Marc Isambard Brunel and the Baersea Shoe Factory

Meaghan Walker University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

Marc Isambard Brunel The Battersea Shoe Factory Contracts and Supplying the Famous as an engineering pioneer, Marc Isambard After the success of the block-making factory at Military Brunel left France for America during the French Portsmouth, Brunel moved on to another project Revolution after serving in the French Navy. During at Battersea, understanding the importance of a Brunel's success with blocks and his failure with his time in New York, he became aware of the continued effort to streamline military production. footwear need to be grappled with together. Both were projects to mechanize important not- Royal Navy’s pulley block problem and travelled to This time he would be concerned with contracted England to propose a mechanised solution in 1799. slops—various shoes and boots for the Army and necessarily military products during a period of Over the course of the French Wars, Brunel aided Navy—instead of changing the manufacture of military production which was intense but not yet the British military through both through this project something which the Navy produced for total. Indeed, Brunel’s mechanization projects and his shoe factory. The surrender of Napoleon at themselves, as with the blocks. Taking on a were attempts to replace an early modern system which was faltering in the face of a global military Waterloo collapsed the demand for mass-produced process that was normally contracted, and was shoes, however, and Brunel was sentenced to produced mainly through cottage industry during conflict like the French Revolutionary and debtor’s prison in Southwark in 1821, accompanied this period, was ambitious. Richard Beamish, Napoleonic Wars. Skilled hand-production could not produce goods quickly enough, cheap enough, by his wife, Sophia Kingdom. During this time, Brunel’s partner and biographer, notes that Brunel Brunel entered into discussions with Alexander I of "had witnessed at Portsmouth in 1809, the or at a sufficiently superior or consistent quality Russia about moving to St. Petersburg, but the disembarkation of some remnants of that gallant enough to satisfy the needs of the Navy or Army. British government intervened at the behest of the band [from the Battle of Corunna]. He had learnt In the case of blocks, Portsmouth was one of the Duke of Wellington, clearing his £5000 debt. Part of how greatly the want of shoes had contributed to primary dockyards of the Royal Navy and his Brunel’s discussions with Alexander included the losses which the army had sustained, and his equipment found a champion immediately in constructing a tunnel under the River Neva, and in kindest, deepest sympathies were at once Samuel Bentham. By his scheme with the Battersea Factory, Brunel had lost his ally at the 1818 Brunel had patented a tunneling shield. After enlisted” (129). Furthermore, Brunel was to learn he was released from debtor’s prison, he began the that contracted footwear, because of frugality and Thames Tunnel Company in deception, had clay inserted between the soles to “Letter from Mr. Brunel attributing 1824, to finish a tunnel make them seem heavier and therefore more the failure of his shoes to the begun in 1804 between durable. Very little use was necessary to cause Limehouse and this design to fail. Brunel’s main goal for his inexperience of the Invalid Soldiers Rotherhithe. The tunnel was whom he has employed in making completed in 1843 and “Letter from Mr Brunel stating that opened for pedestrian them.” traffic, until it was he has a hundred pair of shoes to purchased by the East Dec 9, 1813 – ADM 12/162 London Railway in 1865. be used as an experiment by the Brunel died in 1849. Royal Navy (Bentham moved to Russia in 1805). I Marines.” would argue he also did not understand how military slop clothing worked or how men expected M.I. Brunel, engraving from Richard Beamish’s Memoir, 1862 Oct. 12, 1813 – ADM 12/162 their garments to function. Beamish admits that Battersea shoe factory was to produce Brunel’s shoes could not be repaired, and this consistent, military-grade footwear which could seems to have decreased their marketability to the be produced more cheaply than the contract public. I would also suggest that this decreased supply, through mechanization. Beamish claims their desirability the farther from England troops were stationed. Frequent letters from Australia and Blocks at Portsmouth the Battersea factory could produce 400 shoes a At the time Brunel was coming to Portsmouth to the West Indies at this time ask for shipments of mechanised blocks, the Royal Docksyards were cloth and leather so that sailors and marines could being overseen by Samuel Bentham, the Shoe Prices (Beamish) s. d. (c. 1814) produce their own clothing and shoes. The Inspector General of Naval Works. Bentham, like Admiralty was not easily able to adapt contracts Common Shoes 9/6 a pair Brunel, believed in the power of steam. More for the light apparel needed for working warm weather stations. Sending too few supplies importantly, in his control over the dockyards, Water Boots 10/6 Bentham was able to take the potential of steam infrequently to extremely distant outposts, like power further, and apply it to changing the Half Boots 12/- Hobart, Van Diemen’s Land, meant that troops dynamics of labour in the docks by inventing a were forced to wear shoes made of Kangaroo. system steam-powered saws. Brunel’s vision for Superior Boots 16/- Furthermore, returning to Portsmouth for shoes was not always necessary, as when 20,000 pairs blocks would add to Bentham’s already ongoing Wellington Boots 20/- change in the dockyards; his process reduced the were bought in Sicily for the Mediterranean fleet in skilled block-producing workforce from 110 men to 1801 (at between 4/1 and 4/10 each). 10 men and saved the navy between £6,000 and day using the labour of 24 invalid soldiers. Nine £21,000 a year depending on financial sizes and five different types of footwear were calculations. Foreshadowing Brunel’s future proposed. Unfortunately, Brunel’s shoe scheme problems with the government when it came to did not survive the war’s conclusion in 1814, or financial returns on Brunel’s technological even the brief addition of Napoleon’s One Hundred systems innovations, the Navy was hesitant to Days. pay fully what Brunel claimed he was owed. Further informaon Claims of Savings ADM BP/30B (Caird Library, The block factory at the Portsmouth Dockyards can NNM) still be visited in Portsmouth and much of the extant Brunel £21,174 12s. 10d. machinery can be viewed at the Science Museum in Mr. Rogers, clerk (upon Mr. £6,691 7s. 4d. Kensington, London. The Battersea Shoe Factory Dunsterville’s 1805 prices) was torn down in the late 1970s to make way for a Mr. Rogers (upon Mr. Taylor’s £12,742 8s. 2d. housing development. 1808 prices) General Samuel Bentham (avg. £16,621 8s. 10d. 1808 year)

Literature cited Acknowledgments Beamish, Richard. Memoir of the Life of Sir Marc Isambard Brunel: Civil Engineer, &c. Dr. Beverly Lemire, faculty, and staff at the University of Alberta London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1862 The National Archives at Kew Coad, Jonathan. The Portsmouth Block Mills: Bentham, Brunel and the Start of the Royal The Caird Library, the National Maritime Museum Navy’s Industrial Revolution. Swindon: English Heritage, 2005. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Cooper, Carolyn C. “The Portsmouth System of Manufacture.” Technology and Culture 25, no. 2 (1984), 182-225. Linebaugh, Peter. The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century, 2nd edition. 1992; London: Verso, 2003. Thom, Colin. “Fine Veneers, Army Boots, and Tinfoil: New Light on Marc Isambard Brunel’s Activities in Battersea.” Construction History 25 (2010): 53-67. ADM 12/162; ADM 12/173; ADM BP/30B; ADM 1/405