Factores que influyen en la velocidad computacional

The crucial point revealed by Tables 3.7 and 3.8 is not that the whole development of

Cleveland’s industry was Quaker dominated; indeed, it was far from that. It is that, at least in the early period, the numbers and influence of Quaker-linked firms and entrepreneurs entering the industry were out of proportion to the size of the group, and they were strategically important.93 The effect was that the closely connected and coordinated local Quaker business interests, with extensive links to a wider network of potential entrants to the industry, were sufficiently powerful to be able to attract a significant number of businesses and entrepreneurs.

Foremost among the interrelated business networks were the Quaker business and banking interests of the Darlington-based Pease family. As the Peases’ businesses interests have been well documented, it is sufficient to outline them briefly.94 By the 1840s and 1850s these were largely under the control of Joseph Pease (1799-1872), who along with his father Edward Pease (1767-1858) and other Quaker businessmen and bankers had played a leading role in setting up the S&DR. With business interests stretching from a private bank (Pease and Co), railways and coal mines in south Durham to the new town of Middlesbrough (as shareholders in the

Middlesbrough estate) and its docks (built in 1846 by the S&DR to improve coal shipping facilities), there was a clear incentive to encourage development. Before 1850 Middlesbrough’s and its port were heavily dependent on the coal trade but at that time its position was under threat from at least three sources of competition: the port at Hartlepool; an expanding railway system that could transport coal to the London market along the main North-South route; and from other coal producing areas. A new industry in Cleveland was a timely development.95 Indeed, an anonymous correspondent from Glasgow, who signed himself ‘No Speculator’ wrote to the Mining Journal at the end of 1851: ‘I find the people getting up these joint stock schemes as entirely connected with a certain railway greatly in want of traffic, besides being parties largely interested in collieries on this line [S&DR] in the west of Durham.’96

The Peases were also linked by marriage and religious denomination to the Darlington-based bank of J.

Backhouse and Co, which had been crucial to the financing of the railway. They too had interests in coal in South Durham, and as the only bank in with branches in both Middlesbrough

93 _{There were never more than about 2,000 Quakers in the north east, (Cookson, ‘Quaker families’, p.}

123) and Darlington Monthly Meeting, which covered the Meetings in Darlington and Teesside, had just 907 members and attenders in 1866, Religious Society of Friends, List of Members and Attenders belonging to Darlington Monthly Meeting, 1866, (Darlington Friends Meeting House Library).

94 _{Kirby, Men of Business, pp. 21-46; A. Orde, Religion, Business and Society in North East England: The}

Pease Family of Darlington in the Nineteenth Century (Stamford, 2000), pp. 19-46; Cookson, ‘Quaker families’.

95 _{Briggs, ‘Middlesbrough’, pp. 7-8; Kirby, Origins, pp. 133-44; Taylor, ‘Infant Hercules’, p. 54.} 96 _{Mining Journal, 6 Dec.1851.}

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and Stockton in the late 1840s and early 1850s, clearly had good reason to encourage the development of the district. 97

How this network of Quaker family and business interests worked to foster the development of the iron industry in Cleveland can be illustrated by considering a number of case histories. The ones outlined below all had particularly strong connections to the business networks in the district and are therefore useful for identifying the multiple linkages that existed between enterprises and between their owners.

Bolckow Vaughan

One of the earliest iron firms linked to the Pease-Backhouse network to set up in Cleveland was Bolckow Vaughan, although it was not a Quaker business by any stretch of the imagination. Its importance lies not just in its rapid expansion after 1850, or that it became one of Britain’s largest iron companies, but also in the part it played at the start of Cleveland’s industry. Specifically, there are indications that the firm was attracted to Middlesbrough by the Pease- Backhouse-S&DR interests, that Joseph Pease had a role in the formation of the partnership in the first place, and that the firm was supported financially by the Darlington Quaker

businessmen during a difficult period in the 1840s and later when it began to exploit the newly discovered ore deposits.

The Bolckow and Vaughan partnership (1840) was a classic example of the combination of a merchant and financier, Henry Bolckow (1806-78), with a practical industrialist, John Vaughan (1799-1868). Prior to their move to Cleveland the partners were also linked to the Newcastle and the north-east networks of iron and other business interests. John Vaughan was associated with Bell Brothers, one of the principal iron firms that moved in to Teesside after 1850. He was the manager of their Walker Ironworks – originally owned by a forerunner to Bell Brothers – from the late 1820s until 1840.98 The son of an iron worker from Worcester, he had trained at Dowlais in South Wales before running a small ironworks in Carlisle.99 From there he went on to manage the rolling mills at Walker where he and Lowthian Bell were close colleagues. Bell is reputed to have learnt much from the older man, and in his unfinished family history Hugh Bell quotes his father: ‘Often and often did I go down to the mill after supper and sit for hours watching the bars being rolled and listening to John Vaughan talk about mill practice and instruct me in the act.’100

He also relates a trip that John Vaughan and a young Lowthian Bell

97 _{Kirby refers to the Quaker family connections as the ‘cousinhood’. Kirby, Men of Business, p. xx.} 98 _{Bell Brothers is considered below.}

99

Jeans, Pioneers, pp. 67-70.

100 _{T.H. Bell, ‘Family History and Autobiographical Notes’, (unfinished draft), 1906, North Yorkshire}

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made to South Wales to recruit puddlers for the Walker works, which he described as a ‘a sort of piratical expedition’. Vaughan left Walker in 1839 or 1840 to found the partnership with Bolckow and establish his own a puddling plant and rolling mills in Middlesbrough.

Bolckow, originally Bölchow, was a German-born, Newcastle-based merchant. He began working in a merchant’s office in the Baltic port of Rostock and in 1822 moved to Newcastle with a friend and colleague, Christian Allhusen, to work as a clerk in Allhusen’s brother’s merchant business.101 In the 1820s Bolckow and Allhusen formed a partnership as corn

merchants (Allhusen and Co) and it appears they successfully speculated in grain. Estimates of the amounts they made vary: for Bolckow, they are put at between £20,000 and £40,000.102 Hugh Bell suggests that Allhusen’s share was £30,000, but gives no indication of Bolckow’s.103 By the end of the 1830s Bolckow, by now a property owner eligible to vote and in his mid- thirties, was looking for a new challenge and ended the partnership with Allhusen.

There are numerous explanations as to why Henry Bolckow should have entered into partnership with John Vaughan in a cyclically unstable business, iron, and in a virtually unknown and underdeveloped town, Middlesbrough. They were brothers-in-law (married to sisters); they may have met during the normal course of business, as both men’s firms (Losh, Wilson and Bell and Allhusen and Co) had offices in Newcastle, and discussed new ventures; Vaughan may have wanted to leave Walker if he thought his prospects for further advancement were blocked by Lowthian Bell; and finally, Jeans suggests that Bolckow chose iron as he was looking for ‘a business occupation of a more steady character’, which is a rather odd description of a trade renowned for its volatility.104 Irrespective of Bolckow and Vaughan’s personal motivation, there does seem to be evidence that Joseph Pease made an attempt to persuade them to establish a works in Middlesbrough, perhaps acting a little like a modern development agency attempting to attract inward investment. Firstly, Pease was at the meeting in Newcastle between Bolckow and Vaughan where the decision to establish their partnership, and for Bolckow to dissolve his with Allhusen, was taken.105 Secondly, Bolckow and Vaughan, had attempted to buy land for an ironworks in Stockton in 1839, but were persuaded by Pease and John Harris, the chief engineer for the S&DR, that Middlesbrough provided the superior port facilities and generally better prospects.106 Pease, as a representative of the Owners of the Middlesbrough

101 _{Jeans Pioneers, p. 49; Gott, Bolckow, pp. 19-20.} 102

Gott, Bolckow, p. 20.

103 _{T.H. Bell, ‘Family history’, p. 26.}

104 _{Hugh Bell refers to Bolckow and Vaughan’s wives as ‘the causa causans of the development of}

Cleveland’. T.H. Bell, ‘Family history’. See also Gott, Bolckow; Jeans, Pioneers, pp. 49-50.

105

Gott, Bolckow, p. 20. For the notice dissolving the partnership between Allhusen and Bolckow, see London Gazette, 9 Jan 1841.

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Estate, was able to offer land on which to site their works that was close both to the river and railway at a cheap rate.107 Thirdly, Vaughan is reputed to have received from Joseph Pease a letter of introduction addressed to the Durham colliery owners stating that he ‘was likely to become an extensive consumer.’108

And lastly, Backhouse’s bank financed the new firm as a balance sheet for the firm in 1843 contained in a notebook of one of the bankers shows: Bolckow and Vaughan owed the bank £11,500 (a loan or overdraft) and the Middlesbrough Owners £2,700 for coal.109

Pease was cautious in the help he provided, and he may have been wary of two independent and experienced businessmen coming to a town dominated at that time largely by Quaker interests. But it was certainly in his own interests and those of his fellow Quaker investors to encourage the new business to Middlesbrough. The iron firm would fit in well, making use of the railway for its coal supplies, the harbour for imports of pig iron and exports of finished products, and providing the railway with a local supply of rails and other iron components from the rolling mill and puddling furnaces. Moreover, there were the benefits of increased business to the local bank.

Although evidence is sparse, there appears to be a continuation of a close financial link between the Quaker businesses and Bolckow and Vaughan into the 1850s that enabled the early

expansion of the iron industry. This seems to be implied by an entry in Joseph Pease’s diary when he wrote: ‘Then to my Counting House. H. Bolckow quite fast in his financing arrangements … liberated by him.’110

Given that it was in the Peases’s interests, it is highly likely therefore that Bolckow Vaughan received some support from the Pease’s bank, Pease and Co, and Backhouse’s, possibly in the form of short-term loans as the firm expanded rapidly. Apart from the investment required to buy leases and open up the mines, Bolckow and Vaughan had by 1853 built three blast furnaces at their Middlesbrough ironworks, six at the Cleveland works (Eston Junction) and acquired three more from Thomas Elwon (Eston Ironworks).111 Long-term capital outlay on the works and for new houses for the mine and iron workers therefore would have been substantial, as would short-term working capital. Thus, external financing would have been essential as it is unlikely that the revenue generated from sales was sufficient: the time lapse between the start of construction and the blowing-in of a furnace was

107 _{Jeans Pioneers, p. 135.} 108

Jeans, Pioneers, p. 72; Gott, Bolckow, p. 23.

109 _{Memorandum Book of Agreements Regarding Advances on Accounts, pp. 29-30. Barclays Bank}

Archive, 0388-0472.

110 _{Diary of Joseph Pease, 1 May 1855, Teesside Archive, Microfilms 208 and 209. The full entry is}

difficult to read; there are four illegible words between ‘arrangements’ and ‘liberated’.

111 _{The Cleveland and Eston Ironworks were sited at Eston Junction on the Middlesbrough and Redcar}

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some months, and while the firm already had four furnaces operating at Witton Park (see below) and the puddling and forge works and rolling mills in Middlesbrough, revenues were low at the time. Iron prices in the early 1850s were below the average for the previous decade; in the 1840-49 period pig iron prices averaged about 60s per ton, but fell to 40s in 1851, although they rose steadily thereafter.112 In addition, Bolckow and Vaughan’s own resources would have been insufficient. These had been depleted in the late 1840s when the business almost failed. Indeed, this earlier incident reveals that some of the financial arrangements between the

ironmasters and Joseph Pease, even if sporadic, were long-standing. The collapse of the railway boom in 1847 led to what Jeans called Bolckow and Vaughan’s ‘most trying crisis.’ With falling iron prices and output at 4,500 tons, down from 20,000 in 1846, the business faced financial problems severe enough for the banker’s, Backhouse and Co, to send in the bailiffs to take possession of the works in Middlesbrough. It was Joseph Pease who was able to persuade his cousins at Backhouse’s not to call in the loans, and either lent the money himself or stood security for the firm.113

More generally, if contemporary accounts are to be believed, there was a mutually supportive relationship between the two ironmasters and Joseph Pease. Jeans wrote in the characteristically flowery prose of the day that there was ‘reciprocity of feeling and of interest that made the one rely to a large extent on the other’, and ‘we have heard it said, too, that there were pecuniary transactions carried on that reflected equal credit on both – providing as it did the limitless confidence of the one [Bolckow], and the honour and integrity of the other [Pease].’114

That there was ‘reciprocity of feeling’ between the two sides, and particularly between the two financiers Pease and Bolckow, is shown by a note by Pease in his diary later in 1855. He wrote that Bolckow ‘stuck up for me and my partners.’115

One further aspect of Bolckow and Vaughan’s early history that is worth noting is that in 1845 the firm built its own blast furnace plant at Witton Park near Bishop Auckland to smelt the local clayband ore and to take advantages of coal supplied from the local collieries.116 The plan to supply the works at Middlesbrough with pig iron clearly benefitted from, and would be a source of revenue for, the S&DR, which provided the rail link to the Tees. And for the firm, shipping

112 _{Mitchell, Historical Statistics, p. 63.}

113 _{Gott, Bolckow, p. 25; D.W. Hadfield, ‘Political and social attitudes in Middlesbrough 1853-1889, with}

especial reference to the role of Middlesbrough ironmasters’ (PhD thesis, Teesside Polytechnic, 1981), p. 29; Jeans, Pioneers, p. 54.

114 _{Jeans, Pioneers, p. 138.}

115 _{Joseph Pease Diary, 12 Oct. 1855. This may be a reference to the discussions concerning the}

amalgamation of the railway companies that made up the S&DR interests. See Kirby, Origins, pp. 167- 73.

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pig smelted at Witton Park to the processing plant was likely to be less costly than building blast furnaces at Middlesbrough and transporting all the materials – coal, iron ore and limestone –to Teesside. On the surface therefore the plan seemed logical, and John Vaughan in particular expected to find substantial iron deposits in the local coal measures to make it worthwhile. But this was not a view shared by all. According to Hugh Bell, Lowthian Bell attempted to dissuade Vaughan from the investment, advising him that there was no ironstone in the south Durham coalfield. Bell is supposed to have commented that ‘a more crack-brained enterprise was never undertaken.’117

As it turned out, Bell was absolutely right; the ironstone supplies were insufficient and Bolckow and Vaughan had to look elsewhere. As others firms had done in the past, it was to the nearest and most obvious source that they turned, Cleveland. However, using the poor quality Cleveland ore raised costs substantially because of its low iron content and as it had to be transported in its raw and bulky state, notwithstanding the volume reducing effects of calcining, up to Witton Park for smelting and then as pig iron back to Middlesbrough for finishing. It was this ore shortage that stimulated the search for the richer and thicker main seam of the ore deposit in the hills south of Middlesbrough, a quest that was eventually successful.

In fact, the search for a commercially viable source of iron in Cleveland had been taking place since the early 1800s.118 Repeated trials and surveys led to an accumulation of knowledge about the properties and possible location of the main deposit of ironstone that would have been transmitted between the iron firms, surveyors and geologists involved in the north east iron industry. Bolckow and Vaughan were part of this network, or set of interconnected networks, and were well aware of the potential offered by Cleveland. Their discovery was far from a chance event; it was the culmination of a collective effort and a gradual homing-in on the most likely location of the iron. It is possible therefore to provide an explanation for the initial ‘event’ that started the expansion of the Cleveland iron industry that is also consistent with the operation of business networks.

Edgar Gilkes and Isaac Wilson

Edgar Gilkes and Isaac Wilson had both Quaker connections and interests in the S&DR. Gilkes (1821-1894) was from a Quaker family in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire.119 He trained as an engineer in Berkshire before moving to Shildon, County Durham, to work at the S&DR’s

117 _{T.H. Bell, ‘Family history’, pp. 26-7.}

118 _{The first attempt to smelt Cleveland ironstone in the nineteenth century was between 1815 and 1820 at}

the Lemington ironworks on the Tyne. There followed a series surveys to identify main seam and unsuccessful attempts to smelt the ore. See Marley, ‘Cleveland ironstone’; Bell, ‘Manufacture of iron’; Nicholson, ‘“Jacky” and the Jubilee’, p. 43-4.

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locomotive works in 1839. By 1843 Gilkes had moved to Middlesbrough to manage an engineering works, the Tees Engine Works, mainly to repair rolling stock at the S&DR’s Middlesbrough terminus. In the following year he and Isaac Wilson became partners, initially to lease, and subsequently to take over, the works as an independent business – Gilkes, Wilson and Co.120 Wilson (1822-99) himself was already in Middlesbrough, having arrived in 1841 to join the Middlesbrough Pottery. It was one of the few manufacturing firms in the town at the time and was owned and run by Richard Otley, a former secretary to the S&DR.121 Wilson is described by Jeans as a protégé of Joseph Pease and in 1842 Wilson, when still only 20, was already a shareholder in the S&DR and on the management committee. His move to

Middlesbrough was encouraged by Pease, as perhaps were his later business ventures.122 Like Gilkes, he was from a Quaker family, and also related to the Peases: a great aunt (Dorothy Wilson) was married to John Whitwell, an uncle of Joseph Pease, and Whitwell’s sister Rachel was Joseph’s mother. Wilson was also linked to the S&DR through his sister Mary, who was the second wife of John Harris, an engineer with the S&DR.123

The Tees Engine Works (Gilkes, Wilson and Co) appears to have been the second iron and engineering plant in Middlesbrough, after Bolckow Vaughan.124 In addition to maintaining S&DR rolling stock, the works also manufactured steam engines for a variety of purposes including locomotives, stationary and marine engines, and agricultural engines.125 After the