Industrial and Civic Science, 1840–1880
During the mid-19th century Manchester acquired a reputation for nurturing the applied sciences. This was driven by local needs, in particular, for expertise in industrial chemistry and to support sanitary and public health initiatives.
This developing interest in chemistry was not the product of a great educational initiative, although Owens College’s contribution to training chemists grew from the 1860s. Instead, a group of Manchester-based chemists advanced the case for their subject by helping solve practical problems, both to advance local industry and to deal with some of its more negative consequences.
The Civic Scientists
Despite the opportunities offered by industrial Manchester, making a living by science was precarious and uncertain. Scientists, unless they had private means, needed ‘portfolio’ careers; this might include lecturing and teaching, consultancy work, acting as an expert witness in legal cases, exploiting patents or running a scientifically-oriented business. Salaried posts in education or government service were very rare.
Industrial firms were not necessarily committed to exploiting scientific discoveries, and local government did not yet need scientific knowledge to any great extent. This began to change in the 1840s, with growing concern about the health effects of air and water pollution.
Manchester’s mid-Victorian scientific generation — Lyon Playfair, Robert Angus Smith, Frederick Crace-Calvert, Edward Frankland, and later Henry Roscoe — have been characterised as “civic scientists” by the historian Robert Kargon. All were chemists by training, and most had studied at German universities. They were influenced by the German chemist Justus von Leibig (1803–73), who stressed the public virtues and personal benefits of the scientific calling.
These civic scientists were actively involved in finding solutions to Manchester’s public health problems. Issues such as smoke and water pollution were tackled with new scientific expertise. The idea that infectious disease was spread by air polluted with dirt particles or miasmas was influential, and chemists were in demand to develop new disinfectants to treat sewage and promote cleanliness.
Frederick Crace-Calvert developed a patent disinfectant using carbolic acid. Lyon Playfair and Angus Smith were involved in national public health enquiries, and Smith, Crace-Calvert and Frankland were active in the Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association, the leading local public health pressure group. Manchester’s chemists would help make the town a better place to live.
From the 1860s air pollution was also tackled. This was caused not only by burning coal (“black smoke”) but by alkali manufacture, a major industry in Manchester. The manufacture of soda ash caused acids to be released into the atmosphere. In 1863 the Alkali Act regulated the output of muriatic (hydrochloric) acid from alkali works, enforced by a new government inspectorate. Robert Angus Smith was appointed chief inspector and held this post until his death in 1884. In 1872 using his experience of Manchester’s polluted air, Smith published Air and Rain: The Beginnings of a Chemical Climatology, which introduced the term “acid rain” for a modern urban pollutant.
The Industrial Chemists
Chemical expertise was also a source of profit. Frederick Crace-Calvert was a successful businessman through his patent disinfectants and dyes. Edward Schunck, another former pupil of Leibig, made his fortune as a calico printer, which allowed him to retire early to study the chemistry of natural dyes. Organic chemistry was essential to the exploitation of hydrocarbons. Edward Binney, a Manchester lawyer and amateur geologist, used his knowledge of the Lancashire coalfield in his collaboration with the Scottish chemist James Young to extract paraffin from coal.
Manchester chemists were also involved in the lucrative exploitation of waste from the gas industry. Charles Mackintosh and Thomas Hancock used waste from Manchester’s gas works to make a rubberised cloth, used for waterproof clothing (the ‘Mackintosh’ coat). Waste coal tar was also used in the new industry of artificial dyestuffs, which grew rapidly from the 1860s, with John Dale, a former pupil of Dalton, and Ivan Levinstein, a chemist trained at the University of Berlin, becoming leading Manchester dyestuff manufacturers.
Edward Frankland the first professor of chemistry at Owens College was enthusiastic about promoting links between academic and industrial chemistry. His successor Henry Roscoe pursued the practical application of the German research philosophy to the College’s curriculum. He believed that industrial and academic chemistry were mutually beneficial, and helped establish the national Society of Chemical Industry in 1881 to ensure this fruitful dialogue would continue.
Discussion Points
How did career paths for Manchester scientists change during the nineteenth century?
How did political, economic and societal factors promote, and inhibit, the work of Manchester scientists?
Additional Resources
Robert Kargon, Science in Victorian Manchester: enterprise and expertise (Manchester 1977)
Roy Macloed, Public science and public policy in Victorian England (London 1996)
Colin A. Russell, Lancastrian chemist: the early years of Sir Edward Frankland (Milton Keynes 1986)
