T. K. HERVEY Was born either at Paisley or Glasgow. He is the oldest of his family by his father's second marriage, and was brought to Manchester by his parents whilst yet an infant. He resided in the towu for many years, and served a clerkship to the law, in the office of Messrs. Sharp, Eccles and Cririe: subsequently he resided and studied two years at Cambridge. He entered at the Bar, and has served the terms necessary to qualify him for that honourable profession. but he was never "called." He is Author of the "Poetical Sketch Book"-" The Devil's Progress" and "The Book of Christmas,"-besides other fugitive pieces, of which the most beautiful is his "Convict Ship." He has also written several tales and sketches, which have earned the approbation they have met with. The picture of the Dying Hebrew in "The Devil's Progress" is the most beautiful and sublime of all his poetical compositions. Mr. Hervey has not for many years resided in Manchester. WILLIAM HARRISON AINSWORTH Is another of the small phalanx of literary men destined to attain some permanent distinction, whom Manchester claims as her own by birth. His father was a respectable solicitor, and the son was articled in his office with a view to traversing the same fate. But law was too dry a study for the future writer of romances; he gave his energies therefore to the cultivation of a natural taste for literature, which his associations, his residence in London as a law student, and his subsequent connexion by marriage with the family of Mr. Heber tended to confirm and strengthen. His first production was a series of Winter Tales, his next the Romance of Sir John Chiverton (of which the scene is laid at Hulme Hall,)—his third, the Novel of Rookwood— and his fourth, which is announced, but has not yet appeared, Crichton. The work which has most widely extended the Author's name is his Novel of Rookwood, in which that portion descriptive of Turpin's ride from London to York, is certainly the most graphic and life-like delineation in our language. There are also a few poems interspersed through the book, which in themselves betoken a mind of very high order. The forthcoming work of "Crichton," report ranks even more exaltedly than its precursors. Mr. Ainsworth has not resided in Manchester since his marriage, nor does he now trouble himself with the cares of law. DE QUINCEY, The author of the celebrated "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," was born, it is said, in the house at present known by the name of the Princess Tavern, in Cross-street. He was of an original turn of mind even when a youth, and one of his earliest exploits was the running away from the public school in which he had been placed by his Guardians, because he considered himself a better Grecian than his tutor. He was in fact an excellent classic, and at the age of fifteen, "not only composed Greek verses in lyric metres, but could converse in Greek fluently and without embarrassment," so perfectly, that one of his own masters, who was himself a scholar, has said of him "that boy could harrangue an Athenian mob better than I conld address an English one." After having repeatedly written to one of his Guardians, requesting to be sent to College, without receiving any favourable reply, he resolved so soon as his seventeenth birth-day should arrive to quit the school for ever, and no longer to rank as a boy. Accordingly, having borrowed ten guineas from a lady of rank who had known him from childhood, he arose stealthily on a bright morning in July, with breathless silence stole away from the classic ground he had been treading for the last two years, and bents his step towards. Wales. For some time he wandered about enduring the extremest hardships and privations, until at length a reconciliation took place between his friends and himself, and he proceeded to the University. In 1822 he finished his "Confessions," to which those who are not already acquainted with them may refer for such particulars as may be interesting in the life of this author. In Tait's Magazine, also, will be found several of his cleverest papers-amongst others a memoir of the opium-eating Coleridge. Mr. De Quincey has for some time resided abroad. NOTE TO PAGE 145. MANCHESTER TRADESMEN'S COINS. Some of these curious tokens have been preserved. The best collection of them is possessed by John Greaves, Esq. The following are the inscriptions and dates of some of them : "Joseph Vigor, Manchester. His Half Penny. 1663. V. J. D" "William Bowker, his Half Penny, in Manchester. 1665." "John, of Heaton, neere Manchester. His Half Penny. (No date.) D. J. M " "John Charllton. In Manchester. (No date.)" H. B." "John Nield. 1666. His Half Penny in Manchester. J. N." W. W." Newton, near Manchester. "Manchester Halfpenny. 795. Success to Navigation: Sic Volo. Payable in Manchester, London, or Bristol." (A beautiful coin.) Another of the same date, payable at J. Fielding's, Manchester. "Manchester Token. Value One Shilling. W. Ballan's, Tea Dealer, Market Place." "Manchester Promissory Halfpenny. 1793. God grant grace.' Payable at Jno. Fielding's, Grocer and Tea Dealer." "Halfpenny. Payable at J. Rayner and Co., Manchester. 1793." "East India House. Halfpenny. God grant grace.' 1793. Payable at John Downing's, Huddersfield." "Manchester Token. Value one shilling. (With the Manchester Arms.) For Public accommodation. 1812." Those of more recent date are beautiful coins. SUPPLEMENT. THE SELF-ACTING MULE. The chapters which treat of the manufactures of Manchester can scarcely be deemed complete without some special notice of the self-acting mule, which may be claimed as peculiarly a Manchester invention, and which is gaining daily over the old machine. The one is called the hand mule, the other the self-acting mule. The latter, it may readily be supposed, is the result of laborious pursuit and ingenious mechanical combination. The parties who have principally interested them. selves in contriving a self-acting mule are Messrs. Eaton, originally of Manchester, Mr. De Jough, of Warrington, a name which occurs in other parts of this work, Mr. Roberts, of the highly respectable and extensive firm of Sharp, Roberts, and Co., of Manchester; Mr. Brewster, an American; and Mr. Buchanan, a Scotsman. About a dozen of Messrs. Eaton's mules have been in operation in this town, a few at Wiln, in Derbyshire, and some in France. The complexity of the machine and its tardiness of production occasioned its abandonment however, except in Derbyshire, where it is said four are still at work. Mr. Buchanan has some of his mules in use in Scotland, but their principle is kept secret. Mr. Brewster's is unknown in England, but it is understood that his machine is countenanced in America for woollen manufactures. Mr. De Jough abandoned his mules, after taking out two patents and trying twelve of them in a mill at Warrington in which he had an interest. In 1827, however, he took out a third patent, embracing some necessary features of Mr. Roberts's invention, and about thirty mules were made, partly for cotton and part for woollen yarn, on which it is said they are still at work, though not very successfully. The only self-acting mule of any general reputation, therefore, is that of which the invention belongs to, and the patent is held by, Messrs. Sharp, Roberts, and Co., and the little history of this important machine, and the causes which led to its contrivance, as given by themselves, is full of amusement and instruction. First as to the motives which impelled the manufacturers to seek, and which consequently induced ingenious men to weigh the possibility of contriving a machine, if not wholly to supersede one branch of manual labour, at least to make it less volatile and precarious. The sketch of the history of Manchester which is communicated in the preceding pages will convey to the reader who is inexperienced in such questions an idea of the frequency and the disastrous effects of extensive turns-out of the manufacturing operatives. In a decided majority of instances the "spinners," or the men who have the superintendence of the hand mules, are the origi nators of these painful controversies between the employers and the employed. Like the highest class of mechanics, they earn a very high rate of wages, of any interference with which, real or imaginary, necessary or unnecessary, or with their privileges, they are extremely jealous. The whole body being generally combined, and having the means of accumulating a fund to carry out any views they may form, they have not that disinclination to turn out which other less prosperous operatives entertain. They, too, command the whole trade: without the "twist" which they produce, the subsequent processes of manufacturing cloth cannot of course be continued; without their presence the hands employed under them in producing twist must of necessity stand idle, however averse to do so; and without a regular continuance of the spinning it is obviously undesirable that the large body of hands employed in preparing the cotton for spinning should continue at work, accumulating unwrought material. Thus the journeymen spinners wield great power, which they have exercised without control. An ordinary spinner employs, in immediate connexion with himself, one, two, or three "piecers," to mend threads broken in the spinning, &c., a creel-filler, and a cleaner or scavenger-all young persons. The prepa ratory processes already spoken of employ three or four persons, who are also virtually dependent on the spinner; and the processes which succeed the spinning, as well as the ultimate step of weaving, also depend, in the same way, on the movements of the spinner; so that perhaps a dozen persons may be kept in employment, or thrown idle, at the caprice of the one man who manages the hand-mule. It may therefore be asserted with safety, that the interests of master and servant-of the master whose machinery was rendered unproductive by a turn-out, and of the thousands of hands whose labour was subordinate to that of the spinner-rendered it desirable to discover some substitute for the hand-mule. Though the object has occupied the attention of ingenious men, more or less earnestly, for the last four and twenty years, it has been most eagerly pursued when the manufacturers were labouring under the inconvenience and loss of an actual or a threatened turn-out of their hands. The noted turn-out which occurred in 1824 particularly exemplifies this remark. At that crisis some leading manufacturers applied to Messrs. Sharp, Roberts, and Co. with a view to induce the latter gentleman to direct his great mechanical knowledge to the improvement of the then crude and imperfect selfacting machine, and after some hesitation the application was acceeded to. In the summer of 1825, Mr. Roberts produced a machine for which, as the "selfacting mule," a patent was obtained. Its great merit consisted in the regularity of the process of winding, to form the "cop," bat, &c., but it was too complex for practice, and its simplification and improvement were for the time retarded-first by the destruction of Messrs. Sharps' works by fire, through the agency, as is supposed, of an incendiary; and, secondly, by the dreadful commercial panic of 1826, which, causing a reduction of wages, mitigated the necessity for the self-acting invention. The machine of 1825 is now at work, though it was not generally accepted. In 1830 Messrs. Sharp and Roberts took out another patent, which, combining the best points of the first patent with other improvements, constituted a machine which is gradually obtaining adoption among manufacturers. In 1831 a patent for a self-acting mule was taken out by Mr. Knowles, manager of the Oxford-road Twist Company's Works, but an injunction was applied for and obtained against him by Mr. Roberts, whose patents he had infringed. That injunction was subsequently made permanent, the costs being defrayed by Mr. Knowles, on the condition that his mules should be allowed to continue at work in the Twist Company's mill, they paying for the partial use of Mr. Roberts's invention. This gentlman's is now therefore, in fact, the only self-acting mule in use. It has the great merit of not wholly superseding the ordinary hand-mule, upon the head-work or headstock of which it can with ease be grafted, being only a fifth in value of the hand-mule sacrificed in making the change. Not only has the self-acting mule secured the grand object of its original contrivance-that of rendering spinning less precarious and more economical, (the entire wages of the spinner being saved) but in many respects it does its work better than the hand-mule and more rapidly, its production being greater by from fifteen to twenty per cent. The twist" is also more uniform; the breakings fewer; the "cops" more regularly and firmly wound, the cop from the self-acting mule containing a third to a half more yarn than the hand-mule cop of similar dimensions; less "waste" is consequently produced; the breakages in weaving are more rare; the quality of the cloth is thereby improved; and the time of the weaver is saved. In December, 1834, the self-acting mule was in operation in upwards of sixty mills, which employed between 3 and 400,000 spindles. Since that time its adoption has been steadily extending, it being now in operation in nearly one hundred mills, and the number of spindles at work being upwards of half a million, about a fifth of which are in use in Manchester. During the last two years the machine has undergone some important modifications, and has been materially simplified; improvements which have always been confidently looked forward to, as the attention of practical men became more and more directed to the subject. The same causes affect the work thrown off by the self-acting mule, which in well regulated establishments exhibits a progressing amendment. C. WHEELER AND SON, PRINTERS. |