NATURE 



145 



THURSDAY, DECEMBER 16, \i 



THE PALISSY OF CALICO-PRINTING 



The Life and Labours of fohn Mercer, F.R.S. By 



Edward A. Parnell. (London : Longmans and Co., 



18S6.) 



I "HE subject of this memoir was one of the most 



1 



remarkable men of his time. A son of the soil, 



and almost wholly self-taught, he effected what was prac- 

 tically a revolution in one of our staple industries by his 

 discoveries in technical chemistry and by his application 

 of chemical principles to the dyer's art. With no labora- 

 tory training other than that which he gave himself, he 

 by his skill and sagacity as an experimentalist added enor- 

 mously to the resources of a great industry : owing nothing 

 to academies, and uninfluenced by schools of learning, 

 he made himself master of the chemical philosophy of his 

 time, and by the acuteness and originality of his specu- 

 lations he has permanently influenced the development 

 of theoretical chemistry. In Lancashire, the scene of his 

 work, the name of John Mercer is held in hardly less 

 esteem than that of John Dalton ; and probably to many 

 people in Cottonopolis the director of the Oakenshaw 

 Print-Works was a far more important personage than 

 the old Quaker in George Street, who gave lessons in the 

 Neiv System of Chemical Philosophy at the rate of half-a- 

 crown an hour. The -Atomic Theory has doubtless con- 

 tributed much to the intellectual greatness of Manchester, 

 and Manchester men are not ungrateful : they have 

 named one of their streets after its illustrious author. 

 Still calicoes and calico-printing are what they have to live 

 by, and although they have not yet, so far as we know, 

 named a street after John Mercer, they have shown, by 

 the widespread adoption of his processes, a very practical 

 appreciation of the value of his labours. 



John Mercer is the Palissy of calico-printing. Not 

 that there was anything in the least degree tragic in the 

 life of the Lancashire dyer ; his career was one of almost 

 uninterrupted success, and his domestic peace was un- 

 clouded. But he had the great potter's indomitable will 

 and fi.xity of purpose ; his unwearied patience and unre- 

 mitting industry. Both men had the same high ideal of 

 their art and the same contempt for false work. Each 

 began his life at the bottom rung of the social ladder, and 

 each found his life's work in a direction other than that 

 in which he set out. Both were men of strong religious 

 feeling, and both left the faith of their forefathers in com- 

 pliance with the dictates of principle, but with this differ- 

 ence, that whilst the Huguenot artist found the Bastille 

 and death, John Mercer could build his Sunday-schools in 

 peace and quietness, and find contentment in a standard 

 of doctrine which Mr. Matthew Arnold has characterised 

 as the product of a mind of the third order. 



John Mercer was born on February 21, 1791, at Dean, 

 near Blackburn. His father was originally a hand-loom 

 weaver, but the development of the factory system had 

 led him to take to agriculture. He died when the son 

 was barely nine years old, and John was set to work as a 

 " bobbin-winder." A pattern-designer belonging to the 

 Oakenshaw Print-Works, in which Mercer was destined 

 to play so considerable a part, gave him his first lessons in 

 Vol. XXXV.— No. 894 



reading and writing ; and the Excise-surveyor at the same 

 works (it was in the days when each square yard of printed 

 calico paid an Excise duty of threepence) taught him the 

 elements of arithmetic. He soon became noted for his 

 aptitude at figures, and later on for his skill in music ; and 

 for a time he found a congenial exercise for his artistic 

 faculty in the band of a militia corps. Music remained a 

 passion with him throughout his life, and although, we 

 are told, a man of great self-possession, he was sometimes 

 entirely overcome by it. Mercer was sixteen years of 

 age, and had settled down apparently to the work of a 

 hand-loom weaver, when a very slight incident — as slight 

 as that which made Palissy a potter — gave an entirely new 

 direction to his thoughts. His mother, it appears, had 

 married again. Visiting her one day, John was so much 

 struck with the orange colour of the dress of his little 

 step-brother on her knee, that, to use his own words, he 

 "was all on fire to learn dyeing." He had no means of 

 obtaining instruction : he had no book on the subject, nor 

 could he procure any receipts. He found, however, that 

 the dyers of Blackburn, some five miles distant, obtained 

 their materials from a certain druggist in that town. 

 Mercer repaired to him, and requested to be supplied 

 with materials for dyeing. "What do you want?" in- 

 quired the shopman. " I can't tell you," replied John ; 

 " will you tell me the names of all the different materials 

 you sell the dyers here ? " " Oh, I sell them peach-wood. 

 Brazil-wood, logwood, quercitron, alum, copperas, and 

 others," mentioning their names. Mercer reckoned his 

 money, and found he could afford threepence for each 

 dye-stuff. Armed with these articles he returned home, 

 "full," as he says, "of dyeing and dyeing materials." 

 He seems to have been fortunate in obtaining the use of 

 a convenient place for his experiments, where he had all 

 the necessary apparatus for small trials. Here he com- 

 menced entirely by " rule-of-thumb " ; but by industry and 

 close observation he acquired considerable knowledge of 

 the properties of dye-stuffs, and ascertained the methods 

 of dyeing in most of the colours then in vogue. 



To become a dyer was now the dominant idea of 

 Mercer's life. Everything comes to him who waits, and 

 fortunately for Mercer, as it seemed at the time, he had 

 not to wait long. The Messrs. Fort, the proprietors of 

 the Oakenshaw Print-Works, heard of the success of his 

 dyeing experiments, and offered him an apprenticeship in 

 the colour-shop of their factory. It was one thing to get 

 inside a colour-shop and quite another to get any infor- 

 mation there. No workmen are more jealous of their 

 arcana than the foremen of colour-shops : their know- 

 ledge even to-day is almost entirely empirical, and their 

 secrets are invested with a degree of mystery which is 

 frequently ludicrously disproportionate to their value. 

 After ten months' irksome labour Mercer's indentures 

 were cancelled. The Continental disturbances of iSio 

 reacted disastrously upon all industries connected with 

 the cotton manufacture, and the " Berlin decree," which 

 led to the destruction of all printed calicoes and other 

 goods of English manufacture then in bond in certain 

 European States, was severely felt by the Lancashire 

 printing establishments. Mercer was forced for a time 

 to abandon the calling of a colour-mixer, and to return to 

 his work at the hand-loom. But his brains were still 

 among his colour-pots. It was characteristic of the man, 



