THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
SECOND SERIES. 
VOL. VII.—No. II.—AUGUST 1st, 1865. 
BETTS'S PATENT METALLIC CAPSULES. 
NUMEROUS SUITS IN CHANCERY AGAINST RETAIL CHEMISTS AND OTHERS 
FOR SELLING ARTICLES CAPPED WITH METALLIC CAPSULES. 
If anything was required to strengthen or confirm the opinions which for 
many years past have been frequently expressed by high authorities of the 
questionable advantages, if not the decided evils, resulting from the operation 
of the laws relating to patents, it has been amply supplied by the proceedings 
recently adopted by Mr. Betts with reference to the sale of articles capped with 
metallic capsules. The public have long become familiar with the name of 
Betts in the reports of proceedings in the law courts, and lawyers have bene¬ 
fited by these proceedings to the extent probably of £50,000, or more. Air. 
Betts occupies the proud position of the discoverer and patentee of a combina¬ 
tion of metals which has been successfully used for capping bottles, and in 
establishing his exclusive right to this distinction he says he has spent between 
twenty and thirty thousand pounds. His father, Mr. John Thomas Betts, so 
long ago as 1843, took out a patent for the manufacture of metallic covers or 
capsules for bottles and other vessels, but the metal used under that patent was 
tin, such as is contained in tinfoil. Those tin capsules were then, and 
have been since extensively used both in this country and abroad ; indeed, 
the patentee acknowledged that the subject of his patent had been communi¬ 
cated to him by a foreigner. In 1849, Mr. William Betts, the son, discovered, 
applied, and patented an improvement in the manufacture, which consisted in 
substituting for tin a combination of tin and lead. This patent bears date the 
13th day of January, 1849, and the specification states— 
“ The capsules herein referred to are metal covers, used for closing or stopping, or for 
securing the closure or stoppering of the mouths of bottles and ceitain other vessels, 
which metal covers have been hitherto made of tin, by bending up a suitable piece of 
a thin sheet of that metal into a hollow form, or cup, or cap, of a suitable size for ap¬ 
plying closely over the mouth of a bottle or other vessel (and over any such cork or 
other kind of stopper as may have been previously inserted into the said mouth. In case 
of. a cork or other stopper being used, the sides of the said metal cover, cap, or capsule 
also reaching downwards around the outside of the upper part of the neck of the bottle, 
so as to envelope the whole of such upper part, in the manner of an inverted cup, or of 
a case, or hood, or cap, or metal cover, or capsule, the said sides hereof, after having been 
so applied over and around the said upper part, are closely collapsed or closed in, or com- 
pressed laterally on all sides around that said upper part, in such manner as that Ah e said 
metal cover, cap, or capsule will become securely fastened around and upon the said upper 
part, suitably for closing or stopping, or for securing the previous closure oi stoppering 
of the said mouth of the bottle or other vessel, in such manner as that the said mouth 
