Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been writing about early powered road transport in Greenwich and the surrounding area. The first article was about pioneering vehicles some of which went up Shooters Hill to show that mechanical vehicles could climb up hills. Last week I did something about attempts to set up early ‘omnibus’ services in our area using steam powered vehicles.
This week I want to look at Greenwich manufacturers and their steam car outings. Two of them are people I’ve written about here before: Frank Hills ‘the Deptford chemist’ has featured in articles here and in all four of my most recent books - on the Creek, the Peninsula and the gas industry. The other person, Joshua Beale, was featured in my books on the Peninsula. So, it will be back to them in more detail - but, first, I am going to introduce you to somebody who has not featured here before - Col Maceroni.
Francis Maceroni was the most colourful and prolific builder of steam carriages in the 1830s-1849s. He always cited his ‘fiery Sicilian’ origins which he said meant he ‘retained his love of quick motion'. He had however been born and brought up in Manchester, the son of a school teacher. He had joined the army in Italy as a Colonel of Cavalry and had apparently been an 'aide de camp’ to Joacham Murat, the King of Naples. In the 1820s he fought with Spanish insurgents, and, in Constantinople, he helped the Turks to fight the Russians.
Back in England Maceroni became interested in Goldsworthy Gurney’s steam cars amd he began work in Gurney’s Regents’ Park workshops. Then he moved to a workshop in Paddington with John Squire where they designed and manufactured steam vehicles, one of which ran for hire for some weeks between Paddington and Edgware. There were however, financial difficulties and Maceroni took the carriages to Brussels and Paris where an Italian speculator, Col. Asda, drove them round with great publicity – and then sold them and disappeared with the money.
Macaroni was also interested in using coal tar for road surfaces and wrote about the first tarred garden path which, he said, he had laid in Blackheath. He said it was in the garden of a ‘Mr. Bell’ – is this perhaps a misprint for ‘Mr. Beale’?? Joshua Taylor Beale lived in a house in Woolwich Road in Greenwich at the bottom of what is now Vanburgh Hill, - where the old cinema is now used as flats. Was it here that the first tarred garden path in the world could be found? Mr Beale’s foundry in Greenwich was adjacent to the Enderby site and it was here that Maceroni came to continue his work on steam cars.
In 1841 Maceroni called a meeting of interested parties and a committee was set up to run what was to be called the 'Common Road Steam Conveyance Company'. This seems to have consisted of a number of business men - who eventually found out that they would have to pick up the bills.. They employed as an engineer 'Mr. Gordon' . This was probably Alexander Gordon whose father, David Gordon, had been one of the original steam car pioneers, and Alexander was to write a book called 'Elemental Locomotion' about his father’s work.
Maceroni and Gordon went to Joshua Beale and asked him to make the steam car to Maceroni’s patents. Joshua's brother, Benjamin, helped with the drawings. Together they went to Wright's carriage works in Ray Street, Clerkenwell, and selected a carriage to which they could add the steam engine. When the carriage was tested it was discovered that the steam blew the fire out and so alterations had to be made. This extra design work was done by Beale.
A report in the Worcester Chronicle or 19 August 1840 says: “On Thursday night an experimental trip of a steam-carriage, constructed under the patent of Colonel Macaroni, was made from East Greenwich to Footscray. There were 23 passengers, principally shareholders. They proceeded up Blackheath Hill at the rate of twelve miles an hour. They then proceeded over the Heath and up Shooters Hill, and, ascended it at the rate of fourteen miles an hour. They needed water for the boiler so they stopped at The Bull where the men were regaled and eulogised the scientific engineer. There was no appearance of steam, smoke, or fire; in fact, there is no chimney, and the noise produced is scarcely equal to that of a common omnibus”. Please note these vehicles had no brakes to use when going down hill.
Macaroni had agreed to produce the carriages at £800 each to the Steam Conveyance Company but Beale’s bill was £1,100 for this first vehicle, because of the alterations and experimental trips. The shareholders’ committee refused to pay this amount, and Beale impounded the carriage. Everything Macaroni had was seized by his creditors - his furniture, books, models, and he was now in great distress. He offered the patent of his steam boiler for sale. It had seven years to run, but in that time “a great fortune might be made on common roads."
Although this seems to have been done through the Steam Carriage Conveyance Company which Beale and Squires had set up, reports are confusing and a company called the General Steam Carriage Company dates from the same time. In 1843 The General Company’s incorporation documents refer to ‘letters patent granted Frank Hills of Deptford for improvements in construction of steam boilers’. So at about same time as Beale was building Macaroni's carriages Frank Hills was also busy building steam carriages somewhere in Greenwich – and it is very likely that Beale made his cars too. I fact one author describes a factory where 'two steam carriages were almost complete' .
There are some previous events that we should note here. One is that in 1833 a Mr Roberts had patented a gearing device for steam carriages. A few years later Frank Hills also patented a gearing device which it was later claimed infringed Roberts’ patent. The other is that in 1839 Frank Hills went on a demonstration trip in one of Walter Hancock’ steam coaches, Automaton, and it was noted that he 'was taking a lesson in steam carriage construction during the journey'. Frank said later that his tests on steam powered vehicles had been carried out from around 1835 on a site which was ‘near Vauxhall Bridge’. It should be noted here that Arthur, one of Frank’s innumerable brothers, had a naphtha works in the area which is now Battersea Power Station - and thus not too far from Vauxhall Bridge.
Meanwhile Frank was taking his carriage about all over the place - Windsor, Brighton, Hastings - although it had to stop every eight miles to take on water. There is even a suggestion of a regular service from an advertisement in The Times in 1841 which says that tickets can be got from ‘Mr Hills of the Creek Street Chemical Works for regular coach journeys from Deptford to Sevenoaks on Mondays and Thursdays’. He said his design included 'several improvements which .. are stated to have fully realised his most sanguine expectations. It was said that he had managed to reduce the weight and to make a boiler 'equal to every exigency'. He advertised that he was not going to take 'short trips on good suburban roads' but ' roads .. with peculiar difficulties'.
In 1840 he went on various trips - to Sevenoaks, Tunbridge Wells .. and on the Brighton Road, He could go up steep hills fully loaded at 12 miles and hour and on the level at 16. He went up London Street Greenwich 100 yards in deep gravel. Further afield he went to Hastings and back .. a delightful trip'. He travelled along the road we would now recognise as the A21, going through Tunbridge and Sevenoaks. He could, he said, do the journey 'at half the expense and with double the speed of a stage coach' . It was claimed by the General Steam Carriage Company that Hills’ design was ‘the most perfect now known in England'.
The vehicle was taken out on more trips - this time on more dangerous and difficult roads. He went again to Hastings, and back, 128 miles in a day - half the time it took a stage coach. They went 'up and down the hills about Blackheath, Bromley and neighbour..... on the Hastings Road as far as Tunbridge and back.' Hills boasted of difficult hills - he went up 'Quarry Hill which rises 1 in 13, and River Hill - ‘said by coachmen to be the worst hill in the county, which rises 1 in 10'. Frank Hills claimed to do them all. He claimed that passengers could be conveyed in this way at half the cost and double the speed of stage coaches.
And then it all stopped. No real explanation was given. Macaroni was bankrupt and newly married. Frank Hills was busy making a very large fortune out of the gas industry and Joshua Beale was inventing his exhauster and much else. It was a long time before steam carriages were back in the roads of South London, Kent, Surrey and Sussex - as we will see in my next,
GW 2023
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