JOSHUA TAYLOR BEALE - ENGINEER for Bygone Kent

 

In 1786 a John Beale invented an 'umbrella with joints, flat springs, and tops, worm springs and bolts, slip bolts, screws, slip rivets, cross stop and square slips'.  I do not know who this John Beale was but perhaps he was a forerunner of two later Beales - Joshua Taylor and his son John. They had an impressive record of inventions between them. They moved to Greenwich from an earlier base in the East End of London and became one of the earliest engineering firms to open a works on Greenwich Marsh.

 

Joshua Taylor Beale was a cabinet maker living in Christian Street, Wapping, when he took out a patent for 'improvements' to the design of a rotary steam  engine. His partner in this venture was Mr Thomas Beningfield, a tobacco manufacturer of Whitechapel. At the same time they also bought large amounts of coal tar from the local gas works. What they used this for is not known but in those days it was seen as an exciting new material with great potential - to buy so much indicates a business with a lot of new ideas.

 

Within six years Joshua had begun to describe himself as an 'engineer' and had moved to a bigger works in Chapel Lane, Whitechapel. He had a new partner, George Porter, and together they patented a means of heating inflammable liquids without any risk of them catching fire. This was a very important process for manufacturers who wanted to work with coal tar - heating over an open flame is a very dangerous thing to do. In the east end of London there were many sugar refiners and there was a great need for ways to boil sugar safely - and this process would be very useful to them. Joshua Beale took out a number of patents for other inventions - most to do with steam engines. He also began to make special oil lamps which used 'substances not usually burnt in such vessels'. He described this substance as -mineral naphtha' - a sort of oil derived from coal tar. He also devised new lamps which could burn gas. His lamps became successful and he began to make a name for himself.

 

In the early 1830s Joshua Beale wanted space to expand and so moved to a newer and bigger works, on Greenwich Marsh. He rented a riverside site there from the Enderby Brothers. Shown on maps as 'Beale's Foundry', it was on the west side of the peninsula. Very roughly, today it would be to the right of the gate to the STC works at the end of Christchurch Way.. Beale lived in Greenwich - he eventually lived in a house on Trafalgar Road at the bottom of Vanburgh Hill. This is today the site of Stars Nightclub - the old Granada Cinema. Beale may well have lived in the area for some time before that because Colonel Maceroni said that in 1816 a 'Mr Bell' used coal tar for his garden paths in Blackheath. Maceroni was a friend of Beale and both of them had an interest in coal tar. This story comes from 'Mechanic's Magazine' and it is possible  that they misprinted 'Bell' for 'Beale'. Perhaps, somewhere in a Blackheath garden, are the remains of the first tarred footpaths ever laid!

 

At Greenwich Joshua Beale continued with his work on steam engines - and in the 1840s began to make cars together with Frank Hills and Colonel Maceroni. Frank Hills has been the subject of a number of these articles and the manufacture of cars on Greenwich Marsh will be dealt with in one of them - while this article will look at the rest of Beale's career. In this venture he was joined by another Mr Beningfield - John, who was the 'steward of the Ramsgate steamer'. As time went by Beale became more and more involved in making equipment for the early gas industry. He tried to make gas cookers - at a time when such things were quite unheard of. In the 1830s another gas equipment manufacturer, Thomas Barlow, had set up an all-gas house in Colebrooke Row, Islington. Beale clearly took a great deal of interest in this and Barlow accused him of sending spies to look round the kitchen door to examine these cookers and see what was going on.

Joshua Beale took out patents for all sorts of inventions. There was a propeller for boats and a means of preventing 'encrusting' in boilers by the addition of human urine and soda. Most importantly he patented the principle of a piece of equipment called an 'exhauster' and the idea was later improved by his son John. Exhausters could be used in the gas works to draw the gas through the pipes like a pump. Although the principle had been first described in Tudor times it was Joshua Beale who turned it into a working reality. John Beale redesigned the system and patented it in the 1860s - by which time he had taken over the business from his father. He was determined to make it successful. It has been said that when a fire at the Greenwich works destroyed much of the factory he had a marquee erected on the marshes so that he could continue to demonstrate his exhausters to better advantage.

 

The exhauster was very successful and Beale's patents for it were taken over by Bryan Donknd Company. The first Bryan Donkin had been trained at Hall's of Dartford in the 1790s and gone on to found his own engineering works in Bermondsey. By the 1860s his son, another Bryan Donkin, was in charge of the firm. Gradually this company moved towards specialising in equipment for the gas industry. Beale's exhausters became a major part of their output. In 1903 Donkins left London for Chesterfield where they continued to pioneer new developments in gas industry machinery.

 

John Beale stayed in Greenwich and continued, like his father, to invent a very wide range of devices. One of them is said to have been a sort of magic lantern - one of a number of forerunners of 'moving pictures'.  However it is likely that this was a different Mr. Beale.

 

He also became interested in bicycles. In 1878 he patented the 'facile' bicycle. Up until then the machines which are commonly known today as 'penny farthings' were called 'ordinaries'. There had been several attempts to make them safer and Beale's machine was one of these. It was called 'The Facile' and was advertised as 'suitable for young and athletic and the elderly' - but they could still tip you up so that you became 'a cropper'. In essence 'The Facile' had pedals pivoted onto the end of low-set levers rather than cranked pedals. It was manufactured and marketed by Ellis and Co. who were based in 47 Farringdon Road in the City of London. As part of the publicity drive they organised the South London Facile Club and in 1880 W. Snook won a 24-hour road race - going from Land's End to John o' Groats on a 42-inch front wheel. John Beale died in 1899. Before his death he had built Heathview in Westcombe Park Road where it is said that you can still see in the flower beds the remains of the cycle test track.