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MIDLANDS ENLIGHTENMENT Philip Carter THE INDUSTRIAL ENLIGHTENMENT SHAPERS OF THE WEST MIDLANDS ENLIGHTENMENT Philip Carter What can biography tell us about the West Midlands Enlightenment? The stories of its principal figures, including Boulton, Watt and Wedgwood, are regularly told. Those of the people with whom they worked and socialised, their associates and collaborators, are less familiar, but offer a fascinating insight into the values and aspirations of the age. Courtesy of VisitWorcester Courtesy Worcester was very different from Birmingham as an ecclesiastical centre and county town; nevertheless it was a location for scientific lectures in the West Midlands. Knowledge v Resources Peter Jones is Professor hether the ‘eighteenth-century knowledge economy’ can of French History at the account on its own for the accelerating pace of University of Birmingham. industrialisation in Great Britain as opposed to France, His book, Industrial Enlightenment, has the Low Countries, Silesia or the Rhineland is another recently been published in matter, of course. On the evidence of the West paperback. WMidlands, we need also to allow for the role played by the market. Further Reading Many economic historians would argue that Britain industrialised first, not Peter M. Jones, Industrial because knowledge levels reached a critical threshold, but because energy was Enlightenment: Science, comparatively cheap and skilled labour forbiddingly expensive. To survive in Technology and Culture in the marketplace entrepreneurs had little choice but to innovate with the aid of Birmingham and the West labour-saving machinery, alternative technologies and creative marketing Midlands, 1760-1820 strategies. Manchester University Did Industrial Enlightenment in the West Midlands therefore depend more Press, 2009, 2013). on the growth of a culture of applied science, or on the superabundance of Joel Mokyr, The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of low-cost coal brought in by barge from the Black Country? It is a nice the Knowledge Economy (Princeton University Press, 2002). question, but one which does not require an ‘either/or’ answer. Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: an Economic In any case, the underpinnings of the provincial Enlightenment which History of Britain 1700-1850 (Yale University Press, flourished in the West Midlands in the second half of the eighteenth century 2009). should not be reduced to a simple cost–benefit equation. In an age when men Ken Quickenden, Sally Baggott and Malcolm Dick (eds), and women were ‘daring to know’, knowledge carried a unique value and was Matthew Boulton, Pioneering Industrialist of the pursued for its own sake. As the Annual Register reminded its readers, access Enlightenment (Ashgate, 2013). had never been easier or less fraught with risk. Scientific knowledge carried Larry Stewart, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian particular prestige. Its acquisition conferred status and gentility whilst 'Am I Not a Man and a Brother?'. extending a tantalising promise of material betterment. ● Britain, 1600-1750 (Cambridge University Press, 1992). Anti-slavery medallion by Joshiah Wedgwood. Image courtesy of The Wedgwood Museum 12 www.historywm.com www.historywm.com 13 SHAPERS OF WEST MIDLANDS SHAPERS OF WEST MIDLANDS The West Midlands: Heartland of an chemistry, physics, engineering and medicine; John Barber English Enlightenment for the application of these advances in manufacturing and commerce; and for n the same decade as he Oxford Dictionary of National publicising new standards of social and political Lovett’s Electrical Biography includes the life stories not behaviour, notably in their opposition to the IPhilosopher, the only of the ‘giants’ of late Derbyshire coalmaster John slave trade. The society’s dynamism makes it an eighteenth-century science and Barber was engaged, like excellent case study of the aims and outcomes manufacturing, the manufacturer James Watt, with improving of the West Midlands Enlightenment. TMatthew Boulton (1728-1809) (see article by Rita the output of the Newcomen The range of people of the West Midlands McLean), the Scottish engineer James Watt (1736- steam engine. Barber was a Enlightenment extends beyond the hierarchies 1819), master potter Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) model of that eighteenth- of formal scientific enquiry, embodied by and Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) (see article by century archetype, the Darwin or the chemist and dissenter Joseph Alison Wallis), but of a further two hundred applied scientist, who Priestley, to include influential amateurs and contemporary West Midlanders, who pursued through wide-ranging popular educators such as Richard Lovett or similar goals. These people define the region as the interests and inventions Katherine Plymley. Within the Oxford DNB, heartland of an English Enlightenment characterised sought to improve early we can identify biographies of over 125 men by energy and the practical application of industrial processes. In 1793 and women remembered for their knowledge. Barber’s obituary recalled ‘a contributions to medicine, science and man of universal knowledge Courtesy Faber and Faber Faber Courtesy What was The Enlightenment? technology who were one-time residents of … a sound philosopher, an The Lunar Men by Jenny Uglow. Derbyshire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Mark Office & Trade German Patent Courtesy eminent mineralogist, and a In their different ways Boulton, Watt, Wedgwood Staffordshire, Warwickshire or Worcestershire good mechanic who and Darwin, as well as lesser-known figures like A section of John Barber’s 1791 gas turbine patent. The Birmingham between the 1760s and 1820s. A search for expended an ample fortune Maria Jacson (1755-1829), Katherine Plymley those engaged in engineering and in benefiting mankind’. He was also something of a visionary, for his historian, William (1758-1829), John Barber (1734-1793) and Richard manufacturing locates a further 100 individuals Library & Society Picture Museum/Science © Science experiments on the combustion of coal gas and motion paved the way for the Hutton (1723-1815), Lovett (1692-1780), who shared a passion for active in these counties, while searches by development, nearly 150 years later, of the modern jet engine. when recalling his first gathering, testing, using and communicating Richard Lovett, British physicist. town reveal ten Derby physicians and natural Engraving by R. Hancock. knowledge were exemplars of the ‘Enlightenment’ - impressions of the city philosophers or thirty engineers and Richard Lovett the eighteenth-century intellectual and cultural as a young man in manufacturers in late eighteenth-century movement by which ‘early modern’ belief systems n about 1750 Worcester’s Richard Lovett obtained his first Birmingham. the 1740s, were challenged by a ‘modern’ commitment to ‘friction machine’, and began a life-long study of the commented: ‘I was reason and progress. Icharacteristics and possibilities of electricity. Though he The Importance of Networks surprised at the place, To have described them in this way would have was employed as a cathedral lay clerk, Lovett’s scientific but more by the seemed odd to earlier generations. It was, until y comparing these life stories it research focused on the medical effects of what he called recently, common to doubt the existence of an is possible to identify some of ‘electrical fluid’. This, he claimed, could cure ailments such people. They were a as colds and sore throats. Some rubbished his contentions English let alone a West Midlands Enlightenment, the themes that characterised as showmanship. But Lovett, like his more celebrated species I had never but the articles in this magazine suggest otherwise. the West Midlands seen; they possessed Enlightenment, as shaped by its counterparts Darwin and Benjamin Franklin, was simply edging towards a better understanding of a ‘new’ a vivacity I had ‘Now I Saw Men Awake’ Bparticipants ‘on the ground’. From the phenomenon, electricity, for which adequate descriptive biographies of one-time Birmingham residents, never beheld: I had The Birmingham historian, William Hutton concepts and vocabulary were lacking. Lovett’s greater for example, we can discern the city’s evident been among dreamers, (1723-1815), when recalling his first impressions of achievement was as a promoter of scientific research. His the city as a young man in the 1740s, commented: ‘I attraction to would-be scientific and 1766 Philosophical essays … into the properties … of the but now I saw was surprised at the place, but more by the people. manufacturing innovators. men awake.’ electrical fluid brought the work of Benjamin Franklin to a They were a species I had never seen; they possessed Most celebrated of these arrivals was James new audience, while the Electrical Philosopher (1774) took Library RHS, Lindley Courtesy a vivacity I had never beheld: I had been among Watt who moved from Glasgow to the form of an accessible dialogue to better convey this novel Frontispiece of Maria Jacson's Florist's Manual. dreamers, but now I saw men awake.’ Birmingham and a business partnership with subject to local readers. Few were more awake, and ready to apply Matthew Boulton, in 1774. But there were Maria Jacson enlightened opportunities, than members of the others. They include the physician, William aria Jacson was born in Cheshire and later resident at Somersal Lunar Society. As befits the West Midlands Small, who had previously studied at Katherine Plymley Herbert, Derbyshire. Like the Plymley
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