Humphry Davy, Poet and Philosopher

by T. E. Thorpe

The opposition thus started very quickly gathered strength, and by appeals to local prejudice and to ignorance a degree of heat and even animosity was imported into the question, which served no other purpose than to confuse the true issue. At an adjourned meeting of the coal-owners held on October 11th, 1816, Mr. William Brandling moved—

“That the meeting do adjourn, until by a comparison of dates it shall be ascertained whether the merit of the safety lamp belongs to Sir Humphry Davy, or to Mr. George Stephenson.”

Although Mr. Brandling failed to convince the meeting, it becomes necessary in the interests of truth and justice to examine the grounds upon which George Stephenson—a man of undoubted genius, and of an integrity as blameless as that of Davy, and who, as the pioneer of railway enterprise, subsequently acquired a fame as high and as deserved as that of the great chemist—has claims to be regarded as an inventor of the safety lamp. In equity, it must be admitted that the question is not merely a question of dates, for in assigning merit in a matter of this kind the calmer judgment of posterity is not wholly swayed by priority of date; it looks to circumstances, conditions, motives, and it apportions its meed of approbation accordingly. The glory of Priestley as an independent discoverer of oxygen is in nowise dimmed by the circumstance that Scheele is now known to have discovered it before him. It cannot be truthfully asserted that Davy was not an independent inventor of the safety lamp. What has to be determined is, has George Stephenson any such claim?

Stephenson’s claim has been ably and temperately stated by Dr. Smiles in his biography of George Stephenson, in “The Lives of the Engineers,” but an unbiassed review of the evidence will convince most people that, however certain it may be that the Killingworth engine-tenter was an independent searcher after a method of protecting a flame, it is equally certain that he was not the discoverer of the true principle on which the safety lamp is constructed, and that the lamp associated with his name, although it bears the impress of the crude ideas with which he started, owes its real merit to the discoveries of Davy.

This controversy and the feeling it gave rise to greatly exasperated Davy, and his anger is manifested in his letters at the time. The action of the Brandlings he seemed to think was inspired by the most unworthy motives. As to his rival, he says:—

“I never heard a word of George Stephenson and his lamps till six weeks after my principle of security had been published; and the general impression of the scientific men in London, which is confirmed by what I heard at Newcastle, is, that Stephenson had some loose idea floating in his mind, which he had unsuccessfully attempted to put in practice till after my labours were made known;—then, he made something like a safe lamp, except that it is not safe, for the apertures below are four times, and those above twenty times too large; but, even if Stephenson’s plans had not been posterior to my principles, still there is no analogy between his glass exploding machine, and my metallic tissue permeable to light and air, and impermeable to flame.”

On the 25th of September, 1817, as Davy passed through Newcastle on his return from Scotland, the coal-owners who had subscribed to his testimonial invited him to a banquet and presented him with the plate, which, in accordance with his wishes, took the form of a dinner-service. “I wish,” he had said, “that even the plate from which I eat should awaken my remembrance of their liberality, and put me in mind of an event which marks one of the happiest periods of my life.” The chairman—his friend Mr. Lambton, afterwards the Earl of Durham, and who was with him under the care of Dr. Beddoes at Bristol—made the presentation in an impressive and felicitous speech, and Davy acknowledged it in terms worthy of himself and of the occasion. In a subsequent speech, in response to the toast of his health, he dilated upon the theme always uppermost in his mind, and to which he never neglected the opportunity to give utterance, namely, the benefit of abstract science to mankind. He had an admirable moral to which to point, and it was driven home with all his wonted skill and power.

In what manner this plate, which was valued at about £2,500, was subsequently made subservient to the interests of science will be seen hereafter.

The friends of Stephenson were not wanting in the courage of their convictions or in determination to give substantial proof of it. In the following November they met and resolved that as in their opinion Mr. G. Stephenson had been the first to discover the principle of safety and to apply it, he was entitled to some reward. Whereupon Davy’s friends again assembled in public meeting on November 26th, 1817, and passed resolutions to the effect that in their opinion the merit belonged to Sir Humphry Davy alone, and that Stephenson’s latest lamps were evident imitations of those of Sir Humphry Davy; and they further ordered that copies of their resolutions should appear in a number of local, London, and Edinburgh papers, and be sent to the principal owners and lessors of collieries upon the Tyne and Wear. Davy’s friends in London also exerted themselves in his behalf, and a copy of resolutions similar in purport to those passed in Newcastle, signed by Sir Joseph Banks, P.R.S., Brande, Hatchett, and Wollaston, was sent to the newspapers.

Mr. Brandling and his friends eventually collected about £800 (including 100 guineas which the meeting of October 11th had awarded Stephenson as an acknowledgment of his efforts to construct a safe lamp), and gave it, together with a silver tankard, to Mr. Stephenson at a public dinner in January, 1818.