Richard Roberts: Obituary
Note: This is a sub-section of Richard Roberts
Obituary from the Manchester Times - Saturday 19 March 1864
We regret to announce the dearth of Mr. Richard Roberts, the eminent mechanical engineer, formerly a partner of the celebrated firm of Sharp, Roberts, and Co., of Manchester.
Mr. Roberts will be remembered as one of the most prolific and powerful inventors in a century of which invention has been said to be the motive power. The cotton trade, especially, is indebted to him for the self-acting mule, one of the prime motors in tho great development of manufacture. Mr. Roberts died yesterday, in London, and was, we believe, about 74 years of age.
When a boy he was almost without education, and his life is the familiar story of native talent forcing its way through all obstacles to fame and usefulness, if not to fortune. He was the son of a shoemaker, and was born in 1789, at Carreghova, in a house so exactly on the border of England and Wales that one door opened in Shropshire and another in Montgomeryshire.
He was early put to work as a common labourer, and it was in the intervals of occupation as a quarryman, that he began to show his quality by ingenious contrivances in mechanics. This encouraged him to search for higher employment.
We first hear of his connection with iron work, when in the service of that skilful Staffordshire mechanician, Mr. John Wilkinson, who employed Roberts as a pattern maker. After acquiring a variety of knowledge sad dexterity in different employments at Birmingham, Robert was again working as a pattern maker at Tipton, when, to his extreme disgust, he was drawn for the militia. Serve he would not - that he was resolved upon; and it was while traversing the country on foot, in his determination to escape, that hoe first came to Manchester, weary and penniless fugitive. He got some work in Salford at lathe and tool making. But he was soon on the tramp again, from his fear of the long arm of the law, and this time he made his way (as Mr. Smiles tells us, in his memoir of Roberts) to "that great hiding-place," the metropolis.
After working some time at Maudelay's, continually developing his ingenuity and skill, he at length settled in Manchester. In 1816 he was carrying on business on his own account in Deansgate, and was already distinguished in his vocation by a variety of inventions or improvements.
In the following year, at the request of tho boroughreeve and constables of Manchester, he contrived an oscillating and rotating wet gas meter, which enabled them to sell gas by measure. As in that case, it is rather singular (regarding him as one of those whose brains, it is said, are so formed that we could never want for inventions, though patents were unheard of) that, in the two inventions for which afterwards he was perhaps the most famed, the achievement was rather due to instigation from others - in one instance, at least, we might almost say compulsion - than to spontaneous effort.
His great improvements in weavers' reed-making machines having led to the formation of the prosperous partnership with which his name was so long identified, it happened in the year 1824 that the cotton manufacturers of the neighbourhood, driven to bay by the turbulence of their spinners (the highest paid of workmen, but the most given to strikes), on whom the entire machinery of a cotton mill and all its other workers were then dependent - were induced to apply to Messrs. Sharp, Roberts, and Co., as to reputed magicians, for aid in their extremity. The problem to be solved was to make spinning mules self-acting. The idea was not now, for self-acting mules had been brought out more than once. Unfortunately they had failed. And now, when a mule that would do its own work unmistakeably was the article in demand, every mechanic to whom the thing was broached, not excepting Mr. Roberts, declared it out of the question.
He would hardly listen to the explanations of the applicants. He knew nothing about cotton spinning, he told them, and seemed, oddly enough in such a man, bent on ignorance perpetual. The spinners still kept everything at a stand by their strike. A second time the manufacturers called on Mr. Roberts, without effect. A third time (Mr. Smiles relates) they called, and appealed to Mr. Sharp, the capitalist of the firm. Mr. Sharp was about to try his persuasive powers on the clever but obdurate partner, but now it appeared, on the first mention of the matter, that Mr. Roberts had been revolving the subject in his own mind ll along, and at last "saw his way."
To recount the success and the consequences of this well-known invention, would here be superfluous; and we have not space for a fragment of the long list of inventions which have since borne Mr. Roberts's name to all parts of the world, not only in connection with the staple manufactures of this district, but in the making of locomotives and many kinds of machinery. His Jacquard punching machine, another self-acting tool of great power, was due to the entreaties of the contractors for the Conway Tubular Bridge, in 1848, who appealed to Mr. Roberts to free them, as he had freed tho cotton traders, from the combinations of their workmen.
It is sad to say, at the end of such a career, that Mr. Roberts, outside the realm of invention, did not find the path of prosperity so clear. On the death of Mr. Sharp, Mr. Roberts left the firm which had promised him so much competency as well as renown, and once more commenced business on his own account. From his want of commercial aptitudes that undertaking was discontinued, with an unsatisfactory result.
Lately he had been residing in London with a daughter, in delicate health, dependent on him. His friends, including some of the most eminent in the land, had already begun to subscribe for a well-merited testimonial to him, and if the conclusion of their effort should yet prove to be a timely offering to the survivor, the debt of great numbers of his countrymen will be well acknowledged, though never repaid.
The funeral will take place at Kensal Green Cemetery London, on Saturday (to-day). The funeral cortege will start from his late residence, 10, Adam-street, Adelphi, at twelve o'clock, arriving at Kensal Green at two o'clock.
See Also
Sources of Information