184 Annual Report of the Council. 



on a flat in Dale Street, Manchester, with a capital 

 of £63, being encouraged and supported in his enterprise 

 by the Brothers Grant, then residing in Mosley Street, 

 Manchester, the originals of Dickens's Cheeryble 

 Bros. Owing to a difference with the tenant below 

 him, he left this flat at the end of two years, and 

 removed to Patricroft, where he built the Bridgewater 

 Foundry. In 1839 he received an order for forging the 

 paddle shaft for the steamship Great Britain, but as no forge 

 hammer then in use was capable of forging a shaft 30in. 

 in diameter, he invented the steam hammer to overcome the 

 difficulty. He married, in 1840, Anne Hartrop, daughter 

 of the manager of some ironworks near Barnsley, belonging 

 to Eari Fitzwilliam. In 1842 he made some steam hammers 

 for the French Government, and travelled through France 

 and Italy. In 1843 he- visited St. Petersburg, Stockholm, 

 and Dannemora. He used to transact his business in the 

 morning and devote the afternoon to seeing the country. 

 In 1843 he applied the principle of the steam hammer to a 

 pile driver, which is so ingeniously arranged that the 

 whole weight of the machine, in addition to the force 

 of the blow, acts on the top of the pile. In addition 

 to mechanical engineering, he also took a great interest in 

 astronomy. He made for himself a 20-inch reflecting 

 telescope, with which he carried out some interesting 

 researches on the moon, and in June, i860, discovered the 

 willow-leaf pattern on the sun's surface. He gave a lecture on 

 the moon before the British Association at Edinburgh in 1850. 

 In 1856 he retired from business. He became a member of 

 the Society on August nth, 1837, and in 1862 was 

 elected an honorary member, on his removal from Man- 

 chester. He spent the last 35 years of his life at Penshurst, 

 in Kent, and died of old age at Bailey's Hotel, South 

 Kensington, on May 7th, 1890. To the Society's 

 Memoirs, he contributed the following : — " Remarks on 



