A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



despotism of Ambrose Crowley afford an inter- 

 esting example of one of the earliest efforts after 

 industrial betterment. 



The attempt to found a new industry at 

 Shotley Bridge by bringing over German sword- 

 makers from the world-renowned Soligen was 

 a reversion on the one side to the methods of 

 Burghley ; but there is an essential difference be- 

 tween the Elizabethan experiments and the 

 attempt in the reign of Anne : the one was the 

 work of a statesman, the other of a private com- 

 pany. The disaster of the Stuarts was too fresh 

 in every one's mind for quasi-royalist company- 

 promoting to be countenanced. But . to turn 

 from these interesting industrial experiments to 

 the region of inventions, here too Durham can 

 claim to have left her mark. It seems but 

 natural that a maritime county the chief indus- 

 try of which is ship-building should have been 

 the birthplace of the lifeboat, and the honour of 

 this invention undoubtedly belongs to South 

 Shields. Durham has never taken a foremost 

 part in the textile industry ; still, a Darlington 

 man, John Kendrew, was the first to apply 

 machinery to the spinning of flax, though it was 

 the Marshals of Leeds who utilized the inven- 

 tion on a sufKciently large scale to render it a 

 financial success. Coal is the staple industry 

 of Durham, and Bailey in his well-known 

 General View of the Agriculture of the County 

 claims for George Dixon the discovery of coal 

 tar. The discovery is generally attributed to 

 Lord Dundonald, but he did not take out his 

 patent until 1781, when George Dixon had 

 been supplying the Sunderland shipbuilders with 

 coal tar from his works at Cockfield near Barnard 

 Castle for fully two years. Dixon claimed to 

 have arrived at his results twenty years before 

 putting them into practice. On the other hand 

 there is no evidence to prove that Dundonald 

 took out his patent as soon as he made his dis- 

 covery, in fact, as he was generally penniless, the 

 immediate realization of his discovery is im- 

 probable. There is, however, not the slightest 

 doubt that Dixon was a man of ingenious and 

 inventive mind. He was unquestionably among 

 the first to realize the potentialities for illuminat- 

 ing purposes that lay in coal. Bailey describes 

 with every mark of verisimilitude being present 

 as a boy when Dixon with the very rudest appli- 

 ances, a kettle half filled with coal, tobacco 

 pipes, a lump of clay for fastening the pipe to 

 the spout, and a hot fire, succeeded in producing 

 a brilliant light. A serious explosion which took 

 place while Dixon was pursuing further investiga- 

 tions into the nature of coal tar led him to 

 abandon all hope of being able to apply his dis- 

 covery practically. The use of gas for the light- 

 ing of mines or houses seemed to him fraught 

 with too much danger to be feasible. Unfor- 

 tunately somewhat the same story is told of Dun- 

 donald. It is impossible to decide between the 



276 



rival claims of two men working at the same 

 time at the same subject, but Dundonald is 

 universally accepted as the inventor of coal-tar; 

 the patent too stands in his name, and as, 

 according to Bailey himself, Dixon relinquished 

 the manufacture in 1783 as unprofitable, Dun- 

 donald seems substantially to have the greater 

 claim. 



It is, however, beyond dispute that friction 

 matches were invented at Stockton. In April, 

 1827, Mr. John Walker, a chemist by trade, but 

 a scientific investigator by nature and training, 

 while experimenting with an explosive mixture 

 dashed some of it on the hearth-stone, the friction 

 produced explosion, and suggested to the experi- 

 menter the idea of the friction match. The 

 first box sold contained fifty matches, made like 

 the old-fashioned fusees with double tips ; a piece 

 of folded sand-paper was supplied with each box, 

 the total cost being a shilling. The exact com- 

 position of the mixture was never divulged, but 

 Walker described the contents of the box as 

 sulphurated hyperoxygenated matches, and it is 

 doubtless owing to his lack of business capacity 

 that he derived but slight advantage from his 

 invention.^ Before the introduction of railways 

 trade followed the rivers. Iron and steel forges 

 and paper-mills clustered round the Derwent, 

 abundant coal and iron were near it, and the 

 rapid fall in the lower part of the river supplied 

 a motive power of more importance at that time 

 than in these days of electricity and steam. On 

 the southern banks of the Tyne, salt, glass, and, 

 at a later date, chemicals and shipbuilding were 

 the chief industries. A network of mills — linen, 

 wool, and worsted — were on either side of the 

 Skerne ; and the same description fits both Wear 

 and Tees — carpet-weaving in the higher reaches 

 of the river, shipbuilding and potteries in the 

 lower. But Durham is the home of lost indus- 

 tries ; at the beginning of the nineteenth century 

 the county had a world-wide reputation for 

 pottery, glass, carpets, linen, leather, mustard, 

 and nails ; for all practical purposes these 

 industries are now extinct. Almost all the 

 towns had their tanneries. Darlington especially, 

 in the days of slow methods and excellent wear 

 before chrome and chemicals were so exten- 

 sively used, counted amongst its inhabitants many 

 tanners and many dyers ; now worsted has to be 

 sent into Yorkshire to be dyed, and one small 

 tannery represents the multitude of tan-yards 

 given in early directories and maps. When 

 Arthur Young travelled through the north, he 

 reports that round the city of Durham 



there is much mustard cultivated. The farmers sow 

 it alone, on good rich moist ground, and on that which 

 is pared and burnt. They get from thirty to one 

 hundred bush<;ls per acre, some crops worth ;^I0O an 

 acre have been known. 



1 Arch. Ael. (New Ser.), vii, 217. 



