XXII 



wards at the works of the Walker Alkali Company, on the Tyne, it 

 was not until late in 1868 that Weldon's regenerated-manganese 

 chlorine process was in operation on a manufacturing scale, at the 

 works of Messrs. J. C. Gamble and Sons, at St. Helens. By the end 

 of 1870, however, ont of about forty chlorine makers in the United 

 Kingdom, thirty-five had taken licences for its use, seventeen plants 

 being then either actually at work or on the point of completion. 

 But a formidable rival now arose, in the shape of Mr. Deacon's 

 process for producing chlorine by passing hydrochloric acid gas over 

 masses of pumice stone heated to a certain temperature and satu- 

 rated with cupric sulphate. Questions of cost apart, the chief merits 

 of this process were (1) its great simplicity; (2) that, per unit of 

 NaCl, it yielded a larger proportion of chlorine than did the Weldon 

 lime process. To meet it, Mr. Weldon again attempted to work the 

 process which he had patented contemporaneously with his lime pro- 

 cess, for treating manganese chloride residues by magnesia, so as to 

 recover in the form of hydrochloric acid the proportion of chlorine 

 otherwise lost as calcium chloride. But the Weldon lime process 

 withstood the attacks of all competitors, and by the end of 1875 it 

 had been adopted by every chlorine manufacturer of importance 

 throughout Europe. From the time of the introduction of his 

 chlorine process until the end of 1881, when the patents for it were 

 about to expire, and when his active and pecuniary interest in it 

 ceased perforce, Mr. Weldon was constantly occupied in travel and 

 work connected with the setting up of installations in all parts of the 

 United Kingdom and the Continent, and in devising minor improve- 

 ments in working. The spring of 1882 brought him relief from this 

 kind of work, but no leisure. Moreover, he had recently suffered 

 the severest bereavement that can befall a man : the sudden death of 

 his younger son, Dante, had been followed only a few weeks later by 

 that of one of the best wives that ever graced an English home. He 

 now, too, began to feel severely the effects of that overwork and un- 

 sparing exposure of himself in the cause of duty which had been 

 going on for fourteen years, sapping a constitution once of the most 

 robust. 



Many men in his position, under the combined influences of success 

 and sorrow, would now have been content to retire more or less from 

 the active work of life : not so Mr. Weldon. Indeed some of the 

 most useful, and possibly the greatest, work of his life was yet to be 

 accomplished. During 1881 he had been conspicuous as one of the 

 founders of the Society of Chemical Industry — a Society already the 

 most useful, the most successful, and, with one exception, the largest 

 of its kind. To the development and successful working of this 

 Society he devoted an infinite amount of loving labour and thought, 

 whether as member of its Council, as Chairman of its London section, 



