On Rees's Cyclopaedia as a Source for the History of the Textile Industries in the Early Nineteenth Century

REFERENCES

• See for example – to give only three recent ones – R. L. Hills, Power in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1970), passim, especially p. 19; W. English, ‘A Study of the Driving Mechanisms in the Early Circular Throwing Machines’, Textile History, II, I (1971),69, 112, and S. D. Chapman, The Cotton Industry in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1972), especially pp. 21, 56.
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• Philosophical Magazine, LVI (1820), 222.
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• In the late nineteenth century efforts to date the publication of the various parts of the Cyclopaedia were made by Benjamin Dayton Jackson, who was secretary of the Linnaean Society 1880–1926. See his pamphlet, An Attempt to Ascertain the Actual Dates of Publication of the various Parts of Rees’s Cyclopaedia (London, 1895), reprinted with additions in Journal of Botany, XXXIV (1896), 307–11. Jackson did not however know of the dates of publication given in Philosophical Magazine, op. cit., pp. 222–4. Examination of the only known copy of the Cyclopaedia that was not bound up as directed in 1820 (in the library of the Natural History Museum, South Kensington) reveals that the dating given in the Phil. Mag. is fully reliable.
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• Compare Roger Lonsdale, Dr. Charles Burney (Oxford, 1965), pp. 412,413,416,421,429 for the pressure on the contributors, especially in the early years of the enterprise.
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• Forty-nine contributors were listed on the back covers of the original parts from IV, 2 to XIV, 2 between 1805 and 1810. Thirty-seven others were added in the list given in the preface issued in 1820 for binding in Volume I, pp. iv-v. Rees was rather disingenuous about fully identifying precisely what they had contributed: ‘every reader’, he wrote, ‘will be able to assign to each, so well known in the circle of science, the articles of any extent and of principal importance, which he has furnished’. Ibid., p. iv.
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• For Abraham Rees, see DNB, Gentleman’s Magazine, XCV, ii (1825), 181–4; and Robert Aspland and Thomas Rees, The Reunion of the Wise and Good in a Future State (London, 1825).
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• Prospectus in the possession of the Longman Group Ltd, Harlow, Essex. I am indebted to the Company for permission to search among their archives.
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• J. Thomson is listed in the preface as one of the contributors on ‘manufactures’ and his name is included in the earliest list of contributors on the original back cover of IV, 2. Phil. Mag., op. cit., p. 221 ascribes the subjects of ‘Cotton Spinning and Manufacture’ to him.
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• Edward Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain (London, 1835 ), p. 279.
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• Thomson became an FRS and his death was noted in Abstracts of the Papers communicated to the Royal Society of London, V, 1843–50 (1851), 1002. The only obituary I can trace is in the Manchester Guardian, 21 September 1850. He has been neglected by recent historians of the industry apart from a couple of mentions in S. D. Chapman, ‘The Peels in the Early English Cotton Industry’, Business History, XI, 2 (1969), 81, 85. See also Owen Ashmore, The Industrial Archaeology of Lancashire (Newton Abbot, 1969), p. 259·
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• John Graham, ‘The Chemistry of Calico Printing from 1790 to 1835, and History of Printworks in the Manchester District from 1760 to 1846’ (MSS in Manchester Central Library), p. 414. See also G. Turnbull, A History of the Calico Printing Industry in Great Britain (Altrincham, 1951 ), pp. 78–80.
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• Edmund Potter, ‘Lecture on Calico Printing’, Monthly Literary and Scientific Lecturer, III (1852), 251.
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• Patent 3654 (1813) extended by 3881 (1815). Parliamentary Papers, 1833, VI, Report from the Select Committee on Manufactures, Commerce and Shipping, p. 221.
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• A Letter to the Vice President of the Board of Trade on Protection to Original Designs and Patterns ... (Clitheroe, 1840); and A Letter to the Rt. Hon. Sir Robert Peel, Bart., on Copyright in Original Designs and Patternsfor Printing (London, 1840). Some of Thomson’s designs are preserved in a notable pattern-book; Manchester Central Library MSS, BRF. 667.2.T4.
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• Manchester Guardian, 21 September 1850.
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• A. P. Wadsworth and J. de L. Mann, The Cotton Industry and Industr£al Lancash£re, 1600–1780 (Manchester, 1931 ), p. 476; C. Aspin,James Hargreaves and the Sp£nn£ngJenny (Helmshore, 1964), pp. II, 13, 17, 19,23,48,49. James Thomson was almost certainly the writer signing himself’T’ in the Athenaeum, II (1807), 219–23. Here Hargreaves’s contribution to cotton spinning technology is valuably compared with that of Arkwright and Crompton, and some of the points made in the Cyclopaed£a article on ‘Cotton Manufacture’ of the following year are foreshadowed. See also C. Aspin, op. cit., p. 13. The Athenaeum, like the Cyclopaed£a published by Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, was edited by John Aikin, whose three sons were all contributors to Rees’s work.
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• Wadsworth and Mann, op. cit., p. 113. Ogden’s Descript£on of Manchester (Manchester, 1783), pp. 73–94 gives the earliest coherent historical account of the Manchester trade. Ogden also provided valuable historical information for John Aikin’s Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty M£les Round Manchester (London, 1795) with which Thomson must have been familiar.
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• John Farey, A Treatzseon the Steam Eng£ne (London, 1827 ), p. vi. For both the Fareys, see DNB.
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• See R. S. Fitton and A. P. Wadsworth, The Strutts and the Arkr£ghts, 1758–1810 (Manchester, 1958 ), pp. 212, 221–2.
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• John Farey senior referred to the tour that his two sons John and Joseph made in the summer of 1809 to make drawings of furnaces and forges in Derbyshire and South Yorkshire and to the plans the Strutts permitted them to make of their revolutionary factories. These plans, he stated in 1815, ‘will be published on some future occasion’. John Farey Sen., General View of the Agriculture and Minerals of Derbysh£re, I (1811), 389, 397; II (1815), viii, 17. A connexion between the Fareys and the Strutts, as scientific-minded unitarian industrialists very much part of milieu into which the Cyclopaedia fits, might have been furnished by Charles Sylvester. Sylvester was a contributor to the Cyclopaedia on chemical subjects and from 1807 to 1821 was also employed in a variety of capacities by William Strutt at Derby. See 1. Inkster, ‘Charles Sylvester and the Great Railroad Debate’, Annals of Science, XXVIII, 2 (1972), 115.
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• One plate, that illustrating Calico Printing was drawn by William Thomson, probably James Thomson’s brother. Others were drawn by James Burton and one by James Brown, neither of whom can I trace. They were all finely engraved by Wilson Lowry, FRS (1762–1824), for whom see DNB.
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• Like James Thomson, Charles Taylor was listed as one of the earliest contributors to the Cyclopaedia on the original cover of IV, 2. He is listed in the preface as one of the contributors in chemistry. Phil Mag., Opecit., p. 221 identifies him as the author of ‘Bleaching’.
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• The historians of the Society of Arts do got give him his due; H. T. Wood, A History of the Royal Society of the Arts (London, 1913 ), pp. 334–5; and D. Hudson and K. W. Luckhurst, The Royal Society of Arts, 1754–1954 (London, 1945), p. 172. His importance in Manchester is touched upon by A. E. Musson and Eric Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1969), pp. 96–7, 288–90, 305, 345–6. Their suggestion (p. 260) that Taylor was the author of the ‘Bleaching’ article in the Cyclopaedia can be confirmed.
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• A German visitor to Manchester in 1799 found him ‘an inventive and exceedingly active man’; P. A. Nemnich, Beschreibung einer im Sommer 1799 von Hamburg nach and durch England geschehenen Reise (Tiibingen, 1800 ), especially p. 278.
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• Obituary in Transactions of the Society of Arts, xxv (1817), viii.
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• See the letter from William Henry to Abraham Rees, dated December 1809, published in Annals of Philosophy, VI (1815), 422–4 and Rees’s reply, ibid., VII (1816), 83–4. For the subsequent controversy with Samuel Parkes, see ibid., VII (1816), 98–102.
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• For Parkes, see DNB and Musson and Robinson, Opecit., pp. 235–6, 255, 261.
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• The name of Parkes does not appear on the original paper covers. The preface and Phil. Mag., Opecit., p. 221, identify him as a contributor, but do not specify his subject further than ‘manufactures’.
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• Robert Bakewell, Introduction to Geology (5th edn, London, 1838 ), pp. 402–3.
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• See DNB; Cyclopaedia, I, Preface, p. v; Phil. Mag., Opecit., p. 219.
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• I am indebted for this information to Mr John Goodchild of Cusworth Hall Museum, Doncaster, who has the original assignment.
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• Under ‘Woollen Manufacture, Progress of’. See J. de L. Mann, The Cloth Industry in the West of England from 1640 to 1880 (Oxford, 1971), pp. 266, 273, 281.
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• See N. B. Harte, ‘Rees’s Clocks Watches Chronometers and Naval Architecture: A Note’, Maritime History, III, I (1973), 92–5.
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• Referred to under ‘Woollen Manufacture, Process of’.
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• Duncan’s name was added to the list on the original paper covers in 1808 in IX, I. The Preface includes him as one of the four contributors on ‘manufactures’ with Thomson, Parkes and Farey, Jun., Phil. Mag., Opecit., p. 219 specifies ‘Weaving’.
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• Patent 2769 (1804). He is mentioned in the DNB only to distinguish him from a namesake. He also contributed articles on, inter alia, calico, check, cloth manufacture, damask and drawloom to David Brewster’s Edinburgh Encyclopaedia, 18 vols, C. 1808–1830; see ibid., I, xi.
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• William Felkin, History of the Machine- Wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufactures (1867 ), pp. 32, 39.
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• Under ‘Stocking-Frame’, last paragraph.
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• Robert Bakewell, Observations on the Influence of Soil and Climate on Wool (London, 1808 ), p. V.
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• See Robert Collison, Encyclopaedias: their History throughout the Ages (New York and London, 1964 ), pp. 99, 103–4; D. McKie, ‘John Harris and his Lexicon Technicum’, Endeavour, IV, 14 (1945), 53–7; C. J. Longman and J. E. Chandler, The House of Longman, 1724–1800 (London, 1936), p. 77; David Layton, ‘Diction and Dictionaries in the Diffusion of Scientific Knowledge’, British Journal for the History of Science, II, 7 (1965),221–34 and E. S. Ferguson, Bibliography of the History of Technology (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1968), pp. 55–6. I intend to publish a full study of various aspects of the making of Rees’s Cyclopaedia.
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