George - Assistant Manager
In 1857 George was made Assistant Manager “but
not so as to relieve the manager from his responsibility to conduct the
company’s affairs for the benefit of the proprietors’ – as was recorded m the
Board minutes.[1] Is there perhaps a hint that the Board
thought that twenty three year old George Livesey might have other than the
Board’s interests at heart or that he might take on other, unsanctioned,
activities?
They need not have worried. For the next fourteen
years George worked assiduously under his father’s direction and kept, by his future
standards, very quiet. He took more and more responsibility however as time
went on and Thomas began to develop angina.
Around this time Thomas and Ellen moved
from the company house in Canal Grove to the more refined air of Elizabeth
Lodge in Consort Road - then Albert Road – in Peckham. It is still there as a
pleasant suburban house which must have been even more pleasant before the
building of the Camberwell workhouse - the notorious ‘spike’ – nearby. Within
the next few years the workhouse was joined by two railway lines - in 1865 one
to Nunhead and in 1866 one to Queen’s Road Peckham. They may be the reason that
the family later moved a much greater distance away to Thurlow Park Road in Dulwich.
This is now the South Circular Road but
still surprisingly rural and in the late 1860s the house at the janitor with Dulwich
Common must have been very pleasant indeed.
One reason for the move may have been that
Frank, George’s younger brother, born in 1845 was in 1861 enjoying the benefits
of a public school education at Dulwich College as a day boy and the new
Livesey was almost next door to the school.
Thad other reason may be much sadder I the George’s younger a sister Ellen
died in 1864 at the age of 27. George rarely, if ever, mentioned her. What was
she like?? Why did she die so young? There no clues.
On the 1861 census Thomas described himself
as ‘Gas Company Secretary’ but two years earlier he had been a gentleman when
he signed George’s wedding certificate. George was married in 1859 at St.Mary’s
Peckham, and his new wife was Harriet Howard from Rochester where her father was
a tallow chandler.
Perhaps as a romantic reference point we
can look at another young couple whose relationship was flowering around the
same time in the church halls of South London.
Susie told the story, how, with a large party of friends, they went to Crystal
Palace in Norwood. Before long Charles whispered
in her ear and ‘we wandered together for a long time and not only in the wonderful
building itself but within the garden and even down to the lake beside which
the colossal forms of extinct monsters were being cunningly modelled… we would
meet at the Crystal Fountain.. and I think we learned many things besides the
tenderness of our two hearts’.[2] This couple had to be careful because the
young man then had a pop star status. Harriett would eventually also learn what
it was to be the partner of a charismatic public figure although she may not
have expected it, but she undoubtedly made the same contributions of energy and
critical intelligence to her marriage as did Susie Spurgeon.
George always acknowledged Harriet’s
influence on his ideas. We know of no other mentor and the likelihood is that
was Harriet with whom his ideas were worked out and Harriett who supported him
and gave him confidence.
They were married in St. Mary’s Church in
Peckham very close to his father’s home in Albert Road. The church was bombed
in the Second World War and there is now a replacement church on site.
Why were
they married in Peckham and not in Rochester, as would be more usual and it
also seems her parents were not at the wedding because her sister, Caroline,
who acted as witness
The young couple went to live at 3 Rye Hill
Park, Peckham. The house has now gone but the area remains pleasant enough and
sandwiched between the open space of Nunhead’s reservoir and cemetery to the
north and Peckham Rye to the south. On the 1861 census George describes himself
as a gas engineer and they have one servant, Emily, hardly younger than
themselves. They did not stay here long and by 1871 were at 147 Lower Tulse
Hill, in Brixton – this house again has gone.
George, meanwhile, worked with his father
at Old Kent Road gas works, so that it could eventually ‘take the lead’. The works was to change and grow enormously
in these years.
Expansion at Old Kent Road
The area of the Old Kent Road gas works was
extended in this period. A large piece of land was purchased from a Mr. Brett for
£1,500. This was meadow called ‘six acres’ hitherto pasture with sheep and
their pens. In 1864 another large piece of land was added to the works, having
been bought for £7,000. [3]
Thus, gradually, the gas works crept down the main road and along the canal, engulfing
the side streets until they were surrounded. All that remained for many years was
small patch used for allotments by the workforce.
Coal was
delivered via the Surrey Canal. A small basin is said to have been built in
1856 ‘for the repair of barges’[4]
and Crown Wharf was purchased.[5] The barge fleet was gradually built up as the
company ceased hiring barges and used their own craft. Their first wooden barge, Thomas, had been
purchased second-hand in 1843, an event which George Livesey remembered from his
childhood. [6]
Their second barge was bought in 1845 and
built for them by Linnell, of Rotherhithe.[7] In 1865 an iron barge was
constructed for them by Lewis and Stock well[8]
and another in 1870 came from Thames Ironworks.[9]
But the owned by the company was gradually
extended and against outlet for commercial companies in 18651 was ordered from
Thames ironworks based on Polk read in the north bank of the Thames and the
premiership building works in England properly in the world warrior had been
built the five years earlier and Frank kills was already on board and
An
office block was built in 1861 alongside the road and adjacent to the Canal
Bridge. It is this building which became
the Livesey Institute in the 1900s and which was demolished in the early 1980s
and many local people will remember.
There were also new retort houses built on
the site of the local church. Christ
Church had been built at same time as the gas works when Peckham New Town was
all fields. It was on a path running from the old manor house. Both the
congregation of the church and the Bishop were in favour of the move because
the church was suffering badly from smell from the gasworks but it needed a
special act of Parliament. As compensation the gas company paid £1,000 for a
new site on the other side of the Old Kent Road and £5,000 towards a new church
– which stands opposite the gasworks site today. A new retort house was built on the site of
Christ Church. In 1867 it was described by Samuel Clegg Jnr who said there were
315 retorts each 19 feet by 6 inched long built with firebricks and set seven
in a bench. This reflected a huge increase in the rise amount of gas sold.
Steam Engines
The Old Kent Road Gas Works acquired new
improved steam engines and seem to have bought them from local firms. In April 1864 they bought an Easton &
Co. two cylinder engine.[10]
Easton had begun making hydraulic rams in the Strand in the 1820s and had then
moved to The Grove, Southwark where, together with Charles Amos they made all
sorts of engines and mills. By the time
South Met bought their steam engine the company was in process of moving to
Erith where they were to flourish. A similar engine was bought at the same time
from another local firm, Middleton. They were initially based in Tooley Street
and later Loman Street where they made mills and engines.[11]
Earlier another engine had been bought from
Beale & Co. Joshua Taylor Beale had designed a steam engine in Whitechapel
in the 1830s. He later moved to Greenwich where he adapted the original engine to
turn it into an ‘exhauster’. His son
John Taylor Beale, sold the exhauster patent to Brian Donkin of Bermondsey who moved
to a green field site in Chesterfield in 1860 where they continued to make the
exhauster. South Met. bought both an exhauster and an 8 hp steam engine from
Beale.[12]
CHIMNEY
In 1862 the
young George Livesey designed a chimney from the retort furnaces. This was constructed
by Moreland.[13]
This chimney was described by Samuel C1egg Jnr.[14] as a ‘peculiarly constructed chimney …. It is square and parallel from
the bottom to the top; and it is strengthened by four flange-like buttresses.
GAS HOLDERS
Four holders were apparently in place at Old Kent Road before the
arrival of Thomas Livesey. The works had begun with two gasholders. These were
very different from the holders we see now and had a central column around
which the rest of the holder was constructed. A third holder was added in 1835 to plans by George Palmer and a wall was built
around it to protect it from storms. [15]
Two years later in 1837 another holder was built by Barlow and Co.[16] which ‘had a timber
frame of really highly scientific geometrical construction, with single timber
uprights’. [17] Over the next forty years holders at the Old
Kent Road evolved as ideas changed, towards the holders we see today listed and
remaining in place.
One of Thomas Livesey first decisions was the construction
of No. 5 gasholder. The contract was given in June 1840 to J. and J. Horton.[18]
‘That
had a cast-iron frame with tripod standards held together at … making .. a
frame that was the strongest, I suppose, that was ever seen for a small
gasholder …. It was such that it would almost have held a ship of war from
tumbling over’.[19] Another holder followed in 1845, No.6., the tank – that’s the area in the centre,
usually below ground level – built by direct labour under Thomas Livesey’s
supervision – for a two lift holder. It was another ten years before the next holder
was built. This was for a telescopic holder with two lifts and was built by Piggott.
The tank was constructed by Mackenzie[20]
but once again the canal side dam broke and the works were flooded. This was a twelve column holder with guide framing
‘elegant and artistic’. The cast-iron columns were by Westwood & Wright.[21]
No. 8 was built in 1861 again
constructed by Piggott but with John Aird building the tank.[22]
This holder stood for fifty years as a landmark and after demolition the tank
became an ornamental lake. No.9.the next
holder built in 1857 was also built by Piggott.
There were some problems with groundwater in building this and pumping
was needed after water caused major subsidence and this would be a lesson for
the future
Maps of the 1870s show the holders – on the
Ordnance Maps they are not numbered to tell us which is which. Four stand along
the canal, the largest nearest the Old Kent Road, another is slightly behind
them. Another large holder stands alone some distance down the canal.
AND ALSO
In this period George Livesey patented a number
of processes and devices – one of these was the ‘man lid’ to be used on gas
holders “by which inlet and outlet pipes can be examined
and cleansed without loss of gas .. or ingress of atmospheric air”.[23] He also designed equipment for cleaning the
newly made gas – washers and scrubbers – devices said to have remained an
industry standard until the 1920s.[24]
However, his main work throughout his period as Assistant Manager and then
Engineer was a ‘purification’ system – a means of cleaning the newly made gas
and, hopefully, recovering valuable chemical by products. In this he was attempting to rival Frank Hills, ‘the Deptford
Chemist’.
It is difficult to know how to describe the problem which Frank Hills,
and some other chemical inventors, were causing the gas
industry in this period. The basic problem was the smell of the gas and attempts
throughout the history of the industry to deal with it. A number of schemes had
been tried and had failed and patents had been taken out. It had not been overlooked by a number
industrial chemists that what could e removed here from the gas might be a
valuable resource
Frank Hills was one of a family of industrial
chemists with works in various parts of London and elsewhere. For a long time they had been in business of
buying up gas works waste – tar and ammoniacal liquor. Frank was aggressively energetic
and must have been well known to gas management throughout the country. He was
one of a number of other industrial chemists in a race to find the purification
process which worked for the gas industry and provided lucrative waste products. His
main works near Old Kent Road in Copperas Street. Deptford and he actually lived
in Camberwell. In the 1840s he bought a large tide mill site in East Greenwich
marshes - the Chemical Works he built there was to become important in South
Met’s future.
As early as 1846 the South Met Board had
taken on an ammonia purification process which Frank Hills had formulated on
condition he was ‘given all the ammonia extracted. [25]
In 1852 they took on a process which he had patented ‘of purification from
sulphur with sesquioxide of iron’. For this he wanted three farthings per thousand
feet of gas’ but he accepted £350 a year as a licence fee’.[26] A year
later they were offered a different system by Richard Laming, a London doctor
with a chemical works on the Isle of Dogs and which they accepted.[27]
Hills then threatened to sue them for infringement of patent. The same story could
be retold in all the London gas works in this period.
There is a long back story to this where the
process had been developed by a chain of inventors of which Laming was one. Frank
Hills had however managed to patent the process including elements not covered
by others and could thus claim infringement if a licence fee was not paid to
him. The deal he offered also usually included payment for supply of a
‘mixture’ and removal of the waste products.
Hills, Laming, and one, Angus Croll, were involved in apparently endless
litigation on these issues –which also reflects the amount of money to be made
from it.[28]
In 1863 Frank Hills patent became time
expired and he applied to the Privy Council for n extension of his money making
idea. Thomas Livesey was prominent in a group of gas managers who persuaded
their companies to petition the Privy Council that this should not happen. The
board was happy to do when they heard the amount of money which Frank and his
three brothers had made out of gas companies in the past 15 years.[29] The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
considered the issue and did not allow the extension which, they said ‘had a
strong tendency to contravene the interests of the the public.[30]
Clearly this presented a challenge which
George Livesey was bound to take up.
As early as 1862 some work had been done on
purification at the Old Kent Road and by 1866 large scale tests were underway
under George’s supervision for a process which he had patented.[31] Tests were also done at the Great Central Gas
Works in Bow which may imply that Angus Croll was in some way involved. [32]
These new arrangement would mean reduced use of Frank Hills’ oxide process.[33]
Unlike the others who had developed purification
systems George was prepared to make his public - although of course this may have
been part of the strategy. It seems that
neither Croll, Laming nor Hills had ever
given a paper or written anything to described what were their processes
actually were. George Livesey gave a paper to the 1866 meeting of the British
Association of Gas Managers about his system and this was published not only in
the Journal of Gas Lighting but also in the more widely read Engineering.[34]
He was back at the BAGM two years later
to explain why the experiment had failed.[35]
Why did it fail? It was said that he went
ahead “with his characteristic disregard of old ideas and formerly accepted theories”
[36] - but in 1866 it was of course not known that
this was ‘characteristic’. He was a
young man and this was the first paper he was to give to BAGM. It was to e followed
by many more. Accepted theories were never George’s strong point but it was also
‘characteristic’ that his first serious attempt to effect technological change was
to dive into such technical field and one which had challenged a great many
clever people. Hills and Laming had years’ of experience and a lot to lose,
and, in Hills case at least, they were ruthless operators.
The Professional gas man
These early papers of George Livesey’s were
given to early meetings of the British Association of Gas Managers which was to
evolve into today’s Institution of Gas Engineers. An inaugural meeting had been held in 1863 in Manchester
to set up the Association although, unsurprisingly, all those present were from
Northern England. the first general
meeting was held a few months later again in Manchester George’s purification paper
was given the first London AGM in 1866 and he was from then on to become a
stalwart of the organization. Thomas Livesey was to be President of the
Association in 1871. Inevitably George Livesey was to have a major impact on
the Association in later years – but that is something for a later chapter. As a
young man he gave papers most years -many of them controversial but organization
itself stayed intact.
WORK IN THE GAS WORKS
While management at Old Kent Road was
effecting changes, and giving papers about it, in the works men in the retort
house put in long hard hours making gas.
There were many others and as gas works grew in size so the number of
others increased –tradesmen like carpenters and blacksmiths, stablemen for the
company horses, office clerks, specialists working on ancillary equipment of
increasing sophistication, and of course general labourers working on the wharf
and around the works. Many gas works employees were rarely at the works – main
layers, outside repairmen, collectors, and meter readers. There were also sailors employed by the
company on the collier ships. George Livesey
was to have an impact on all their lives.
Despite all these other staff it is the
retort house men that most historians have written about. They needed to be big, strong, tough men and
to be relatively young. Gas was made in
retorts arranging in stacks in ‘retort houses’. The retorts were filled with
coal, heated, and the gas which came off was run into pipes and off to be
processed. When the process was ended the
coal – by now coke - would be removed and the process started again. Men worked
on the job in twelve hour shifts seven days a week. These cruel shifts were
made easier if they included periods when the work pace slackened. Men lived
near the works focusing their lives around it. The regime was a hard one and
increasingly so as the city and its ways crept out and encompassed what had
been a semi rural areas around of the Old Kent Road.
Problems with the hours worked were made
worse because the process was itself continuous. Gas had to be made all the time and even if
some is stored to cope with peak demands there was still a problem in retorts needed
to be kept hot and in use. As gasworks became larger and hopefully more
efficient the pace of work increased.
moves to change this came from
two directions – one from the men themselves through the trade union movement
which had already jade its presence known in some London works. The other pressure came from philanthropists
and most particularly from those who wanted to stop work on Sundays for
religious reasons. None of this was
going to be easy to implement
WORKING MEN’S CLUB
Livesey was also involved in welfare
schemes for workers outside of the actual gas works and ones in which he hoped
to be ‘the agent of improvement’. He
helped to set up a working men’s club in Meeting House Lane in 1865. [37]
Meeting House Late is
another of the roads running between the Old Kent Road and central Peckham. It
is a road down which George must have walked to get his parents’ house from the
works. he helped logically to set it up
in Mucklow’s Yard off Peckham High Street and it moved to Meeting House Lane in
1865
He is said to have started the club along
with three others although what the input of any of them is a matter of
speculation. The others were Thomas Cash,
Mr. Spurling and a Mr. E. Clark. Of these Cash was a friend of
Livesey’s a Quaker temperance reformer who was to become chairman of the London
Temperance Hospital. He lived at Adelaide Place in the City of London. Spurling
was a wealthy stockbroker –presumably he put the money up - who lived in North Terrace,
Camberwell. Edward Clark was to have a career as a successful barrister who
became a Kings Counsel. In 1865 he lived in Peckham Park Road and had become in
the early 1860s interested in the formation of the Working Men’s Club and
Institute Union. In fact he took the minutes of the first meeting.[38]
The Peckham club is listed as having been in existence before the Union which
meant it dated from before 1865.
CHANGE
By the early 1870s it became clear that Thomas
Livesey had a heart problem. Nevertheless he became president of BAGM in 1871. Thomas, or someone in charge of the works,
decided to have the place photographed that year. This included a group picture
of the officers of the company. Thomas is a little old man covered in whiskers.
Things were about to change.
[4] Layton. An inlet is shown on an 1851 map alongside
the Old Kent Road and marked as ‘Globe Wharf’ .
However by 1872 there is a gasholder shown on the site. Garton says that
No.7 holder was built on the site of a small dock the walls of which gave way
during the construction of the holder.
[5] There was a Crown Wharf
on the other side of Old Kent Road and another further down the canal and on
the north bank. However Garton says that
the office block was built on the Crown Wharf site.
[8] Lewis and Stockwell
were engineers and shipbuilders with a large dry dock at Blackwall Point –
which was eventually purchased by S.Met in the 1880s for part of the site of
Ordnance Wharf.
[9][9][9] Thames Ironworks –
shipbuilding company based on Bow Creek. A premier shipbuilding company in world
terms. In 1870 they would have just finished building Warrior – which now lies
as a heritage attraction in Portsmouth Harbour.
Their Chair from 1871 was Frank Hills – the ‘Deptford chemist’ who
Livesey rivalled in purification technology.
[13] This general
engineering firm began in Clerkenwell, moving later to Silvertown. Owned by a
succession of Richard Morelands it had begun by a John Moreland in the late
18th century as specialist chimney constructors.
[15] Thomas Piggott of
Spring Hill, Birmingham, had begun as general engineers but became specialists
in gasholder construction. Cf Grace’s Guide.
[16] Barlow was a gas works
construction firm – a family company. See Gas Engineering February 1882.
[18] Joshua Horton of the
Aetna Engineering Works, Smethwick. They were becoming specialist gas holder
engineers.
[20] I assume this is the
major contractor William Mackenzie who worked with Thomas Brassey on canal and
rail contractor. Cf. Grace's Guide. However he had died in 1851 so this may be
a continuation of his firm. Or a different contractor.
[21] Westwood and Wright
were at Hope Works, Dudley. This was another firm
specialising in gas holder construction along with other related iron work.
[28] I covered much of this
saga in some detail in my PhD Thesis (The Early London Gas Industry and its
Waste Products. OU 1991). Frank is said
to have taken out his patent following a demonstration of Laming’s process at Westminster
Gas works, from which he was excluded, but saw enough to get to the patent
office before anyone else.
[34] As above
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