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While still very young, Mr. Pattinson left Alston for Newcastle-on- 

 Tyne, to occupy a situation in a soap-work, and his position there, 

 though a subordinate one, afforded him facilities for pursuing his 

 favourite study. A few years after this he was appointed Assay- 

 Master to the Commissioners of Greenwich Hospital, the chief duty 

 of his office being to inspect, as to quality and quantity, the ores 

 which are levied as royalties from the extensive lead mines in his 

 native district belonging to that establishment. It was while thus 

 employed, and when his mind was directed to the improvement of 

 metallurgic operations, that he was led to discover his admirable and 

 now well-known process for extracting the silver from argentiferous 

 lead. Returning to Newcastle after a few years, to undertake the 

 management of Mr. Beaumont's lead-smelting and refining- works in 

 that neighbourhood, he was enabled to put in practice his method of 

 de-silvering lead, for which he took out a patent. The profits thence 

 accruing afforded him the means to establish, in partnership with 

 two of his friends, a chemical manufactory at Felling, which, through 

 subsequent additions, has become one of the most extensive in the 

 district ; and at a later period he discovered and brought into prac- 

 tical use a method of separating magnesia from the limestone rock 

 containing that earth, and a process for producing oxychloride of 

 lead, a valuable pigment, directly from the ore. 



But while thus engaged in improving industrial chemistry, Mr. 

 Pattinson was not unconcerned in matters of more purely scientific 

 interest ; and it is more especially deserving of mention, that, contem- 

 poraneously with Mr. Armstrong, he was one of the first to give an 

 account of the remarkable fact of the evolution of electricity by 

 effluent steam. He was also attached to the study of astronomy ; 

 and although he took little part in its pursuit as a practical observer, 

 he possessed an elegant observatory, furnished with a transit-instru- 

 ment, and also an admirable equatoreal, which, as is known to many 

 of the Society, he liberally lent to Professor Piazzi Smyth, to be 

 used by that gentleman in his recent expedition to Teneriffe. 



Mr. Pattinson was elected a Fellow of this Society on the 3rd of 

 June, 1852; he belonged also to the Royal Astronomical, Geological, 

 and Chemical Societies : his death took place at Scots' House, his 

 residence near Newcastle, on the llth of November, 1858. 



