Green Crusaders or Captives of Industry? The British Alkali Inspectorate and the Ethics of Environmental Decision Making, 1864–95

Abstract

The enforcement of the alkali acts by the chief inspectors Robert Angus Smith (1817–84) and Alfred Evans Fletcher (1827–1920) indicates how scientific ideals of neutrality and impartiality were placed under strain by their state‐sanctioned role as arbitrators between environmental and industrial interests. Previously unused or unexploited sources reveal the precise ways in which they sought to resolve the conflicts between ‘muck and brass' intrinsic to environmental regulation and illustrate the value‐laden and discretionary implementation of scientific public policy. Through an analysis of the ethical considerations and decision‐making strategies of the first chief alkali inspectors this study highlights the social negotiation of regulatory science and shows the extent to which the cultural values of actors can shape the implementation of technical policy.

Notes

¹Anon, ‘Progress and Devastation’, Punch, 42 (1862), 205.

²Robert Murray, Science and Scientists in the Nineteenth‐Century (London,1925), p. xv.

³For the role of the ‘classic ideal’ of objectivity in science and public policy see Theodore Porter, Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton, NJ, 1995). For case studies of the work of experts in nineteenth‐century governnment see the essays in Government and Expertise: Specialists, Administrators, and Professionals, 1860–1919, ed. by Roy MacLeod (Cambridge, 1988) and Studies in the Growth of Nineteenth‐Century Government, ed. by Gillian Sutherland (London, 1972).

⁴ Victorian Science in Context, ed. by Bernard Lightman (Chicago, IL, 1998), p. 288.

⁵Roy Macleod's comprehensive and ground breaking study only touches upon the enforcement issue, see ‘The Alkali Acts Administration, 1863–1884: The Emergence of the Civil Scientist’, reprinted in Macleod, Public Science and Public Policy in Victorian Britain (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 85–112. A suggestive local study is Richard Hawes' ‘The Control of Alkali Pollution in St. Helens, 1862–1890’, Environment and History, 1 (1995), 159–71.

⁶The concept of ‘capture theory’ was introduced by Marver H. Bernstein in Regulating Business by Independent Commission (Princeton, NJ, 1955) and provides a central theme in Neil Gunningham's Pollution, Social Interest and the Law (London, 1974). New sociological perspectives on the enforcement of environmental law are provided in Keith Hawkins, Environment and Enforcement: Regulation and the Social Definition of Pollution (Oxford, 1984), Bridget Hutter, Compliance: Regulation and Environment (Oxford, 1997) and the essays in A Reader in Environmental Law, ed. by Bridget Hutter (Oxford, 1999).

⁷The literature on techno‐scientific controversy addresses the disputes, interests, and assumptions which lie behind twentieth century technical policy. For an introduction see Dorothy Nelkin's Controversy: Politics of Technical Decisions (London, 1979).

⁸Images utilized by Asa Briggs with his Age of Improvement, 1783–1867 (London, 1999) and by A.V. Dicey in the classic Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century (London, 1905).

⁹For an introduction to Victorian science and public policy see Macleod (note 5).

¹⁰Eric Ashby and Mary Anderson, The Politics of Clean Air (Oxford, 1981), Christopher Hamlin, A Science of Impurity: Water Analysis in Nineteenth‐Century Britain (Bristol, 1990), Bill Luckin, Pollution and Control: A Social History of the Thames (Bristol, 1986) and Lawrence Breeze, The British Experience with River Pollution, 1865–1876 (New York, 1993).

¹¹The classic study of professionalisation in this period is Harold Perkin's The Rise of Professional Society: England Since 1880 (London, 1989). On chemists see Colin Russell, Noel Coley and Gerrylynn Roberts, Chemists by Profession (Milton Keynes, 1977) and Robert Bud and Gerrylynn Roberts, Science versus Practice: Chemistry in Victorian Britain (Manchester, 1984).

¹²For its development see L.F. Haber, The Chemical Industry During the Nineteenth‐Century (Oxford, 1958), K. Warren, Chemical Foundations: The Alkali Industry in Britain to 1926 (Oxford, 1980), and Chemistry, Society and Environment: A New History of the British Chemical Industry, ed. by C.A Russell (Cambridge, 2000).

¹³Statistics presented to the Select Committee of the House of Lords on Injury from Noxious Vapours (SCNV), PP. 1862.xiv.159–160.

¹⁴NaCl+NaHSO₄→Na₂SO₄+HCl.

¹⁵Robert Angus Smith, ‘What Amendments are Required in the Legislation Necessary to Prevent the Evils Arising from Noxious Vapours and Smoke’, Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, (1876), 495–542 (p. 521).

¹⁶SCNV (note 13), Q.2248.

¹⁷Ibid., Q.257.

¹⁸Ibid., Q.45.

¹⁹Ibid., Q.1091.

²⁰Damage to his Knowsley Park estate prompted Lord Derby to press for the 1862 Select Committee and the 1878 Royal Commission. See Anon., ‘Lord Derby on Noxious Vapours’, Manchester Guardian, 20 November 1878.

²¹H.A. Bruce's Commons statement in support of the Alkali Bill in July 1863 focused on the inadequacies of the common law in cases of chemical pollution. See Hansard, PP. 1863.clxxi.col.1163–1164. For the unwillingness of local nuisance inspectors to check chemical works see SCNV (note 13), Q.1986. The Runcorn landowner Sir Robert Gerard resorted to hiring men to monitor the vapours emitted by local chemical works at a cost of £100 p.a. See SCNV (note 13), Q.60.

²²SCNV (note 13), Q.914. For the exorbitant cost of the common law remedy for landowners see Q.60.

²³Ninety‐five per cent of hydrochloric acid in each foot of chimney gases was to be condensed by manufacturers under the first alkali act. See 26&27 Vict.c.124, PP. 1863.i.61. Successive legislation widened the regulatory scope, including processes that produced sulphuric and nitric acid.

²⁴A fine of £100 was instituted for repeated offences see 26&27 Vict.c.124, s.4 & s.12. In general manufacturers did not object to the institution of central control, see SCNV (note 13), 156.

²⁵Decisions regarding prosecution were taken by the chief inspector, although authority to proceed was required from the appropriate government department. Until 1893, chief inspectors also decided the level of fine for offenders who were not proceeded against. Public Record Office, Kew (PRO), Alkali Inspectorate's Precedent Book, Alkali Act, 1863, BT328/60/61770.

²⁶Philip Hartog, ‘Dr. Robert Angus Smith’, The Dictionary of National Biography, 18 (1921), 520–22 (p. 520). The most extensive modern biographical account of Smith is A. Gibson and W.V. Farrar, ‘Robert Angus Smith, F.R.S., and Sanitary Science’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 28 (1974), 241–62. Also informative is John Eyler's ‘The Conversion of Angus Smith: The Changing Role of Chemistry and Biology in Sanitary Science, 1850–1880’, Bulletin for the History of Medicine, 54 (1980), 216–34.

²⁷Edwin Chadwick Correspondence, University College London, MSS 1832, Jessie Knox Smith (Smith's niece) to Edwin Chadwick, 23 February 1887. It was on the strength of his ‘exertions in the cause of sanitary reform’ that Smith was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1857, see Certificates of Election 1840–1860, 9, 396, Royal Society of London.

²⁸For discussion see Gibson and Farrar (note 26) and Robert Kargon, Science in Victorian Manchester: Enterprise and Expertise (Manchester, 1977).

²⁹Florence Nightingale papers, British Library, Add 45799 fols 256–263b.

³⁰Maisie Fletcher, The Bright Countenance: A Personal Biography of Walter Morley Fletcher (London, 1957), p. 25. Alfred Fletcher's fifth son was Walter Morley Fletcher (1873–1933), the renowned physiologist and first secretary of the Medical Research Committee.

³¹See the 1st RAI for 1864 (c.3640), p. 96 (1865), xx.1 and the description of inspectors duties under the Alkali Act, 1863, 26 & 27 Vict. c.124, s.8 and 3.5.

³²A.E. Dingle has rightly contended that, despite its limitations, the Alkali Act of 1863 was ‘a remarkable measure [which] placed the property of manufacturers under the supervision of the state in order to protect the property of landowners’. See ‘The Monster Nuisance of All: Landowners, Alkali Manufacturers and Air Pollution, 1828–1864’, Economic History Review, 35 (1982), 529–48 (p. 529).

³³A phrase coined by Roy Macleod (note 5).

³⁴See G. Kitson‐Clark in ‘Statesmen in Disguise: Reflections on the History of the Neutrality of the Civil Service’, Historical Journal, 2 (1959), 19–39.

³⁵Anon., ‘Dr. Angus Smith’, American Journal of Science, 28 (1884), 79–80 (p. 80).

⁴⁶3rd RAI for 1866 (c.3792), p. 48 (1867), xvi.1.

³⁶See Hawkins, Environment and Enforcement, and Hutter, Compliance: Regulation and Environment (note 6).

³⁷See the Royal Commission on the Working and Management of Works and Manufactures from which Sulphurous Acid, Sulphuretted Hydrogen and Ammoniacal and Other Vapours and Gases are given off (RCNV) Minutes of Evidence, PP. 1878.xliv.43, 248.

³⁸Report of the Alkali Inspector (RAI) for 1879 (c.3640), p. 135 (1879–80), xvi.131. Smith complained that the general public ‘are continually confusing or attempting to confound our duties with those of the police…The Government Inspectors have been more as teachers raising up the standard of labour in the works’. See the 18th RAI for 1881 (c.3583), p. 8 (1883), xviii.1.

³⁹RCNV (note 37), Q.6660.

⁴⁰Robert Angus Smith (note 15), p. 531. Vladimir Jankovic has identified education as a central tenet in Smith's activities as a ‘multi‐directional pedagogue’ in ‘Bad Air in Courts of Law: R.A Smith on the Nature of Sanitary Evidence’, Good Airs and Bad: Historical Perspectives on the Atmosphere in Relation to Health and Medicine, Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of East Anglia, 10–11 November 2000.

⁴¹T.E Thorpe, ‘R.A. Smith’, Nature (1884), 105.

⁴²Robert Angus Smith, ‘Some Ancient and Modern Ideas of Sanitary Economy’, Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, 11 (1854), 39–89 (p. 64).

⁴³Robert Angus Smith, ‘How Far are Smoke and the Products of Combustion arising from various Manufacturing Processes Injurious to Health?’, Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (1861–62), 429–40 (p. 440).

⁴⁴Papers of Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association (MSSA), Manchester Central Library, M126/5/1/88.

⁴⁵26th RAI for 1889 (c.6026), p. 6 (1890), xx.1.

⁴⁹36th RAI for 1899 (c.192), p. 324 (1900), x.257.

⁴⁷25th RAI for 1888 (c.5758), pp. 115–16 (1889), xviii.1.

⁴⁸24th RAI for 1887 (c.5417), p. 7 (1888), xxvi.1.

⁵⁴Intermediate RAI for 1876 (c.165), p. 2 (1876), xvi.1. The alkali industry did not commonly employ resident chemists at their works until the 1870s. See James Donnelly, ‘Consultants, Managers, Testing Slaves: Changing Roles for Chemists in the British Alkali Industry’, Technology and Culture, 35 (1994), 100–28 and idem, ‘Structural Locations for Chemists in the British Alkali Industry, 1850–1910’, in The Chemical Industry in Europe, 1850–1914: Industrial Growth, Pollution and Professionalisation, ed. by Ernst Homburg, Harm Schröter and Anthony Travis (Boston, 1998), pp. 203–19.

⁵⁰On Victorian philanthropy and the ‘gift relationship’ see Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age (London: Faber and Faber, 1984) and Gareth Stedman Jones, Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971).

⁵¹1st RAI for 1864 (c.3640), p. 96 (1865), xx.1.

⁵²Alfred Evans Fletcher, ‘The Present State of the Law Concerning the Pollution of Air and Water’, Journal of the Society of Arts, 36 (1888), 567–81 (p. 575).

⁵³Samuel Smiles, Self Help (London, 1859), p. 1.

⁵⁵Indeed many manufacturers registered with the Local Government Board to receive guidance even when not legally bound to do so. For examples see the Alkali Inspectorate's Precedent Book, PRO, BT328/60/61770

⁵⁶Smith (note 43), p. 438.

⁵⁷Ibid.

⁵⁸R.A. Smith, ‘The Smoke Nuisance’, Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (1861–62), 429–40 (p. 440).

⁵⁹For further discussion see Bud and Roberts (note 11) and the essays in The Making of the Chemist: A Social History of Chemistry in Europe 1789–1914, ed. by David Knight and Helge Kragh (Cambridge, 1998).

⁶⁰In relation to this issue Peter Bartrip has commented that ‘it was politically difficult to appoint persons who had a financial interest in the business under inspection owing to possible accusations of bias in the conduct of their duties. At the same time it was preferable to appoint individuals with some knowledge of the inspection field, and in many cases the best qualified were likely to be managers or directors.’ See Peter Bartrip, ‘British Government Inspection 1832–1875: Some Observations’, Historical Journal, 25 (1980), 605–26 (p. 608).

⁶¹Alkali Inspectorate's Precedent Book, PRO, BT 328/60/61770.

⁶²Analysis of the social and cultural aspects of this network is provided by Hannah Gay and John Gay in ‘Brothers in Science: Science and Fraternal Culture in Nineteenth‐Century Britain’, History of Science, 35 (1997), 425–53.

⁶³In addition, Angus Smith was a member of the council of the Chemical Society from 1870 to 1872, and Vice President in 1878–1880, while Fletcher served on the council from 1884 to 1887; see Tom Moore and James Philip, The Chemical Society 1841–1941: A Historical Review (London, 1947). The industrial membership of the society was substantial; see James Donnelly, ‘Defining the Industrial Chemist’, Journal of Social History, 29 (1996), 779–816, and Bud and Roberts (note 11).

⁶⁴See the special jubilee issue of the journal of the Society of Chemical Industry, Chemistry and Industry (July 1931), 9–21 (pp. 9–10). For Davis' involvement in the SCI and his ‘conflict of interests' dispute with the Midlands manufacturer Alexander Chance see James Donnelly, ‘Chemical Engineering in England’, Annals of Science, 45 (1988), 555–90.

⁶⁵Ibid., p. 14.

⁶⁶Ibid., p. 13. Despite the high proportion of industrial chemists in its membership, the SCI council was dominated by owners or directors of chemical firms and academics. See Donnelly (note 63).

⁶⁷Anon., ‘The Late Dr. Angus Smith’, Manchester Guardian, 17 May 1884.

⁶⁸Alkali Inspectorate Precedent Book, PRO, BT328/60/61770.

⁶⁹Russell Forbes Carpenter to the Secretary of the LGB, PRO, MH16/4, 26 June 1897.

⁷⁰Smith spent his summer holidays touring on the yacht Nyanza with James Young (1811–83), the pioneer of paraffin production. See the account in Smith's To Iceland in a Yacht (Edinburgh, 1873), and also John Butt's biographical study James ‘Paraffin’ Young–Founder of the Mineral Oil Industry (Edinburgh: Scotland's Cultural Heritage, 1983).

⁷¹3rd RAI for 1866 (c.3792), p. 48 (1867), xvi.1.

⁷²Fletcher explained that ‘when things are going wrong the visits are repeated at short intervals until the desired amendment is reached’. 23rd RAI for 1886 (c.5057), p. 7 (1887), xvii.1.

⁷³Keith Hawkins, ‘Bargain and Bluff’, Law and Policy Quarterly, 35 (1983), 35–73.

⁷⁴Alkali Inspectorate's Precedent Book, PRO, BT328/60/61770. Matthew Weait has shown that the infraction letter still underpins the whole enforcement process, see ‘The Letter of the Law? An Enquiry into Reasoning and Formal Enforcement in the Industrial Air Pollution Inspectorate’, British Journal of Criminology, 29 (1989), 57–70.

⁷⁵For a description of this system see Russell Forbes Carpenter to Hugh Owen, PRO, MH16/4, 29 August 1897.

⁷⁶Papers of the United Alkali Company, Chester Record Office, DIC/UA/12/3; Minute Book of MSSNVAA, Manchester Central Library, M126/6/1/1; Brooke of Norton Collection, Chester Record Office, D24B/3–4.

⁷⁷Angus Smith to John Lambert, PRO, MH16/1, 24 July 1875.

⁷⁸Ibid.

⁷⁹For Owen Hartley the idea of ‘partnership’ naturally springs from a long‐term advisory relationship between two parties with a common professional discipline. See Owen Hartley, ‘Inspectorates in British Central Government’, Public Administration, 50 (1972), 447–66 (p. 455).

⁸¹3rd RAI for 1866 (c.3792), p. 48 (1867), xvi.1. Jeremy Bugler has maintained that from this perception of manufacturers' unawareness of pollution abatement evolved the Alkali Inspectorate's ‘self‐conceived role as an agency to help industry get on with the job, rather than an air pollution control agency above it.’ See Jeremy Bugler, Polluting Britain: A Report (Harmondsworth, 1972), p. 17.

⁸⁰26th RAI for 1889 (c.6026), p. 6 (1890), xx.1.

⁸³Ibid. For wider consideration of gentlemanly behaviour in science, see Martin Rudwick, The Great Devonian Controversy (Chicago, IL, 1985).

⁸²Angus Smith to John Lambert, PRO, MH16/1, 24 July 1875.

⁸⁵14th and 15th RAI for 1877 and 1878 (c.2300), p. 137 (1878–79), xvi.131.

⁸⁴RCNV (note 37), p. 246. There is evidence that inspectors underestimated the amount of fraud undertaken by chemical workers and managers. For example, see Joseph Davis' description of the deceptive tactics undertaken at Steeles chemical works in 1875 in the Brooke of Norton Collection, Chester Record Office, DC25c/C/8.

⁸⁶Alfred Fletcher to Angus Smith, PRO, MH16/1, 23 July 1875.

⁸⁷18th RAI for 1881 (c.3583), p. 79 (1883), xviii.1. The Victorian factory inspectorate was also less likely to prosecute in times of trade depression; see Peter Bartrip and Paul Fenn, ‘The Evolution of Regulatory Style in the Nineteenth‐Century British Factory Inspectorate’, Journal of Law and Society, 10 (1983), 201–22 (p. 210).

⁸⁸Angus Smith to John Lambert, PRO, MH16/2, 6 June 1883.

⁸⁹Alfred Fletcher to Angus Smith, PRO, MH16/1, 10 December 1877.

⁹⁰RCNV (note 37), p. 248.

⁹¹Peter Bartrip has observed that prosecutions under the early factory acts occurred ‘where convictions are virtually guaranteed, where previous cautions have proved ineffective, where there is a clear moral culpability, and where the consequences of the infraction threaten to be severe (such as undermining the inspectors authority)’; see ‘Success or Failure? The Prosecution of the Early Factory Acts’, Economic History Review, 38 (1985), 423–27 (p. 424).

⁹²Christine Garwood, ‘The British State and the Natural Environment: The Alkali Inspectorate 1864–1906’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Leicester/Nene College, 1998).

Formal responses to infractions 1864–95, taken from the reports of the chief alkali inspectors, 1865–95.

⁹³Such judgements were often made on the basis of ‘interogatories' administered by the chief inspector. See the Alkali Inspectorate's Precedent Book, PRO, BT328/60.

⁹⁴Hawkins (note 73).

⁹⁵Angus Smith to the LGB, PRO, MH16/1,18 September 1879. John Lambert persuaded Sclater Booth to grant permission, commenting ‘you know how often it has been alleged that the Inspector omits to take proceedings’; John Lambert to George Sclater Booth, PRO, MH16/1, 26 September 1879.

⁹⁶Thomas Snape to Angus Smith, PRO, MH16/1, 10 October 1879.

⁹⁷Angus Smith to the LGB, PRO, MH16/1, 14 October, 1879.

⁹⁸The Commissioners commented that the policy of non‐prosecution ‘at first expedient, has been unnecessarily prolonged’. See RCNV (note 37), 16.

⁹⁹John Lambert to George Sclater Booth, PRO, MH16/1, 22 October 1879.

¹⁰⁰Thomas Snape to Angus Smith, PRO, MH16/1, 14 November 1879.

¹⁰¹The leniency of the Alkali Inspectorate was not forgotten by Thomas Snape, later MP for Widnes, who in 1893 visited the LGB to praise Alfred Evans Fletcher. See Hugh Owen to the President of the LGB, PRO, MH16/4, 21 January 1893.

¹⁰²Widnes Traders' Association Scrapbook, Chester Record Office, DIC/UA/17/31.

¹⁰³Clarke Nardinelli poses the same argument in reference to the factory acts; see ‘The Successful Prosecution of the Factory Acts: A Suggested Explanation’, Economic History Review, 38 (1985), 428–30 (p. 429).

¹⁰⁸9th RAI for 1872 (c.815), p. 35 (1873), xix.1.

¹⁰⁴ Chemical News, 7 (1863), 4. A detailed account of the case is provided by Anthony S. Travis in The Rainbow Makers: The Origin of the Synthetic Dyestuffs Industry in Western Europe (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1993), pp. 124–27.

¹⁰⁵Anon., ‘Alfred Evans Fletcher’, Chemical Age, 3 (1920), 334.

¹⁰⁶See the account of Regina v. Spence in J. Fenwick Allen, Some Founders of the Chemical Industry: Men to be Remembered (London, 1906), pp. 278–80. For the effect of the Spence case on Smith, see Gibson and Farrar (note 26) and Jankovic (note 40).

¹⁰⁷Robert Angus Smith (note 15), p. 504.

¹⁰⁹For further evidence of Smith's desperation to keep his name out of court, see his reaction when the sub‐inspector George Davis threatened to proceedings for libel against a manufacturer who had accused him of misusing government time. Papers of George Davis, Angus Smith to George Davis, 23 August 1879, Science Museum, 2/2–3.

¹¹⁰Robert Angus Smith (note 15), p. 504.

¹¹¹Smith called for special scientific courts of law; see ‘Science in our Courts of Law’, Journal of the Society of Arts, 7 (1860), 135–49 (p. 137).

¹¹²Ibid. For the difficulties faced by scientific expert witnesses in Victorian law courts see June Z. Fullmer, ‘Technology, Chemistry and the Law in Early Nineteenth Century England’, Technology and Culture, 21 (1980), 1–28, Christopher Hamlin, ‘Scientific Method and Expert Witnessing: Victorian Perspectives on a Modern Problem’, Social Studies of Science, 16 (1986), 485–513, and Tal Golan, ‘The History of Scientific Expert Testimony in the English Courtroom’, Science in Context, 12 (1999), 7–32.

¹¹³Robert Angus Smith, ‘The Smoke Question’, Chemical News, 19 (1866), 182–85 (p. 184).

¹¹⁵Ibid., pp. 567–68.

¹¹⁴Alfred Evans Fletcher (note 52), p. 571.

¹¹⁶Ibid., p. 569.

¹²³Smith (note 58), pp. 439–40.

¹¹⁷Christine Rosen has provided a groundbreaking study of the ways in which nineteenth‐century judges in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania used a cost–benefit ‘balancing’ doctrine in prosecution decisions. See Christine Rosen, ‘Differing Perceptions of the Value of Pollution Abatement across Time and Place: Balancing Doctrine in Pollution Nuisance Law, 1840–1906’, Law and History Review, 11 (1993), 303–81.

¹¹⁸For Fletcher ‘in treating with a manufacturer, it should never be forgotten that his works are established not to condense gases, not to suppress vapours, but to make money, and all fancy processes which interfere with this result stop the works, and thus defeat their own object’; see RCNV (note 37), Q. 6743, 6859.

¹¹⁹Robert Angus Smith (note 42), p. 86. For discussion of industrial smoke as a symbol of wealth and wellbeing in Victorian urban environments, see Stephen Mosley, The Chimney of the World: A History of Smoke Pollution in Victorian and Edwardian Manchester (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 70–89.

¹²⁰Smith (note 15), p. 497.

¹²¹Smith (note 58), p. 439.

¹²²Alfred Evans Fletcher, ‘Modern Legislation in Restraint of the Emission of Noxious Gases from Manufacturing Operations’, Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry, 11 (1892), 120.

¹³¹Angus Smith to the LGB, PRO MH16/1, 18 February 1881.

¹²⁴Anon. (note 105), p. 334. See Alfred Evans Fletcher, ‘The Means at our Disposal for Preventing the Emission of Smoke from Factories and Dwelling Houses’, Transactions of the Seventh Annual Congress of Hygiene and Demography (1892), 28–37.

¹²⁵Minute Book of the MSNVAA, Manchester Central Library, M126/6/1/1. Also see Alfred Fletcher, ‘The Prevention of Smoke in Towns’, Manchester Guardian, 9 November 1889.

¹²⁶Eville Gorham, ‘Robert Angus Smith, F.R.S., and “Chemical Climatology”, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 36 (1982), 267–72.

¹²⁷Thorpe (note 41), p. 104.

¹²⁸Smith (note 15), p. 503.

¹²⁹Smith (note 113), p. 184. In 1844, almost twenty years prior to his appointment to the Alkali Inspectorate, Smith wrote to the Manchester Guardian in despair about the atmosphere of the city; see Kargon (note 28), pp. 115–16. For analysis of the network of largely middle class anti‐pollution activists in Victorian Manchester, see Mosley (note 119) and idem, ‘The Smoke Nuisance and Environmental Reformers in Late Victorian Manchester’, Manchester Region History Review, 10 (1996), 40–46.

¹³⁰Angus Smith to the LGB, PRO MH16/1, 1 March 1880.

¹³²Intermediate RAI for 1876 (c.165), p. 5 (1876), xvi.1.

¹³³Angus Smith to the Assistant Secretary of the Board of Trade, 11 November 1872, PRO, BT22/8/6, R7140/72. On 30 July 1872, it was decided that a copy of this letter should be sent to Newton and Parkgate Local Board.

¹³⁴Anonymous minute dated 30 July 1872, PRO, BT22/8/6, R7140/72,

¹³⁷Angus Smith to the Local Government Board, 13 April 1883, PRO, MH16/1.

¹³⁵In one extreme episode, in February 1880, Angus Smith decided that the Seaham Chemical Company could continue to operate without sufficient acid‐condensing capacity on the condition that the acid gas produced would be blown seawards by westerly winds. Angus Smith to the LGB, 17 February 1880, PRO, MH16/1. This decision was over‐ruled by administrators at the Local Government Board, see LGB to Angus Smith, 20 February 1880, PRO, MH16/1.

¹³⁶8th RAI for 1871 (c.582), p. 5 (1872), xvi.1.

¹³⁸This approach underpins contemporary pollution control in Britain. See David Vogel, ‘Cooperative Regulation: Environmental Regulation in Great Britain’, Public Interest, 72 (1983), 88–106; Hutter, Compliance: Regulation and Environment, (note 6).

¹³⁹With reference to the enforcement of the 1875 Sale of Food and Drugs Act, Ingreborg Paulus argues that ‘the state and business interests slowly evolved a modus operandi that did not cause harm to either’. See Ingreborg Paulus, The Search for Pure Food: A Sociology of Legislation in Britain (London, 1974), p. 38.

¹⁴⁰Martin Weiner contends that Victorian industrialists also adopted civil service standards during the nineteenth century in order to develop the ‘English way of doing business’; see English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit (London, 1981). Samuel Smiles' Self Help espouses the importance of tact in businessmen and ‘those who direct the action of other men’; see Smiles (note 53), p. 109.

¹⁴¹As Eric Ashby and Mary Anderson have observed, Smith's ‘only hope was to secure the confidence and cooperation of the factory owners. One tactless letter, one injudicious prosecution for infringement of the Alkali Act—and Smith would have had the whole Alkali industry ganged up against him’; see Ashby and Anderson (note 10), pp. 25–26.

¹⁴²Similar conclusions are evident in Richard Hawes' study of enforcement on a local level (note 5).

¹⁴³Liverpool manufacturer Frank Tate during discussion of A.E. Fletcher's paper (note 121), p. 123. For discussion of the positive attitude of manufacturers towards the alkali inspectorate see Sarah Willmot, ‘Pollution and Public Concern: The Response of the Chemical Industry in Britain to Emerging Environmental Issues, 1860–1901, in Homburg, Schröter and Travis (note 54).