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This page is part of a website based
on the life and achievements of eighteenth-century inventor Henry Cort. Please email site controller Eric Alexander
with any comments or queries. This page has been modified (September 2008) to reflect newly
discovered material which provides
a refutation against allegations in this text, in contrast to reliable statements about Cort’s
contribution to the nation’s prosperity. |
1856 ACCOLADE
From the editorial columns of The Times, July 29, 1856 (page 8)...
It is
somewhat a departure from our usual course to make the leading columns of this journal
the medium for laying before the British public the claims and grievances of
individuals. To persons in the
situation suggested doors of our law-courts are open; there is the remedy by
petition to Parliament; finally there is the public press. The conductors of any respectable journal
are at all times ready to give insertion in the form of a letter to any
well-authenticated complaint; indeed, no inconsiderable share of our own daily
labour consists in considering and disposing of applications of this
description. When an aggrieved person
is admitted to make his own story known in this form, of course he, and he
alone, is held answerable for the substantial truth of his statement. It is quite another matter when a case is
"taken up," as the ordinary phrase runs, in the leading columns of a
public journal, for such a step would no doubt imply, without special notice to
the contrary, that the facts had been carefully investigated, the alleged
grievances duly considered, and that the credit and character of the journal
were to a certain extent involved in the truth of the story.
Now with reference to the case which we
are about to bring under the notice of our readers, and which is the subject of
an advertisement in our columns today, we would begin by disclaiming the
faintest shadow of responsibility. We have not investigated the truth of the allegations to
which we are about to advert, nor, indeed as they refer to scientific matters,
and to secret passages of the scandalous history of England 60 years ago, do we
esteem ourselves competent to conduct an inquiry of that description. We wish merely that others should know, as
we know, the story of Henry Cort, the father of the
British Iron Trade: that is, that they should cast a glance over this
brief abstract of a petition which his destitute family have presented to the
House of Commons. This petition has
been forwarded to us, and the allegations it contains are so completely of a
national character that, for once, we violate a general and necessary rule, and
have determined to give to them all the publicity in our power. Time was, some 70 years ago, that England
was dependent upon Sweden and Russia for her supply of wrought iron. Henry Cort, of
Gosport in the county of Southampton, an iron manufacturer, invented, and
secured by patent, in the years 1783-4, two processes which relieved us from
this commercial servitude, and liberated for the use of English manufacturers
the supplies of iron which are stored up so profusely under the surface of these
islands. "The first process
effected the cheap manufacture of wrought iron by the use of pit coal in the
puddling furnace; the second process, which was rolling this cheap wrought iron
through grooved rollers, enabled the manufacturer to produce 20 tons of bar
iron in the same time and with the same labour previously required to
manipulate one ton of an inferior quality by the tedious operation of forging
under the hammer."
This
allegation is given in the words of the petition. Before the year 1785, when iron was, comparatively speaking, but
slightly used for commercial, maritime, or social purposes, we paid annually to
Sweden something like £1,500,000 for wrought iron. Then came the war, came commercial embarrassment, depreciated
paper, foreign prohibitions, and an overpowering and increasing demand for more
and more iron. The
inventions of Henry Cort carried us easily through this period of sharp trial,
and, as his descendants allege, were the principal cause of our success. It would indeed be impossible to exaggerate
the advantages resulting from an unlimited supply of "the precious
metal." The only points for
consideration in this case are whether, first, to Henry Cort, and to him alone,
the credit is due of enabling us to draw upon Vulcan at sight; and, secondly,
whether he did not obtain all the remuneration to which he was fairly entitled
by receipts from his patents, and so forth.
Now, upon
the first point, we are bound to declare that Mr. Cort's son has succeeded in
obtaining the signatures of the most eminent engineers and ironmasters in
England to the petition in which he sets forth his father's claims to be
considered as the exclusive author of the improvements in the manufacture of
iron. The point is one upon which
hostile criticism is very desirable, but until such very powerful attestation
as we see incorporated in this petition is disproved there is no doubt a very
violent presumption that Henry Cort, of Gosport, is entitled to be considered
as the Tubal Cain of our century and of our country.
The history of Henry Cort's ruin we can
not altogether disentangle from the allegations of the petition. The most condensed account of it is to be
found in the 58th paragraph, page 19 of the petition: "That for these unparalleled
services Henry Cort derived no remuneration.
He expended a private fortune exceeding £20,000 in bringing his patent
processes to complete perfection. When
that was achieved, and the leading ironmasters of the
kingdom had, as related, signed contracts to pay him 10 shillings per ton for
their use, his patents were seized by a high Officer of the Crown,
holding the responsible and lucrative posts of Treasurer of the Navy and
Secretary at War, and under an extent obtained by the
perjury of a confidential deputy his freeholds at Fontley, Fareham and
Gosport, valued, with the stock and goodwill of a lucrative trade, at £39,000,
were handed over to the son of a public defaulter in
that Treasurer's office. No account of these proceedings against Cort was ever
obtained either before his death in 1800 or afterwards.” Two or three years elapsed from the time
that Henry Cort had disappeared from the scene, and Parliament appointed a commission of Naval Inquiry
to examine into the charges against the financial department of the navy. It appears that the Treasurer and his
confidential deputy a few weeks before the sitting of the commission
indemnified each other by a joint release, and agreed to burn their accounts
for something approaching to a million and a half of the public money which had
passed through their hands. In this general conflagration all the evidence by which Henry
Cort's case could have been established perished, and the culprits
refused to answer any questions which would have criminated themselves. As far as we can make out of the story,
Henry Cort was involved in the ruin of a public defaulter with whose crimes he
was not in any degree concerned. He, as
the only solvent person connected with any transactions in which this person
was involved, was made to pay to the extent of his last shilling. It is probable,
indeed, that from his royalties, and receipts under his patents, Cort or his
representatives could have satisfied all claims. Time, however, was denied him,
and the simpler plan adopted of ruining him and his descendants outright, and
at once. The influence of the culprits
and the exigencies of political life forbade all hope of raising the question
in Parliament at any subsequent period.
Such is the
brief outline of this remarkable case, and thus much we will venture to say: if
the statements of Henry Cort's son turn out on investigation to be true, he and
his sisters are well entitled to some mark of the public gratitude. We can not pretend to encumber our columns
with the calculations which are inserted in the petition as to the amount to
which the national wealth has been increased by Cort's processes in the
manufacture of iron. Let anyone think of our iron fleet, iron gunboats, iron
mercantile marine, iron railways, iron engines, iron cotton mills, iron
suspension and tubular bridges, iron batteries, iron palaces, etc., and then
ask himself what should be the measure of public gratitude to the descendants
of a man who endowed his country with such an amount of wealth and power. While others have, upon the strength of
Henry Cort's discoveries, been raised to the position of millionaires, his
children are almost starving. We should
be ashamed for the honour of England to mention the amount of the pension which
has been conceded to them by the Crown and Parliament. It is about equal in amount to the wages of
a domestic servant of the humblest description, and even this has been made
subject to deductions. For the sake of
our national credit, it behoves all persons of influence in the country to give
the case of Henry Cort's children their immediate consideration. In bringing the subject under their notice
our duty is discharged.
“Others have, upon the strength
of Henry Cort's discoveries, been raised to the position of millionaires”
Cyfarthfa Castle, built for Richard Crawshay’s grandson in 1825
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