October 15, 1915.

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

775

NORTH	OF ENGLAND INSTITUTE

OF	MINING AND MECHANICAL

ENGINEERS.

MR. GREENER’S PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.

The President (Mr. T. Y. Greener) occupied the chair
at last Saturday’s meeting of the members of the North
of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical
Engineers, held in the lecture theatre of the Wood
Memorial Hall, Westgate-road, Newcastle-on-Tyne.

In view of the fact that Mr. Greener was to deliver
his presidential address, and that Dr. J. B. Simpson
was to make a presentation to the institute of a number
of engravings and miners’ lamps, there was an even
larger attendance than usual, many gentlemen not
usually seen at these meetings putting in an appearance.
The “ strangers ” included Dr. Hadow, principal of
Armstrong College, and County Aid. U. A. Ritson.

The Secretary (Mr. J. H. Merivale) announced that
the sum of <£637 had been subscribed towards the fund
inaugurated by the institute for the provision of a motor
ambulance, to be called the North of England Institute
of Mining and Mechanical Engineers’ Ambulance, for
service at the front—an amount he regarded as satis-
factory. The ambulance had already been bought, and
Mr. Leech had had the opportunity of inspecting it at
Nottingham. Although the speaker did not know the
actual cost yet, he knew that that cost was more than
covered by the amount in hand. The surplus would
enable the car to be run free of cost to the Red Cross
Society for some little time to come.

Mr. Edward Carl Joachim Meyer, mining engineer,
P.O. Box 57, East Rand, Transvaal, was elected as a
member; and Mr. Ernest Hughes Suggett, colliery
under-manager, The Villas, West Rainton, Fencehouses,
was admitted as an associate.

The Invention of the Safety Lamp.

Some remarks on the invention of the safety lamp
were then contributed bv Dr. John Bell Simpson,
D.C.L., as follow:—

This year being the centenary of the invention of the
so-called “ safety ” lamp by Sir Humphry Davy and of the
Clanny and Stephenson lamps, it seems to me that this is a
fitting opportunity to review the great advantages which have
accrued by the development of the coal industries in conse-
quence of these inventions, which have enabled the output to
be enormously increased, and our mines to be carried on
with less danger and loss of life to the miners. I may say
that the annual output of this country 100 years ago was not
more than 27 millions of tons, and now it has reached the
enormous total of 280 millions, and the present output could
not have been reached if the invention of the safety lamp
had not taken place. The railway system could never have
been developed to the extent that it has been if this lamp
had not been invented, which also gave an impetus to other
industries, and enabled many new ones to be introduced. A
few years ago, in 1891, in a presidential address which I
delivered to the North of England Mining Institute, I gave
a brief account of the introduction of the safety lamp, and I
now propose to give a few extracts therefrom which are as
follow :—

I mentioned that the North of England Institute of Mining
Engineers, which was founded in 1852 after the serious loss
of life caused by an explosion at Seaton Colliery, and “one
of their chief objects was to meet together to discuss the
means for the ventilation of coal and other mines, the
winning and working of collieries and mines, the prevention
of accidents, and the advancement of the sciences of mining
and engineering generally.’’

In 1810 a society for preventing accidents in coal mines
was formed after a serious explosion at Felling Colliery,
where there had been a great loss of life. The Duke of
Northumberland was the patron and Sir Ralph Milbanke
its president. It was also under the patronage of the Marquis
of Bute, Bishop of Durham, Lord Percy, Sir Matthew
White Ridley and Rev. Robert Grey, Dr. Clanny, John
Buddle, M. Dunn, the Rev. J. Hodgson (who was the
honorary secretary), and many others.

Mr. John Buddle, at the request of the society in 1813,
made -a report to them, explaining the condition of mining,
etc. He concluded his report in the following words :—
“ On the strength of my own experience ... I freely
hazard my opinion that any further application of mechanical
agency towards preventing explosions in coal mines would
be ineffectual, and therefore conclude that the hopes of this
society ever seeing its most desirable object accomplished
must rest upon the event of some method being discovered
of producing such a chemical change upon carburetted
hydrogen gas, as to render it innocuous as fast as it is
discharged, or as it approaches the neighbourhood of lights.
In this view of the subject, it is to scientific men only that
we must look up for assistance in providing a cheap and
effectual remedy.’’

At this time the Rev. J. Hodgson fortunately appealed
to Sir Humphry Davy, giving him an account of the great
disasters in mining, and was successful in inducing him to
visit Newcastle to gain some knowledge of the conditions
under which inflammable gas was found in the mine. Sir
H. Davy visited the north in 1815, and had several inter-
views with Mr. Hodgson, who introduced him to Mr. Buddle,
who had the charge of many collieries. They visited several
of the dangerous mines in the north, and Mr. Buddle
assisted him in the investigations of the conditions of mining,
and pointed out the necessity for some safe method of
dealing with inflammable gas in the working of mines.
When, on leaving, he said to Mr. Buddle, from whom he
had got all the information he wanted, “ I think I can
do something for you,’’ Mr. Buddle looked at him with
considerable doubt. However, in a few months, Sir
Humphry Davy did produce a lamp which was destined
to make a great revolution in mining, and to add greatly
to the development of the coal trade.

In 1816 this society was broken up, as it was thought
that its objects had been accomplished by the invention of
the safety lamp. Whatever we may think of the wisdom
of breaking up so important a society, we must admit
that it had achieved a triumph which has seldom been the
fortune of any society to accomplish in so short a time; and
Mr. Buddle, who before had expressed himself so despair-
ingly, afterwords wrote, “ I first tried the lamp in an
explosive mixture on the surface, and then took it into
a mine, and to my astonishment and delight, it is impossible

for me to express my feelings at the time when I first
suspended the lamp in the mine and saw it red hot. If it
had been a monster destroyed I could not have felt more
exultation than I did. I said to those around me, ‘ We
have subdued the monster.’ ’’ Sir Humphry Davy accom-
panied Mr. Buddle into some of the fiery mines, and saw
his lamp in actual use, and was delighted; and Mr. Buddle
expressed himself as “ overwhelmed with the feeling of
gratitude to that great genius which had produced it.’’
Mr. Buddle spoke feelingly, and his colliery diaries, which
were kept up daily and with great exactness, gave graphic
details of his own frequent hairbreadth escapes, and the
difficulties which the viewers of those days had to encounter
from inflammable gas. The present generation can hardly
realise the dangerous conditions of mining before the inven-
tion of the safety lamp.	'

Since the days of Clanny, Davy, and Stephenson, who
were the first inventors, their lamps have undergone many
modifications. In their day, there was great controversy
between the friends of Sir Humphry Davy and those of
George Stephenson. There is no doubt that they were both
working at the same time, but on rather different lines :
Davy went into the matter in a purely scientific way, and
Stephenson proceeded on more mechanical and practical
lines. I think we may accept the opinion of the late Mr.
Nicholas Wood who, from his friendship for Stephenson
might have been more partial, viz., that they should be
considered as parallel inventors. There can be no doubt,
however, that Dr.-Clanny was the first man to produce a
lamp enclosing a. light which was safe in an inflammable
mixture. The original, however, was not portable enough,
but afterwards he produced a lamp which, with the Davy
and Stephenson, is the foundation of all the lamps now in
use. No invention that we have had since the application
of steam for the draining of our mines and for the winding
of coal gave to the coal trade, and, I may add, to the
industries of the country, so great a stimulant. Time will
not allow me to go into any length as to thosse difficulties,
but to consider one of them, let us imagine our fiery mines
now having to be lighted by the flickering sparks from
the old flint and steel mill (which sometimes produced
explosions), and we may easily imagine how restricted would
be our output of coal. I will not say anything more on the
subject, as one of our members is about to produce a com-
prehensive history of the safety lamp for our institute, with
an account of its improvements, enabling the lamp to be
more properly designated a safety lamp, and to cope with
the additional difficulties consequent on the working of coal
at greater depths. I may also beg to refer the members to
the very extensive remarks on safety lamps by the late
R. L. Galloway (who was a member of our institute) in
his work on the Annals of Coal Mining. Without further
comment, I have now to ask the acceptance of the North
of England Institute of Mining Engineers of portraits of
Davy, Clanny, and Stephenson, with a lamp of each
inventor, and a steel mill, which was in use at Ben well
Colliery. I have also to add the portraits of John Buddle,
Nicholas Wood, and the Rev. J. Hodgson, the historian, who
all took such an enormous amount of trouble in the intro-
duction and development of the safety lamp.

On the motion of the President, seconded by Mr.
J. G. Weeks—who referred to Dr. Simpson as his old
master, having worked as his under-viewer — Dr.
Simpson was thanked for his gift and his address.

Presidential Address.

At the outset of his presidential address, Mr. Greener
thanked Dr. Simpson for the very handsome gift that
he had presented to the institute. It was very right
and proper that the services which those gentlemen
rendered to humanity and to the coal trade should always
be remembered. They were all more or less connected
with the introduction of the safety lamp into coal mines;
without it numerous lives would have been sacrificed
in attempts to work mines, which would ultimately have
been abandoned; hence the invention that they were the
means of bringing about had been one of the most
important factors in the development of collieries
generally, and in raising the output of the country from
about 26 to 27 million tons in 1815 to its present output
of about 280 million tons per year. The President
continued :—

The earliest record of a fatal accident from an explosion
of firedamp in British coal mining is, I understand, con-
tained in the register of St. Mary’s Church, Gateshead, in
which it is stated that on October 14, 1621, the burial took
place of Richard Backas, who was burned in a pit. It is
quite possible that there may have been similar cases at a
much earlier period, but it was not until the early part of
the 19th century that the presence of firedamp in mines
became a serious danger, and the cause of large losses of
life in collieries. At that time the celebrated High Main
seam, which had been extensively worked at Wallsend, and at
other collieries on the Tyne, was becoming exhausted near
the outcrop, and the workings were being continued at
greater depths. Large quantities of firedamp were, there-
fore, encountered, and the difficulty of ventilating the mines
was further aggravated by “ creeps,’’ which were constantly
occurring in those days by reason of the small size of pillars
of coal left.

An explosion took place in 1801 in the High Main seam
at the A pit of the Wallsend colliery, which caused exten-
sive damage to the shaft, and destroyed a number of lives.
Other similar explosions, accompanied by loss of life, followed,
and public attention was not unnaturally directed to the
matter, with the result that coal owners and viewers of the day
took up the question with the view of finding a lamp which
might safely be used in fiery mines. The flint and steel
mill is supposed to have been invented by Mr. James
Spedding, of Workington, Cumberland, in the year 1760, who
was described by Mr. John Buddle, in his evidence before the
Select Committee on Mines in 1835, as the most able pitman
of his day. That method of obtaining light was undoubtedly
safer than a candle, but instances of explosions have been
known to follow from sparks from the steel mill, and the
system had the further disadvantage that it required the
services of a lad in each working place to do nothing but
work the mill : hence the system was not only inefficient,
but costly.

The need, therefore, of an improved light in gassy mines
was urgent and imperative, and it was further emphasised by
the fact that on May 25, 1812, a tremendous explosion
occurred in the Low Main seam of the Felling Colliery, by
which 92 persons lost their lives. The Rev. John Hodgson,
who was at the time vicar of the parish of Heworth, in
which the colliery was situated, was naturally very much

concerned at the loss of life among his parishioners caused
by the disaster, and apparently assisted to the best of his
ability in obtaining relief for the dependants of the deceased
workmen, and, further, by means of correspondence and
meetings, did everything in his power to give publicity to
the occurrence, with the view of calling the attention of the
Government to the matter, and of seeing that steps should
be taken for the prevention of similar accidents in the future.
For that purpose a society, the object of which was to devise
means for the prevention of accidents in coal mines, was
formed at Sunderland in the latter part of 1812, and although
I have not been able to obtain a complete list of the names
of its members, it is clear that the Rev. Dr. Grey, at that
time Rector of Bishop wearmouth and Prebendary of Durham,
and afterwards Bishop of Bristol; Cuthbert Ellison, Esq.,
M.P., of Hebburn Hall; and the Rev. John Hodgson were
among its most active members. The society was under the
patronage of the Duke of Northumberland, the Marquess of
Bute, and other distinguished colliery owners.

Mr. Greener next recounted ithe subsequent efforts of
Buddle, Davy, Clanny, Stephenson, and others, leading
up to the introduction of the safety lamp in mines,
adding that it was no part of his province to enter into
the question of whether Sir Humphry Davy or George
Stephenson was the actual discoverer of the safety
lamp, or whether (as seemed likely) they were parallel
discoverers.

The President then passed on to other topics dealing
especially with latter-day developments in the methods
of manufacturing coke. He said :—

Dr. John Percy, in his Metallurgy, alludes to the fact that
in 1852 Mr. F. Jossa, of Witton-le-Wear, was taking out a
patent for extracting salts of ammonia from the smoke and
gases evolved from the manufacture of coke, so that it appears
that at that early period attention was being directed to the
matter of recovering by-products from coke oven gases. I do
not know anything about the process, nor whether it was
ever tried on a large scale, but I believe not. At all events,
the system was not adopted in any coke yard, and nothing
further appears to have been accomplished until about 1873.
In that year, or thereabouts, Messrs. Bell Brothers deter-
mined to abandon laboratory experiments and to test practi-
cally, on a fairly large scale, the nature and quantity of
by-products to be obtained from the waste gases from coke
ovens, and for this purpose they treated the gases from 36
beehive ovens for a period of five months or more. The
quantities of ammoniacal liquor and of sulphate of ammonia
which they obtained were, however, so small that it was not
worth while to continue manufacturing them, and the process
was for the time being abandoned. Messrs. Bell Brothers
continued to persevere in their endeavours to solve the pro-
blem of recovering by-products from waste gases, and in 1882
the Jameson oven, having been previously patented, was
introduced to a small extent at their Pagebank Colliery. The
process was exceedingly simple—the coal was coked in a
beehive oven of the ordinary type, and the gases were con-
ducted from the back-eye by means of a flue connected with
a series of flues underneath the floor of the oven, similar to
those in the Dixon and Brecon oven. The gases were drawn
off by means of an exhaust engine, and they were treated in
the usual manner for tar and sulphate of ammonia. The
results were not equal to the sanguine estimates of the
patentee, but they were not altogether unsatisfactory, and
the system might have been perfected and extended if it had
not been for the fact that the manufacture of coke in by-product
ovens was by that time fully established on the Continent,
and the first installation of 25 of such ovens was being erected
by Messrs. Pease and Partners at their Bankfoot Works,
together with a recovery plant, for the purpose of obtaining
tar and sulphate of ammonia. The results obtained by
Messrs. Pease and Partners were so satisfactory that., in the
succeeding nine years, they built 83 additional Simon-Carv&s
ovens similar to the first 25 installed, and more than doubled
their recovery plant, and extended it to include the production
of benzol. The installation of ovens at Peases West was
quickly followed by a similar installation at Bearpark, but
for some years afterwards little or no progress was made with
the extension of the system, chiefly, I believe, by reason of
the prejudice against the appearance of coke manufactured in
by-product ovens. The prejudice against that coke is only
now disappearing, and I believe that even yet certain con-
sumers prefer to pay an enhanced price for beehive coke.

About twenty years ago, however, the necessity for
improving the manufacture of coke was forced upon the atten-
tion of colliery owners by reason of the fact that the best
coking coal in Durham was being rapidly exhausted, and that
the remaining workable seams were not capable of producing
good coke without careful washing. The effect of such wash-
ing was to remove the free dirt in the coal, amounting in
some instances to 15 to 20 per cent, of the produce, with the
result that, whilst a clean coal was obtained, its cost was so
high that it was ‘ impossible to manufacture coke in beehive
ovens at a profit, having regard to its comparatively small
use, and to the market price of the coke. A great impetus
was therefore given to the erection of by-product ovens,
because the manufacture of coke in such ovens had very dis-
tinct advantages over the manufacture of coke in beehive
ovens. Large numbers of by-product ovens were from that
time onward installed in the several coalfields, and I should
think that it is more than likely that all the coke in the
country will eventually be manufactured in such ovens, and
that the beehive oven will in process of time be entirely
superseded, as it has been in Germany.

The by-product oven is a retort, and the recovery of the
by-products in the most recent installations approaches as
nearly as possible the best practice at gasworks. There are
a large number of different makes of ovens, having impor-
tant differences in detail, but substantially they may be
divided into two classes—those which are constructed with
vertical flues and those which are constructed with horizontal
flues. I do not propose to enter into the consideration of the
question whether the horizontal or the vertical flue is better:
there is considerable difference of opinion on the subject, but.
so far as I am aware, the results from both descriptions of
ovens are, in practice, eminently satisfactory. The operations
to be conducted, and the results to be achieved, are pre-
cisely the same in each description of oven, although there
are important differences in the methods of obtaining the
results.

The ammoniacal liquor from coke ovens may be dealt with
in two ways—either by the older method of obtaining the
sulphate of ammonia by bringing the ammoniacal liquor
into contact with live steam, or by the recovery of the
sulphate direct from the coke oven gases. The former
process was always adopted in this country until about
six years ago. The difficulty of dealing with the liquor was,
I believe, to a large extent an incentive to the adoption of