed, that when they occurred they were thought worthy of mention in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. As the pits became deeper, and the ways more extended, explosions became more frequent, and at times it was impossible to work the coal, owing to the accumulation of fire-damp and its liability to “fire” at the candles of the miners. In 1732 attempts were first made to ventilate the pits by “fire-lamps” or furnaces, and by mechanical means, so as to sweep out the “sulphur” by means of fresh air. Carlisle Spedding, a little later, invented the steel mill—a contrivance by which a disc of steel was caused to revolve against a piece of flint, so as to throw off a shower of sparks sufficiently luminous to enable the miner to carry on his business.
In spite of the “spark-emitting wheel,” and of the systems of ventilation introduced by Ryan, James Spedding, John Buddle, and others, “the swart demon of the mine” grew more and more formidable, and demanded a greater number of victims every year. Mechanical science would appear to have spent itself, and the mining world was gradually coming to look upon fire-damp with the fatalism with which ignorant and superstitious people regard the plague. Some of the great coal owners—powerless to do more, but afraid of the rising tide of public opinion—used their influence with the newspapers to suppress all allusion to these calamities. But many persons, especially the physicians and clergymen in the mining districts, who were witnesses of the suffering and distress which the “firing” of a mine occasioned, kept public attention alive by means of pamphlets and letters and notices to such journals as would insert their communications. One colliery—the Brandling Main or Felling Colliery, near Gateshead-on-Tyne—acquired an unenviable notoriety from the frequency with which it fired. On May 25th, 1812, an explosion occurred which killed ninety-two men and boys. No calamity of such magnitude had ever happened before in a coal mine. Eighteen months afterwards a second explosion took place by which twenty-three lives were lost. In the following year explosions occurred at Percy Main, Hebburn, and Seafield. In June, 1815, Newbottle Colliery exploded with the loss of fifty-seven men and boys, and this was immediately followed by a similar disaster at Sheriff Hill. The Rev. Mr. Hodgson—the historian of Northumberland—in whose parish the Brandling Main was situated, published a particular account of the first Felling Colliery Explosion. This was widely circulated, and ultimately found its way into Thomson’s Annals of Philosophy, which continued to print accounts of similar accidents as they occurred. At length Mr. J. J. Wilkinson, a barrister resident in the Temple, suggested the formation of a society to investigate the whole subject and to seek for remedies. The Bishop of Durham and the Rev. Dr. Gray, afterwards Bishop of Bristol, but then Rector of Bishopwearmouth, led the way, and ultimately the society was instituted on October 1st, 1813, with Sir Ralph Millbanke, afterwards Sir Ralph Noel, as President. Its first report contains a letter from Mr. John Buddle, the great authority on the ventilation of coal mines, in which he expresses his conviction that mechanical agencies are practically powerless to prevent explosions in mines subjected to sudden bursts of fire-damp, and he concludes
“that the hopes of this society ever seeing its most desirable object accomplished must rest upon the event of some method being discovered of producing such a chemical change upon carburetted hydrogen gas as to render it innoxious as fast as it is discharged, or as it approaches the neighbourhood of lights. In this view of the subject, it is to scientific men only that we must look up for assistance in providing a cheap and effectual remedy.”
The society received a number of suggestions, for the most part wholly impracticable, and generally of the character of that of Dr. Trotter, who proposed to flood the mines with chlorine. A variety of air-tight or insulated lamps were suggested by Clanny, Brandling, Murray, and others, much on the same lines as that devised by Humboldt, but none of them appears to have been seriously tried.
Under these circumstances it was decided to ask for the co-operation of Davy, and with that object Mr. Wilkinson called upon him at the Royal Institution, in the autumn of 1813, but found he had left for Paris. A few months after his return the Rev. Dr. Gray wrote to him on the subject, and received the following letter in reply:—