COAL-TAR DYES 259 



The next year, with money lent to him by his father, who 

 risked all his hard-earned capital in the enterprise, he set 

 up works at Greenford Green, near Harrow, on the Grand 

 Junction Canal, and here in company with his brothers he 

 produced the new dye, which soon became the rage. 



' As I look out of my window now,' remarks a writer of 

 1859, ' the apotheosis of Perkin's purple seems at hand : 

 purple hands wave from open carriages, purple hands shake 

 each other at street doors, purple hands threaten each other 

 from opposite sides of the street ; purple stripe gowns cram 

 barouches, jam up cabs, throng steamers, fill railway stations, 

 all flying countryward like so many migrating birds of 

 paradise ; purple ribbons fill the windows ; purple gowns 

 circle out at shop entrances ; purple feather fans beckon to 

 you in windows. We shall soon have purple omnibuses and 

 purple houses ; there is everywhere a glut of this white and 

 violet which is a great deal more agreeable than perpetual 

 partridge.' l 



This was the beginning of the Coal-tar Colour Industry, for 

 Perkin obtained his mauve from Aniline, and aniline is obtained 

 from Coal Tar. 



If we put some powdered coal into the bowl of a clay pipe, 

 and seal it up so that no air can get to it, and then heat it, 

 after a time gas issues from the other end of the pipe. This 

 is the coal gas which we burn in our houses. In gas works, 

 in the place of the bowl of a pipe great retorts are used which 

 are heated by furnaces, and the gas which is obtained is stored 

 in those enormous gasometers with which we are all familiar. 

 But the gas which issues from the retorts is not pure, and, 

 in order to purify it, it is passed into water contained in 

 a great pipe called a hydraulic main. 



Some of the impurities sink to the bottom of the main, 

 and some pass on with the gas, which has to be subjected to 

 other processes of purification before it is suitable for purposes 

 of illumination. The impurities at the bottom of the hydraulic 

 main form a thick, black, sticky substance, called Coal Tar. 



1 Quoted in Burnley's Romance of Modern Industry. 

 R2 



