xii Amputation of Wedgwood's Right Leg 125 



making me some wooden legs. As lie can forge iron, 

 file extremely well, and cast in various metals, I shall 

 employ him in making and repairing engine lathes, 

 punched by tools of various sorts. If his character be 

 good, he is just the very man I want." 



In writing to her agents in London, Mrs. Wedgwood 

 says : " The peg leg is much wanted." In February 

 1769, he writes that he cannot attend the Grand Trunk 

 Canal meeting, because his leg was repairing ! He had 

 an immense deal of trouble indeed with his pin leg ! 

 In a letter to Mr. Steward, written by Wedgwood him- 

 self at a later date, he regrets that he had met with a 

 slight hurt, which rendered him unable to wear his 

 artificial leg, and thereby confined himself at home; 

 but he added : " I have now got well, and go abroad 

 again, though I am not fond of doing so in frosty 

 weather, being not so expert a footman as I have been, 

 and a slip or accident to my better leg might lay me 

 up for good and all." 



There was a great deal of trouble about the " spare 

 leg." In a letter to his brother in London, Wedgwood 

 said : " Send me by the next waggon a spare leg, which 

 you will find, I believe, in the closet. ... I shall make 

 a wretched walker in the dark with a wooden leg." At 

 the same time there was a large demand for Vases, 

 which Wedgwood did his best to supply. He went to 

 London in February 1769, and superintended the opera- 

 tions there for six weeks. After his return to Burslem, 

 he wrote to Bentley at Liverpool, who had just re- 



