Thanks to Paul Lorber for this ‘one off’
contribution to our local history series
While local history is often just local places, I
thought it would be good to write about people, who lived locally in the past,
and who made a major contribution. This is a story of a famous inventor who
made his home in Sudbury. He made a discovery that propelled the development of
chemistry – but he is now largely unknown.
William Henry Perkin was born on 12 March 1838 at
King David Lane, Upper Shadwell, East London. He was baptised in St Paul’s
Church – a small church with a tall spire built in 1669 after the fire of
London. His early home was demolished a long time ago, but a plaque
commemorates the site of his birth and his first experiments.
1. The blue plaque to William Perkin in Shadwell. (Image
from the internet)
His father ran a successful carpentry business
employing 12 men and the family was reasonably well off. Shadwell at the time
was a crowded mixture of slums and artisan tradesmen. Their middle-class status
did not prevent the impact of poverty-based diseases that were all around them
and William lost both his eldest sister and a brother to tuberculosis. William
attended a private school near his home, and had lots of hobbies including
photography. At the age of 14 he got all dressed up and took his own photo,
seen here.
2. The self-portrait photograph that William Perkin
took, aged 14. (From “Mauve” by Simon Garfield)
Like most young people, he had no idea what career
he might follow, thinking at first that he would follow in his father’s
footsteps and become a carpenter. For a while he had ambitions to become an
artist or possibly a musician, as he learned to play the violin and double
bass. When he was around 13 a friend showed him some simple experiments with
crystals and he became attracted by chemistry and the idea of making
discoveries.
Aged 13, William joined the City of London School
not far from St Paul’s. The school offered lessons in chemistry, taught during
the lunch hour twice a week, and cost his father an extra 7 shillings (35p in
decimal currency) per week. Thomas Hall, the visiting master in charge of the
lessons noticed William’s interest and made him a helper with his experiments. By
this time his father agreed to build a small chemistry laboratory for William
in their home, although George Perkin wanted his son to become an architect,
like his brother.
William also attended chemistry talks given by Henry
Letheby at the London Hospital and lectures by Michael Faraday at the Royal
Institution. Chemistry then was looked down on as a serious science in Britain,
but owing to Faraday’s efforts, with support from Albert, the Prince Consort (a
German), the Royal College of Chemistry was founded by private subscription. The
first Director of the new College was also a German – August Wilhelm von
Hofmann. In 1853, at the age of 15, William enrolled at the Royal College,
although it took a number of interviews with Hofmann before his father was
convinced.
The streets of London were at the time lit by gas
light. The gas was derived by distillation of coal but the process created
great many unwanted by products – one being a large amount of oily tar. Tar was
regarded as waste and there was a problem of how to get rid of it, and all the
other by-products including sulphur. Chucking it down the drains or into rivers
was one environmentally unfriendly solution. Chemistry was still in its infancy,
but it was known that coal tar consisted of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen
and sulphur.
Professor Hofmann was interested in a substance
called aniline. He was keen to create quinine which at the time was the only
effective treatment for malaria, then still prevalent in large parts of Europe
and quite rampant in parts of England. Britain regarded malaria as the greatest
obstacle to more colonisation, and the link with mosquitoes had not yet been
established. Quinine was obtained from cinchona bark but was in limited supply
and therefore very expensive. William understood the importance of this
research and was ambitious enough to try to help find the solution. He did this
by undertaking experiments in his makeshift home laboratory – without running
water or gas supply.
3. A vial of Perkin's original Mauveine, and a
sample of his dyed silk. (Images from the internet)
William Perkin had an inquisitive mind and one of
his experiments produced a black powder, which when digested with spirits of
wine gave a mauve dye. He stained a piece of silk cloth and found that it did
not fade with washing or prolonged exposure to light. But what next? He was
just 18, and knew nothing of manufacturing processes. With the help of his
brother Thomas, William produced a larger quantity of his new dye and sent a
sample to Robert Pullar in Scotland who had recently been appointed as dye
maker to Queen Victoria. He received an encouraging response, and in August
1856 Perkin obtained a patent for his discovery.
Although William wanted to concentrate on research,
he hoped that making a living from manufacturing would be a means to that end. As
investors were impossible to find for such a new industry, it was his own
father who decided to risk all his assets to help finance the project. In the
mean-time, samples produced using the new colour were tested and “were well
received by the ladies”.
As getting a suitable factory site in Shadwell seemed
impossible, a ‘meadow’ close to the Grand Junction Canal was found. The six-acre
Oldfield Lane site, at Greenford Green near Harrow, was purchased from the owner
of the canal-side Black Horse pub. Construction started in June 1857, and despite
having to design his own manufacturing process and find sufficient quantities
of base material, the factory was built and started producing within six months.
4. William Perkin's factory at Greenford Green, in
1858 and in 1873. (From “Mauve” by Simon Garfield)
In 1858, Perkin had his application for a French
patent refused, because he applied too late and a French dye works copied his
process. He felt that all was lost – only for his good fortune to be revived by
Queen Victoria who wore mauve to her daughter’s wedding, while the Empress
Eugenie, at the time the most influential woman in the world of fashion, decided
that mauve matched the colour of her eyes. Paris went crazy for mauve, and the
rest of the world followed.
5. A mauve Victorian dress, and the Empress Eugenie
displaying her fashion style. (From the internet)
To take advantage of the craze William improved the dyeing methods and devised
new ones so the dyes could be applied to calico and paper. Demand grew
exponentially and with it his personal wealth. Mauve was the height of fashion for
about two years and then the time had come for new colours as the fashion
industry took off.
In 1859, William married his first cousin, Jemima
Lisset, and the couple moved to rented accommodation in Harrow Road, Sudbury
(one of the villas between Nos. 797 and 807). Their first son William Henry (junior)
was born a year later followed by a second son, Arthur George, a year after
that. They moved from rented accommodation to a house of their own, Seymour
Villa, also on Harrow Road, which included room for a small laboratory.
William continued to keep busy running his factory
and inventing new colours, including Britannia Violet and Perkin’s Green. He
had plenty of competition from others in the UK, but also in France and Germany,
as chemists were keen to create new colours to feed the never-ending demand. Perkin
also continued with his experiments, and did find a way of improving the dyeing
of wallpapers, but also spent time writing scientific papers. Some of the dyes he
invented were used to colour postage stamps, including the original mauve from
1881 until withdrawn after Queen Victoria’s death in 1901.
6. William Perkin (second right) and his brother
Thomas (centre) with colleagues at Greenford, c.1870.
(From “Mauve” by Simon Garfield)
In 1869 a new colour (alizarin, a red dye) which
William had created was all the rage, and made great profits. By the early
1870s Perkin had personal wealth of £100,000, a very rich man by Victorian
standards. He sold his factory, which he regarded as too small to compete with
the large German concerns, in 1873. He’d also had enough of constant legal
battles to protect his patents. The sale became acrimonious, but fortunately
the Perkin brothers won the court case.
William’s first wife had died of tuberculosis in
1862 and his father died in 1864. In 1866 he married for the second time. His
new bride was Alexandrine Caroline Mollwo, the daughter of a neighbouring
family originally from Poland, and the wedding took place at St John’s Church,
Wembley. They had 3 daughters, Sasha, Lucy and Nellie, and one son, Frederick.
7. The Chestnuts, Harrow Road, Sudbury, c.1900. (From
“Mauve” by Simon Garfield)
In 1874, and retired from industry at the age of 36,
William built a new home called The Chestnuts, next door to Seymour Villa in
Harrow Road, and converted his old house into a large laboratory. Between 1874
and his death in 1907 he published 60 scientific papers dealing with magnetic
rotary power and molecular architecture of various chemical compounds.
8. The Chestnuts and New Hall on an extract from an
1895 O.S. map. (Source: Brent Archives map collection)
William was an active Christian, and made a large cart shed near his house
available for services, as there was then no church in Sudbury village. He bought
some land and buildings on the other side of The Chestnuts, which had belonged
to the former Sudbury racecourse. There, in 1878, he built the New Hall,
designed for use as both a church and village hall.
9. The New Hall, Harrow Road, Sudbury, c.1900. (From
a slide in the Wembley History Society Collection)
10. Lucy (with doll) and Nellie Perkin, at the old cottages
behind the New Hall. (Brent Archives image 9554)
Perkin became an evangelical churchman preaching
charity, moderation and abstinence from alcohol. He created a working men’s
club at the New Hall, but the venture was apparently not a success as the men
liked to drink. With “The Swan” on one side, and the Sudbury Brewery and its
“Jolly Gardeners” pub on the other, temptation was too great! The New Hall’s
Sunday School for children, which he actively supported, was popular however,
and his daughter Sasha was among its teachers in these photographs from 1899.
11. The New Hall Sunday School children, 1899, and
their teachers, including Sasha Perkin.
(Brent Archives online images 4695
and 4698, from the Wembley History Society Collection)
William Perkin received a Knighthood in 1906,
exactly 50 years after his famous discovery. In 1907 he received a Degree of
Doctor of Science from Oxford University at the same ceremony where Mark Twain
was made a Doctor of Literature. Later that year he became ill with double
pneumonia and appendicitis. His end was very sudden and Sir William died on 14 July
1907 at the age of 69. He was buried in the graveyard at Christ Church, Roxeth.
12. A portrait and photograph of Sir William Perkin
at the time of his Knighthood, 1906. (From the internet)
Lady Perkin, who died in 1929 at the age of 90,
continued her husband’s charitable work. She offered the New Hall to the
Wesleyan Methodist Trust at a modest price, and they bought it in 1913. Twenty
years on, it became too small for Sudbury’s rapidly growing population, and was
demolished to make way for the present Sudbury Methodist Church, which opened
in 1935. Sudbury Neighbourhood Centre now stands on the site of the old
buildings behind the hall.
13. The Perkin Memorial Seat, in a 1950s Sudbury postcard.
(Brent Archives online image 8871)
Perkin also owned part of the former Sudbury Common
opposite the church, which he’d allowed the Sudbury Institute football team to
use for their pitch. Sudbury shopkeeper Edwin Butler was a local councillor,
and persuaded Wembley U.D.C. to buy it from Perkin’s executors in 1920, to
become Sudbury Recreation Ground. Butler became the Borough of Wembley’s first
Mayor in 1937, and the following year the Council erected a William Perkin
memorial seat, in a small garden at the corner of the open space, to mark the
centenary of his birth. The seat was officially unveiled by Miss Sasha Perkin
in 1939, on her return from Christian missionary work in China. The memorial
seat was sadly lost when the Sudbury roundabout was enlarged.
14. Chestnut Avenue and Perkin Close, remembering a
famous Sudbury resident and his home.
(Photos by Paul Lorber, 2020)
The Chestnuts was demolished a long time ago, but
it was situated where Chestnut Court now sits just off Chestnut Avenue. Further
on is Chestnut Grove and nearby Perkin Close (a tiny close with around 20
maisonettes) named in his honour. Another memorial to Perkin, organised by
Wembley History Society, was unveiled outside Sudbury Methodist Church in 1956,
marking the centenary of his discovery of the first aniline dye.
15. Unveiling the Perkin Memorial plaque outside
Sudbury Methodist Church, 1956. (Brent Archives 9628)
Perkin’s sons, William, Arthur and Frederick, were also
part of his legacy. They became successful scientists making their own
contribution, doing research at Oxford and becoming Professors of Chemistry at Manchester
and Leeds Universities. The methods Perkin used progressed to creating
explosives, painkillers, fertiliser, and medical advances including treating
ulcers, use as disinfectant and the earliest forms of chemotherapy. The irony
of his invention is plain to see - William was conducting experiments to find a
medical application and created a new dye. Today scientists are using dyes to
find new medical applications.
In 1944, over 80 years after William Perkin failed
to find a synthetic way of creating quinine, an American scientist finally did
so. Just in time, as the drug was essential for the treatment of malaria in the
Second World War and the fight against the Japanese.
Paul Lorber,
Barham Community Library.
Come back next week, as we travel a
short way down the Harrow Road for the story of another local person, whose
influence is still felt today!
