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Read Ebook: Western Worthies A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West of Scotland Celebrities by Jeans J Stephen James Stephen

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In 1839, Mr. Bell was appointed a Sheriff-Substitute of Lanarkshire, with a salary of ?400 per annum. The appointment lay with Sir Archibald Alison, who is said to have been favourably impressed with his successor's conduct while acting as junior counsel for the Glasgow cotton-spinners when they were brought to trial in the spring of 1838 for conspiracy. When Mr. Bell became Sheriff-Substitute, the duties of the office were very light compared with what they are at the present time. For a number of years his only colleague was the late Mr. George Skene, who subsequently became Professor of Law in Glasgow University. Indeed, the duties of the Sheriffs continued to be comparatively easy up to 1853, when the passing of the Sheriff Court Act, which compelled Sheriffs to take all notes of evidence in their own handwriting, rendered the work much more laborious. Their salaries were raised from time to time, in proportion to the increased irksomeness and responsibility of their duties; and it is a fact worth noting, that whereas Mr. Bell, as Sheriff-Substitute, had only ?400, Mr. Dickson, in the same sphere of labour, has now ?1400 per annum.

With the exception of this little cloud, Sheriff Bell has uniformly lived in peace and concord with his professional friends, and he has at their hands received many little marks of honour and respect. In 1852, a rumour went out that Sir Archibald Alison was to be elevated to the Supreme Court. This led the profession in Glasgow to present a memorial to the Lord-Advocate, praying that in such an event Sheriff Bell might be made Sir Archibald's successor. Again, about 12 years ago, strong representations and inducements were held out to him to return to Edinburgh as consulting counsel in Mercantile Law--a department of jurisprudence which, if he did not altogether create it, Sheriff Bell has done much to develop and bring into a practical shape. Although the offer promised the realisation of a handsome income, it was respectfully declined. Still farther we may remark, that it was no small honour to Mr. Bell that he was made Sheriff of Lanarkshire contrary to the usual custom, which is to appoint to the office some one that has acted for a longer or shorter period as Advocate-Depute--a place which he, of course, has never filled.

As a judge, Sheriff Bell displays remarkable discrimination and insight. He is gifted in a large measure, with the judicial faculty; but for the same reason that he is a good judge, he would probably fail as a pleader. At the bar it is customary only to represent and contend for one side of a case, to the exclusion or destruction of the other; but on the bench conflicting arguments have to be duly weighed, and the balance so adjusted between them that truth and justice may ultimately be evolved. In thus discriminating between irreconcilable issues, and duly weighing the arguments presented on both sides, Sheriff Bell is particularly at home; and his decisions are remarkable for standing the great test of an appeal to the Supreme Court.

MR. ROBERT DALGLISH.

There are not a few reminiscences associated with the name and history of Mr. Robert Dalglish, the senior representative of Glasgow, that must tend to render a record of his life peculiarly interesting to his constituents. Born at Glasgow in 1808, he is now in his sixty-third year. His father was emphatically one of the pioneers of Glasgow's industrial prosperity. Born in humble circumstances, he "burst his birth's invidious bar," and elevated himself to the proud position of the first magistrate of that city "whose merchants are princes and whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth." During his three years tenure of the civic chair, Mr. Robert Dalglish, sen., approved himself a very useful and excellent citizen, and his attention to municipal affairs was most unremitting and diligent, while at the same time he was laying the foundations of that splendid business to which his son, the subject of the present sketch, ultimately succeeded. Our Senior Member was educated at the University of Glasgow, and "when the fulness of the time had come," he was admitted a partner in the firm of which his father was then the principal, and which is now well-known by the title of R. Dalglish, Falconer, & Co. It is, perhaps, the largest calico-printing firm in Scotland, their works at Campsie employing upwards of 1000 hands. Since his accession to the business, Mr. Dalglish has largely extended and improved the original works, so that they are now vastly superior to what they were at that time. Several substantial additions, including a large engraving shop, were recently made to meet the requirements of the firm. It is worthy of note that the father of Mr. Dalglish occupied as a dwelling-house the building now used as the offices of the firm in St Vincent Place--the business part of the city being at that time within a short radius of the Cross. To the son, however, the lines have fallen in more pleasant places, for his mansion at Kilmardinny, near Milngavie, is one of the most "highly desirable residences" in the West of Scotland. The grounds or policies attached to the house extend to 140 acres, and within recent years Mr. Dalglish has expended a great deal of both money and taste on his fine property.

Buchanan, 7069 Dalglish, 6764 Hastie, 5044

At every subsequent election Mr. Dalglish has been returned with acclamation. At one time he announced his intention to retire from Parliamentary duties, but a numerous and influential deputation from Glasgow waited upon and induced him to alter his resolution. At the General Election of 1868, the electors raised a subscription, to which men of all ranks and all shades of politics contributed, to defray his election expenses, and so liberal was the response made by his constituents that he was returned free of personal cost.

"A fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind;"

It would be unfair, however, to imply that Mr. Dalglish owes his influential position in the House of Commons to this speciality alone. No member is more regular in his attendance on Parliamentary duties. Mr. Dalglish is always in his place, and he is ever eager to promote the interests of his constituents. He has rendered yeoman service to the municipal affairs of the city, having sat on many committees appointed to deal with bills promoted by the Corporation. His solicitude to oblige his constituents is, indeed, only bounded by his ability to serve them, and the "open sesame" is seldom beyond his control. As a speaker he never did and never will excel, although he has several times, and notably on the question of the management of the dockyards, addressed the House.

In personal appearance, Mr. Dalglish is about the ordinary height. He has a genial and pleasant countenance, to which a long white beard imparts somewhat of a patriarchal aspect; and the merry twinkle of his keen, bright eye affords a capital index to his real character. His whole demeanour is that of a man in whom confidence may be reposed without fear of rebuff, and no man in the House could be more readily accessible to his constituents. Mr. Dalglish is considered to have as good a technical knowledge of the House of Commons' business as any private member in it.

Consistently with his Liberal principles, Mr. Dalglish voted for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Irish Church in 1869. He is in favour of the withdrawal of all State grants for religious purposes, and he is also an advocate for the assimilation of the county and borough franchise.

MR. WILLIAM GRAHAM.

Interesting is his distinct disgust at women which disappears after alcoholic drinks enough so as to enable him to carry out coitus. He was also near falling in love with a girl who had a boyish appearance. That betrays certain relations between boy and girl. The boys are loved when they show the traits of a beloved sister, the old men when they recall the father.

His path towards woman is blocked. Disgust and fear of infections cover more significant motives bearing a religious coloring. Every prostitute becomes the sister, a younger edition of the mother. Without analysis the genesis of this paraphilia cannot be understood. He avoids me because he is unwilling to discover the truth. The over-severe father seems to have roused in him the yearning for a kindlier one and to have determined the development of his feeling-attitude. An attachment to the sister seems also clearly discernible.

His family history is as follows: He is the only son of a very kindly man who died four years previously. The mother died at his birth and that has established in his mind an intimate association between coitus and death. He cannot help thinking of that association when with women. His father was extraordinarily tender with him, and for his sake never married again. When he was still young his father always played with him, devoting to him all his spare time. Later their relationship became even more intimate. There was a sort of marriage situation with his father.

It is significant also that at 5 years of age he played with a girl from the neighborhood, trying to imitate the father. He must have hurt the girl for she cried out, the nurse rushed in, a serious scene ensued, and he was severely chastised by the nurse.

An ugly impression was produced on him when he witnessed a terrible quarrel between their cook and the nurse who were jealous of each other on account of the father's attentions. They grabbed each other by the hair and the whole household was in an uproar. The cook had to leave the house at once. He believes that after that incident his father gave up all intimate relations with the women in the house. At 19 years of age he fell in love with the cashier of a coffee house and would have very much liked to possess her. But his father, to whom he told everything, warned him against all cashier women because they are usually diseased and infected. As a warning he told him that in his youth he once suffered very unpleasant consequences as the result of an affair with that kind of a woman and was even subjected to blackmail.

He filled his heart with a gruesome fear of woman. In addition to that he placed in his hands a book relating all about the evil consequences of sexual diseases, so that after that he did not dare come near a woman without the protection of a condom. After intercourse, which consisted merely of digital manipulations in his case, he had to bathe at once and to wash his genitals with soap several times. After homosexual acts he did not feel the compulsion to carry out these ablutions.

We now come to the analysis of his acts, which show themselves veritable compulsive manifestations. Suddenly he becomes restless, energetically tries to control himself, then paces back and forth for hours, until he falls into the hands of one of the male prostitutes who easily recognize their prospective victims. But as he never mentioned any name and never established any lasting intimate relations, he escaped blackmail. Once he thought that a certain masseur had studied his physiognomy and had later recognized him. He saw that fellow a few times in front of his home. Immediately he left Vienna and undertook an extensive journey which kept him for some months in foreign countries.

In the act he tried to find the love caresses of his father. He split love into its well recognized two components. The erotic side he reserved for elderly men, physicians, and the faithful elderly friends,--while for sexuality proper he turned exclusively towards men of low rank. Similarly he divided his father's personality into two parts, the high-striving, intellectual, lofty-minded father, and the woman fancier, the lover of ordinary servant girls. He was still playing the r?le of a male but during the act he regressed back to childhood, becoming again a child who longs for the father's tender love squandered on servant girls. Moreover the ordinary males also had the traits of servants, they were of the servant class.

We have here an instance of the transposition of the love of servant girls to males. He had always a weakness for servant girls and since he feared he might yet get tangled up in marriage with a cook, he tried to keep away from them. Only once in the home of a friend he embraced suddenly a cook and passionately kissed her. "I could have without a doubt cohabited with her," he told me. But he soon quit visiting that particular friend....

He identified himself completely with the father. He lived in his own house, acted like the father, had the same kind of wardrobe, although his father had aged a great deal. But in one respect he wanted to be different. He engaged therefore a male servant and always took his meals outside, so as to have no cook in the house. But that servant he kept always at a certain distance. He did not care to have any love affairs with servants in the house, like his father.

He showed an idiosyncrasy against certain female occupations. Nurses in their garb he would have gladly torn to pieces. He also hated all nuns. It was not well for any woman to rouse his anger. He could be very dangerous when roused. He confesses entertaining as his favorite phantasy the thought of tearing to pieces a woman.

That hatred of women made him impotent and drove him into the homosexual path. For he was afraid of himself when finding himself alone in the presence of a woman. He rushed away from houses of prostitution suddenly, as if a thousand demons were after him.

Here we found a complete fixation on the father, which had to be overcome first in order to free the path to woman which had become obstructed by all sorts of infantile imperatives. Neither the mother nor the persons who trained him during his earlier years play any r?le in the psychogenesis of his homosexuality; on the other hand there was his strong sadistic attitude towards women which showed itself in a personally baffling fear of women.

We must also bear in mind that many children gravitate to the mother only because they feel themselves neglected by the father, because they hate the father, and are unable to attain a proper feeling-attitude towards him. Precisely that overstressed love of the mother and the obvious antagonism against the father adroitly covers the fixation on the father.

I will now report three similar cases from my own practice, relating only the important details:

In reference to the Citation Amendment Act, which has put an end to keyhole citations in small debt cases throughout Scotland, we may remark that Mr. Anderson aimed, in introducing this measure, at the amelioration of the poorer classes, on whom the keyhole system pressed with undue severity. Previous to the passing of the new Act the officer appointed to serve a summons was permitted--if he did not find the defender at home, or could not obtain access to his house--to place the summons in the keyhole, after six knocks at the door, or to affix it to the gate; and whilst many accidents might readily occur to prevent its reaching the hands of the proper party, it was also not unfrequent for some one interested to take it away, and thus a decree in absence was too readily obtained.

In the Trades' Union and Criminal Amendment Bills he attempted several amendments on behalf of the working man, and was successful in some, particularly in excluding the jurisdiction of Justices of Peace from such cases in Scotland, which renders that Act less oppressive in Scotland than it is in England.

We may briefly indicate, in reference to the rest of Mr. Anderson's Parliamentary career, that he has voted in favour of Mr. Mundella's motion against the increase of the Army Estimates. He has supported the bill for the legalizing of marriage with a deceased wife's sister, and voted in favour of the Irish Church and Land Bills. On the 9th May, 1871, he voted in favour of Mr. Miall's proposed resolution for the disestablishment of the Church of England; while as cognate to this subject, we may add, that he has opposed Mr. M'Laren's Annuity Tax Bill, as well as the Church Rates Bill; though, in speaking to his constituents in 1871, he claimed to have been the means of bringing about the settlement of the Annuity Tax question.

During the last two sessions he has repeatedly called the attention of the Home Secretary to the prevalence and results of betting advertisements, and urged the need of further legislation. On mercantile subjects Mr. Anderson is considered somewhat of an authority, and in 1869, when the English Bankruptcy Bill came on, his knowledge of the Scotch system, which the English commercial members wished to adopt, was of some use, and enabled him to take a considerable share in the discussion of the clauses, and to carry a number of amendments, though failing in some important ones, he has taken an active part also in amending the Assurance Companies Bill, and in almost every discussion bearing upon the commercial relations of the country. Speaking against Mr. Delahunty's Money Law Bill in the session of 1869, he declared with reference to the proposed abolition of small notes in Ireland, that "if the House came to the conclusion that small notes ought to be abolished in Ireland, a proposal to abolish them also in Scotland would probably follow; and that it was only with the assistance of her small notes that Scotland had maintained her place in commerce and manufactures by the side of so enormously wealthy a country as England." It is worthy of note that Mr. Anderson is a convert to the abolition of the game laws, which until the session of 1870 he had wished to see only amended, not repealed. He is also in favour of the abolition of the laws of entail and hypothec. Mr. Anderson seems to have a thorough detestation of anything like jobbery. He has several times, by judicious questions in the House, succeeded in stopping a job--such, for instance, as the Colonel Shute scandal, and the proposed pension to the Military Secretary--and though he is a general supporter of Mr. Gladstone's Government he never hesitates either to vote or to speak against them when he thinks them wrong; and as no Government can see any merit in merely supporting them when they are right, he is naturally no great favourite in high quarters.

Mr. Anderson voted against any grant to Prince Arthur, and explained that he "thought it unfair that savings by the abolition of old offices on the civil list should go to the Crown, while the burden of establishing new princes was to be thrown on the people." He has also voted in a minority of four in favour of Sir Charles Dilke's motion for enquiring into the expenditure, under the various classes prescribed by the Civil List Act, declining to accept the general opinion that the vote was a Republican vote, merely because Sir C. Dilke moved it, and as a protest against the Government for refusing the information, and the Opposition Benches for endeavouring to howl down the motion.

Mr. Anderson's speeches are always short, unadorned, and practical. He has endeavoured, by moving a resolution, to reduce the inordinate length of the speeches in the House as the only way of saving time to get through the yearly increasing work of legislation, and he has proposed some other resolutions for facilitating the business of the House.

SIR JAMES CAMPBELL.

Glasgow cannot lay claim to a hereditary aristocracy. She has, however, what is infinitely better for the purposes of commercial, political, and social progress--an aristocracy of energy, talent, and moral worth. There are very few of her merchants and manufacturers who have not been the architects of their own fortune. The pioneers of her industrial prosperity do not build their aspirations and hopes upon a few broad acres, or a pedigree stretching backwards to the time of William the Conqueror. These maybe fine things in their way, and, like an antique jewel, they may serve very well to wear on special occasions, or to treasure as an antiquary would do some rare coin or "auld nick-nacket." But the magnates of Glasgow have a juster and more legitimate cause for pride; their ambition is of a less ornamental, but far more useful kind. The Youngs, the Napiers, the Elders, the Campbells, and the Bairds are, after all, your true and permanent nobility. All that is not the direct result of merit and industry can only induce vanity and vexation of spirit. It is no uncommon thing to hear men who have been pitchforked into an affluent position--whose progenitors may have taken part in the "forty-five"--to go no further back--look with disdain upon the pretensions of those who have, within the short span of a single lifetime, realised a colossal fortune. But Catullus has truly said that there's "nothing so foolish as the laugh of fools," and many men still require to be taught that--

"Honour and fame from no condition rise,"

although the fact is every day patent to the most casual observation.

With reference to Sir James's public career a great deal might be written, and yet the gist of it might be comprised in a few sentences. Both he and his brother William, so well known as Mr. Campbell of Tillichewan, were for a long time members of the Town Council, and Sir James occupied for the statutory period of three years--from 1840 to 1843--the position of Lord Provost. It was while Sir James filled the civic chair that the heir apparent to the Throne was born, and to mark the occurrence of such an important event, as well as in recognition of the active part which he took in connection with the festivities and demonstrations that happened in Glasgow to celebrate the same, he received from her Majesty the honour of knighthood. In 1837, he had come forward as a candidate for the representation of the city, conjointly with Mr. Monteith of Carstairs; but as he stood in the Conservative interest, and as Glasgow, even at that distance of time, was a Radical constituency, he was, despite his great local influence, defeated by a considerable majority. His opponents on this occasion were Lord William Bentinck, Mr. John Dennistoun, and Mr. Robert Monteith; and after a hard struggle the election terminated with the following result:--

Lord William Bentinck, 2767 John Dennistoun, 2743 Robert Monteith, 2121 James Campbell, 2090

Again in 1841, while Lord Provost, he was an unsuccessful candidate for the representation of the city, the poll terminating as follows:--

James Oswald, 2776 John Dennistoun, 2728 James Campbell, 2416 George Mills, 355

In every movement having for its object the promotion of the interests and well-being of Glasgow, Sir James has taken an active and useful part. Politically, his support and influence have had an important bearing upon the fortunes of the Conservative party in the West of Scotland; and to the Established Church, of which he has all along been a steadfast and warm adherent, he has contributed unwearied service.

On the 14th January, 1868, Sir James was entertained at a banquet in the Corporation Galleries in recognition of his private worth and his public services as a citizen of Glasgow. The banquet was so far official that the Lord Provost occupied the chair, and he was supported by most of the leading men of Glasgow. In proposing the health of Sir James, the Lord Provost declared that he had "for many years taken an active part, and still takes a deep interest in all municipal affairs;" and added, "he is well known as a warm and attached friend, a judicious counsellor, ever ready not only to lend his name and open his purse in the furtherance of all measures leading to the improvement of his fellow-citizens, but by taking such an active part in their management as shows his earnestness in accomplishing whatever he takes in hand." In the course of his speech, the Lord Provost also mentioned the interesting fact that, entering the Council in 1831, Sir James was one of the four surviving members of that body who presided over municipal affairs prior to the passing of the Borough Reform Bill--Mr. William Smith, Mr. William Brown, and Mr. Thomas Douglas being the other three.

Lady Campbell is a daughter of the late Mr. Henry Bannerman of Manchester, founder of the well-known firm of Henry Bannerman & Sons. It is a coincidence worthy of notice that the progenitors of the Bannerman family, with whom throughout the greater part of his life Sir James has been so closely identified, were also Perthshire farmers, occupying a comparatively humble rank in life.

Of Sir James Campbell's family, the eldest son, Mr. James A. Campbell, younger of Stracathro , now administers his father's interest in the business. His other and younger son, Mr. Henry Campbell, has, since 1868, represented the Stirling Burghs in Parliament, and now occupies a responsible post in the Government of his country as Financial Secretary in the War Office.

In his private capacity, Sir James is genial, accessible, and full of dry, pawky humour. He is in his proper element when entertaining a company of his friends, either at his town residence in Bath Street, or at his more delightful country mansion of Stracathro, near Brechin. Although upwards of eighty years of age, he is in the full possession of all his faculties, his sight alone excepted, and even his sense of vision is sufficiently retained to enable him to find his way in the most crowded thoroughfares of the city.

MR. JAMES YOUNG OF KELLY.

The whole range of industrial biography does not present a more signally successful career than that of Mr. James Young; nor can we find, in all the annals of aspiring genius, a more wonderful example of the ultimate triumph of mind over matter.

The origin of the inventor of paraffin oil was comparatively obscure. He was born in the Drygate of Glasgow--a street on which the operations of the City Improvement Trust have effected a wonderful transformation--where his father was a working cabinetmaker. After receiving what little schooling his parents were able to afford, Mr. Young commenced to assist his father--who had by this time established himself as his own master in the Calton--and while so employed he took to the study of Chemistry. For some time he attended the lectures of Professor Graham, the late Master of the Mint at the Andersonian University, and he showed such aptitude for science, that in a remarkably short time he became Mr. Graham's class assistant. In this capacity Mr. Young continued for seven years, and, as his subsequent career amply showed, he did not fail to improve his opportunities. After leaving the Andersonian, he followed Mr. Graham to London, when the latter was appointed to the Professorship of Chemistry in London University, and he continued to be associated with his old friend and master until he accepted the position of manager of Muspratt's Chemical Works at Newton, near Liverpool. Here he continued for four-and-a-half years, improving, of course, his acquaintance with the practical bearings of his favourite science, especially in regard to the manufacture of alkali and bleaching powder, the staple products of Muspratt's works. Mr. Young afterwards removed to Manchester, where he undertook a responsible position in Tennant's Chemical Works--a branch of Tennant's of Glasgow. This would be in the year 1843. While employed in Manchester he received from Dr. Lyon Playfair, whose acquaintance he had made while in the Andersonian University, a communication with reference to the existence of a petroleum spring in Derbyshire. This may almost be said to have been the turning point in Mr. Young's career. Dr. Playfair stated that in his brother-in-law's coal mine in Derbyshire there was a large quantity of petroleum, and he proposed that Mr. Young should investigate the mine, and judge if anything could be made out of it. A commission so responsible, and involving the exercise of so much scientific skill, was just suited to Mr. Young's fancy. He went and examined the springs, found petroleum dropping from the roof of the mine over the coal, and the result was that he took a lease of the spring, and worked the petroleum with the view to making it profitable. We may here explain that petroleum is of different kinds, although in all its diverse forms it retains the same qualities. It is an oleagenous substance, naturally evolved from the earth, and may be found in all degrees of thickness, from a very light substance found in some parts of Persia, to a thick viscid substance more indigenous to Britain. Before taking a lease of the petroleum spring, Mr. Young suggested the advisability of Tennant's people taking it up, but they said it was too small a matter for them. Mr. Young, however, in 1848, commenced to work the spring for himself, producing two different oils--one a thick oil for lubricating, and the other a thin oil for lamp burning. In course of time it became evident that the petroleum was almost worked out, and Mr. Young directed his attention to finding an artificial substitute for the natural oil. He had previously held the idea that the petroleum might be produced by the action of heat on the coal and the vapour going up into the sandstone to be condensed. He made a great many experiments in retorts, with the view of testing the practicability of this idea, and the results obtained were very various. He had no fixed data to guide him, and he sometimes got one thing, sometimes another. At last, however, success rewarded his labours, and he was entitled to exclaim--"Eureka!" Out of a cannel that came to be mixed with soda ash he obtained a quantity of liquid that contained paraffin. In the beginning of 1850, Mr. Bartholomew, of the City and Suburban Gas Works, Glasgow, showed Mr. Young some specimens of the Boghead coal, with which he renewed his experiments, distilling the mineral at a low temperature, until he evolved a considerable quantity of crude paraffin. Ultimately, Mr. Young, Mr. Meldrum, and Mr. Binney, to whom the discovery was imparted at the Edinburgh meeting of the British Association, in 1850, resolved on erecting works at Bathgate, in the centre of the Torbanehill coal district, for the manufacture of paraffin. Before setting out on this venture, however, Mr. Young took care to protect his invention by securing a patent. In 1851 the Bathgate works, which originally consisted of only two or three retorts, were set agoing, and from that time until the present hour their success has been uninterrupted. It is worth while mentioning that Mr. Young, during the whole course of his experiments, derived no advice or assistance whatever from the experience or conclusions of others who had preceded him in the same phase of chemical science, and that he had never either heard of or seen Reichenbach's letter to Dumas, upon which the claims of the German chemist to have been the original discoverer of paraffin were based. It is now generally admitted that Reichenbach was the real discoverer of paraffin. He found it as an ingredient in the tar obtained by distilling beechwood, as far back as 1830. What Reichenbach only dreamed about and hoped for, however, Mr. Young practically realised; and to our townsman is due the credit of having been the first to prepare paraffin as a commercial article from mineral sources.

The monopoly carried on by Mr. Young and his partners was broken down in October, 1864, by the expiry of the patent rights, and the dissolution of the partnership, and the Bathgate works subsequently passed into the hands of a limited liability company, by whom they are still owned and controlled, Mr. Young continuing to hold a large share, and the position of general manager. The amount paid for the works and plant by the new company was ?450,000, and we believe Mr. Young took shares to the extent of one-fourth of that amount; Mr. Pender, of Minard, the next largest shareholder, holding stock to the extent of ?70,000 more. The idea of erecting new works on a larger scale, and with more improved and modern appliances, in the West Calder district, was meanwhile conceived by Mr. Young. He selected a site on the estate of Addiewell, a mile west from the village of West Calder, extending to fully fifty acres of ground. Here he erected works that are still unrivalled in point of extent, and of which it may be said that they form an apt commentary on their projector's energy, intelligence, and enterprise. There being no accommodation in West Calder for a large body of workpeople, Mr. Young's first care was to erect suitable dwelling-houses. Very soon a new village of respectable proportions sprang into being, and the chemical works were pushed forward with equal celerity. The arrangement of Addiewell Chemical Works is admirably calculated for their purpose. They cover nearly a half of the entire site, the buildings as well as the mechanical appliances being on a gigantic scale. The retort sheds are upwards of 200 yards in length taken together, and each shed contains a double row of retorts. Altogether, there are no less than 354 retorts, capable of distilling more than 3000 tons of shale per week, and producing 120,000 gallons of crude oil, which yields 50,000 to 60,000 gallons of burning oil, in addition to about 12 tons of refined paraffin oil and a large quantity of lubricating oil. Each of the condensers contains several miles of piping. The main pipe, which collects the vapours from the retorts, is nearly a yard in diameter. One and a quarter million cubic feet of gas are manufactured at the works every day. Upwards of 1000 hands are employed. In the shale-pits adjoining, four hundred miners are regularly at work. The pits are conveniently near to the Addiewell Works, none of them being more than two miles off. A network of railway lines communicate with the various shale-pits, and five locomotives are regularly employed in the transit of minerals. A school, under Government inspection, is attached to the works, and the employ?s are exceptionably well off for house accommodation.

Within the limits of this article we cannot do full justice to the enormous industry of which Mr. Young is the founder. It is even claimed for Mr. Young's little factory at Alfreton that it was the parent, not only of the Scotch mineral oil trade, but also of that of America; for oil had never been distilled to produce an article of commerce until he commenced to work his patent there. From such a small beginning has arisen, within the short space of twenty-three years, one of the most important and extensive industries in the world. At the present time there are in Scotland altogether 65 oil-works, at 17 of which crude oil is manufactured and refined ready for the market. At 38 other works the crude oil alone is produced, and although most of the crude oil so made is refined at other works in Scotland, a not inconsiderable quantity is sent to the Welsh refiners, while some of it is sent to the Continent. Of the remaining works, 16 refine the crude oil only. There are altogether 3804 retorts in operation, both vertical and horizontal. It is a moot point, which is now engaging the attention of those in the trade, whether vertical or horizontal retorts are the best suited for the purposes in view. At Mr. Young's works, which are the largest and most important in Scotland, nothing but vertical retorts are used, it being considered that they possess an advantage over the horizontal kind in respect of their continuous feeding, but the latter are likewise very largely used. Of the 3404 retorts, however, there are seldom more than 3000 at work together. The remainder are usually standing idle, on account of repairs or some other cause. The average weekly production of crude oil at the Scotch works is nearly 120,000 gallons, and the number of men engaged in the trade in its various departments is estimated at little short of 6500. Assuming, as we may fairly do, that 3000 retorts are regularly at work, they will yield 21,800,000 gallons of crude oil, and distil 730,000 tons of shale annually; or, in other words, they will distil 13,000 to 14,000 tons of shale weekly. From the crude oil thus distilled there will be produced something like 10,000,000 gallons of refined burning oil annually, besides crude solid paraffin, and other products, such as naptha and lubricating oils. It is further calculated that the average wages paid in connection with this industry will reach between ?400,000 and ?500,000 per annum. The districts in which the manufacture is carried on are situated in Midlothian, Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, Fifeshire, and Linlithgowshire. The largest works are in the Midlothian and Linlithgowshire districts, the Fifeshire and Ayrshire works being comparatively limited in extent, and chiefly confined to the manufacture of crude oil. Some of the principal works have been considerably extended of late.

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