382 Mr. E. Beckett Denison, [March 6, 



method of hanging makes it troublesome and expensive to turn 

 the bell in the stock, to present a new surface to the clapper when 

 it is worn thin in one place, and many bells have been cracked in 

 consequence. A Mr. Baker took out a patent a few years ago for 

 several new modes of hanging, for the purpose of enabling bells 

 to be turned in the stock. The first is simply making a hole in 

 the crown and hanging the bell by a single large bolt, which also 

 spreads out into the staple to carry the clapper. The objection to 

 this is, that nobody would like to trust the weight of a large swing- 

 ing bell to a single bolt if he could use several instead ; because, 

 although a single bolt can of course be made large enough to carry 

 anything, yet if there is any flaw or bad workmanship in it, the result 

 would be something frightful with a large bell ; at any rate, nobody 

 who expressed an opinion about it on either of the two occasions 

 when it was exhibited at the Institute of Architects, nor any one 

 whom I have consulted about the making or hanging of the West- 

 minster bells, nor indeed anybody anywhere whose opinion is worth 

 mentioning, so far as I can learn, approves of such a mode of 

 hanging a large bell like this, even though it does not swing, and 

 therefore I declined Mr. Baker's invitation to adopt it. His other 

 method, as described in a recent pamphlet and in his specification, 

 is to cast a thickish pipe on the top of the bell, which is to go 

 through the stock and be fastened with a large nut, just as his iron 

 bolt was in the other plan : only the clapper bolt is now inde- 

 pendent and goes through this pipe, and is held by another smaller 

 nut on the top of it. This seems to me to combine the two vices 

 of the weakness of canons and the risk of a single bolt in the most 

 complete manner, with the addition of a thread cut on this bell- 

 metal pipe, which is about as weak a construction as possible. I 

 should think no person in his senses would use such a plan : in fact, 

 Mr. Baker himself did not seem to contemplate using it, but only 

 put it into his patent, as patentees do, with the object of securing 

 possession of every possible new method of doing the thing in ques- 

 tion they can think of : but as patentees also do sometimes, he left 

 out at least one method which is better than those which he put in, 

 and that is the following- 



On the top of the bell is cast what has been called a button 

 and a mushroom ; and either name will do well enough, except that 

 a mushroom has not a hole through it, and buttons have more than 

 one. It is in fact a very thick short neck, with a strong flanch 

 round the top, which is fastened to the stock, in moderate sized 

 bells, merely by bolts with hooked ends ; and in very large ones, by 

 bolts passed through a collar, bolted together in two pieces. The 

 clapper (if there is one) is hung by a separate bolt, which goes 

 through the hole in the neck and through the stock ; and it has 

 nothing to do with carrying the weight of the bell, unless you like 

 to make it with a shoulder, so as to help the outside bolts. By this 

 method you hang the bell by a lump of its own metal as large as 



