The Great Exhibition 1851 and my family

One of my treasured possessions is the signed cover of a copy of the catalogue of the Great Exhibition presented to my great-grandfather, Richard Williams, by the members of the Surgical and Anatomical Committee Class X, ‘as a slight token of the services rendered by him as Secretary’. 

Richard managed the business of John Weiss & Son, manufacturers of surgical instruments at 62 The Strand, and, I like to think, offered his services for the exhibition. John Weiss & Son had produced a most marvellous instrument comprising 1,851 knives. This was clearly a bit of showing off. Yet, behind the scenes, advances were being made in surgery with the work of Lister and others, and the makers of instruments were taking up the challenge to keep pace. Weiss & Son are still in business. I imagine Richard’s son, Alfred my grandfather at age nineteen, visiting the exhibition and being inspired by all he saw. He would go on to register a number of patents during his varied career, including that for a life raft for which he won a number of awards. It was an age of invention. 

The catalogue does make fascinating reading and leaves the reader wanting a first-hand account of a visit and there is one first-hand account by a visitor with whom I am very familiar, Charlotte Brontë, my great-great uncle, William Smith Williams, having worked with her at her publishers. Charlotte’s relationship with the Exhibition was perhaps characteristic of the attitudes of many people removed from industry. On 17 April 1851, she wrote to her publisher George Smith’s mother to say, ‘I was nursing a comfortable and complacent conviction that I had quite made up my mind not to go to London this year: the Great Exhibition was nothing – only a series of bazaars under a magnified hothouse.’  She did though go, as she wrote to her father on 31 May 1851:

‘Yesterday we went to the Crystal Palace – the exterior has a strange and elegant but somewhat unsubstantial effect – The interior is like a mighty Vanity Fair  - the brightest colours blaze on all sides – and wares of all kinds – from diamonds to spinning jennies and Printing Presses are there to be seen – It was very fine – gorgeous – animated – bewildering…’

The Great Exhibition drew both great praise and harsh criticism. A wonderful series of lithographs were produced by Lowes Dickinson and this is available for us to see on the British Library website. Lowes Dickinson was William Smith Williams son in law.

William Smith Williams makes no comment on this major national event, or rather any comment he may have made has been lost. The involvement of Lowes Dickinson may suggest a visit by William’s daughter, Margaret, even though she and Lowes wouldn’t marry for a further six years. This involvement and William’s earlier connection with Henry Cole with a paper he wrote On Lithography, would certainly suggest to me that William himself would have visited. The lithographer for whom William had worked, Charles Hullmandel, was an exhibiter with a demonstration of the technique. 

Richard Williams

You can read more on How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World and more on the Great Exhibition 

What do we mean by manufacturing?

I tend to see manufacturing, as distinct from making, where there is an element of mass production and/or mechanisation. 

In historic terms, we see manufacturing appearing when textiles were produced in a manufactory such as a mill driven by water power, instead of the cottage.  Birmingham gunsmiths offer a different example with the manufacturing process split down into constituent parts with each carried out by a different person, often in a different workshop. We can see how the production line developed from this.

A related question is which pairs of hands are manufacturing and which are providing a related service. The Office of National Statistics, I think, stumbled across this issue when comparing manufacturing employment over the post war period where they saw services being outsourced and so the related employees no longer being included in the returns made by manufacturing companies. This links to an example I found on a manufacturing blog in which manufacturing companies are placed in the spotlight. I was surprised to find a component distributor included and was told that it was part of the supply chain.

There are then questions of ownership and geography. Rolls-Royce and JCB are British manufacturing companies which manufacture both in the UK and elsewhere. Nissan is a Japanese company which manufactures in many countries including Britain; the same is true of the growing number of electric vehicle related companies building manufacturing plant in Britain. Some toy manufacturers, for example, who used to manufacture in the UK now have their products made in China Are they all British manufacturers? 

What about Manufacturers and makers? This image from the Bovey Tracy Craft Fair shows a few of the two hundred stands where makers sell the pieces they have made. This is a vibrant part of the economy and can lead to manufacturing.

I have friends who design and make table wear. If a particular design attracts great interest they may ask 'manufacturing' businesses to make them. They are no longer hand made, but who is the manufacturer? An article in Monocle magazine tells of the revival in Stoke’s pottery manufacturers. Another friend told me of Somerset textile factories which are more and more undertaking contract work for makers. 

Are they all part of the bigger manufacturing picture ?

The British electronics company ARM came out of Acorn computers where it designed operating systems. These then have to be printed on silicon chips. Are both parts manufacturing? ARM decided to licence its designs for other companies to process  is it still a manufacturer? A comparison is with EMI which designed the brain scanner. They had a choice of whether to make it themselves or license the design for others to make. They chose the first route only to find themselves unable to meet demand..

You can read my take on How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World  

  

Whatever Happened to British Manufacturing

How often do we hear the lament that British manufacturing is in decline, that jobs have gone overseas? Great Britain was the workshop of the world. What has happened? In the companion volume, How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World, the bold assertion in the book’s title was tested and not found wanting. In Whatever Happened to British Manufacturing, the story since the Festival of Britain of 1951 is explored: the good, the bad and the ugly.

There is much to celebrate in those brands of which this nation was rightly proud; the book takes a trip down memory lane. The stories of what happened to those brands we loved so much are uncovered . Importantly, the assumption of decline is challenged with examples of where Britain still holds its head high in the manufacturing world. It is not a story of gloom; there are some wonderful successes: JCB, Jaguar-Rover, Glaxo and John Harvey-Jones’s ICI from which Astra Zeneca was born, but also Alan Sugar’s Amstrad. There is hope for the future in manufacturing for the green revolution. Manufacturing will probably continue to employ fewer people, but more than offset by British innovation and skill.

How Britain Shaped the Manufacturing World is published by and is available from Pen & Sword . My proposal for Whatever Happened to British Manufacturing has been accepted. I am delighted and look forward to producing a book that is thoroughly positive about modern British manufacturing. 

The University of Lincoln has one of the newest departments of engineering in Britain.