Manchester Memoirs, Vol. Ivii. (191 3), No. IT. ZZ 



people. I think that it is doubtful whether any event of 

 equal significance has occurred in modern times. We 

 have, therefore, this curious result, that Sir Henry 

 Bessemer has certainly been the great apostle of democ- 

 racy, although I have never heard that he made this claim. 



Goransson, to whose aid Bessemer owed so much of his 

 first success, died at Sandviken, Sweden, in 1900, at the age 

 of eighty-one. He was chairman of the Board of Directors 

 and founder of the famous Sandvik iron and steel works. 

 In 1865 he received the gold medal of the Swedish Jern- 

 kontor. He was a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal 

 Wasa Order and a Knight of the Royal Order of the 

 Polar Star. He was a man of the broadest culture and of 

 a most lovable personalit}'. On the occasion of the visit 

 of the Iron and Steel Institute to Sweden in 1898, Mr. 

 Goransson, although very infirm, welcomed the members, 

 in an English speech, to the Sandvik works. 



The greatest of this great trio of octogenarians, Sir 

 Henry Bessemer, died, in 1898, at the age of 85, at his 

 residence at Denmark Hill. He had been much affected by 

 the loss of his wife in the previous year, after a happy union 

 of more than sixt)' }'ears. More fortunate than some great 

 pioneer inventors, he reaped a full reward for his ingenuity 

 and perseverance. In royalties alone he is said to have 

 received altogether a sum considerably over a million 

 sterling. He was less fortunate in "honorary" rewards, as 

 these were insignificant in view of his great services to the 

 industrial world. The Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, 

 which the Emperor Napoleon offered him in 1856, he was 

 not permitted to accept, and the British Government only 

 tardily acknowledged his services to the Inland Revenue 

 Office in 1879. In 1858 the Institution of Civil Engineers 

 awarded him the gold Telford medal. After the suc- 

 cessful establishment of his process in Austria, he received 



