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effect ultimately of closing the whole of the old Whitby and 

 Guisborough works. 



Shortly after patenting the process, Mr. Spence selected 

 Manchester as a field for practical operations, his choice 

 being determined by the consideration that the raw materials 

 for the manufacture were there readily obtainable, whilst 

 the district as a centre of the dyeing and paper making 

 trades afforded a good market for the manufactured product. 



Although for some years the process did not pay, and the 

 prejudice of the consumers of potash alum had to be over- 

 come, the Manchester Alum Works eventually became the 

 largest of the kind extant, and the source of the purest alum, 

 no other make being now used by the great Lancashire or 

 Clyde turkey-red dyers. In 1855 Mr. Spence built another 

 alum works at Goole, to supply the East Coast trade. As a 

 commercial result of the new process, and of the operations 

 of rival works which arose on the expiry of the patent, it 

 may be mentioned that alum is now selling at less than 

 half its former price. 



For successive periods, extending over some 80 years, Mr. 

 Spence contracted for the gas liquor produced by the Man- 

 chester Corporation, amounting to some 5,000,000 galls, 

 per annum, and manufactured it into sulphate of ammonia. 

 He also for some years back converted into this valuable 

 fertilizer the gas liquor of the Birmingham Corporation, 

 amounting annually to 7,000,000 gallons. 



About eight years ago, in conjunction with one of his 

 sons, Mr. Spence brought out, as an extremely cheap source 

 of soluble alumina, a compound made from Bauxite, termed 

 " aluminoferric." This article, produced in the form of large 

 blocks or slabs, was designed as a sizing agent for paper, and 

 precipitant of suspended and other foreign matters in im- 

 pure waters. Its action in the latter case depends on the 

 mordanting property of alumina a ad peroxide of iron, which 

 seize upon and rapidly carry down the whole of the me- 



