This book contains eight profiles of 19th. century chemical industrialists orginally published in the Chemical Trade Journal. The preface and the article on William Gossage was given in issues 60 and 61, and issue 62 looked at Josias Christopher Gamble, issues 63 and 64 at James Muspratt, and issues 65 and 66 at Andreas Kurtz. Subsequent issues of Chemistry in Action! will contain the other articles. Hopefully this series will introduce you to some of the unsung and largely forgotten pioneers of the chemical industry in the U.K. and worldwide, told in the words of one of their contemporaries. In this issue the first part of Henry Deacon's life is published and will be continued in issue 68. The influence of Michael Faraday on Deacon is particularly interesting.

HENRY DEACON
Part 1

Henry Deacon

Born in London, 30th July, 1822 - A Northamptonshire family - Sent to a Quaker's school - Mechanical tastes - Apprenticed at fourteen to Galloway Sons, London - Michael Faraday, a friend of the Deacon family - Tyndall's estimate of Faraday and his method - Deacon a disciple of Faraday - Liverpool and Manchester railway opened, September 15, 1830 - James Nasmyth started his works at Patricroft, 1836 - Holbrook Gaskell joins Nasmyth - Deacon comes to Nasmyth's Patricroft works - The steam hammer - Nasmyth's sketch, dated November 24, 1839 - Schneider's visit to Patricroft - Schneider carries out Nasmyth's idea - Faraday's letter to Nasmyth - Henry Deacon goes to Pilkington's glassworks about 1848 - Researches into manufacture of alkali - John Hutchinson with Kurtz - Deacon leaves St. Helens, and accepts a post with Hutchinson at Widnes - Deacon leaves Hutchinson, and with William Pilkington starts a chemical works at Widnes. Partnership terminated, 1855 - Holbrook Gaskell joined Deacon. Gossage's process of manufacturing caustic soda, 1853 - The founders of Widnes - Deacon discerned the importance of the ammonia soda process - His patent July 8, 1854, but Gaskell refused to supply capital, and process was abandoned

A philosophical mind applied to the arts and manufactures, to commerce and to public affairs; such was Henry Deacon. He was born in London on the 30th July, 1822.
An old and intimate friend of the family writes:- "About 1680, a William Deacon was born at Crawford, Northamptonshire; he is said to have invented some weaving machinery, which was broken up by the populace, as they said it took the bread out of poor men's mouths. His son William lived at Kettering, Northamptonshire. I believe he made cloth. He and his wife lived 56 years together, having 12 children, five of the sons grew up, and all came to London; they were quick, versatile, and inventive. They all made money, though some of them lost it again; one of them established "Deacon's Coffee House," another made hot-air pipes and heating and ventilating apparatus, another wrote a book on conical wheels. The youngest, Daniel, apprenticed to a watchmaker, became one of the largest carriers, before railways. The mother (Hannah Bentford) was always very much thought of by her sons, and there is an interesting letter of hers extant which gives a curious insight into the life of four generations since. Henry Deacon, of Appleton, was grandson of two of these brothers, one being his father's father, and the other his mother's father. His father and mother were therefore cousins.
Henry, when quite young, was much with his mother's father, Daniel Deacon, with whom he was a great favourite, at Tottenham, and went to a Quaker's school."
The whole system of education in those days widely differed from that in vogue today. Schools in the subjects of instruction, in the methods of imparting knowledge, in the discipline, in the buildings and appliances, in the very aims and ends of all school-life, were totally unlike anything which has fallen to the lot of the present generation.
The mass of the people were densely ignorant, the key of knowledge was not to be entrusted to the custody of the common folk, they would admit themselves to paths in which Providence never intended them to walk. Book-learning would unfit the working classes for hand labour, and so popular education not only was not promoted, but it was absolutely condemned as a project of unpractical men, schemers and radicals. As soon as the children of the lower classes were strong enough to work, aye, and often long before, they were sent to the factory, the forge, the mine, to labour out long, weary days, and to grow up acquainted only with what they could learn in following their daily toil. This ignorance of the poorer classes had its effect on those above them; a prolonged school life was looked upon as the heritage and the prerogative of the rich, it was presumptuous for the tradesman or the farmer to give his boys and girls a good "schooling," and so it was the common thing for children to be taken early from school. This was the lot of Henry Deacon.
The boy had shown a taste and talent for mechanical subjects, and had given such indications of character that his parents were enabled to discern his vocation, and apprenticed him to the well-known engineering firm Messrs. Galloway and Sons, of London. At 14 years of age he stood at the foot of the ladder, which was to conduct him to the position of an accomplished mechanic.
It was whilst spending his days at the bench in the Galloway's shop, that he attracted the notice of the master who gave tone and colour to his whole future career. At the Royal Institution "the greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever seen," was engaged in his vast and profound researches. Michael Faraday was an intimate friend of the Deacon family; he noticed the bright boy and drew him to his side, gave him access to his laboratory, and encouraged him to apply himself, as far as his time permitted, to chemical and physical science, becoming his tutor, directing and superintending his studies and experiments.

During the boyhood, which he spent in London, Henry Deacon lived in the sunshine of the splendid genius of Faraday.

During the boyhood, which he spent in London, Henry Deacon lived in the sunshine of the splendid genius of Faraday. The influence of this contact is manifest in the mental development of the pupil as well as in the character and peculiar features of his life-work. Faraday was no mere experimenter. Professor Tyndall says of him:- "Faraday has been called a purely inductive philosopher. A great deal of nonsense is, I fear, uttered in this land of England about induction and deduction. Some profess to befriend the one, some the other, while the real vocation of the investigator like Faraday, consists in the incessant marriage of both." Again, "his principal researches are all connected by an undercurrent of speculation. Theoretic ideas were the very sap of his intellect - the source from which all his strength as an experimenter was derived. And so it must always be; the great experimenter must ever be the habitual theorist, whether or not he gives to his theories formal enunciation." "Faraday was more than a philosopher, he was a prophet, and often wrought by an inspiration to be understood by sympathy alone."
On the 19th January, 1844, Faraday gave a lecture at the Royal Institution, entitled: "A speculation touching electric conduction and the nature of matter," and "this lecture," says Professor Tyndall, "reveals the manner in which Faraday himself habitually deals with his hypotheses. He incessantly employed them to gain experimental ends, but he incessantly took them down, as an architect removes the scaffolding when the edifice is complete." Faraday himself, on the same topic says, "I cannot but doubt that he who as a mere philosopher has the most power of penetrating the secrets of nature, and guessing by hypotheses at her mode of working, will also be most careful of his own safe progress and that of others, to distinguish the knowledge which consists of assumption, by which I mean theory and hypothesis, from that which is the knowledge of facts and laws." The method of Faraday in the pursuit of truth was the method of Deacon. The philosopher who made "theoretic divination the stepping stone to his experimental results" was the father of men on whom the lineaments of his intellectual life were deeply impressed.
But the influence of Faraday was not simply seen in the methods of research and discovery which he pursued, he was an intense lover of order, "which ran like a luminous beam through all the transactions of his life." The most entangled and complicated matters fell into harmony in his hands. His mode of keeping accounts excited the admiration of the managing board of the Royal Institution. His science was similarly ordered.
In his Experimental Researches he numbered every paragraph, and welded their various parts together by incessant reference. His private notes of Experimental Researches, which are happily preserved, are similarly numbered; their last paragraph bears the figure 16,041. What an inestimable privilege it was for the boy, Henry Deacon, at the most impressionable period of his life, to have enjoyed the intimacy and to have had the instruction of such a master.
Misfortune overtook the firm to which Deacon was apprenticed; the business collapsed, and the works were closed. With the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, on the 15th September, 1830, a new era dawned on the engineering trades, especially in Lancashire.
In 1836 James Nasmyth had started his new engineering works on the banks of the Bridgewater Canal, at Patricroft. For five years he had been at work in Manchester, in a building in Dale Street, Piccadilly, where his business had very rapidly grown from the smallest of beginnings. The premises had been an old cotton mill; a glass cutter tenanted the floor beneath Nasmyth's fitting shop, and one day the floor gave way under the weight of a piece of machinery that was being constructed, and the landlord and tenants agreed that the building was not suitable for the work. The Bridgewater Foundry was the result. Nasmyth, although quite a young man, had already won a name by his skill, and for the excellence of his workmanship. He was especially sought after for the self-acting tools, which he made. The increasing business demanded a division of labour, and a partner was selected, a young man who had served his time with Messrs. Yates and Cox, iron merchants, Liverpool, Mr. Holbrook Gaskell. He introduced some capital into the concern, and his business capacity and training fitted him to take charge of the counting-house.

When Gaskell and Sons failed, the apprenticeship indentures of young Henry Deacon were transferred to Messrs. Nasmyth and Gaskell. He left London and settled at Patricroft. It was about the time that Nasmyth made the first drawing of his celebrated steam hammer that Deacon entered his employ. That drawing was a testimony to the ability of the designer. It was to forge an intermediate paddle shaft for that leviathan, as she was then regarded, the "Great Britain," that the steam hammer was devised. The work needed was laid before James Nasmyth, he took out his "Scheme Book" and therein he sketched his steam hammer. The date of that sketch is November 24th, 1839.
M. Schneider, accompanied by his mechanical manager of the Cruzot works in France, happened to call at Patricroft and in the absence of Nasmyth, Holbrook Gaskell permitted them to examine the "Scheme Book." Nasmyth's design was not taken up in England, no one wanted it, and no hammer was made, but when on a visit to France, he called at Cruzot, and there saw that M. Schneider's engineer, who was with him at Patricroft, had carried out most successfully Nasmyth's sketch.
It is said that Deacon made the first model of the steam hammer for the patent, and was locked up in a room for a week, having his food passed in through a hole in the door.
Nasmyth was no unworthy successor to Faraday, to be entrusted with the training of the lad who was to leave his name and mark in one of the cardinal manufactures of Lancashire; and the youth who had sat at the feet of Faraday would know right well how to appreciate the character of Nasmyth, and to make the most of the opportunities which were afforded him at Patricroft.
There is a letter from Faraday to Nasmyth dated 29th May, 1847, which is of some interest, showing how these two men, who were Deacon's teachers, regarded each other. He says, "If ever I come your way I hope to see your face; and the hope is pleasant, though the reality may never arrive. You must tell me of the glorious success of your pile driver, it must be indeed a great pleasure to witness the result. Is it not Shakespeare who says 'The pleasure we delight in physics pain'? In all your fatigue and labour you must have this pleasure in abundance, and a most delightful and healthy enjoyment it is. I shall rejoice to see some day a blow of the driver and a tap of the hammer. You speak of some experiments on tempering in which we can help you. I hope when you come to town you will let us have the pleasure of doing so. Our apparatus, such as it is, shall be entirely at your service. I made, a long time ago, a few such experiments on steel wire, but could eliminate no distinct or peculiar results. You will know how to look at such things, and at your hand I shall expect much. Here we are just lecturing away, and I am too tired to attempt anything, much less do anything just now; But the goodwill of such men as you is a great stimulus, and will, I trust even with me, produce something else praiseworthy." - Ever, my dear Nasmyth, yours most truly,
M. FARADAY."

Training and experience which Henry Deacon had had, enabled him to obtain an appointment as a manager in the glass works of Messrs. Pilkington Bros., St. Helens. He went to St. Helens about the year 1848, when he was about 26 years of age.
Deacon would especially have had to plan and superintend machinery for smoothing and polishing "German Plate." In those days the manufacturing of glass was a very "pottering" affair compared with what it now is. Small furnaces, little pots, imperfect combustion, inferior machinery, badly arranged grates, dark, low, stuffy, dingy dismal sheds, and few, if any appliances for economising labour. This was the state of affairs forty years ago, when Henry deacon was employed in the glass works.
In glass making, and in St. Helens, he made no very decided mark by any lasting or original invention; he was then a young man and had much to learn, especially in a business to which he had not been brought up; but wherever he went his personality made itself felt. His quick intellect, his philosophical and speculative habit of mind, his sharp, incisive manner, his thorough careful training, and a certain restless enterprise of character, these would be infallible indications that he would sink into no rut of sheer common place.
Messrs. Pilkington permitted their manager to utilize their laboratory for research and experiment, and Deacon had the foresight to discover the dawning greatness and importance of the alkali trade, and that to him it held out the promise of far greater possibilities than the glass trade. It could be entered on with less capital and on smaller lines; it was a new, and at that time an almost unbounded field.
At about the time that Deacon was with Messrs. Pilkington, there was a man in the employ of Mr. Kurtz, who also was wide awake to what was coming, John Hutchinson. He recognised the splendid position of Widnes as a seat for the manufacture of chemicals. Giving up his situation at St. Helens he went to Widnes, and there in an exceedingly small way commenced business on his own account. When he needed a manager for the works that he had founded he selected Henry Deacon.
In those days, at least, he would be a man to recognise ability, and it is a tribute to the capacity of Deacon that he was selected by Hutchinson to manage his works.
But Deacon was not the man long to wear the yoke of service; he had in him those qualities that cannot be restrained; a consciousness of power, an active, energetic spirit, no lack of ambition, and a certain restlessness under restraint that made it more congenial to him to rule than to be ruled. John Hutchinson, too, was hardly the man who could control or even co-operate with one of Deacon's character and culture, and so they parted, and Deacon was joined in partnership by his former employer at St. Helens, the younger of the brothers Pilkington, William, of Eccleston Hall, and they started the chemical works at Widnes. The site was everything that could be desired - a railway on one side and the canal on the other. When the land was first acquired, it was never contemplated to what extent that insignificant venture would attain: to-day, large as the area covered by the works is, it is inconveniently restricted, and the plant has to be arranged so as best to economize the space.
Mr. William Pilkington withdrew from Widnes, and Mr. Deacon in the year 1855 was joined by his old employer, Mr. Gaskell, who dissolved partnership with Mr. Nasmyth after they had been connected for sixteen years. The reason of Mr. Gaskell's retirement from the firm of Nasmyth and Gaskell was a dangerous illness, which his medical man feared would compel him to retire altogether from active life, happily he recovered from this serious breakdown, and such was the opinion he had formed of Henry Deacon when he was in the shops at Patricroft, that he was now prepared to become his partner, and to place his capital in the concern, to carry on the manufacture of alkali, as Deacon & Co., subsequently Gaskell, Deacon & Co.

Widnes was at this time a centre of attraction in the chemical world

Widnes was at this time a centre of attraction in the chemical world, not merely on account of the growing prosperity of the place, but the inventions of William Gossage were drawing the attention of all manufacturing chemists to the complete revolution, which his discoveries would bring about in several industries. In 1853, Gossage was the first to invent the process for producing caustic soda as an article of commerce, on a large scale. The great importance of this invention was at once discerned; caustic soda would be an article for which there would undoubtedly arise a large foreign demand; there would be an export of caustic and a consequent decrease in the import of tallow, for those nations that had hitherto imported their tallow would be our purchasers of caustic soda and make their own soap. Gossage's caustic soda also affected to an enormous extent the paper trade. It was just at the time when Gossage was bringing out his great and valuable inventions, that Gaskell, Deacon and Co. commenced their business. They caught the tide of fortune at the flood.
Muspratt, Gossage, and Deacon, and probably it would be unfair to exclude Hutchinson, were the men who laid deep and strong the foundations of the renown and prosperity of Widnes. They had something to work for, there was the vision of a golden age before their eyes; impelled by genius and energy, and drawn forward by the prospect of a limitless field for enterprise, they realised the greatness of their opportunity, and for many years Widnes became the scene of ceaseless activity, of fertile invention, and of wonderful and rapid development. The works grew, new processes were introduced, new apparatus sprung up; chemists were busily engaged at researches in the laboratories, engineers were scheming plans for economising labour and adapting plant, the dock and canal became inadequate to the increasing requirements of the district, houses and streets spread themselves over the open spaces around the works, and in a very few years Widnes was transformed from a pretty, sunny riverside hamlet, with quiet sleepy ways, into a settlement of thousands of labouring men, mostly Irish, with dingy unfinished streets of hastily constructed houses, with works that were belching forth volumes of most deleterious gases and clouds of black smoke from chimneys of inadequate height, with trees that stood leafless in June, and hedgerows that were shrivelled in May, the air reeked with gases offensive to the sight and smell, and large heaps of stinking refuse began to accumulate.

Widnes was transformed from a pretty, sunny riverside hamlet, with quiet sleepy ways, into a settlement of thousands of labouring men, mostly Irish
But the minds of men were full of projects, and the air was full of stir, and amongst these busy minds there was none more keenly interested in everything that was going forward than Henry Deacon. He did not underrate the importance of having capable and highly-trained men in his laboratory; to him a chemist was not merely a man "who could wash out bottles"; and he was able to understand and appreciate their labours and worth. In laying out works and erecting plant there was no one in Widnes that had received such a training as he had. His experience at Patricroft and St. Helens had fitted him to manage men, and in all that pertained to business, he was discerning, courageous, and accurate.
Like his friend and neighbour, William Gossage, he frequently availed himself of the Patent Laws. As we have already stated, it was in 1853 that Deacon, in conjunction with Mr. William Pilkington, took land at Widnes and erected Works to make carbonate of soda. They attacked the Dyar and Hemming ammonia soda process.
Harrison Grey Dyar and John Hemming of London, patented their process on the 30th June, 1838. Delauney, acting as their agent in France, took it out in that country on the 27th May, 1839, and on the 18th May, 1840, patented improvements of the same process, and in a small works in Whitechapel they tried to carry it out as a commercial undertaking. As such, however, it was not a success, the loss of ammonia was their stumbling block. The chemical reactions were complete, but they failed in the adaption of their plant. Muspratt followed in the footsteps of Dyar and Hemming, and under the superintendence of the skilled chemist, James Young, he put up a works at Newton, on the banks of the Canal, between St. Helens and Warrington, but after an expenditure of about £8,000, and two years' experience, it was abandoned in favour of the Le Blanc process. Chemists were not disheartened by these failures; Kunheim, Seybel, Bowker, Gossage, Turck, Schloesing, and Deacon, discerned the great value of the invention, and persistently worked at it.
The year 1854 saw a revival of the endeavours to displace the Le Blanc process. On the 21st. February in that year William Gossage led the way with his patent for producing the carbonate and sesquicarbonate of soda and potash, and the bicarbonate or sesquicarbonate of ammonia in aqueous solution. He was followed by Turck on the 26th. May, by Schlosing on the 21st. June, and by Henry Deacon on the 8th July. Deacon's plant resembled the arrangement as described by Schloesing and Rolland, only that Deacon took a step far in advance by using carbonic acid under pressure. But the experiment of 1854 was not more successful than that which preceded it.
Mr. Pilkington soon discovered that protracted experiments and deferred profits was the prospect before them; this did not suit him, and so he severed his connection with Henry Deacon, leaving him alone to do as best he could with his ideas and his hopes - but difficulties, disappointments, and desertion did not daunt him. Mr. Holbrook Gaskell came to his aid, and found capital to continue the work, but the expenditure needed was more than he had anticipated, and the obstacles to be overcome seemed interminable, so that he too lost patience, and declared he would be no party to any further prosecution of this process. Deacon pleaded earnestly that another thousand pounds might be spent, he was confident that amount would avail, but Mr. Gaskell was obdurate; unless Deacon would abandon his ammonia process, and follow the example of his neighbours with the Le Blanc, he too would forsake him.
Deacon was compelled to yield, although fully assured that perfect success would have resulted from a little more perseverance; and so the plant on which some thousands of pounds had been spent, and on which he had bestowed such thought and pains, had to be abandoned and demolished; and sulphuric acid chambers, with saltcake pots and condensers, black-ash furnaces, lixiviating tanks, and vat waste had to be endured whilst the beautiful and most profitable ammonia process was a treasure to be hidden for ten years longer, reserved for Solvay and for Brunner Mond. Many a time of late years must Mr. Gaskell have wished that he had trusted to the knowledge and foresight of his partner, and yielded to his importunity.

To be continued in issue 68.