Percival Parsons - Bessemer's Greenwich steel works, invented manganese bronze in his Blackheath garden, and more

I thought this week that I ought to return to some of the Greenwich based engineers and inventors. There are awful lot to choose from but I thought I would do the man who I once heard Neil Rhind say invented Manganese Bronze in his Shooters Hill back garden.

Now manganese bronze is an important substance “typically used t make things  that require strength, corrosion resistance, and thermal conductivity”. Some important Greenwich industries made items based on its use. But I don’t know why he invented it at home in his garden because he had a perfectly well functioning foundry down in Greenwich.. Also as far as his back garden was concerned he had eleven children - which means something between the eldest and he youngest there is a need over thirty years for garden playspace

We seem to have forgotten all these interesting little foundries where so much was being invented. Engineering history goes on and on and on about the Stephensons and Brunels and rarely is there any mention of those in the back streets and there were lots. The famous ones are only those whose heads pop up above the crowd.I have tried to write about some of the non-famous - Joshua Beale and William Joyce for instance.  This is going to be about Percival Moses Parsons and what he did as well as inventing manganese bronze

Percival was born in 1819 at an address in Stockwell in Lambeth where, I think his father had a business. I know very little about his father - John Parsons-  who may or may not have come from  Leicestershire where his father could well have been may have been the county roads engineer .He might have had a wood supply business in Lambeth and he might have died in India in 1824. But this is all guesswork. Percival’  mother was Charlotte Moses from a Greenwich family who married John Parsons in St.Alfege's church. By 1825 she was living in Greenwich with her young son.  He went to the school in Blackheath and in 1834, because of his interest in engineering went for an apprenticeship ah Portsmouth dockyard.

When he was 18 he joined the firm of Braithwaite and Milner.  Braithwaite had been involved in the earliest railway trials at Rainhill with the ‘Novelty’. They built locomotives for the Eastern counties Railway and by 1841 Percival was in charge of plant and some works.

After a few years he set up on his own with Theophilus Bunning at another address in Lambeth and they designed a marine engine, Bunning is more usually seen as a mining engineer from North East England and within two years the partnership was dissolved by mutual consent.. Percival henceforth described himself as ‘a civil engineer/.

 I have a newspaper report from 1845 where he appears to be in charge of a works on Deptford Creek – the news story is about the death of a young boy who fell into the Creek and was drowned. Percival gave a lot of evidence of all the ways that were tried to save the boy and failed. There is no other of him working as a supervisor at a Deptford firm this early but worked for the Rennie brothers for a while, although apparently not at their works on Deptford Creek.

At some stage Percival set up his own foundry in London – he always gave an Adelphi address - but this is more likely to be an office than a works. He also used an address in Arthur Street West – the curving road which still runs between Lower Thames Street and King William Street. Here he worked on railway equipment - light fittings, improved switches and axle boxes.  He sold “Marine and Land (Locomotive, Stationary, and Portable) Steam Engines and Boilers, Steam and other Cranes and Drivers, Forge Hammers, etc.” From the early 1850s he took out many patents - 52 in all - 11 of them for railway equipment. His Railway Axle Box Co sold licences to manufacture using his patents. At the 1851 great exhibition he showed a ‘railway switch’. In 1857 he patented ‘The Wedge Fish-Joint Chair’ – which received a great deal of publicity.

In 1851 he married Ann Rexford from Greenwich in St.Alfege’s church  like his parents.  They went to live at an address in Lee Green. Their first child Percival Rexford Parsons was born just a year later at an address in West London.

 Meanwhile Perceval wrote a book about a proposed railway scheme. This was ambitious to say the least and involved the construction of a large central station on the Embankment Gardens connecting the Metropolitan and District lines with other London lines.  He had the backing of a Robert Stevenson (not the famous one) and John Hawkshaw. These ideas were hailed as revolutionary and would certainly have been a great asset to London but it were halted by the development of the Crimean war, This  led to rising land values, and the land needed was sold to others.  The scheme was dropped and meanwhile in 1854 the family celebrated the birth of Eustace Robert.

By the mix-1850s  the family had moved to Shooters Hill Road – where he was to remain until the end of his life.  Soon after setting up home there in 1855 the family was increased with Annie Rexford – clearly named for her mother. Two years later in 1857 John Inglis was the next addition to the family. Meanwhile Percival had begun to experiment with metals and had a furnace and a laboratory built in his back garden.  In 1859 Charlotte Mary was born and in 1860 Flora Kate.

He had also developed an interest in gun manufacture. He held 19 patents for artillery related devices. These included a system of inserting rifled steel tubes into old cast-iron guns, to make old and unusable weapons serviceable. However a trial of this by the Ordnance Committee in 1860 was not favourable and he let his patent lapse. In 1862 he challenged a patent for a similar system. It went to adjudication and he got £1,000 compensation from the War Office

Also in 1862 he launched his another invention - ‘white brass’. “For the bearings of railway carriages, engines, and all kinds of machinery. A large saving is to be effected by the use of this alloy. The price is not more than two-thirds that of gun metal, whilst its durability is twelve times as great.”

Meanwhile in 1862 the family was joined by Charles Frederick born in Dover and two years later Jane Edith Sophia was born –like most of her siblings –in Blackheath – as was Catherine Louise Maude in 1865.

At some stage he opened a foundry in what is now Banning Street - I think either on the site adjacent to the rear of the Pelton Arms or on the corner with Derwent Streetr. In 1871 he was recruited by the Bessemer family to lay out, and eventually manage the Bessemer Greenwich steel works on what is now the Hanson site on Victoria Wharf.  This was a large works and its main product was rails for the railway industry.” It had two 2½ ton converters..... one 2½-ton steam hammer … the buildings were carefully designed, with the intention that the establishment should be in all respects be a model one".

Sadly Helen Grace, born in 1869 lived only a year, but Amy Lillian born in the following year was much longer lived and made it into the 1960s.

He continued to work on metals and in 1875 he set up the White Brass Co appointing as superintendent his eldest son Percy, by then aged 23.

He patented manganese bronze in 1886 and then established his own company, P. M. Parsons, to produce the metal at St George's Wharf, in Deptford.  He began to specialise in making ships propellers (copper and manganese) operating from a Thames-side factory.  Later the propeller works were in rivalry with Stone who made vast propellers in Charlton for famous ocean liners. 

Manganese Bronze Company moved to Millwall and in the Great War was contracted by the Ministry of Munitions to produce shell cases. They later moved their propeller works to Birkenhead merging with Stone's only in 1963.  Stone Marine Shipcare still functions in Birkenhead - and dropped the word 'manganese' from their title only in 2008

This has been a very quick run through the life of Percival Moses Parsons –who deserves something much longer and much more detailed.  He died in 1892 and is buried in Greenwich cemetery.