22 Mr. F. J. Bigger on Alexander Mitchell 



was over six feet in height ; upright in figure, with broad 

 shoulders. He had a strong and thoughtful face, expressive 

 features, clear gray eyes, which hardly suggested blindness, as he 

 turned to those he talked to, and seemed to look at them. His 

 blindness was caused by amaurosis, that is paralysis of the 

 nerves of the eye. Possibly his sight may have been over- 

 strained in his childhood, as I remember his telling how he and 

 a brother used to lie on the floor of the hall in Dublin, reading 

 by the dim light that came rom the street lamp, through the 

 fanlight over the door. 



Shortly after, he commenced the manufacture of bricks, on his 

 very slender patrimony he being the youngest but two, in a 

 family of thirteen children. This business he carried on with 

 moderate success for about thirty years, at the same time indulg- 

 ing his taste by many mechanical experiments. 



The house in which Mitchell lived, and where his five children 

 were born, was a small square two-storied cottage, with a fruit and 

 vegetable garden on the right, and a curving drive on the left, 

 which led out to a suburb of Belfast called Ballymacarrett. The 

 house lay between the Newtownards and Albert Bridge Roads, 

 near the present Ropeworks. 



When in his fifty-second year, a friend who had constructed a 

 dock in Belfast requested Alexander L. Mitchell to consider how 

 he could connect with it a plan for the repair of vessels of moderate 

 size, which should be neither a dry dock nor a patent slip, but 

 which should cost little, occupy but little space, and be worked at 

 small expense. 



This plan Alexander Mitchell perfected and patented in 1833, 

 the screw pile and screw mooring being essential parts of the work. 

 He was at this time in his fifty-third year, and entirely without the 

 use of sight. 



In 1837 he became an associate of the Institution of Civil 

 Engineers, during the presidency of the late Thomas Telford; and 

 in the year 1848 was elected a member, when he received the 

 Telford medal for a paper prepared for the occasion. 



In 1847 he had procured a renewal of his patent for fourteen 



