INDUSTRIES 



PRINTING AND PRINTING MACHINERY 



Very early in the history of printing a 

 press was set up in Southwark by Peter 

 Treveris who here printed, as the imprimatur 

 shows, Trevisa's translation of Higden's Poly- 

 chron'tcon in the year 1500. In 1529 this 

 was followed by the earliest English Herbal 

 printed by the same printer.* In 1536 the 

 Bible was first printed in its entirety in Eng- 

 land in the English language at Southwark 

 by James Nycholson under the patronage of 

 St. Thomas's Hospital.' 



A curious press from which issued a num- 

 ber of Puritan tracts in or about the year 

 1572, and the whereabouts of which it was 

 necessary at the time to conceal with a con- 

 siderable amount of mystery, has been conjec- 

 tured to have been at Wandsworth. One 

 of these tracts has the following on the title 

 page : Certaine Articles collected and taken [as 

 it is thought) by the Byshops out of a little boke 

 entituled an Admonition to the Parliament, wyth 

 an Answere to the same. Containing a confir- 

 mation of the sayde Booke in shorte notes . . . 

 Imprinted we know where, and whan, jfudge 

 you the place, and you can. I.T.I.S., and on 

 the same title the last two lines of a verse of 

 eight run : — 



You will marvel where it was fynished, 

 And you shall know (perchance) when domes- 

 day is ended. 



Three other tracts of a like tendency, all from 

 the similarity of type and appearance printed 

 at the same press, are known to exist.^ 



We need not doubt that printing in some 

 form or another has been carried on contin- 

 uously at one place or another in Surrey from 

 this latter date until the nineteenth century, 

 although we are in possession of no facts 

 concerning the industry of any special interest. 

 About the year 18 10 or a little later a Mr. 

 Hamilton, after his house in Falcon Court, 

 Fleet Street, had been burnt down, had con- 

 verted Holstein House at Weybridge into a 

 printing ofHce and was employing about sixty 

 men there.* In 1826 the machine printing 

 offices in Duke Street, Lambeth, of Mr. 

 Augustus Applegath, whose name is specially 

 connected with several improvements in the 

 machinery of printing to be noticed below, 

 appear to have been very extensive and im- 

 portant. Upwards of one hundred persons 



> Mrs. E. Boger, Bygone Southwark, 233, 234. 



' Ibid. IS7, 234. 235- 



^ C. T. Davis, Industries of Wandsworth, 3S, 36. 



* Manning and Bray, Hist, of Sun: ii. 785. 



were employed and the printing was executed 

 by a steam engine which drove several presses. 

 Here were printed various works both for 

 government and private individuals, among 

 them being the John Bull and Examiner 

 newspapers, the Encyclopcedia Metropolitana, 

 Hone's Every Day Book and the Scientific 

 Gazette.'^ Sometime before 1828 Applegath 

 removed to Crayford in Kent and set up as a 

 calico printer.* He subsequently became of 

 Dartford in the same county, where he 

 seems to have continued his calico printing.'' 

 In 1850 two Surrey printing firms called 

 for especial notice. One of these was Messrs. 

 Clowes of Duke Street, Stamford Street, who 

 were then very eminent in the department of 

 type and block printing. Their works com- 

 prised the foundry of movable type and 

 stereotype for their immense printing estab- 

 lishment. The quantity of paper consumed 

 by them exceeded 1,500 reams or 750,000 

 sheets weekly, whilst their stock of stereotype 

 plates was estimated at the value of half a 

 million sterling and weighed 2,500 tons. 

 They were the printers of the Penny Cyclo- 

 pcedia, the plates of which alone were I2,000 

 in number and weighed 85,000 lb. They 

 had twenty-five printing machines, which 

 would each throw off 800 copies per hour, 

 besides thirty-one hand presses, the whole 

 capable of printing on an extraordinary emer- 

 gency more than 100,000,000 sheets in a 

 year. Their machinery included steam en- 

 gines, printing machines that twirled the 

 paper in a serpentine direction around its 

 rollers in quick succession, a powerfiil hydrau- 

 lic press, and various contrivances to facilitate 

 the compositors' and print-casters' operations. 



s T. Allen, Hist, of Lambeth, pp. 314 seqq. 



» He is described as of Duke Street, Blackfriars, 

 printer, in the specification for a patent he took 

 out on 19 February 1824 {Pat. of Invention, No. 

 4902), but as of Crayford, co. Kent, printer, in 

 his next patent on 26 January 1828 (ibid. No. 

 5613), and on 22 September 1832, he was of the 

 same place, calico printer (ibid. No. 6310). 



' In his patent taken out on 21 December 1846 

 he is described, as of Dartford, calico printer {Pat. 

 of Invention, No. 1 1 505). Between 181 8 aud 

 1851 he took out fifteen diiferent patents, the 

 majority dealing with improvements in printing 

 machinery, but in 1832 and 1 83 3 he seems to 

 have applied himself in conjunction with Joseph 

 Gibbs, an engineer, to improvements in machinery 

 for cutting out wood for carriage wheels, in steam 

 carriages, and in the construction of railroads, 

 bridges, etc. (ibid. Nos. 6310, 6318, 6438). 



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