News

Industrial Revolution

The year 1709, just over 300 years ago, is considered the birth of the Industrial Revolution. That year, Abraham Darby successfully smelted iron with coke at his Coalbrookdale furnace. It was here in England also that the World’s first caste-iron bridge was constructed. I wonder if Mr Darby was able to look into a crystal ball and observe the appalling horrors that would be inflicted on wretched men, women and children in the ensuing years, whether he would put away his furnace and return to his potato patch. The reality is that that the Industrial Horse had already bolted from its iron stall.

The good folk at Claphams National Clock Museum have asked me to write a few words on one of their best examples of French ormolu clocks. Part of the process of producing ormolu (from French "or moulu" meaning ground gold), is the application of finely ground, high carat gold in a mercury amalgam to an object of bronze. The mercury is then removed in a kiln. Basically, a solution of nitrate of mercury is applied to a piece of metal, gold is added and the clock frame is exposed to extreme heat, burning off the mercury and leaving the gold behind. The French gilt mantel clock in the Clock Museum was made by Japy Freres in the early 1800s, showing two cherubs supporting the clock, the face of which is a lovely blue enamel. Mr Clapham was very fond of this piece, as it is a fine example of this type of clock.

The construction of proper ormolu clocks ceased around 1830, because legislation in France outlawed the use of mercury. This was because mercury fumes were killing off the clock makers while still in their relative youth. This was a remarkably humane piece of legislation, when you consider that most industrialists, capitalists (read Karl Marx) and the growing bourgeoisie probably didn't give a stuff about the pbw (poor bloody workers).

Child labour has always been universal, but the Industrial Revolution raised this crime to a new level. William Hutton recalled that, as a child of seven, he went to work in a silk-mill in his native Derby, where he had to wear wooden platforms so he could reach the machinery, working from five in the morning to seven at night. Charles Kingsley, who wrote the Water Babies, was appalled at the use of child slave labour. Dicken's Oliver Twist saw our hero narrowly escape becoming a chimney sweep. Because children were small enough to climb up chimneys, a Master Sweep would either buy a child from an orphanage or abduct a homeless one off the streets. The child, often naked, would climb the chimney returning hours later covered in soot. This would enter every crack and pore, often developing into testicular cancer. Clockmakers, factory workers, spinners, miners and steel workers were burned, maimed, blinded and poisoned by shocking working conditions as they toiled in coal mines, lead mines, copper mines and totally unsafe factories and Bob Cratchett "tanks".

Hatters went mad, not just in A in W, because the mercury they used to turn fur into felt cooked their brains. Revenge of the beaver, perhaps. In the First World War, women munition workers were exposed to what became known as the "Devil's Porridge". The chemical TNT turned their skin yellow and removed their hair. Victorian children worked bare-handed with phosphorous making matches, rotting their gums and teeth. I could go on ( but I'm starting to feel a little unwell), but I encourage you to visit our Clock Museum at the Town basin.

While enjoying the many skills of the clock-making craftsmen of the past, spare a thought for what was their lot.