Page 75 - BBC History The Story of Science & Technology - 2017 UK

Slums of Victorian London, as
drawn by Gustave Doré. The
industrial revolution has long
been blamed for exacerbating
social deprivation

each, but most subscriptions were of five to gave birth to those mighty efforts of his to shelter the marble statue. Edinburgh,
ten guineas, from people unknown to Watt. genius”. It had, after all, been while repairing torn between its Scottish and its British
As Cobbett predicted, grateful ‘cotton lords’ Glasgow University’s model Newcomen identities, debated whether or not to cede the
sprang to the cause. engine that Watt conceived of the fuel-saving honour of Watt to Westminster Abbey, and
Manchester, despite having no direct separate condenser. decided not. It collected over £1,250 but that
connection to Watt, contributed £1,100. was insufficient to achieve its ambitious
Without fast-flowing rivers, the city’s A new Newton plans. Consequently, it was 1851 before the
expansion since the 1780s had depended However, popular admiration for Watt Watt Institution and School of Arts funded
entirely on Watt’s rotative steam engine. extended well beyond the cotton industry a statue by Peter Slater for its new building
By the 1820s, ‘Cottonopolis’ (as Manchester and the professoriate. Not only did numer- in Adam Square.
was dubbed) was a bastion of free trade and ous artisans and tradesmen subscribe, but By then, Watt’s memory was regularly
provincial science, and saw in steam power substantial sums were collected in a dozen toasted both at trade unionists’ and profes-
both the opportunity for worldwide shipping (mainly engineering) workshops – impressed sional engineers’ dinners, verses were written
services and proof of the utility of scientific perhaps by the tutor at Anderson’s in his honour and his image appeared on
investigations. In 1857, the city would Institution, Glasgow, who stated that Watt unions’ membership certificates. Thomas
inaugurate its own monument to Watt in had rescued “the term Mechanic… from Wright described how a new apprentice
Piccadilly Gardens, subscribing £1,000 for opprobrium, and [rendered] it as honourable would be interrogated by his peers, “as to his
a copy of Chantrey’s statue by William Theed a title as any man could possess”, or the designs about becoming the Stephenson or
the Younger. chemist Andrew Ure, who declared that Watt Watt of his day: in a word to ‘taking his
Already in 1824, Glasgow, the other centre “has done for the earth what Newton did for measure’”. In 1868, when Birmingham
of Britain’s cotton industry, preferred to go the Heavens” (Glasgow Mechanics’ Magazine, commissioned a statue to stand in front of
its own way, raising £3,500 to commission 4 December 1824 and 1 January 1825). the town hall, The Times remarked that “no
Chantrey to dignify George Square with a Down the Clyde, Greenock proclaimed its small share was contributed by the working
ALAMY similar bronze statue (see above left). As status as Watt’s birthplace with yet another men of Birmingham”. This time Watt was
dressed in everyday clothes, standing next to
commission for Chantrey, prompting James
the Lord Provost told a large public meeting,
a steam-engine cylinder. Newly enfranchised
Watt Junior to donate a library to the town,
Glasgow was proud to be “the city which
The Story of Science & Technology 75