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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 December 2009
Joseph Jewell (1763–1846), the subject of the autobiographical memoir which follows, was one of the pioneers of the fine chemical industry in England. Starting his career in practical chemistry as porter at a well-known pharmacy in the City, this remarkable man was soon placed in charge of the ‘elaboratory’ there, spent many years in making chemicals, and eventually, in 1807, became a partner in the firm of Howard, Jewell and Gibson, manufacturers of fine chemicals, whose laboratory was then situated at Stratford, in Essex, about four miles from the City, beyond the River Lea. Here he was actively engaged, as partner and chemical technician, for a further twenty-four years, retiring at the end of 1830. The manuscript of his memoir has been preserved in the archives of the firm, which is now known as Howards of Ilford Limited.
page 113 note 1 Fine chemicals (as distinct from heavy chemicals) are substances which are produced in relatively small quantities in a high state of purity. The term includes highly purified forms of substances met with in the cruder state as heavy chemicals, e.g. sodium sulphate.
page 114 note 1 Stanford-in-the-Vale Parish Records, Register of Baptisms, 1712/13–1763; Register of Marriages, 1754–1807 (Berkshire Record Office, D/P 118/1/3; D/P 118/1/7).
page 115 note 1 Jewell states (below, p. 147): ‘I believed I had lived with JOB [Joseph Gurney Bevan] about 18 months before I married.’ He was married on 3 April 1794, so he probably started work at the Pharmacy during the last quarter of 1792. The evidence of the Pharmacopœia (below, p. 144, n. 2) appears to confirm this.
page 118 note 1 Howard's firm was converted into a limited liability company in 1903 under the title of Howards and Sons Ltd, but remained a family business. Allen's firm, now Allen and Hanburys Ltd, was incorporated in 1893.
page 118 note 2 In 1822; see below, p. 120.
page 119 note 1 The mill was built in the Middle Ages as a fulling mill. It was known for centuries as Spilman's Mill, after John Spilman, who lived in the middle of the thirteenth century. He shared the ownership of the mill with Roger fitz Roger. In 1276 the mill was granted by Laurence Stede of Stratford to Gregory de Rokesle and Nicholas de Wynton, Wardens of the Bridge House of London, ‘and the brethren of the same’. It remained in the possession of the Mayor, Commonalty and Citizens of the City of London for nearly seven centuries, the freehold being sold to the County Borough of West Ham in 1933. See P. E. Jones, ‘Some Bridge House Properties’, Journal Brit. Archaeol. Assoc., 3rd Series, xvi (1953), pp. 69–72. Howards occupied the site until 1914, when the factory was moved to Ilford. Bernard Howard, a director of the company, wrote in a letter dated 17 February 1954: ‘The mill as I knew it in 1901 had an undershoot wheel of about 25 foot span and was purely tidal, only giving about eight hours power in the 24 hours … there were five pairs of over driven French stones set in a circle round the main shaft, their pinion wheels keying into the huge wooden crown wheel. These stones were used for most of the large scale chemical grinding including borax, boracic acid and Rochelle salt and had been so used since Luke's days.’
page 120 note 1 A copy of this autobiography, entitled ‘Copy (with some needful additions and changes) of the memoir of myself sent to Goethe at his request and by him published in German’, may be seen in the Society of Friends’ Reference Library, Friends House, London, MS. Box 5.2.
page 121 note 1 Jewell's Patent Specification is given in full in Appendix B.
page 126 note 1 In the short manuscript mentioned in the Introduction Jewell describes his parents as ‘… a man and his wife who before they married had lived servants in farm houses and saved money enough to buy furniture to furnish a little house decently and the husband continued to work as an agricultureal labourer and the wife used to spin flax and such stays, besides keeping her house in good order—and they lived together in unity and prospered and in a few years saved money enough to buy a good horse—as I here state. One day, as the man was threshing in a barn, he saw a man leading the horse along to a fair to sell him. The thresher asked the price of the horse and after close inspection bought him and soon after sold him again at about a ginue profit. This, he thought, was a very good begining and soon bought and sold another but still continued to fill up his spare time as a labourer and got on and up until he could buy two good horses, then three and in a few years took a little farm and also attended fairs to buy and sell horses and became a respectable horsedealer. Many gentlemen as well as farmers bought their horses of him. But still his good wife did not leave off her spining etc. nor keep any female servant although she had a family of seven children.’ (Apart from the passage quoted here this short manuscript adds nothing to the Memoir.)
page 127 note 1 Sarah Jewell died in June 1773, aged 37. Her burial on 30 June is recorded in the Stanford-in-the-Vale Register of Burials in woollen, 1678–1774 (Berkshire Record Office, D/P 118/1/4).
page 137 note 1 I.e. Bermondsey Street.
page 137 note 2 I.e. Botolph Lane.
page 138 note 1 A waggon left the ‘Oxford Arms’ in Warwick Lane for Faringdon every Friday morning at 11 o'clock (The New Complete Guide to … London, 1783).Google Scholar
page 139 note 1 There can be little doubt that this ‘very large cabbinet maker’ was George Seddon (1727–1801) who owned a very big furniture manufactory in Aldersgate Street. No other cabinet maker of the period is known to have operated on anything like such a scale. The premises, known as London House, occupied a site of nearly two acres near the middle of the west side of Aldersgate Street. Little Britain, where Jewell kept the corn for his horses and presumably where the stables were situated, is at the rear of Aldersgate, also on the west side. A foreign visitor to London, Sophie v. la Roche, who was shown over Seddon's establishment on 16 September 1786, described it as a building with six wings, housing 400 work people employed ‘on any work connected with the making of household furniture—joiners, carvers, gilders, mirror-makers, upholsterers, girdlers—who mould the bronze into graceful patterns—and locksmiths’. The place had ‘its own saw-house, too, where many blocks of fine foreign wood lie piled’. Seddon had ‘an understanding for the needs of the needy and the luxurious’ and his work ranged ‘from the simplest and cheapest to the most elegant and expensive’. See Williams, Clare, Sophie in London, 1786 (London, 1933).Google Scholar
page 142 note 1 In May 1679 the Haberdashers’ Company granted a 99-year lease of the premises at No. 2 Plough Court, Lombard Street, to John Osgood, a Quaker and linen-draper. Osgood sub-leased the premises to Alexander Pope, linendraper, father of Alexander Pope the poet, who was born there in 1688. No. 2 Plough Court first became a pharmacy in 1715, when the premises were taken over by the Quaker Silvanus Bevan II. Some time before 1730 his brother Timothy Bevan I joined him in partnership, under the title of ‘Silvanus and Timothy Bevan, Apothecaries, Lombard Street’. Silvanus II died in 1765: in the following year Timothy I took his own sons, Silvanus III and Timothy II, into partnership. Silvanus III retired to become a partner in Barclay's Bank in 1767. Timothy II died in 1773. His father retired in 1775 and left the business to his youngest son Joseph Gurney Bevan, Jewell's employer, a highly esteemed and influential Quaker, Clerk of the Yearly Meeting in 1794. It is said that Alexander Pope (1688–1744) and Joseph Gurney Bevan (1753–1814) were born in the same room on the second floor of No. 2 Plough Court. See Cripps, E. C., Plough Court (London, 1927)Google Scholar; Houston, D. Chapman and Cripps, E. C., Through a City Archway (London, 1954).Google Scholar
page 143 note 1 This was almost certainly Thomas Healde's translation of the London Pharmacopoeia—probably the edition of 1788. The original was in Latin, which Jewell had never had the opportunity to learn.
page 144 note 1 The London Pharmacopœia, 1788 (Healde's translation, p. 147)Google Scholar, under the heading ‘Antimonium Calcinatum—Calcined Antimony’, gives the following directions for making this substance: ‘Take of Antimony, powdered, by weight eight ounces: Nitre, powdered, two pounds: mix and throw them by degrees into a crucible heated to a white heat. Burn the white matter about half an hour and, when cold, powder it, and wash it with distilled water.’ Healde adds, ‘This is the Calx Antimonii of the last Dispensatory.’
page 144 note 2 Jewell must be referring to Healde's translation of the London Pharmacopœia of 1791, which was a revised reprint of the edition of 1788. The method of making acetated quicksilver (i.e. mercury acetate) described by Jewell and that prescribed in the 1791 edition (p. 170) under the heading ‘Hydrargyrus Acetatus’ are identical, whereas the instructions given in the 1788 edition are quite different, as Healde remarks. The fact that Jewell appears to have been working from the 1791 edition of the London Pharmacopœia when he first became ‘elaboratory man’ is further evidence that he joined the firm in 1792 (above, p. 115).
page 145 note 1 Kent's London Directory (1787) lists the firm as Corbyn, Brown, Beaumont and Stacey, Chymists, 300 High Holborn. Thomas Corbyn (c. 1711–91) and George Stacey (1749–1816) were both Quakers. Stacey was clerk of the Yearly Meeting in 1799.
page 145 note 2 Druggists were able to obtain specimens from the laboratory which the Society of Apothecaries had set up in 1671 for the purpose of making reliable preparations, both chemical and galenical.
page 146 note 1 The London Pharmacopoeia, 1788 (Healde's translation, p. 148)Google Scholar, gives directions for making Crocus of Antimony by mixing a pound of powdered antimony, a pound of nitre and an ounce of sea-salt, putting them ‘by degrees into a redhot crucible’ and melting them ‘with an augmented heat’. The melted matter was to be poured out and when cold separated from the scoriae. It was recognized at the time that this method was dangerous: Nicholson's Dictionary of Chemistry (1795) warned that ‘Nitre detonates very readily with the regulus of antimony’ (i.e. metallic antimony). On the subject of ‘the medical effects’ Nicholson remarks that ‘the nearly pure and insoluble calx, produced by detonation with a large proportion of nitre, is almost ineffectual’. Crocus of Antimony is identical with the substance described as Calx, antimoni, nitrat, of calx of antimony, which was made by a similar process (above, p, 144, n. 1).
page 147 note 1 Joseph Jewell and Elizabeth Marsh were married at Ratcliffon 3 April 1794: see Digested Copy of the Registers of Marriages of the Quarterly Meeting of London and Middlesex, 1720–1837, Friends’ Reference Library, London. Jewell's place of residence is given as Aldersgate Street.
page 147 note 2 The young man, Bevan's successor, was Samuel Mildred (1769–1839), a Quaker apothecary.
page 148 note 1 There was a ‘chymist’ of this name at 43 Newgate Street at about this time (The New Complete Guide to … London, 1774).
page 149 note 1 The day-to-day activities of Jewell and his team at this time were recorded briefly in a laboratory diary or log, which has fortunately survived. The first entry, dated ‘1800 Sixth mo. 11. IV Day’ (Wednesday 11 June 1800) shows that on that day Jewell himself was dealing with ammonia and ‘calcining alkali’; John Strong was boiling down a solution of ammonium sulphate; James Rogers was distilling ammonia solution and ‘preparing to distill soot’ (from which ammonia was obtained); Joseph Petever and R. Lloyd were ‘mowing L[uke] H[oward]'s grass’; John Nelmes was busy with borax; Peter Dix was making a stool for a receiver and attending to some nitric acid: in the afternoon he was ‘in town’; John Claridge was engaged in the preparation of calomel and antimony tartrate; Peter Buckmaster was working on benzoic acid and ether, while Francis King was ‘jobbing, including carrying coals, wood, water etc.’
page 152 note 1 Jewell does not mention here that he also encouraged his workmen to provide comfortably for themselves, but in his pamphlet Christian Advice to Corn-Burners he states that he had ‘been a master to about the average number of thirty men for twenty-five years: and having worked with them the whole time: and when I left there were between forty and fifty employed:—some of these had worked with me about thirty years and lived respectably, with large families, and saved money: and others, with lesser families, had placed in my hands several hundred pounds. I had in my trust above one thousand pounds of my men's savings, when I retired from business, which I had regularly paid interest for, and they preferred trusting it in my hands, to placing it anywhere else. I always paid them interest, and compound interest, as I ought…. There were other men that worked under me, that saved money to the amount of some hundreds, which I did not hold.’
page 155 note 1 The Peel Monthly Meeting of Friends was in St John Street, Clerkenwell. The name was derived from the house in which it was held: in 1690 the premises were described in the title-deed as ‘all that messuage and tenement, with the appurtenances called the Baker's Peel, situate in or near St John Street’. See Beck, William and Ball, T. Frederick, The London Friends’ Meetings (London, 1869).Google Scholar
page 157 note 1 This was probably Thomas Mabbott (1742–1800), who preached at Red Cross Street Meeting House from 1781 to 1791. See Wilson, W., The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting Houses in London, Westminster and Southwark (London, 1810), iii, p. 303.Google Scholar
page 157 note 2 William Huntington, S.S. (‘Sinner Saved’), described in the D.N.B. as ‘eccentric preacher’, for many years ‘had a lecture here on a Tuesday evening, which was well attended’ (Wilson, , op. cit., iii, p. 189).Google Scholar
page 157 note 3 Thomas Cannon preached at the Bartholomew Close Meeting House for several years. ‘A new meeting house being erected for him in Grub Street, he removed to that place in 1788.’ He eventually went to Hammersmith, ‘where he carried on the employment of a schoolmaster’. See Wilson, , op. cit., iii, p. 386.Google Scholar
page 159 note 1 There can be little doubt that Jewell was received into the Society of Friends at the Gracechurch Street Monthly Meeting, but the date of his admission cannot be determined, owing to the loss of all the records of this Meeting in a fire which totally destroyed the premises in White Hart Court on Sunday 9 September 1821. However, evidence of his membership of this Meeting is given by the First Notice of Intention of Marriage dated 20th of 2nd mo. 1794 in the Minutes of the Ratcliff Monthly Meeting, which state that Joseph Jewell was a member of the Gracechurch Street M.M. and by an entry in the Minutes of the Peel Monthly Meeting which records a transfer of membership from the Gracechurch M.M. of Joseph Jewell and Elizabeth his wife on 18th of 6th mo. 1794. See Minute Book of the Ratcliff Monthly Meeting, 1787–95, and Minute Book of the Peel Monthly Meeting, 1790–94; Friends’ Reference Library, London.