CHAPTER I 



PARENTAGE AND YOUTH 



IN the little town of Haddington during last century 

 several generations of Ramsays carried on the craft of 

 dyers. At length one of the family, William by name, 

 the son and grandson of previous Williams who had 

 been content to pursue their calling by the banks 

 of the East Lothian Tyne, determined to push his 

 fortune in a wider sphere. He appears to have been 

 a man of high principle and great energy, wide-minded 

 and good - tempered, with a strong bent towards 

 chemical pursuits, and not a little originality as an 

 investigator. About the year 1785 he went to 

 Glasgow, and became there junior partner in the 

 firm of Arthur and Turnbull, manufacturers of wood- 

 spirit and pyroligneous acid. Besides making dyers' 

 chemicals and a variety of Prussian blue still known 

 as ' Turnbull's Blue,' this firm was the first to manu- 

 facture ' chloride of magnesia ' as a bleaching liquor, 

 and also 'bichrome.' Had William Ramsay patented 

 some of his processes, it was generally believed among 

 his friends that he might have become one of the 

 richest men in the west of Scotland. But he did not 

 consider himself entitled to retain for his own behoof 

 a discovery which, if made widely known, would 



