The early nineteenth
century, though separated from us by only a relatively
short span, is something difficult for the present
generation to comprehend. There was so much that was new
which we take for granted, the machines themselves, the
factories where they ran, and the industrial towns where
men worked and lived. For the thinking man, these new
social and economic phenomena raised strange problems
which admitted of no easy answers but for the first
generation of business men they merely provided the
essential conditions of advance in an age of change. The
pioneers of early industrialisation left few written
records of their triumphs and defeats; they were men more
interested in work rather than posterity. In working
themselves to the bone as well as forcing others to work;
in working without respite; in order to achieve success
to expand their enterprises. At times they were men who
seemed to be driven ahead by the logic of progress
itself. They were not
often men who lacked humanity or social sense, they were
men whose views of economics were often expressed in
religious language, even though at times they seemed to
have no time to worry about the general environment they
were creating. Material progress meant individual forging
ahead. “Manchester streets may be irregular,”
wrote an outside witness surveying the scene in
mid-century. “Its trading inscriptions pretentious;
its smoke may be dense, and its mud ultra muddy, but none
of these things can prevent the image of a great city
rising before us, a very symbol of civilisation foremost
in the march of improvement and a grand incarnation of
progress”. (1) That was what Disraeli
discerned in Manchester more than ten years before the
above words were written, but it was a clearer vision
than that caught by the first industrial pioneers, who
did not care to express their personal strivings in such
sophisticated language. They saw their opportunities and
they took them. It was said that
the Mathers came to Manchester from Montrose, Scotland,
at an unknown date and for unknown reasons; so far as we
know, they certainly left no written records of their
journeys or their objectives. Also since they left
no records of the daily business of their first
enterprise, we know far more of the opportunities open to
them in Manchester than of the way they tackled them. The
early nineteenth century is a dark age for that reason
too, we know more of the world of necessities and
opportunities than we do of the people who lived in it
and shaped it. Manchester,
primarily a cotton manufacturing centre, was a city to
attract the enterprising pioneer. In 1800 there were 38
steam mills in Manchester and Salford and by 1820, no
less than 66 cotton mills in the two towns. (2)
Steam power was also employed in the bleaching, dying and
printing branches of the cotton trade, and there were
many finishing factories of this type in the Manchester
neighbourhood. Lancashire was supplanting London as the
chief centre of the calico printing trade and forging
ahead of Scotland in bleaching and dying. (3) As
a result, there was a flow of Scotsmen across the border,
men like the Cheeryble Brothers, so well described by
Charles Dickens in “Nicholas Nickleby”.
Merchants had to link up to the fortunes of Lancashire with the development of cotton producing areas overseas, and machine manufacturers had to provide and repair the large wheels, the cylinders, boilers and pipes and the rollers for printing, without which the cotton factories would have come to a standstill. The demand for textile machinery often of a very simple character, brought into existence a large number of one man or family concerns making machines by hand; roller makers, iron turners and millwrights. Some of these men and firms survived; others disappeared, hit hard, no doubt, by commercial misfortunes and trade fluctuations, which suspended demand for their products, or by the competition of more powerful rivals.
It
is among the small men who survived that we first trace
Colin Mather, cabinetmaker, of Gun Street, Salford, in
1817. (1) He is probably the same man who
appears as Colin Mather, a machine maker, and just over
ten years later at Waterloo Place. (2) The
transition from cabinet making to machine making would be
quite a natural one for an immigrant from a
non-industrial area. By 1834, he had moved to Brown
Street, Salford, (3) that has often been
regarded as the birthplace of the present firm. The site
was convenient, not far from the River Irwell, and by
1836, Colin had become associated with his brother
William in an enterprise as that of “Engineers,
machine makers and millwrights”, 23 Brown Street. (4)
Compared with some rival ventures, Colin and William
Mather’s establishment appears to have been small
and unimportant. In
the decade after the Napoleonic Wars, two of the most
renowned engineering partnerships in Manchester, were
Peel, Williams and Peel, of the Soho Foundry, Ancoats and
Galloway, Bowman and Galloway of Great Bridgewater
Street, (5) but by modern standards, these two
firms were also small in size. Indeed, for some years
Galloway and Bowman merely called themselves millwrights,
although they employed pattern makers, iron and brass
founders, smith's, firemen, hammermen and turners.
Another firm, T.C. Herves, extensively employed in
erecting mills and filling them with machinery, found
work for 140 to 150 men. (6)
There
was one other active concern in Salford, which was to
provide the eventual site for the Mather and Platt
partnership at the Salford Iron Works. Indeed, the
building was known as the Salford Iron Works when William
Green drew his map of Salford in 1794. It was then owned
by Bateman and Sherratt, (1) Bateman lost
interest in the firm, and the Sherratts, a Westmorland
Family became the dominant influence. (2) In
1795, Aikin wrote that, “a considerable iron foundry
is established in Salford, in which are cast most of the
articles wanted in Manchester and its neighbourhood. Mr
Sharrard is a very ingenious and able engineer, who has
improved upon and brought the steam engine to great
perfection. Most of those that are used and set up in and
about Manchester are of their make and fitting up. They
are in general of a small size, very compact, stand in a
small space, work smooth and easy and are scarcely heard
in the building when erected. They are now in use in
cotton mills and for every purpose of the water wheel,
where a stream is not available and for winding up coals
from a great depth in the coal pits, which is performed
with a quickness and ease not conceived”. (3)
This was an interesting forecast of the sort of claim
that was to be made eventually for engineering operations
carried out by Mather & Platt and as a reference, it
also showed how established was the Sherratt firm before
the Mathers had begun their operations at all. In
1834, when William and Colin Mather had begun their
operations, a wage book dated 1829, established that
William and Colin Mather were in business as millwrights
and engineers at the date that J & T Sherratt were
described as brass founders, engine makers and iron
founders. (4) The description indicates that
they were concerned primarily with general engineering
rather than with the production of machinery for the
textile trade, a task which was still left to small men,
although from a later entry, it is clear that the
Sherratts continued to do some textile machinery work. In
the eighteenth century, many cotton mills grew up in the
same neighbourhood as iron works, and the textile
industry and the engineering trades flourished side by
side. (5) As late as 1836, Sherratts still
called themselves “iron founders, steam engine
manufacturers, millwrights and hydraulic press
manufacturers”. (5) In
1837, Thomas Sherrat died, and two years later, his
trustees leased the Salford Iron Works to John Platt.
(6) Little is known about John Platt, for he is not
described in the Directories until 1836, when he was
described as a “machine maker”, living in Roman
Road Terrace, Higher Broughton. (7) His
workshop before he moved to the Iron Works was in
Greengate.
Platt
had entered into partnership with George Yates, the two
of them continuing Sherratt’s line of business. From
their small workshop in Brown Street, the Mather’s
could contemplate the roomy premises occupied by Platt
and Yates at the Salford Iron Works across Chapel Street.
For reasons which remain obscure, the Mathers and the
Platts became connected when in 1845, John Platt leased
the Salford Iron Works, or at any rate part of them, to
William and Colin Mather. (1) The premises
were to grow substantially in size in later years, but
here was the beginning of a larger ‘Mather’
enterprise than had been envisaged before. Stepping
into the shoes of the Sherratts, they advertised
themselves in the Directory as “Engineers,
Machine-makers, Millwrights and Iron-founders”,
Garden Lane, Salford. (2) At the time of the
Great Exhibition of 1851, they referred to their premises
not as “Garden Lane” but as “Salford Iron
Works” and went to London to display “A calico
printing machine for printing eight colours at one
operation with drying apparatus, a sewing machine and
patent pistons”. (3) The sewing machine
for the batching of the pieces was a new invention of
1847. (4) The patent pistons were made at
Brown Street. (5)
One
year after the Exhibition, Colin Mather entered into
partnership with William Platt, the son of John Platt,
who had died in 1847. It was this partnership which laid
the foundations of the later business. The younger Platt,
who had carried on iron founding work in the Salford iron
Works, (6) provided land, buildings and money
for the new partnership, while Colin, apparently,
contributed technical skills and ideas. This sort of
division of labour in industrial partnerships was by no
means new, indeed it had already been established as a
well-tried recipe for business success. Colin
Mather, “Cast Iron Colin”, as he came to be
called, was an engineer of ingenuity and brilliance. As
the active head of the business, with Grundy as his
manager, he not only built up an efficient organisation
to produce textile finishing machinery, he also concerned
himself with a wide range of ingenious ideas, including
the design of piston rings, particularly for use in ships
engines. There was also well boring, the production of
magnesium in quantity in cast iron pots instead of in
expensive platinum and porcelain vessels which had been
used previously; and the method of preventing coastal
erosion with a system of cast iron plates. He had
something of Wilkinson’s zest for turning iron into
a universal material and it was easy to see from the list
of his pre-occupations how he came to earn his nickname.
Such
clever ideas have sometimes led engineers to their ruin,
for as Campbell had written in the middle of the
eighteenth century, “an engineer ought to have a
solid not a flighty head, otherwise his business will
tempt him to make useless and expensive projects”. (1)
These did not prevent Colin from building up the solid
side of the partnership’s activities for in 1852 the
firm was employing about 125 men, (2) ten
years later the number had increased to 300 and in 1875,
about the same number were employed. (3) The
entry of William Wilkinson Platt into the partnership
coincided with the withdrawal of Colin’s brother
William, who had been associated with him since the
1830’s. William had been more interested in public
life and politics than in engineering and at the time of
his death in 1858, he had few business interests.
However, as a result of domestic circumstances, it was
William's son, also called William, later Sir William
Mather, rather than Colin’s sons who was destined to
play the biggest part in the subsequent development of
the business in the nineteenth century. Colin
Mather had three sons, the eldest, William Penn, whom
after spending a few years in the family business decided
to emigrate to America. The second, John Harry was sent
to Alsace to study tinctorial chemistry, in which the
firm, as makers of dyeing machinery, had an active
interest. The youngest, another Colin, spent over 40
years in the family business and in due course became a
director of the Limited Company. Colin played a prominent
part in the technical developments of the time and left
his mark in many branches of engineering, especially that
associated with the textile finishing trade. When
Colin Senior met with an accident at work and was
compelled to take a less active part in the affairs of
the firm, it was to William, the second son of old
William that he turned. (4) and not to his own
children, who were still too young to accept important
positions in the business. Young William was capable, far
seeing and energetic and in 1850, at the age of twelve,
he had begun three strenuous years of apprenticeship in
the family business. He had broadened his industrial
education by spending some time in Germany and had
returned at the age of eighteen to work in the family
business. It is on record that his hours of work extended
from 6.00 am to 6.00 p.m. and most of his evenings were
spent at night school in the Mechanics Institute, which
both the Mathers and the Platts had sponsored three years
before. This
was learning the hard way, but it paid good dividends,
for, as a result, William Mather always understood the
value and dignity of manual work and the importance of
establishing happy relations with his employees. As he
said on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, in the
course of a celebration at Belle Vue, he had “always
loved working men from his youth”. Because he knew
so much of them in his early life, he had “a
profound respect for the honest, diligent, earnest,
working man”. (5)
In
1858, the year when his father died, William was made
assistant manager at the Salford Iron Works. Five years
later he was taken into partnership with Colin Mather and
William Wilkinson Platt and the occasion was marked by a
celebration at Belle Vue Zoological Gardens. All
employees were given half a day’s holiday and
invited to attend a social gathering, the first of many
similar functions given by the firm. The programme
included a characteristically Victorian meal and a feast
of speech making and dancing. (1) Young
William Mather represented a new generation, wider in its
interests and more cultivated in its tastes, than the
generation of pioneers who first saw the possibilities of
advancement in the world of machines and factories. It
was fitting that for a time he should be the sole figure
on the stage of the story of the firm. Colin Mather
retired soon after 1863 and William Wilkinson Platt in
1872. William Mather was thus left in sole control
between 1872 and 1878 when he took into partnership young
John Platt, the son of W.W. Platt. The men of the new
partnership were different from those in 1852,
representative of a changed age, about which we know more
and of which we can find out more if we try. Indeed, we
have numerous photographs, diaries, records and outside
observers’ comments to help us. Of John Platt, who
had served his apprenticeship at Hulses’ machine
tool makers in Salford and who died in 1927 at the age of
79, we have fewer records. So far as can be traced from
available documents, he spent much of his time travelling
in search of business and frequently visited Italy,
Austria, Germany and Russia. A study of old order books
indicates that as a result of his efforts in these
countries, he left a definite imprint in the commercial
history of the concern. Between
the beginning of the 1870’s and the end of the
nineteenth century, the firm was expanding rapidly, both
in the size of its plant and the scope of its operations.
In 1873, adjacent property in Deal Street, known as
Drinkwater’s Mill and the whole of Foundry Street
were taken over. This increased accommodation provided
new offices, a lodgeman’s house, stores, pattern and
joiners shops and a light fitting shop and the number of
employees increase to about 600. From 1888 onwards, land
was being acquired from the Salford Corporation. In 1894
agreement was reached concerning the closing of a portion
of Union Street in order that the area covered by the
street and two rows of cottages, could be absorbed into
the Salford Iron Works, thus providing space for a fine
erecting shop and new offices. The new erecting shop soon
became know as “Klondyke” as it was being
erected about the time when gold was discovered at
Klondyke in Alaska. The men working in the building
through the winter felt that the term was a bright and
apt one. “Klondyke” was more up to date than
the rest of the buildings, but it marked the effective
limit to the expansion of the Salford Iron Works site. In
order to expand further the firm had to look outside,
just as William and Colin Mather had looked across the
way from Brown Street nearly fifty years earlier. As
the firm expanded in size the partners had another
problem to face, should it remain a partnership or be
turned into a limited company? The Limited Liability Act
of 1862 had codified previous legislation, but the
limited liability Company had not yet become dominant or
even a representative type of business organisation.
However, between 1889 and 1891, there was an
unprecedented increase in the number of changeovers from
family businesses to limited liability companies,
particularly in the north of England, and the question
arose as to whether the partnership of Mather & Platt
should follow the fashion. William Mather’s
son-in-law, John Petro, who had been making a close study
of the Companies Acts, discussed the idea with his
father-in-law, who was at that time much opposed to the
changeover.
This
opposition was based on interesting, but at that time
fairly commonly held grounds among family industrialists,
he said that he could not part with what was “his
creation” and that “the works would always
remain the private property of the partners”. He
thought that enterprise would not be fostered nor
advancement made under the control of a board of
directors; and that the personal element would depart
from the Works. (1) This
opposition was gradually overcome; indeed the roots of it
had in fact been cut away before William Mather expressed
himself so strongly. In 1888, Dowson and Taylor, a firm
which had been installing automatic sprinklers, the
selling rights of which Mather had acquired from
Frederick Grinnell in 1883, was turned into a private
limited company with William Mather as Chairman and his
partner John Platt as one of the directors. The Dowson
and Taylor firm, which had moved from Bolton to
Blackfriars, Salford, had for some years been interested
in fire-fighting devices and by this time was acting as
sub-licensee of the Grinnell patent. The success of this
venture was calculated to make William Mather less
sceptical in considering a general changeover in the
status of the Mather & Platt partnership. In
1892, he agreed to form Mather & Platt into a private
limited company with a capital of £40,000. The first
directors were, William Mather, John Platt, Dr. Edward
Hopkinson, who had managed the Electrical Department
since its foundation, and Hardman Earle, who was also
connected with the Electrical Department. The funds of
the company were increased by the private issue of
mortgage debentures to members of the family. So certain
were the directors that there would be no change in the
constitution of the private company, that these
debentures were issued as “irredeemable” and a
“first charge on the works”. At
this stage we must turn our attention to another
partnership which affects our history, it is the
Dowson-Taylor partnership which brief reference has
already been made and which later amalgamated with Mather
& Platt. The central figure in this part of the story
is John Taylor, who was destined to become, for nearly 35
years, Managing Director and Vice Chairman of Mather
& Platt Limited and the organising genius and driving
force at Park Works. He comes on the scene as an
ambitious young man of twenty; ready to work hard to
ensure the success of the great enterprise to which he
devoted his working life. On leaving school, he had
joined the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company at
Bolton and in the evenings, had studied shorthand and
other commercial subjects in order to fit himself for
office work. John
soon discovered that life in the office of the Railway
Company had little to offer to one of an adventurous
outlook, so he obtained a position in the works of the
Bolton Chemical Fire Extinguisher Company. Here he had
his first real encounter with that stirring element
“fire” and here he found adventure in plenty
for he soon discovered that he was working in a sinking
ship. Sales were not enough to keep the place going, the
firm was losing money and it could not pay its way. No
doubt the lessons he learned from its failure helped to
develop that acute commercial sense which was such an
asset to him in later life. Many young men would have
lost heart when they saw the firm they worked for sinking
and would have sought a safe job elsewhere. Not so John
Taylor and a young colleague named Ralph Dowson who
enjoyed his confidence and with whom he was prepared to
embark on a business career. These two enterprising and
energetic young men, confident in their own ability and
possessing a great capacity for hard work, decide to
strike out on their own at an age when most of
today’s engineers are still serving their
apprenticeship.
In
1883 when the Bolton Chemical Fire Extinguisher Company
finally closed down, Dowson and Taylor started their own
firm, in Bolton, under the title “Dowson and Taylor,
Fire Engineers”. Thus began a partnership which was
to play a great in the future of Mather & Platt
Limited. The title “Fire Engineers” which
Dowson and Taylor adopted was indicative of a new
attitude towards that enemy of civilisation
“Fire”. It told of the resolve of engineering
science to place its resources at the service of a
crusade which has since saved the world untold damage and
many millions of pounds. John
Taylor brought to this early venture the great qualities
of the self-made Lancashire man, hard headed business
sense, a determination to get the best out of himself and
those about him and great energy. The first aim of the
new firm was the perfecting and marketing of a Chemical
Fire Extinguisher called the “Simplex”, it held
five or six gallons of liquid, weighed about eighty
pounds and was carried on the back as a soldier carried
his pack. In 1884 it was awarded a medal at an
International Exhibition in London and was soon installed
in royal palaces, railway stations and public buildings.
Following this early success, the next stop was to
produce a more portable machine and it was not long
before the well-known “2 gallon Simplex”
extinguisher made its appearance. Today the modern
“Simplex” Chemical Extinguisher is still
recognised as an efficient hand appliance with which to
fight small fires. If
one were asked to name some of the secrets of John
Taylor’s success, the reply might well be “his
swiftness to learn from others; his ability to pounce
upon a new idea and his eager eye for anything which
might further his life’s work”. Thus,
in 1881 when Bolton received a visit from an American
fire-fighting enthusiast named Parmelee, John Taylor had
been quick to see the possibilities of the automatic
sprinkler. Parmelee was out to market an automatic fire
extinguisher. Automatic! Here was a word to fire John
Taylor’s mind. Some fire engineers ridiculed the
idea, but Bolton was ready to learn. The Corporation
allowed Parmelee to build a shed in the Wholesale Market
ground for the purpose of giving practical
demonstrations. According to eyewitness accounts, as
published at the time, the demonstrations made a great
impression on all present, but some months later Mr.
Parmelee decided upon a more thorough test, under
conditions approximating to a Cotton Spinning Mill. He
adopted the bold policy of hiring the Spa Mill in Bolton,
an old cotton-spinning factory of non-fireproof
construction, five storeys in height, with wooden boarded
floors, which were saturated with the oil of fifty years
work. The building was fired on 22 March 1882 and the
Bolton Evening News, of the same date, published the
following report of the event.
The
demonstration made a profound impression on the large and
influential company present, but another result and one
of more importance to our story- is that John Taylor, who
was one of the eager spectators at the initial
demonstration, had already been charged with enthusiasm
and had decided that he would one day perfect a sprinkler
of his own. Thus it came about that before long,
Lancashire cotton mills were installing the
“Simplex” Automatic Sprinkler, designed and
manufactured by the firm of Dowson and Taylor. It
was about two years after Parmelee had given his first
sprinkler demonstration, in Bolton, that William Mather
made the visit to America, to which reference is made
elsewhere and brought back from the United States, the
world selling rights, apart from North America, for an
automatic Sprinkler called “Grinnell”. No
sooner had John Taylor studied the mechanism of the
“Grinnell” head and seen it tested under fire
conditions, that he knew this to be the best sprinkler
head yet invented. (1) With typical forthright
resolution, he cut out sentiment, jettisoned his own
sprinkler head and henceforth installed
“Grinnell” heads, which he bought from Mather
& Platt. Events
moved quickly during the next few years and in order to
meet the needs of a rapidly expanding business, Dowson
and Taylor was made into a limited company, Dowson,
Taylor & Co. Ltd., with Ralph Dowson and John Taylor
as Managing Directors and William Mather as Chairman. At
this stage another important figure appears on the scene,
John Wormald, one of the leading British Insurance
authorities on Automatic Sprinklers and a surveyor of the
Mutual Insurance Company, who elected to forsake the
realms of insurance in order to join the ranks of
industry as one of the Directors of a growing enterprise. John
Taylor had been quick to realise the potential value of
the Automatic Sprinkler System in the cotton mills of
Lancashire, but although he obtained approval for his own
automatic device, the reluctance of mill owners to spend
money on equipment to extinguish fires was a big obstacle
to progress. Only some financial encouragement from
Insurance Companies could bring about the necessary
change in their attitude. What John Taylor had in mind, a
bonus or rebate on fire insurance premiums, did not
appear to be in the interests of local insurance
officials. Their income depended on turnover and turnover
meant increasing rather then bringing about a decrease in
the premium paid for fire insurance. Greater fire losses
in a given industry meant higher premiums to be paid by
the insured within that industry. If higher losses in an
industry meant an increase in premiums and greater
commission for the ‘agent’ what did it matter? The
new outlook necessary to counter this attitude and to
ensure the general acceptance of the principle of rebate
on insurance premiums as an inducement to install
automatic sprinklers found one keen advocate in the
person of John Wormald. John, as a young insurance
official interested in cutting fire losses, had witnessed
Parmelee’s sprinkler demonstration in Bolton and had
since taken a prominent part in exploring the
possibilities of sprinkler protection.
John
Wormald realised that financial success for the Insurance
companies depended not on total premiums received, but on
the difference between premiums and claims met. It was
sound business to make a big cut in the total amount paid
out, to cover fire losses, in return for conceding a
reduction in premiums received. He saw plainly that if he
could make a big cut in the amount paid out in respect of
fire losses by the simple expedient of offering
attractive rebate on the premium normally paid, the net
result would be a considerable gain for the Insurance
Company. He communicated his enthusiasm to others in the
insurance world until, in a few years, this principle was
firmly established. Thus
we see that while still a young man, John Taylor had
proved his capacity for big business by joining forces
with men like Dowson and Wormald who would work hard with
him to build up the business in which they were engaged.
Typical of the man was the advertisement, which first
brought into service of the firm a boy who was later to
become Secretary to the Company. It was brief and very
much to the point, “Wanted, Office Boy, not afraid
of hard work and with his head screwed on the right
way”. There was no demand for matriculation
standard; and not even a promise of a bright future in an
age of golden opportunities, for John Taylor always held
that hard work brought its own reward. How hard the three
Managing Directors worked in the early days of Dowson,
Taylor & Co. Ltd, can best be judged by the
achievements of the first ten years. Once
the big Insurance Companies had accepted the principle of
allowing rebates on insurance premiums in respect of
buildings protected by automatic sprinklers, and the
efficiency of Grinnell Installations had been established
by their satisfactory performance in extinguishing
numerous mill fires, the future was assured. It was
merely a matter of time before the cotton mills and
warehouses of Lancashire were fitted with sprinklers as a
matter of course. Some
men might have been content to reap the local harvest,
not so John Taylor and his colleagues on the board of
Dowson, Taylor & Co. Ltd. They lost no time in
planning to cultivate a wider field and the minute books,
covering their first twelve months as a limited company,
contain references to the activities for negotiating
business in the Metropolitan district; to the appointment
of Resident Managers for Scotland and Ireland; to the
establishment of branch offices in London and many
provincial centres; to negotiations for agencies to cover
special industries in the British Isles; to the
completion of agency agreements to take the
“Grinnell” system to France, Belgium,
Australia, New Zealand and India as well as arrangements
to stage demonstration fires in London for Press,
Insurance Officials and leaders in Industry. Quite
ambitious programmes for one year for a company still in
its infancy! In
view of William Mather’s business connections with
Russia, it is not surprising to find that he was
instrumental in bringing the “Grinnell” system
to the notice of his many friends in that country. Thus
he secured concessions from the Russian Insurance
Companies, with the result that automatic sprinklers were
soon installed there on a big scale. During his early
years as Chairman of Dowson, Taylor & Co. Ltd.,
William Mather himself watched over the interests of the
new company on the occasion of his annual visits to
Russia, but as “Grinnell” business expanded in
that country, it became a full time job. Accordingly,
John Wormald himself took charge of the business and in
due course arranged for a branch to be opened in Moscow
under the supervision of Martin Cox, who later became a
Director of Mather & Platt Limited. As a means of
cementing the connection and studying the technical
problems of the country, John Taylor also spent some
months each winter in Russian mills for many years. One
of the most important events of this period was the
completion of an agreement in 1890 under which
“Grinnell” Sprinkler heads which, under the
terms of the original arrangement with Frederick
Grinnell, had been imported from America, were in future
to be made in England by Dowson Taylor & Co.Ltd. For
some years the story of Dowson Taylor & Co, was one
of uninterrupted success but in May 1896, the Company
suffered its first great loss. This was the death of
Ralph Dowson, who died with tragic suddenness in Bombay,
whither he had gone while on a ‘tour to further his
company’s business interests in India. The
untimely death of the man who had lent his name to the
original Dowson-Taylor partnership, while still a young
man and apparently at the heyday of his career, was a
heavy blow to his colleagues in the firm and it robs our
later history of the lustre of a man whose achievements
would have added colour to our study of many great
personalities. This is not idle speculation; conjecture
it may be, but it is conjecture based on the considered
opinion of John Taylor who, near the end of his business
career, when he himself enjoyed an outstanding reputation
among his business associates and had travelled in all
parts of the civilised world in search of business and
had met Kings, Princes, Government Officials and all men
of Big Business in every country, described his original
partner as “One of the finest business men I have
ever met: a man of wonderful vision, a typical English
gentleman and a man with whom it was a delight to
work”. To the end of his life, whenever John Taylor
spoke of Ralph Dowson he did so with deep emotion. From
this point until the Company went into voluntary
liquidation in order to join Mather & Platt Ltd., the
destinies of Dowson, Taylor & Co. Ltd., were in the
hands of John Taylor and John Wormald as joint Managing
Directors. This was a great combination and each man made
an outstanding success of work in his own sphere: John
Taylor, the engineer, carried the responsibility for the
works production policy and all technical and commercial
administration. John Wormald, from his headquarters in
London devoted his tremendous energy to formulating and.
carrying out an aggressive sales policy at home and
overseas. Much
of the success of Dowson, Taylor and Co. Ltd., was due to
the ability of each in his own sphere and to the fact
that each concentrated on his own work. There was no
overlapping and in all phases of their business dealings
each manifested supreme confidence in the other. Later
they carried this same principle into good effect in
administering the business of Mather & Platt Ltd, of
which company they were destined to become managing
directors, Some
examples of the work carried out by John Taylor when as a
boy in the office of the Railway Company he attended
night school in order to fit himself for a position as a
shorthand writer are still in existence. Work in his
shorthand notebook was written with meticulous care and
approached perfection in execution. The result is more
like a page from a printing press than the handiwork of a
student at an evening school. He displayed the same
meticulous attention to detail throughout his life. He
had a passion for learning and from every situation and
from every new encounter he sought to draw a lesson. He
had a great belief in concentration of effort avoiding,
where possible, all diversions. As
evidence of his devotion to the interests of his business
we have the record of his wedding. He was married on
Christmas Day but next morning was back at work at the
normal time. “I could not spare time for a
honeymoon,” said John, “so long as there was
work waiting to be done.” John
Taylor, the engineer, would accept nothing but the best,
he was a ruthless critic and his yardstick was
engineering perfection. Men came to know that every job
which survived his criticism was right and that,
furthermore, it would have his complete support and the
driving power of his constructive mind. Contemporary
engineers recognised in John Taylor a man who brought a
profound knowledge of engineering subjects to bear on the
many problems connected with fire extinction and the
wider activities of Mather & Platt Ltd after he
joined that Company. His discerning eye was of the utmost
value in the pioneer days of electrical machinery and
centrifugal pump's. He took special pride in the
development of the electrical side of the business and
the value of his services to the electrical industry may
be gauged from the fact that he served, for many years on
the Council of the British Electrical and Allied
Manufacturers’ Association, and was one of its
Vice-Presidents up to his death. This was one of the very
few “outside” activities of John Taylor, who
had neither time nor inclination to take part in public
life. He felt that his work for Mather & Platt Ltd
was a full-tine job and. demanded his undivided
attention. He made an exception during the world war of
1914-18, which provided an opportunity for those in
authority to set the seal on John Taylor’s position
as an acknowledged master in his sphere. He was appointed Chairman of the Lancashire Anti-submarine Committee, a body appointed by the British Government of the day to investigate the possibilities of all measures which the ingenuity of engineers and scientists could devise to counter the menace of the German submarine. Although the work of the Committee was hidden behind the veil of war-time secrecy we may be sure that with John Taylor as Chairman, Mr. A. P. N. (later Sir Arthur) Fleming as Vice-Chairman and the late Lord Rutherford as Chief Technical Adviser, the local engineers and scientists who served in this body from 1917 to 1919 would not lack encouragement. John Taylor was also a member of the Board of Management of the Manchester and District Armaments Output Committee, an organisation to which the Ministry of Munitions delegated the work of co-ordinating the efforts of local engineering firms engaged on the production of munitions. When the Ministry of Reconstruction set up a number of Committees to investigate problems connected with industry, John Taylor was appointed a member of the Engineering Trades (Now Industries) Committee and Chairman of the Electrical Branch Committee of that body. In recognition of his work on those bodies Mr. Taylor was made a Companion of the Order of the British Empire but his work for Mather & Platt Ltd remains to be seen by all who visit the great engineering establishment he built up at Newton Heath. As
we have now introduced the principal characters who were
concerned with the decision of 1898 to amalgamate Dowson,
Taylor & Co. Ltd. with Mather & Platt to form the
public limited Company of Mather & Platt Limited, it
is fitting that we should at this point include an
extract from the Chairman’s address at the first
meeting of the directors of the new Company. A minute of
the Board meeting held on 25th January 1899, reads: - "Each
firm had been successful in the past and there was every
reason to expect that in the future they, as a united
firm, would continue to prosper, but the Chairman
reminded the Board that the union of the two firms must
be looked upon very much like a marriage; They took each
other “for better or worse”, “for richer
or poorer” and, as in marriage, the future very much
depended upon the mutual consideration, forbearance and
regard of all members of the Company towards one another.
Each one must look to the future with the intention of
doing his best to maintain the traditions of the
past….” The
capital was fixed at £775,000 - 37,500 preference shares
of £10 each and 40,000 ordinary shares of £10 each. The
preference shares were entitled to a cumulative dividend.
of 5%, and upon a distribution of assets to have the
capital paid up on them, plus a premium of 10 shillings a
share, repaid in priority to the ordinary shares. 37,500
of the ordinary shares and 10,800 of the preference
shares were issued as fully paid in part consideration
for the sale of the business. The remaining 2,500
ordinary shares were reserved, to meet applications from
certain employees of the Company. Of the preference
shares 5,000 were reserved for issue as and when required
for further extensions of the business, and the balance
of 21,700 5% cumulative preference shares was offered for
subscription. In
drawing up these plans it was overlooked until almost the
last moment that the debenture issue of 1892 was
“irredeemable”. Fortunately, the two debenture
holders did not hold out for their ‘pound of
flesh’, but loyally accepted an allotment of
preference shares in exchange for their debentures. It
was a propitious time to launch the new company. Prices
were rising, business activity was high, prospects were
good and the curve of limited company registration was
rising fast. The issue was eleven times over-applied for,
and the company soon got away to a good start. The
year 1899, the first of the new limited company, was a
record one for cotton, which made bigger profits than in
the previous twenty years, and for engineering, which
could not secure raw material supplies as fast as they
were wanted. The unemployment figures of the Amalgamated
Society of Engineers in that year were down to 1.8% The
launching of the Company and the first move to Park Works
in 1901 marked as big an epoch in the history of the firm
as did the drawing up of the articles of a partnership in
1852. It is worthwhile taking a more careful stock
of’ the position of the enterprise at the beginning
of a new phase of its history and at the beginning of a
new century. Technically it had moved far from the roller
making enterprise of the first Mathers: physically it had
increased greatly in size from the Salford Iron Works
plant of 1845. From a financial point of view it was a
safe enterprise, far safer than most of the companies
floated during the cheap-money atmosphere of 1894-6. The
physical assets of the new company, before the
acquisition of the Newton Heath property, consisted of
three and a half acres of freehold land within half a
mile of the Manchester Royal Exchange, and other
leasehold properties, fixtures, machinery and stock,
together worth considerably more than the preference
capital. Other assets included ample working capital; the
goodwill associated with one old established successful
family business and the younger company of Dowson, Taylor
& Co. Ltd, as well as a set of patents sufficient to
make any competitor feel envious. The annual average
combined profits of the two firms in the middle nineties
were sufficient to pay the dividend on the new issue of
preference capital more than three times over (1).
The hard work of “Cast Iron Colin” and his
associates and successors was now paying good dividends,
and the accumulation of capital through laborious
personal savings in the middle years of the century had
provided a successful basis for the appeal to the capital
market. William
Mather was Chairman of the new Company and there were
four managing directors John Platt, Edward Hopkinson,
John Taylor and John Wormald. The other directors were
Colin Mather, son of “Cast Iron Colin", John
Milligan, Hardman A. Earle, J. J. Holden, W. Ernest
Mather and. Alfred Willett. The
inclusion of Sir William’s son, Ernest Mather, who
had just left Cambridge, showed that although the company
had become a public one, the family tradition was to
continue. It was to remain in the twentieth century as a
distinctive element in the further growth of the firm. Of
the present Board of Directors, six have direct family
connections with their predecessors and. the other three
are very long serving’ members of the Company.
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A History of
Mather & Platt Ltd.