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Losh, Wilson and Bell
Company typeManufacturing company
Founded1809
Headquarters
Newcastle-upon-Tyne
,
England


Losh, Wilson and Bell was a manufacturing company, founded in 1809, based at Newcastle-upon-Tyne with an Ironworks and an Alkali works nearby at Walker. The Alkali works was the first in England to make soda using the Leblanc process; the Ironworks was the first to use Cleveland Ironstone, presaging the 1850s boom in ironmaking on Teesside.

History

Founders

The company was named after William Losh, Thomas Wilson, and Thomas Bell.

William Losh (1770 Carlisle–4 August 1861, Ellison Place, Newcastle) came from a rich family that owned coal mines.[1] He was educated in Hamburg, and trained in Newcastle, Sweden and France. He married Alice Wilkinson of Carlisle on 1 March 1798 at Gateshead.[2] He was a friend of the explorer Alexander von Humboldt and a one-time business partner of rail pioneer George Stephenson. His brother James Losh was also a partner in the firm, and kept a diary recording his anxieties about the firm during the Napoleonic wars.[1]

Thomas Wilson (1773–9 May 1858) of Low Fell, Gateshead[1] joined the Losh, Lubbin counting house. In 1807, Wilson became a partner and the firm took the name Losh, Wilson and Bell.[3][4] In 1810 he married Mrs Fell of Kirklinton.[5]

Thomas Bell, (5 March 1784–20 April 1845) partner, was married to Katherine Lowthian of Newbiggin, Cumberland on 25 March 1815.[6]

Origins: from alkali to iron

In 1790 Archibald Dundonald, with John and William Losh, experimented on how to produce soda from salt. In about 1793 they opened a works at Bells Close, near Newcastle. Dundonald sent William Losh to Paris to study Nicolas Leblanc's process for making soda from salt.[7] In 1807, the Loshes opened an alkali works at Walker, Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland.[8]It was the first in England to use the Leblanc process. Dundonald left the partnership and the business continued as Walker Alkali Works.[7]

In 1809 the firm of Losh, Wilson & Bell founded an ironworks at Walker, beside the alkali works,[9] carrying out "general machine and mill work" but not building steam engines. [10]

By 1818, George Stephenson's original wooden wagonway was completely relaid with cast-iron edge-rails made in collaboration between Stephenson, who owned the patent, and Losh, Wilson and Bell.[11] Around 1821, George Stephenson was briefly a partner in the Walker Ironworks.[7]

Wealth

In 1827 a rolling mill capable of 100 tons of bar iron per week was installed at the Walker ironworks;[12] in the same year, Losh, Wilson and Bell, Walker, is listed in the Gazetteer under "Steam Engine Manufacturers and Builders".[13] In 1833, the iron puddling process was installed at Walker.[12]

In 1835, while "inspecting construction" of the Whitby & Pickering Railway, Thomas Wilson noted the presence of ironstone in a railway cutting at Grosmont, and arranged for drift mines to exploit the find; the new railway carried the ore to Whitby.[14] In that year, at the age of nineteen, Lowthian Bell (1816-1904), entered the firm's Newcastle office under his father. In 1836 he joined his father at the firm's ironworks at Walker.[12]

In 1838, a second mill for rolling rails was added, run by ironmaster John Vaughan (who went on to found Bolckow Vaughan); he strongly influenced Lowthian Bell to become an ironmaster.[12] In the same year, The Athenaeum Journal describes the Losh, Wilson & Bell works as "of great magnitude and interest" and states that "tin and plate iron" are made "upon an extensive scale" along with "bars for the tiers of railway-carriage wheels, and the entire process of manufacturing wheels". In the next door works, the firm made alkali; "the head of the firm, Mr. William Losh, may be considered as the father of sofa-making on the Tyne." In total (of all the works in the area) "above 250 tons of crystallized soda [are] made per week, besides about 100 tons of alkali, or soda ash."[15]

In 1842, the shortage of pig iron persuaded Bell to install its own blast furnace for smelting mill cinder.[12]

In 1844, the firm installed a second furnace at Walker for Cleveland ironstone from Grosmont, six years before the boom in Cleveland iron when Vaughan and Marley discovered ironstone in the Eston Hills in 1850.[12]

In 1849, Losh, Wilson and Bell "executed the approaches" to the Newcastle-Gateshead High Level Bridge.[16]

On 25 January 1851, Lowthian Bell[17] left the partnership with William Losh, Thomas Wilson, Catherine Bell, Thomas Bell and John Bell. The business at that time was described in the London Gazette as "Iron Manufacturers, and Ship and Insurance Brokers, under the style or firm of Losh, Wilson, and Bell".[18] He went on to have a career in chemistry and politics, becoming a member of parliament among many other distinctions.[19]

On 8 October 1855, there was "a terrible boiler explosion" at the Walker Iron Works, in which "five men and two boys were killed". The boiler "unfurled like a sail, was blown upwards, carrying with it two roofings of the sheds, and blowing down two furnaces, with their chimneys, and scattering the molten metal and red hot bricks around, while one end of it was hurled into the midst of the works, and the other about 200 yards over the hill top, into the lumber-yard." All the dead were aged between 19 and 33.[20][21]

In 1857, John Marley, in his account of the Cleveland Ironstone, described the Walker Ironworks as follows:[22]

These iron-works, situate on the Tyne, and belonging to Messrs. Losh, Wilson, & Bell, originally consisted of only one furnace, being the first blast furnace that was specially erected for this bed of ironstone (in connection with Scotch, and other ores, for mixing), viz., about the year 1842 or 1843, and which ironstone was purchased from the aforesaid mines belonging to Mrs. Clark, in the Whitby district, the first cargo being sent in June or July, 1843, since which time these works have been increased by one extra furnace, built for the Whitby district ironstone in 1844, and by other three for the north part of Cleveland, about 1852, making now a total of five furnaces.[22]

Bells, Goodman

From 1869 at the latest, the company owning the Walker Engine Works was Bells, Goodman & Co. In that year the firm made the tunnelling shield and iron castings to line the Tower subway tunnels. In 1871 the firm made pumping and winding engines for Seghill Colliery. In 1875 it made machinery to condense smoke and gases for Clyde Lead Works of Glasgow.[23]

The end: Bells, Lightfoot

Cornish beam engine, Springhead Pumping Station: 90" engine by Bells Lightfoot

In 1875, the Bells, Goodman partnership was dissolved when Alfred Goodman retired. The firm became known as Bells, Lightfoot & Co.[23] In 1876 it supplied a 90" Cornish beam engine for Springhead Pumping Station near Anlaby in the East Riding of Yorkshire; it had an unusual box-section wrought iron beam, and continued running until 1952.[24]

On 30 November 1876, Thomas Bell Lightfoot, Managing Partner, was granted a patent for "improvements in squeezing machines for working metals".[25]

On 28 August 1883, Thomas Bell, "formerly of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but now of Bilbao, in the Kingdom of Spain, Ironmaster", Henry Bell, of Tynemouth, and Thomas Bell the younger, dissolved Bells, Lightfoot by mutual consent. The deed was witnessed on 7 December 1883.[26]

Wages and social conditions

In 1842, John Roby Leifchild reported for the Children's Employment Commission on the "Employment of Children and Young Persons in the Collieries, Lead Mines, and Iron Works of Northumberland and the North of Durham; and on the Condition, Treatment, and Education of such Children and Young Persons".[27]

Leifchild found that Losh, Wilson & Bell paid its workers 30 to 36 shillings per week for a scrap-puddler; £2 5 shillings per week for a pudler; 18 shillings per week for a plate mill-furnace man; and 25 shillings per week for an engineman. The engineman's family of a wife and four children spent 18 shillings per week on provisions and 3 shillings per week on rent, leaving only 4 shillings for all other expenditure.[27]: 25 

Leifchild also cited a report from Mr Wilson of Losh, Wilson & Bell on the life of a "pit lad" (a boy working in a coal mine) of "fifty years ago", Mr Wilson recollecting his own experience as a young man. The "poor boy was sent down below at the age of 6 to 8" and had a "long and laborious day" from 2 in the morning to about 9 at night, pulling a heavy wagon of coal, and "many other sufferings".[27]: 203 

In 1857, Robert Chambers, an iron puddler at the Walker works, won the sculling championship at the Thames Regatta. The heavy work stirring the iron was said to have strengthened his arms and shoulders. He also won the return match, held on the Tyne on 19 April 1859, even after a collision with a moored boat left him a hundred yards behind.[28]

Bibliography

References

  1. ^ a b c "Low Fell - Additional Pages". Low Fell History: Part 1. Gateshead Libraries. 2011. Retrieved March 21, 2012.
  2. ^ Losh Family History
  3. ^ Thomas Wilson FC
  4. ^ Durham & Tyneside Dialect Group: Word Lists: Thomas Wilson's Pitman's Pay
  5. ^ "Some Marriages from the Longtown Area 1810-1817". 19th Century Longtown. Retrieved March 20, 2012.
  6. ^ Charles Mosley, editor, Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes (Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003), volume 1, page 331.
  7. ^ a b c Grace's Guide: Walker Ironworks
  8. ^ Simpson, David (2009). "Chemicals and Glass". Chemicals and Glass 1800AD - 1900AD. England's Northeast. Retrieved March 20, 2012.
  9. ^ J.S. Jeans, 1875. Page 121.
  10. ^ Tyne Tugs & Tug Builders: Engine Builders
  11. ^ Institution of Mechanical Engineers: George Stephenson (1781-1848)
  12. ^ a b c d e f The Peerage: Bell, Sir Isaac Lowthian. William Arthur Bone, 1912.
  13. ^ Parson, William and William White (of Sheffield) (1827). History, Directory, and Gazetteer, of the Counties of Durham and Northumberland: And the Towns and Counties of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and Berwick-Upon-Tweed. W. White & Co. p. 124. ISBN 978-1247504216.
  14. ^ Tees Valley RIGS Group (2010). Tees Valley RIGS group: Ironstone "Ironstone". Retrieved 15 April 2012. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
  15. ^ The Athenaeum Journal of Nature, Science, and the Fine Arts. From January to December, 1838. J. Francis, London. page 574
  16. ^ Tyne Bridges at Gateshead.
  17. ^ Institution of Mechanical Engineers: President, Sir Lowthian Bell
  18. ^ "London Gazette" (PDF). Notices: Partnership: Losh, Wilson, and Bell. 1851. p. 676. Retrieved March 20, 2012.
  19. ^ "Memoir of Sir Lowthian Bell, Bart". Transactions of the Institution of Mining Engineers. XXXIII: 665–672. 1904–1907.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)
  20. ^ Fordyce, T. (1867). "Disasters". Walker Iron Works: Boiler Explosion. Durham Mining Museum. Retrieved March 20, 2012.
  21. ^ "Walker Works Boiler Explosion". NEIMME Transactions, Vol 4. 1855-6. Retrieved March 20, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  22. ^ a b John Marley, Cleveland Ironstone, 1857.
  23. ^ a b "Bells, Goodman and Co". Grace's Guide. Retrieved March 21, 2012.
  24. ^ Allen, Chris (Photograph 1991; Page 2008). "TA0429 : Cornish beam engine, Springhead Pumping Station". (photo has CC2 licence). Geograph.org. Retrieved March 21, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  25. ^ "London Gazette" (PDF). Patents. 4642. And to Thomas Bell Lightfoot. London Gazette. January 12, 1877. p. 176. Retrieved March 22, 2012.
  26. ^ "The London Gazette, December 14, 1883" (PDF). Notices: Bells, Lightfoot and Company. London Gazette. 7 December 1883. p. 6470. Retrieved March 22, 2012.
  27. ^ a b c Leifchild, John Roby (2000 (original report 1842)). "CHILDREN'S EMPLOYMENT COMMISSION 1842" (PDF). REPORT by JOHN ROBY LEIFCHILD, Esq., on the Employment of Children and Young Persons in the Collieries, Lead Mines, and Iron Works of Northumberland and the North of Durham; and on the Condition, Treatment, and Education of such Children and Young Persons. The Coal Mining History Resource Centre. Retrieved March 20, 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  28. ^ Whitehead, Ian. The Sporting Tyne, A History of Professional Rowing, Portcullis, 2002.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Losh,_Wilson_and_Bell&oldid=487680891

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