Lamp of Learning: Two Centuries of Publishing at Taylor and Francis

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The Lamp of Learning

In the 1830s, Richard Taylor regularly attended meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. At the Birmingham meeting in 1839 Taylor and other scientific visitors were sketched by the young painter Alexander Craig (d. Glasgow 1878), who was seeking commissions for full-scale portraits. This framed portrait, 10 in×8 in, remained in private hands until 1989, when it was acquired by Taylor & Francis.

The Lamp of Learning Two Centuries of Publishing at Taylor & Francis

W.H.BROCK AND A.J.MEADOWS

UK USA

Taylor & Francis Ltd, 1 Gunpowder Square, London EC4A 3DE Taylor & Francis Inc., 1900 Frost Road, Suite 101, Bristol, PA 19007–1598 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. Copyright © W.H.Brock and A.J.Meadows 1998 First published 1984 Second edition 1998 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-203-21167-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-26916-0 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-7484-0265-9 (Print Edition) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data are available Cover design by Berryman Ball

Contents

Preface Foreword Sources and Abbreviations

vi xi xvii

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

1 19 63 89 111 147 185 223 243

A dynasty of Taylors Richard Taylor Bensley, Koenig, Woodfall and Taylor Taylor and the commercial science journal The Francis era Ups and downs Expansion Brave New World The Philosophical Magazine

Appendices 1. Editors of the Philosophical Magazine 2. Early prefaces to the Philosophical Magazine 3. Early printers of the Philosophical Magazine 4. Translations of quotations on the title-page and verso of the Philosophical Magazine 5. Editors and series of the Annals of Natural History 6. Prospectus of Koenig’s newly invented patent printing machine 7. Inventory and valuation 8. Journals published by Taylor & Francis (1997) Index

257 258 261 262 263 265 271 275 279 v

Preface to the First Edition

It is a pleasure for me, as President of Taylor & Francis and former chairman of the Board of Directors, to write a preface to this history. I have sent papers to our leading journal, the Philosophical Magazine, since before the war; since the end of the war in 1945 I edited the journal for a few years, and have published many papers in it. One of my most treasured possessions is the first volume of the journal, given to me by the company on my seventieth birthday. In this volume, dated 1798, there is a paper ‘On a new metal called tellurium’. In recent years we have published papers on the mobility of electrons in tellurium, and also in selenium, the raw material in the familiar Xerox office copying process. Also there is an article on ‘a new metal called chrome’. We call it chromium now and have published papers on it too. But we have become more limited in the subjects we cover in the Philosophical Magazine. We would not now publish a paper on a ‘New method of freeing molasses from their sharp taste, and rendering them fit to be used instead of sugar’ or on a ‘Method of discovering whether Wine has been adulterated with any metal prejudicial to health’. Should there be a demand for papers in such subjects, doubtless the company would start a new journal for the purpose. Indeed, the preface to the first volume thanks ‘Those Scientific Gentlemen who assisted us with Communication, as well as Hints respecting the future conduction of the Work’. The company prides itself that it solicits hints—and more than hints—from the scientific community, now happily both women and men, about how it can best serve that community—and so of course produce publications that will sell. Scientists sit on the board, scientists edit the journals and help us when necessary to change and improve their character and that of our books so as to produce what is wanted. A history of Taylor & Francis is a history in microcosm of a very vi

Preface

important aspect of science, how scientists make known to each other and to the wider public what they are doing and what results they achieve. Partly this is done through societies and academies, partly through independent firms. Both are needed, and I hope this book will help many readers to understand why this is so and to plan the future. Nevill Mott January 1984

Preface to the Second Edition It is appropriate, as Taylor & Francis approaches its bicentenary, that a revised edition of the history of the firm should be published. The Authors have been able to shed much new light on the private lives of the Company’s founders, Richard Taylor and William Francis. There have also been enormous changes in the firm since Sir Nevill Mott wrote his Preface in 1984. Taylor & Francis has grown from a single limited company into a Group with members on both sides of the Atlantic. One indication of this growth is the range of journals published. The Lamp of Learning in 1984 listed thirty eight titles—this second edition refers to ‘some 130 titles’ in 1996; today the Company publishes around 150 titles. This development has taken place at a time when the technology of communication, worldwide, has been transformed, giving publishers both challenges and opportunities. As a Group, we hope to continue to respond positively to both as we move into our third century. Elnora Ferguson March 1998

vii

“The art of printing is the most important invention that was ever introduced to the world, in its effects on the human mind, and of consequence on all civilized society; it preserves and disseminates all discoveries and improvements in the arts and sciences; it commemorates all other inventions; it hands down to posterity every important event; it immortalizes the actions of the great and good; and, above all, it extends and diffuses the word of God to all mankind.” William Savage, A Dictionary of the Art of Printing, 1841

x

Foreword

Although the study of newspaper and periodicals was not entirely ignored by historians before and immediately after the Second World War, it was Derek de Solla Price who, in Science since Babylon (1961) and Little Science Big Science (1963), first drew attention to scientific periodicals as one of the indicators of scientific growth. Bibliographical and analytical studies of scientific periodicals by David A.Kronick and Robert M.Gascoigne soon revealed the full extent of this golden stream.1 A more qualitative attention to the contents of periodicals also became possible following the lead and inspiration of Walter E.Houghton’s fivevolume The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824–1900. 2 Houghton’s identifications of the writers of essays in a select number of key Victorian periodicals, together with interesting accounts of their owners, editors, printers and publishers, quickly led to the establishment in 1968 of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, whose Newsletter and Review have done much to stimulate work on the editors, contributors and contents of yet more obscure periodicals and newspapers. Similarly, the establishment of the Journal of the Printing Historical Society in 1965, of Publishing History in 1973, and the Journal of Newspaper and Periodical History in 1984, has provided meeting places which allow the particular study of periodicals and books to be seen in the wider context of the economic and technical history of the printed word. 3 Professor R.M.MacLeod’s exemplary analysis of the weekly journal Nature for its centenary in 1969 drew the attention of historians of science away from the origins of scientific periodicals in the seventeenth century to their cultural and social significance for science in the nineteenth century. General studies of European science publishing which were brought together for the centenary of the Elsevier Publishing Company in 1980 by A.J.Meadows, specialised studies of the Annales de Chimie by Susan Court and M.P.Crosland, of Rozier’s Journal by J.E.McClellin, and the Annals of Natural xi

Foreword

History, by Susan Sheets-Pyenson, have all illustrated the fact that not only the scientific paper itself, but also its publishers and printers, merit the attention of historians of science. 4 In Sheets-Pyenson’s words, publishers and printers ‘acted as midwives in the creative process of bringing forth periodicals and books, [and] made decisions about which forms of scientific literature could survive in the market place’. Seeing printers and publishers as ‘merchants or brokers in scientific ideas who catered to the tastes of potential purchasers’5 undoubtedly helps explain the proliferation of commercial science journalism in the nineteenth century, as opposed to the important, but often dreary and single-minded, production of the Transactions of learned societies. One of the most successful of all publishers and printers of nineteenth- and twentieth-century science has been the firm of Taylor & Francis—a firm which has been closely identified with the growth of history of science in Great Britain since 1936 through its ownership and printing of Annals of Science. As a result of its involvement with the publications of learned societies, its ownership of the Philosophical Magazine and its close association with the changing fortunes of physics and natural history since the early nineteenth century, the firm has always been part of the structure of scientific activity in the metropolis. Since the Second World Wa r, moreover, like its German counterpart Springer, 6 it has become an integral part of European and world publishing. The success of Taylor & Francis was due not only to its commercial sense in the way, until the 1870s at least, it undercut larger rivals, but to its dedication to the business of scientific communication nationally and internationally— especially through the translation of scientific papers. Both its founders, Richard Taylor and William Francis, published original scientific papers; both men enjoyed the respect of research practitioners of science. They were the very mortar binding together the Victorian science building and furnishing it through the firm’s ‘lamp of learning’ with some of the ornaments which now render it so attractive to the historian. The foundation of Taylor & Francis has traditionally been placed at the launching of the Philosophical Magazine, whose first issues appeared in 1798. The publication of this second edition of The Lamp of Learning coincides, therefore, with the firm’s bicentennial celebrations in 1998. In fact, the origins of the firm extend back to the opening of the printing establishment of Jonas xii

Foreword

Davis in 1783. Richard Taylor was apprenticed into this firm in 1797 and with financial backing from his father he eventually took sole control of the business. This development of a publishing house from a purely printing company has given Taylor & Francis an unusual flavour among scientific publishers, for the printing side has always been closely associated with the editorial and selling sides. In his The Truth about Publishing, Stanley Unwin commented on the hazards of a publisher being his own printer: Many authors think it is a great advantage to a publisher to possess his own printing works. This is a delusion. It may even be a positive disadvantage. To be run economically, and therefore profitably, a printing plant needs an even supply of manuscripts to print. No one firm, however large, can ensure that the supply will arrive sufficiently regularly to keep all the machinery steadily employed. If there is a lull, either the machinery is idle, or in order to make full use of his plant, the publisher is tempted to embark on some new publication which he would otherwise not have done. There is thus a perpetual conflict between the requirements of the printing and publishing sides of the business.7 Despite the difficulties of combining the activities of printing and publishing, Taylor & Francis has succeeded where other companies have failed. This success has been achieved partly through the firm’s continued ownership of the Philosophical Magazine, whose aims have been slowly modified to suit the needs of the twentiethcentury physicist. Partly it is because the firm has become even more closely identified with the scientific community by transforming itself from a small family business into a limited company in which leading scientists are shareholders. At the same time, from the 1930s it has shed its Victorian image (aptly symbolised by its first purchase of a monotype machine as late as 1930), and faced the challenges offered by new European and international markets since the Second World War. The quaint Red Lion Court premises which Taylor & Francis occupied for over a century had to be abandoned in 1969 for the sake of this expansion. But, from its elegant modern premises in Gunpowder Square, a stone’s throw from Red Lion Court, the firm continues to feed the flame of learning from the Roman lamp which Richard xiii

Foreword

Taylor chose as his printing emblem. Despite its great expansion in recent years into education and the humanities, Taylor & Francis has managed to retain something of its previous family image. It is this continuity amid the changes in science and the printing industry since the end of the eighteenth century that we have tried to capture in this study. Although a large part of the firm’s archives has been destroyed, a surprising amount of nineteenth-and early twentieth-century material survives at the St Bride Printing Library in the form of some eighty boxes of papers and about 200 ledgers. These remains (whose survival owes much to the exertions of the printing historian, Nicolas Barker), together with the printed materials in the Philosophical Magazine and the firm’s many other commercial journals, as well as its learned society publications, have enabled us to write this biography of the firm. For information on its more recent history we are indebted to the many present and former members and directors of Taylor & Francis. Our account was first published in 1984. In this new, enlarged edition, an opportunity has been taken to correct a few errors and to add further information, including a new chapter on the developments that have taken place since 1984. Although the original edition revealed the blood relationship between Richard Taylor and William Francis, Taylor’s wife and Francis’s mother remained elusive figures in the account. We are now in a position to be more positive about Taylor’s tragic personal life and the identities of his wife and mistress are revealed fully for the first time. The details of this story, which are given in Chapter 2, have had to be built up from small fragments of information mined from dozens of different archival sources. For this painstaking detective work we are greatly indebted to Dr Peta Buchanan. Our other debts are to James Mosley and his staff at the St Bride Printing Library; Professor T.E.Davis and Dr David L. Wykes of the University of Leicester; Professor Jim Pegler of the City University, the last trustee of the Francis estate; and to the librarians and archivists at the many other centres to which our joint researches have taken us: namely, the Royal Scottish Museum; the Royal Society; the Royal Astronomical Society; the Royal Society of Chemistry; the Linnean Society of London; the Geological Society; the Society of Antiquaries; the Royal Institution; the Royal College of Physicians; University College London; the Guildhall Library; the Birmingham Reference Library; the Public Record Office, Kew; the Family History Centre xiv

Foreword

(formerly PRO, Chancery Lane); the Office of Census and Surveys, St Catherine’s House, London; the Probate Registry, Somerset House; London Metropolitan Archives (formerly GLRO); the Corporation of London Record Office; the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital Trust; City of Westminster Archives; the local history libraries of the Boroughs of Bromley, Chelsea, Finsbury (Islington), Richmond and Southwark; Surrey County Archives, Kingston; Yeovil Local Studies, Somerset; Tavistock Local Studies, Devon; West Devon Record Office, Plymouth; Hampshire Record Office; the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, London; East Sussex County Archives, Lewes; Hastings Local History Library; the Church Warden of St Mary’s Church, Richmond; as well as our own university libraries at Leicester and Loughborough. We also happily acknowledge our many obligations to the scientists, and former and present employees of the firm, who were kind enough to answer our questions. The names of most of them, some of whom have died since 1984, appear in the text. We would, however, like in addition to record our gratitude to Miss Debby Rose and Mr Eric Hulley. Professor Ted Davis of the University of Leicester has been very helpful in providing information on the recent history of the Philosophical Magazine. In particular, he has contributed the table in Chapter 9 which summarises the history of the journal. He is the editor of a series of volumes, published by Taylor & Francis under the general title Science in the Making, which reproduces selected Philosophical Magazine papers from the past two centuries. When complete, this series will provide a valuable overview of the journal’s development. References

1. D.A.Kronick, A History of Scientific and Technical Periodicals. The Origins and Development of the Scientific and Technological Press 1665–1790 (Metuchen, N.J., 1962; 2nd edn, 1976); R.M.Gascoigne, A Historical Catalogue of Scientific Periodicals 1665–1900 (Garland, New York, 1985). 2. The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824–1900, 5 vols (University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1966–89). 3. Victorian Periodicals Newsletter, 1–11 (1968–78), continued as Victorian Periodicals Review (1979–); Journal of Newspaper and Periodical History (London, 1984–92), continued as Studies in Newspaper and Periodical History (1993–); Journal of the xv

Foreword

4.

5. 6. 7.

xvi

Printing Historical Society (London, 1965–); Publishing History (Cambridge, 1977–). R.M.MacLeod, Nature 224 (1969), 423–61; A.J.Meadows, ed., The Development of Science Publishing in Europe (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1980); S. Court, ‘The Annales de Chimie’, Ambix 19 (1972), 113–28; M.P.Crosland, In the Shadow of Lavoisier. The Annales de Chimie and the Establishment of a New Science (British Society for the History of Science, 1994); S. SheetsPyenson, ‘Popular science periodicals in Paris and London. Low scientific culture 1820–75’. Annals of Science 42 (1985), 549–72; idem, ‘A measure of success. The publication of natural history journals in early Victorian Britain’, Publishing History 9 (1981), 21–36; idem, ‘From the north to Red Lion Court. The creation and early years of the Annals of Natural History’, Archives of Natural History 10 (1981), 221–49. For a recent guide to the literature, see W.H.Brock, ‘Science’ in J.Donn Vann and Rosemary T.VanArsdel, eds, Victorian Periodicals and Victorian Society (Toronto University Press, Toronto, 1994; pbk 1995), pp. 81–96. S.Sheets-Pyenson, ‘Popular science periodicals’, op. cit. (4), p. 549. H.Sarkowski and H.Götze, Springer-Verlag: History of a Scientific Publishing House, 2 vols (Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1996). Sir S.Unwin, The Truth about Publishing (Allen & Unwin, London, 1947; 8th edn, 1976).

Sources and Abbreviations

Various archives that have been used considerably in the preparation of this work are referred to in abbreviated form in the lists of references. These are as follows. 1. Taylor & Francis Miscellaneous papers, files and Minute Books 1936 to date at the offices of Taylor & Francis Ltd, 1 Gunpowder Square, London, EC4A 3DE. 2. St Bride, Taylor Papers The personal and family papers of Richard Taylor, including account books and records of his business until roughly 1852. Deposited at the St Bride Printing Library, Bride Lane, London EC4Y 8EE by Taylor & Francis Ltd., in 1969. There is an index to the personal and business papers. 3. St Bride, Taylor & Francis Archive The business records in 141 volumes of Taylor & Francis from roughly 1853 until 1914. There is some overlap between this collection and the Taylor Papers. Deposited at the St Bride Printing Library by Taylor & Francis Ltd., in 1973. There is a simple handlist of the account books. 4. Croesor Papers Croesor United Slate Company Ltd., papers c. 1840–1876. Deposited at Gwynedd County Record Office, Shirehall Street, Caernarfon, Gwynedd, LL55 1SH, Wales, by Taylor & Francis Ltd., 1970. There is a handlist Z/DAW. 5. Jardine Papers Correspondence of Sir William Jardine concerning the Magazine of Zoology and Botany and The Annals of Natural History, including about fifty of Taylor’s letters. Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh. xvii

CHAPTER ONE

A Dynasty of Taylors

Richard Taylor, the founder of Taylor & Francis, was a member of the talented Taylor family of Norwich concerning whom it has been said that if all their works were collected together, ‘it would form a respectable library’. 1 The Norwich Taylors formed part of the ‘intellectual aristocracy’ of eighteenth-and nineteenth-century England. United by their religious dissent, radicalism, liberalism, and their literary and business abilities, they exemplified to Francis Gallon in 1869 the ‘hereditability of genius’. In fact, the roots of their genius lay, not in Norwich, but in Lancashire, where Richard Taylor’s great-great-grandfather, John Taylor, was born in 1657. A humble timber merchant, his son, John Taylor (1694–1761) became one of the great eighteenth-century Nonconformist divines, renowned for his teaching at the famous dissenting academy at Warrington, and for his edition of The Hebrew Concordance (1754) which was an essential stage in the treatment of biblical texts as historical documents and for which the University of Glasgow awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1756.2 Between 1715 and 1733 he was minister to a small Presbyterian congregation at Kirkstead in Lincolnshire. Dissent was not strong in Lincolnshire; nevertheless his motley congregation of yeomen, tradesmen, farmers and labourers was larger than was found in Lincoln. In 1733 Taylor

Dr John Taylor (1694–1761), Richard Toylor’s great-grandfather. He began to preach in Norwich in 1733 and the engraving commemorates his opening of the Octagon Presbyterian Chapel there in 1754. On 8 November he wrote to his daughter, Sarah: ‘This day I have corrected ye last sheet of my [Hebrew] Concordance, which hath been near five years in printing, and in wch I have been exercised, more or less, for near two and twenty years’. (Courtesy Norfolk Record Office) 1


settled in the more intellectual environment of Norwich where, between 1753 and 1756, his congegation of well-to-do wool merchants and manufacturers, who formed the backbone of English Presbyterianism, built for him the spacious and elegant Octagon Chapel. John Wesley describes it in his Journals as ‘perhaps the most elegant [meetinghouse] in all Europe’. It is eight square, built of the finest brick, with sixteen sash windows below, as many above, and eight sky-lights in the dome, which indeed was purely ornamental. The inside is furnished in the highest taste, and it is as clean as any nobleman’s saloon. The communion table is fine mahogany; the very latches of the pew-doors are polished brass. He added, however, ‘How can it be thought that the old, coarse Gospel should find admission here?’3 Erected for £5,000, the chapel is still used by the Unitarians of Norwich. Although Socinian or Unitarian ideas had been prevalent since the Reformation or earlier, it was only in the second half of the eighteenth century that Unitarianism began to take root. Many of the leading Presbyterian congregations of England were profoundly influenced by intellectual developments of the period and by the doctrinal divisions which emerged within dissent, especially over the Trinity. Influenced by the Newtonian world picture and by the biblical exegesis of scholars such as Samuel Clarke, English Presbyterians came to modify traditional Calvinist doctrines by appealing to reason in matters of controversy, including the interpretation of biblical texts. This appeal to reason and personal conscience inevitably led Presbyterians to tolerate a wide divergence of belief. Historians have therefore preferred to use the term ‘Rational Dissent’ to describe such congregations. The growth of anti-trinitarianism—whether of the Arian variety which simply denied that Christ was of the same essence or status as God, or of the Socinian which completely denied the divinity of Christ—undermined the concept of atonement as the foundation of Christianity and with it the Calvinistic emphasis on original sin and predestination. Because Unitarianism represented a way of thought its development was complex, and though found largely within the more important Presbyterian congregations, it transcended denominational boundaries and so was also espoused by some Anglicans. Both Rational Dissenters and Unitarians stressed that 2

A dynasty of Taylors

The Octagon Chapel, Norwich. Opened in 1756 during Dr John Taylor’s ministry, it replaced a seventeenth-century meeting house. According to John Wesley, it was the most elegant Nonconformist chapel in the whole of Europe. Both Richard and Edward Taylor sang in the choir here while their father was a Deacon of the chapel. From a print of 1828. (Courtesy Norfolk Record Office)

the Bible, not the established and episcopalian Church of England, was the only authority for faith, and human reason the only guide to truth. What held true for rational religion also held true for science, politics and every other aspect of life. As a consequence, Unitarians of John Taylor’s generation and his successors drew certain practical conclusions from their religious and philosophical beliefs. In general terms they came to have a deep-seated commitment to the concept of religious (and hence political and civil) liberty, and they were to opppose what they considered religious bigotry, superstition and political corruption.4 While the Toleration Act of 1689 still left dissenters with various disabilities, it had left them free to worship outside the Church of England.5 The Unitarians, as the theologian and natural philosopher Joseph Priestley described himself and those who jettisoned the Trinity, came to develop a religion whose basic truths were few, plain and reasonable and in harmony with the natural law of the Newtonian universe. Priestley’s adoption of the materialistic system, which Hartley had described in the Observations on Man, led the Unitarians 3


to the belief that ‘the business of thinking’ depended largely upon sensory impressions. Since man was a creature of nurture rather than just nature, it followed that human society might be improved by remoulding man’s social environment and by educating men to become more like Christ, the perfect man. The Unitarians, therefore, like the Utilitarians, Owenites and other Associationists, inevitably became interested in and involved with programmes of social and political reform. Consequently, as many historians have noted, they came to play a disproportionate part in what R.K.Webb has called the cultured ‘social geometry’ of provincial towns. Business and political associates were quite likely to be drawn from among the Unitarian circle, and in moving from one town to another the Unitarians’ network could provide a form of introduction and a principle of cohesion—as the young Richard Taylor was to find. Of course, the emergence of Unitarianism from, chiefly, Presbyterian congregations was by no means smooth and uncontroversial. Members of the Octagon Chapel, for example, took many years to change from the Arianistic Presbyterianism of Dr Taylor to the Unitarianism of his grandson. Above all, however, it came to appeal to middle-class intellectuals in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Such men and women, with their new-found prosperity, grew increasingly conscious of the civil and political disabilities enforced because of their chosen religion and began to find such constraints incompatible with their growing social and cultural power within provincial and metropolitan society. Already known for his defence of the right of Christians to deduce their own individual faith from the Bible ‘without the aid of human creeds and confessions’, in 1740 John Taylor provoked widespread controversy by attacking the Calvinist doctrine of original sin in his much reprinted Scriptural Doctrine of Original Sin Proposed to Free and Candid Examination. ‘I solemnly charge you’, he told his Warrington pupils, that in all your religious inquiries, you carefully, impartially, and conscientiously attend to evidence, as it lies in the holy scriptures. That you keep your mind altogether open to evidence; that you labour to banish from your breast all prejudice, prepossession, and party zeal; that you study to live in peace and love with your fellow Christians; and that you steadily assert for yourself, and freely allow to others, the unalienable rights of judgment and conscience.6 4


John Wesley thought Taylor’s book shook ‘the whole frame of scriptural Christianity’.7 Although branded a heretic, infidel and deist by his opponents, it was his and his children’s principled stand for ‘Learning, Liberty and Truth’ which later made Richard Taylor not merely a London printer, but a skilled politician. It is noteworthy that Richard was keenly interested in his greatgrandfather’s life and publications, some of which he reprinted after collecting many notes. In 1757 Dr Taylor left Norwich to become Tutor in Divinity at the newly opened Warrington Academy. This was not a happy experience and he died four years later in 1761.8 Of his two surviving children, his daughter Sarah married John Rigby, their descendants including the obstetricians (father and son) Edward Rigby (1747–1821) and Edward Rigby (1804–60), the Arctic explorer Sir William Parry (1790–1855), and the authoress Elizabeth Rigby (1809–93), who married Sir Charles Eastlake (1793–1865), the President of the Royal Academy. The son, Richard Taylor (1719–62), remained in Norwich where he became a manufacturer of woollen goods. One source says that he lost money as a result of the Lisbon earthquake in 1755; another mentions how he stoically attempted to overcome a speech impediment at the age of twenty-five. Dicky has not spoken a word at home or abroad, since last Lord’s Day night. He has injoind himself a voluntary silence for about 3 weeks, wch he is determined strictly to observe, in hopes it will, together wch some other Rules, wch Mr Wingfield has given him, be of use to correct ye impediment in his speech.9 Richard’s wife, Margaret Meadows (1718–81), whom he married in 1746, came from a well-established Norwich family of Presbyterians and local government officials. She was also related to the Huguenot family of the Martineaus through her sister’s marriage to David Martineau, the grandfather of the writer, Harriet Martineau (1802– 76) and the Unitarian divine, James Martineau (1805–1900). Following David Martineau’s death in 1786, which was preceded by Richard’s in 1762, the two widows and their families became extremely intimate, forming, in effect, one extended family. Furthermore, during the second half of the eighteenth century, the Taylors and Martineaus became two of the leading families in Norwich in business, religious and civic affairs. 5


Of Richard Taylor’s eight children, Philip (1747–1831) became a Presbyterian clergyman in Dublin and had a distinguished grandson, Colonel Philip Meadows Taylor (1808–76), whose books on Indian subjects were very popular with Victorian readers; another son, Meadows Taylor (1755–1838), practised as a solicitor at Diss in Norfolk and numbered among his children and grandchildren lawyers, MPs and admirals; a third son, Samuel Taylor (1757–1841), a wealthy farmer who married Jane Cowling, produced many distinguished children who were, of course, cousins to Richard Taylor, the printer. These included Richard Cowling Taylor (1789–1851), a geologist, mining engineer and archaeologist who made his reputation in Philadelphia; 10 Edgar Taylor (1793– 1839), an important radical lawyer in London—he handled Richard’s legal affairs—and the first translator of Grimms’ fairy stories between 1824 and 1826; and Emily Taylor (1795–1872), a writer of historical tales and books for children; another daughter, Jane, married the engineer John Martineau (1789–1831), who partnered Richard’s brother John in his mining engineering activities. Richard Taylor the elder’s other son, John Taylor, was the father of Richard Taylor the printer. John Taylor (1750–1826) was trained for a business career at a dissenting school at Hindolveston, north Norfolk, where he was able to attend the Independent (Congregational) services held at Guestwick by the Rev. John Godwin, the father of the philosophical radical William Godwin (1756–1836), who attended the same school. Godwin’s subsequent controversial career was of great interest to the Taylors—Crabb Robinson records an angry conversation on politics between Godwin and Richard Taylor in 1815.11 On his father’s death from kidney stones in 1761, and at the age of twelve, John Taylor left school to help run the family’s yarn business. In 1765, however, he was apprenticed to a Norwich manufacturing firm, following which, in the early 1770s, he spent two years as a bank clerk in London, contributing his first poems to the Morning Chronicle. In April 1777 he married Susannah Cook (1755–1823), an exceedingly cultivated woman who was to be immortalised by writers who enjoyed her conversation in the parlour of their house in St George’s, Colegate, as ‘the Madame Roland of Norwich’. Her great granddaughter pays her the following well attested compliment: Mrs John Taylor…was a remarkable woman, whose house 6


John Taylor (1750–1826), Richard Taylor’s father, ‘grandson of that eminent man who first taught uncorrupted Christianity within its walls, whose name be bore, and of whose excellent moral as well as religious principles his own character was a bright illustration’ (from the memorial tablet in the Octagon Chapel erected by Richard Taylor and his brothers and sisters). The engraving, by R.M. Meadows, was published in the Methodist Magazine, 1808. at Norfolk was the resort of the most cultivated men and women of her day, whose friendship was prized and valued by them. She brought up her children with an unflinching love of truth and a horror of debt. Not ashamed of being poor, she attended to all the small details of daily life, in the midst of which she found time to read and appreciate philosophy and poetry, and to think for herself.12 Here, within this Unitarian circle were frequently to be found the Utilitarian barrister, James MacIntosh (1765–1832), the botanist 7


James Edward Smith (1759–1828), the diarist Henry Crabb Robinson (1775–1867), the politician William Windham (1750–1810), the philanthropist Elizabeth Fry (1780–1845), who was a sister of the Norwich banker J.J.Gurney, the writer and poet Amelia Alderson (1769–1853), best known as Mrs Opie, and the poet and children’s writer Anna Barbauld (1743–1825). Most of these intellectuals left reminiscences of the Taylors and befriended the young printer when he entered London society. It is no wonder that William Enfield, the Octagon minister, should have said regretfully on leaving Norwich for Manchester, that ‘for a man of literary tastes and pursuits, I can truly say that I know of no town which offers so eligible a residence’.13 In 1778 John Taylor, who had set up his own business in Norwich as a wool comber (and from 1784 as a wool and yarn factor), become a Deacon of the Octagon Chapel, which had by then become a centre of Rational Dissent. He also began to enter fully into civic affairs. As a Poor Law Guardian he introduced a scheme of spinning and weaving for women and children in the two local workhouses which, according to his son Edward, offset the cost of poor relief by several thousand pounds. In 1784, together with his cousin Philip Meadows Martineau, a member of the famous surgical school of Norwich lithotomists, he founded the Norwich City Library. A convivial family man, in 1784 he established the custom of holding an annual reunion of the Taylors and Martineaus for which he usually composed a toasting song. This tradition of family concord seems to have been continued by his children well into the 1850s. Sarah Taylor, for example, mentions a ‘formidable gathering of the whole Taylor clan’ in May 1856 to celebrate the centenary of the opening of the Octagon Chapel which ‘in spite of age and infirmities, my dear and venerable brother [Richard]’ attended.14 John Taylor’s introduction to national politics had come in 1786 when Norfolk yarn manufacturers, in common with those from Yorkshire and Gloucestershire, protested at the proposal by landed farmers to export the long wool which they traditionally processed. Taylor was one of the Norwich spokesmen deputed to lobby the cause in London with the Prime Minister, William Pitt. He also engaged in a long newspaper wrangle with the agricultural writer Arthur Young. Having won this cause, in 1789 Norfolk dissenters began to look to the centenary of the ‘Glorious Revolution’ (when Nonconformists had been granted freedom to worship in public) for political freedom through the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. (In fact the Act of Toleration of 1689 specifically excluded anti-trinitarians; 8


consequently Unitarianism was, strictly speaking, illegal until a further Act of Exemption was passed in 1813. Only then was the term Unitarian widely adopted in congregational titles.) John Taylor was a confirmed Whig and libertarian. Hence, like Joseph Priestley, he initially welcomed the American War of Independence and the French Revolution, penning his most famous song, ‘The Trumpet of Liberty’ to celebrate the latter in 1789: The trumpet of Liberty sounds through the world, And the universe starts at the sound; Her standard Philosophy’s hand has unfurl’d, And the nations are thronging around. CHORUS Fall, tyrants, fall! fall! fall! These are the days of liberty! fall, tyrants, fall! … The cruel dominion of priestcraft is o’er, Its thunders, its faggots and chains! Mankind will endure the vile bondage no more, While religion our freedom maintains. Shall Britons the chorus of liberty hear With a cold and insensible mind? No,—the triumphs of freedom each Briton shall share, And contend for the rights of mankind.15 Unitarians and Rational Dissenters faced considerable difficulties over the French Revolution and with the outbreak of war between France and England in 1793. 16 Taylor’s Jacobinism became not merely unpatriotic, but treasonable. Nevertheless, many leading figures in Norwich, including John Taylor, continued to support the principle of revolution and liberty, while deploring the war itself. Taylor’s sincere belief in the cause of civil liberty, which became an important issue as the British Government adopted draconian anti-revolutionary measures, found an outlet in The Cabinet, a now rare periodical. Published in Norwich in 1794–5 in support of Jacobinism and to disseminate liberal political information, it was enlivened by the poetry of Taylor and Amelia Alderson. A copy of the periodical, with identifications of the anonymous authors in the hand of Richard Taylor, is in the possession 9


of the University of Michigan. Taylor’s poetic talents also found expression in hymn writing—his best known being ‘Rejoice! the Lord is King!’ which he set to Handel’s ‘Gopsal’ melody. He shared this interest in hymn writing with his intimate friend James Edward Smith, the Unitarian botanist and founder of the Linnean Society.17 From about 1774, John Taylor began to suffer from gout—the same complaint had plagued his father and was to recur in Richard Taylor and William Francis. He also became a martyr to kidney stones from 1802, and six years later seemed to be on the point of death. However, he soon returned to vigorous health, and in his sixty-eighth year in 1818 he even became a member of the Norwich Common Council in a further attempt to repeal the disabilities against dissenters. He had put his aspirations for such local service into his verses called ‘The Rats’ as long ago as 1790, following the defeat of Charles James Fox’s attempt to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts. ‘Forbear, my friends, awhile,’ he cried ‘To tempt the Church’s power: No mortal Rat that power defied, But wail’d the fatal hour. ‘With sugar’d sops she baits her traps, In number thirty-nine, And he that from such wires escapes Has sharper teeth than mine. ‘The city’s corporation chest A readier prey shall yield: There, long by gold and parchments prest, The Charter lies conceal’d.18 It was a similar motive which inspired Richard Taylor to become a Common Councilman of the City of London in the same year. John Taylor died at Birmingham as a result of being thrown from his carriage on the way to see his brother in Dublin. He was buried in the Unitarian churchyard in Birmingham. ‘Few men have passed a more exemplary life’, noted the Norwich Mercury: He was cheerful yet sedate in his dispositions and manners. By the application of his hours of leisure from business to literary pursuits, he was continuously adding to a stock of 10


Susannah Taylor (1755–1823), née Cook, Richard Taylor’s mother. ‘Norwich was always a haven of rest to us; from the literary society with which that city abounded…our chief delight was in the society of Mrs. John Taylor, a most intelligent and excellent woman, mild and unassuming, quiet and meek, sitting amidst her large family, occupied with her needle and domestic occupations, but always assisting, by her great knowledge, the advancement of kind and dignified sentiment and conduct.’ (B. Montagu, Life of Sir James Mackintosh, 1835). Drawing by Henry Meyer. (Courtesy British Library) general knowledge, that rendered him a respected member of the intellectual society in which he moved, and caused his judgment to be regarded with deference by the many who had or who took occasion to refer to his opinion. The same taste and the same cultivation led him early to feel the importance of public character, and induced him to become the advocate of civil and religious liberty, whenever he conceived that his style of argument (which was like mild 11

John Taylor (1779–1863), Richard Taylor’s elder brother. A distinguished geologist and mining engineer, by 1824, when he formed the Real del Monte Company to exploit the minerals of Mexico, he owned nearly forty mines in Yorkshire, Wales and the West Country. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1825, his business prowess was eagerly sought by the Geological Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Science for whom he was Treasurer from 1816 to 1847, and 1832 to 1861 respectively, and by the new University of London on whose Council he served from 1826 until 1841. The firm of John Taylor & Sons finally closed in 1969. (Portrait of 1825 by Sir Thomas Lawrence, courtesy Norfolk Record Office)

Edward Taylor (1784–1863), Richard Taylor’s younger brother. Although he began his career as an ironmonger and chemist, in the 1820s he launched upon a successful musical career as a singer, music critic for The Spectator and concert promoter. He was a great friend of the German violinist and composer, Louis Spohr (1784–1859), whose music he popularised in England. From 1837 until his death he was also Professor of Music at Gresham College in the City of London. His son, John Edward Taylor, was Richard Taylor’s printing partner from 1837 until 1851. (Engraving by H. E.Dawe of a painting by R. S.Tait, courtesy Norwich Record Office)


and sensible) might conduce to the benefit of his fellowcreatures. …Regarded for pure and constant principles in public, and revered for his urbanity in private life, connected with an ancestry distinguished by talent, and exemplary in the discharge of the parental duties, this excellent man has given every proof how deeply and how carefully he endeavoured to prolong the good fame which pertains to a family the most numerous, the most united, and the most esteemed of any of the same place in society that the country possesses.19 This was the man whom his talented children strove to imitate. As his son Edward sincerely put it, ‘Our obligations, so far from being discharged by our losses, increase as the friends of virtue expire; we should study to prevent society from missing absent benefactors, by performing such duties as they would have performed had they continued in a world abounding with objects of benevolent and useful exertion’.20 The seven children all followed this precept in their various ways. John (1779–1863), the eldest and most brilliant, became an extremely successful and rich mining engineer and entrepreneur, Fellow of the Royal Society, Treasurer to the Geological Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and a prime mover in the establishment of University College London. The firm established with his children, John Taylor & Sons, survived as a family business until 1969.21 Edward Taylor (1784–1863), whose memoir of his father has been extensively drawn upon, was initially apprenticed to an ironmonger in Norwich. He tried various other careers before finding his feet as a bass singer, conductor, concert promoter and music editor for The Spectator. In 1824 he established the first of the triennial Norwich Music Festivals. Through Richard’s influence he also held the office of Professor of Music at Gresham College in London from 1838 until his death. One of his sons, John Edward Taylor (1809–66), was to be Richard Taylor’s partner in the Red Lion Court printing house between 1837 and 1851, when he established his own printing firm in Queen Anne Street. Engineering talent was also found in Philip Taylor (1786–1870). Apprenticed by his parents to a Norwich apothecary, he briefly joined his brother John as a mining surveyor before becoming a pioneering gas and chemical manufacturer in London. His patent of 14


1815 for the refining of sugar using high-pressure steam led him, together with his brother John and John Martineau, to set up a business for making high-pressure boilers and steam engines. However, a financial scandal within the British Iron Co. in South Wales, in which he became implicated, forced his emigration to France in 1828. Here he and his sons established a machineimporting business and a large firm of marine engineering in Marseilles. 22 The youngest son, Arthur (1790–1870), was (like Richard) destined to be a printer. Trained by Richard, he was the latter’s partner from 1814 until 1823 when he decided to become independent. Through Richard’s influence within the City he obtained the lucrative contract of printer to the City of London. He also shared Richard’s antiquarian tastes, publishing such works as The Glory of Regality (1820) and several essays in the Journal of the Society of Antiquaries. Literary talent found its chief expression in John Taylor’s two daughters, Susan (1778–1844) and Sarah (1793–1867) and their children. In 1807 Susan married the Norwich physician Henry Reeve, who had been one of the founders of the Edinburgh Medical & Surgical Journal. His early death in 1814 affected the family deeply and led his mother to dote upon the surviving child, Henry Reeve (1813–95), who (after being The Times’ foreign correspondent for fifteen years) became the formidable editor of the Edinburgh Review from 1855 until his death. Sarah Taylor, ‘the handsomest and most gifted’ of all the children, according to her granddaughter, married the Utilitarian lawyer John Austin (1790–1859). The story of her unhappy marriage and her unconsummated love affair with a German prince, Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, has now been told by Lotte and Joseph Hamburger.23 Despite her unhappiness, marriage brought her the intimate friendship of leading intellectuals such as John Stuart Mill and George Grote. She spoke fluent French, German and Italian and was a formidable Latin scholar. It was said of the salon she kept in Paris (a more sophisticated version of her mother’s Norwich parlour), that ‘it was the centre where France, England, Germany and Italy met, and learned to know and appreciate each other’.24 Most of her widowhood was devoted to seeing her husband’s unpublished work on Roman law through the press, but in her own right she became well known as a translator of German historical works, such as Ranke’s History of the Popes (1840). The Austins’ daughter, Lucie (1821–69), became Lady Duff Gordon on her marriage to the baronet Duff Gordon. She, too, became a distinguished translator and hostess to visiting British and foreign celebrities. Janet 15


Sarah Taylor (1793–1867), Richard Taylor’s youngest sister, who married the Utilitarian lawyer, John Austin, in 1820. ‘Of Mrs. Taylor’s seven children, Sarah Austin was perhaps the handsomest and most gifted; the extraordinary vigour of her mind and body was almost overpowering’ (Janet Ross, Three Generations of Englishwomen, 1888). Among her chief scholarly works were Germany from 1760 to 1814 (1854), the translation of Ranke’s History of the Popes (1840) and the editing of her husband’s lectures on jurisprudence. (Chalk and pencil drawing of 1834 by John Linnell, courtesy British Library)

Ross recorded the lives of her great-grandmother Susannah Taylor, her grandmother Sarah Austin, and her own mother Lady Lucie Duff Gordon in the highly successful, albeit reticent, book Three Generations of Englishwomen (1888). The Taylors of Norwich were, apart from their Galtonian persistence of talent, typical of the middle-class dissenting families to emerge in the eighteenth century and from whom the bankers, traders, manufacturers, engineers and scientists, men and women of the arts and letters, sprang in the nineteenth century. Within such 16


families and little groups of like-minded people, tied together by friendship, intermarriage and chapel, strong encouragement was given—as Professor R.K.Webb has noted—‘to the spread and strengthening of those political and religious views that were the badge of Unitarian separateness and the source of their sense of superiority’. Such was the family into which Richard Taylor was born, and to whom we can now turn. References 1. Janet Ross, Three Generations of Englishwomen, Memoirs and Correspondence of Mrs John Taylor, Mrs Sarah Austin and Lady Duff Gordon, 2 vols (1888), vol. 1, p. iii. There was a second edition in one volume in 1893. 2. Certificate of Hon. Doctorate 20 January 1756. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Family Letters 1741–1816’. Richard Taylor possessed the Ms of a Hebrew grammar compiled by Dr Taylor at the age of eighteen; but this has not survived. 3. John Wesley’s Journals, 2 vols (London, 1902), vol. 2, p. 247. See History of the Octagon Chapel, Norwich, by the late Mr John Taylor of Norwich, continued by his son, Edward Taylor, Esq (1848), p. 33. This contains some footnotes by Richard Taylor, though the book, curiously, was not printed by him. 4. This paragraph has drawn upon notes kindly provided by Dr David L. Wykes. See also R.K.Webb, ‘The emergence of Rational Dissent’, in Knud Haakonssen, ed., Enlightenment and Religion. Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996), Chap. 2, pp. 12–41. 5. Michael R.Watts, The Dissenters. Vol. 1: From the Reformation to the French Revolution (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1978). 6. [Richard Taylor], ‘A Sketch of the Life of the Late Dr. John Taylor of Norwich’, Universal Theological Magazine, July 1804. A reprinted copy, with extensive annotations by Taylor in 1813 is in St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Family Letters 1741–1816’. Many further details of Dr Taylor’s controversies are included in Edward Taylor, ‘Letter to the Editor on John Taylor (1750–1826)’, Monthly Repository, September 1826; offprinted in Taylor Papers, ‘Family Letters 1741–1816’. This was reprinted in John Taylor, Hymns and Miscellaneous Poems, privately printed, 1863 (copy British Library). 7. Watts (5), p. 3. 8. D.L.Wykes, ‘The contribution of the Dissenting academy to the emergence of Rational Dissent’, in Haakonssen (4), pp. 98–139. 9. John Taylor to Sarah and John Taylor, 11 January 1744/5. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Family Letters 1741–1816’. The St Bride archive also contains Richard’s description of a trade visit to Germany in 1745. 10. Obituary, Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 5 (1851); reprinted by Richard Taylor for family distribution. Copy, with annotations by Taylor in St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Family Letters 1800–1851’. Richard Cowling Taylor was the author of Index Monasticus…in the Ancient Kingdom of East Anglia (1821) and General Index to Dugdale’s Monasticon 17


11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

Anglicanum (1830) in addition to important geological writings on American coal measures. Thomas Sadler, ed., Diary, Reminiscences and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, 2 vols (1872), vol. 1, pp. 256–7 (22 June 1815). Ross (1), vol. 1, p. iii. Edward Taylor (3), p. 53. Letter, Sarah Austin to M.B.St Hilaire, 5 May 1856, quoted Ross (1), vol. 2, p. 40. Printed copy by Richard Taylor in St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Family Letters 1788–1874, Richard and Sarah Taylor’. Also in Hymns (6). D.L.Wykes, ‘The spirit of persecutors exemplified. The Priestley riots and the victims of the Church and King mobs’, Transactions of the Unitarian History Society 20 (1991), 17–39. Lady Pleasance Smith, Memoir and Correspondence of the late Sir James Edward Smith, M.D., 2 vols (1832), which was printed by Taylor for Longman. Edward Taylor (3), p. 11. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid., p. 15. R.Burt, John Taylor: Mining Entrepreneur and Engineer 1779–1863 (Moorland Pub. Co., Hartington, Buxton, 1977). See memoir by his son, Philip Meadows Taylor, A Memoir of the Family of Taylor, privately printed (1886). For the British Iron Co. scandal, see St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Family Letters 1801–1846. John Edward, Philip, Arthur, Susan and Sarah Taylor’, letter from Philip to Richard Taylor 1 November 1834. Lotte and Joseph Hamburger, Contemplating Adultery. The Secret Life of a Victorian Woman (Macmillan, London, 1991). Ross (1), vol. 1, p. ii. W.L.Morison, John Austin (Edward Arnold, London, 1892). Additional material has been drawn from C.B.Jewson, The Jacobin City. A Portrait of Norwich in its Reaction to the French Revolution (Blackie, Glasgow and London, 1975); Walter Graham, ‘The Authorship of the Norwich Cabinet 1794–5’, Notes & Queries, 162 (1932), 194–5; and lan Sellers, ‘Unitarians and Social Change’, Hibbert Journal, 61 (1962–3), 16–22, 76–80, 122–7, which, however, confuses John Taylor with the Norwich German scholar, William Taylor (1765–1836). We have also benefited from reading a series of unpublished lectures on the Unitarians by R.K. Webb.

18

CHAPTER TWO

Richard Taylor

R ichard Taylor was born in Norwich on 18 May 1781. Little is recorded of his childhood and youth before he moved to London at the age of fifteen. He was educated partly by his mother, and partly at a local dissenting day school run by the Rev. John Houghton and his son. An ‘excellent grammarian and a severe disciplinarian’, 1 Houghton schooled Taylor in the classics and also introduced him to the sciences. An undated exercise book containing some of Richard’s ‘earliest writings’ contains notes in Greek, Gothic, Runic and Anglo-Saxon characters, though he does not appear to have begun a serious study of medieval Latin and Italian poetic literature and of the French, Flemish, AngloSaxon and old Teutonic languages until his apprenticeship. Both Richard and Edward sang in the choir which their greatgrandfather had established at the Octagon Chapel, where Richard also played the organ. Although it was Edward who became the professional musician, Richard Taylor appears to have kept up musical interests as an adult—he belonged, for example, to a madrigal group attached to the Purcell Club of London and the firm executed some music publishing in the 1840s. 2 One of John Taylor’s catches, written for the annual family reunion in 1796, seems to imply that Richard’s parents were expecting him to become a tradesman in Norwich. Houghton, who had himself been educated at the Glasgow High School, and recognising the boy’s scholarly abilities, urged that he should complete his education there and become a dissenting minister. Why this plan was not adopted is unclear. Instead, as they did with all their sons, John and Susannah Taylor arranged for Richard to be apprenticed. At the suggestion of James Edward Smith, an intimate friend of the family, and on his personal recommendation, Richard was duly apprenticed for £105 on 7 March 1797 to Jonas Davis, a printer in Chancery Lane in London, after a trial period beginning on 18 January. Smith was the son of a wealthy Norwich cloth merchant and had studied medicine at 19


Edinburgh and London, where he became a close friend of Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society. In 1784 he borrowed a large sum of money from his father to buy for the nation the botanical and other collections which Linnaeus, the great Swedish botanist and systematist, had left at his death in 1778. This purchase led directly to the foundation, ten years later, of the Linnean Society, of which Smith was the first President. Although Smith moved back to Norwich on his marriage in 1796, he remained a powerful force at the Society until his death in 1828. In 1791 the Society issued its first volume of Transactions, the printer being the Unitarian Jonas Davis (c. 1755–1827). A letter inquiring what Davis thought about ‘the liberty of the press’ in 1799 suggests that Davis was also sympathetic to the libertarian cause always espoused by the Taylors. 3 Following his own apprenticeship to a London printer between 1770 and 1777, Davis had been assistant to Archibald Hamilton (1719–93), a leading London printer and publisher of Smollett and of the Critical Review. In 1783 Davis had established his own printing house at 89 Chancery Lane, and it was here that Richard Taylor lived as an indoor apprentice from 1797. It was by the happy accident that Davis printed the Linnean Society’s Transactions, and from 1798 the independent Philosophical Magazine, that Taylor became a scientific printer. In his later and more respectable middle-age, another distinguished radical, Francis Place, condemned the ‘profligate’ and ‘dissolute’ culture of his own eighteenth-century youth. The son of a ‘drinking, whoring, gaming, fishing and fighting’ masterbaker father, Place had spent his apprenticeship to a Temple Bar breechesmaker mingling with prostitutes in St Catherine’s Lane, fornicating with tradesmen’s daughters, drinking, swearing and singing bawdy songs at all-male clubs.4 There is no evidence that Taylor behaved in this way, though living in the streets and alleyways of Georgian London he must have been well aware that what would later be considered disreputable behaviour in a more evangelically minded society was the norm among London’s late eighteenth-century middling ranks. U n f o r t u n a t e l y, t h e d i a r y R i c h a r d k e p t d u r i n g h i s apprenticeship says nothing about his work, being confined to records of his weekends with friends such as his cousin, John Martineau, Amelia Opie, whose husband made his portrait in 1798, 5 Mrs Barbauld, her brother John Aikin (1747–1822), the 20

Richard Taylor (1781–1858), a portrait by George Ransome, c. 1850, lithographed by T. H. Maguire in 1851 for the series of Ipswich Museum Portraits (Courtesy Linnean Society). ‘Had tea with Mr. Taylor and his daughter [Sarah] in the evening. Passed a couple of very agreeable hours: was much struck by three portraits of Mr Taylor. One was taken when he was a ruddy young man of 21 [sic, 17, by John Opie in 1798]; fresh and radiant with remarkably pleasing and guileless features; …another taken 7 years ago [sic, 1846] in which the youth is completely lost; a fine patriarchical countenance, solid firm muscle, and open brow; the third one of the series by George Ransome of Ipswich: the muscles are becoming loose, the wrinkles are deepening;yet over all spreads a charming benignity: neither Mr. nor Miss Taylor liked it at first; but upon a reinspection they liked it better, and their liking for it grows the more they look at it. It is really a very true and very beautiful portrait’ (Journals of John Tyndall, 26 January 1851, Royal Institution).


liberal physician and radical editor of the Monthly Magazine (virtually a London continuation of the Norwich Cabinet) and his daughter, Lucy Aikin (1781–1864).6 It was Taylor’s contact with the Aikin family that brought the Monthly Magazine to Davis’s printing house in 1800. He also regularly attended Anglican as well as Unitarian services. On hearing the Tory Bishop of Rochester Samuel Horsley (1733–1806) preach, Taylor’s republican prejudices were to the fore: He is a bulky fat man; and appears to me very surly, haughty and supercilious; he preached an excellent sermon, excepting where it savoured of his aristocratic principles; he delivered it with great propriety, but with a sort of disagreeable gruffness which abounded both in his matter and manner.7 His support for anti-establishment religion of any kind is also suggested by the surprising entry ‘being Christmas day, I went to the Roman Catholic Chapel [in Norwich] in the morning, where I heard Miss Alderson [the future Mrs. Opie] sing mass very finely’. Richard’s maternal Aunt and Uncle John Livie also lived in Chancery Lane. The latter’s ‘deep grammatical learning and vast stock of knowledge’ was greatly appreciated, but his sudden death in April 1798 ‘deprived me of one of the best friends which I had in London’.8 Livie’s ‘classical and critical’ library was auctioned many years later (probably on the death of his widow) and Taylor bought several items, including Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1713), a Lucretius of 1564 and Musschenbroek’s Elementa Physica (1734).9 Another contact was with the former minister of the Octagon Chapel, George Cadogan Morgan (1754–98), who had left Norwich in 1776 to teach at the dissenting academy in Hackney. The author of several works on electricity and chemistry, he had a laboratory at his home at Southgate in Middlesex where he also took private pupils. Richard records several visits to Southgate ‘trying experiments in his laboratory’. Morgan’s brother, William (1750–1833), was a distinguished actuary and radical; his connection with the Equitable Assurance Society from the 1770s was eventually to produce a long-standing printing contract for Taylor & Francis, again confirming the significance of the Unitarian circle for business. Although only in his mid-forties, Jonas Davis decided to give up printing in 1800—possibly because of a weakness in his eyes. 22

Richard Taylor

Obviously pleased with Taylor’s progress, and despite the fact that his apprenticeship would not officially expire until March 1804, he offered Richard’s father a sleeping partnership with a young printer from Dean Street (off Fetter Lane) named Richard Wilks, concerning whose earlier career nothing is known. In a Deed of Covenant between Davis, Wilks and John Taylor signed on 19 April 1800, Taylor and Wilks agreed to purchase, for £2,000 (£1,000 each), all of Davis’s printing materials and to lease his Chancery Lane premises. 10 For his part, Davis was to continue to lend his name to the new enterprise of ‘Davis, Taylor & Wilks’. It should be stressed that the ‘Taylor’ in this title was Richard’s father and not Richard himself. In effect, Richard became apprenticed to his father, while doing all the work, John Taylor providing Wilks with an interest free-loan of £300 until 1804, when his son’s apprenticeship ended, as compensation for his inactivity. An important clause in the partners’ agreement allowed for its dissolution with six months’ notice by either party, followed by an equitable division of the stock; in another, John Taylor promised to hand over all of his interests to Richard within twelve months of his becoming twenty-one. Davis withdrew completely at the end of 1800 (the firm becoming ‘Wilks & Taylor’) in order to take up farming at Uckfield in Sussex. He remained on intimate terms with Richard, who printed his Commonsense on Agricultural Distress for him in 1822, and on Davis’s death in 1827 he made Richard, and another important City printer, George Woodfall (1764–1844), his joint executors. Davis had bought 1218 acres of land in Pennsylvania in 1797 (possibly with the notion of following Joseph Priestley into exile if repression of liberal dissenters continued in England) 11 and he left this land to his executors. In 1830, Taylor and Woodfall asked Taylor’s cousin, the geologist Richard Cowling Taylor, to sort out the complex issues surrounding their rights to the land.12 It appears that there must have been legal difficulties in recognising the claim to ownership since the lands are not mentioned in Taylor’s own will—though he may, of course, have disposed of any land to which he gained title before his death. At first the partnership worked well, but by 1802 violent quarrels between Richard and Wilks were harming their business efficiency. Richard hid these troubles from his father until 30 October 1802 when he explained that the firm was having cashflow problems and that the partnership was hindering the growth of the business. John Taylor immediately consulted Davis, who saw faults on both sides. 23


As for the two antagonists, they ought to know, and do know each other so well, that after deducting about one-half of their mutual accusations for self-partiality and prejudice, the rest, it is probable, may be safely depended on. Tell Richard I cannot help be angry with him for not conforming a little longer at least. I infer from your letter that the grand dispute is about industry. And of effective industry they have not enough between them to quarrel about. However, should the present breach terminate in a final separation, I think you may rely on Richard’s sobriety, integrity and good sense for securing himself subsistence….13 From this it sounds as if each partner was leaving it to the other to get the work done. According to Philip Martineau, Wilks ‘was a most unprincipled fellow, who would stop at nothing to give you all the trouble in his power’ and Richard writes of it being difficult to keep compositors while trade was brisk ‘for Wilks is so disliked’.14 By January 1803 Davis had also concluded that Wilks was ‘mean, fitful and suspicious’. Wilks’s accusations against Richard Taylor, he thought, were pathetic—‘that Richard has been guilty of rendering himself beloved by his employees’ in order to occasion a rift which would lead to Richard’s promotion. Wilks’s difficulties with the workmen are, indeed, vividly portrayed by Richard: We have nothing but quarrels, now, between Wilks and his two apprentices. These disturb the peace of the house, but do not affect me. They were all three at it, with words and blows, for about half an hour this morning, and Mrs. Wilks came to beseech me to take her husband’s part. Wilks has also been engaged in an absurd and unjustifiable quarrel with a journeyman; and has incurred some law [sic] charges without consulting me or saying a word on the subject till he wanted them entered in the Cash-book, which I would not do.15 By December matters had reached such a pitch that Richard was searching for separate premises and nearly took rooms in Red Lion Court; however, in January 1803 he found more spacious accommodation in the upper storeys of a house in Black Horse Court (at the corner with Fleet Street) which he could share with the Unitarian Society. However, the move was to take a few more months. By March 1803 the situation had become violent and dangerous: 24

Richard Taylor

I now write to you in a situation so disagreeable that you must excuse a strange letter. Mr. Wilks is walking up and down beside me in my room, which he refuses to quit, and my aunt [Livie] is sitting beside my fireside as my sole protector. Mr. Wilks’s conduct with respect to considerable sums that he has received within the last few days has given me some uneasiness; he has refused either to give or to keep any account of monies which he receives; he has also shuffled off and procrastinated settling the books with me; and refused to give me an account book which I want, and which he has in his possession. He has received notes from Faulden, Phillips [publisher of the Monthly Magazine], etc., of the value of between £400 and £500, which he keeps in his hands. The immediate cause of the present unwarrantable conduct is this:—I went yesterday to settle an account of Mrs. Opie’s with Longman and Rees; and when this was done, they, without my asking it, offered to settle with me our account for printing the Lexicon, for which, you know, about £480 was still due. I, of course, made no objection, and received a quantity of bookseller’s notes at 6 months to the amount. When I came home I told Wilks of this and he evidently seemed much disappointed, and vexed that I had got them and said that I had better give them to him. I proposed [their] being sent to our bankers, but to this he objected…. After dinner I sent three times the servant to him for the book in which we enter bills, and he would not let me have it. This morning he came and asked again for the bills, and I asked for the bill-book…. This he refused repeatedly and I got nothing by my expostulation but grosser insults than I had ever before received…[he] called me a curst villain, a liar, an undermining scoundrel, and a thief; began to throw all my books and papers etc., about the room; and evidently tried to provoke me to violence. I called out of the window for someone to fetch Aunt. She came directly, and her presence, at least put a stop to all violence, but that of the tongue.16 Remonstrations by John Taylor that Wilks must enter bills and cash received in the books only led to counter-accusations. John Taylor therefore had no alternative but to ask lawyers to draw up a severance of the partnership and to place Richard in the Black Horse Court premises in April 1803. Richard wrote to his father: 25

Richard Taylor

Our new office is Brick and Tile; it is No. 1 in the Court; the cellars are occupied by Cutler, the ground and 1st floor by the company of Newshawkers, and the upper part by ourselves. I am of opinion that, till I have got my freedom, the business had better be carried out in your name only, and that whatever I receive from it had better be in the form of a salary from you; I shall thus have been bona fide a servant to my master [Davis] and you, his successor, during the whole of my apprenticeship. 17 The six months’ notice to dissolve the partnership was dated 18 May 1803. It was agreed that Wilks should have the Chancery Lane premises and its lease (which was not due to expire until 1810), but Wilks at first could not agree upon the valuation of the stock, half of which was legally his. More important was the continuing goodwill of existing customers, and in this Taylor was exceedingly fortunate. Tilloch will continue his [Philosophical] Magazine with me notwithstanding the additional distance; and Mr. Johnston, who translates for the work, and is engaged in translating for different works from 5 in the morning till 11 at night, seems to espouse my cause heartily, and has promised me his interest with the booksellers. The Unitarian Society, of which I am now a member, are keeping back some work till I am ready, and the Linnean Society will let their Transactions wait for me.18 That the Linnean Society stayed with Taylor was due to Smith’s continued influence. Not only did he have Taylor print his own works, such as the Introduction to Botany (1807), but (together with Sir Joseph Banks) he ensured that Taylor was chosen as the printer for the luxury publication by subscription of the unpublished Flora Graeca of the Oxford botanist, John Sibthorp (1758–96), who had endowed a Chair of Rural Economy at Oxford in his will provided Title-page of James Edward Smith’s Compendium of the English Flora, 1800. This was an abstract of the Flora Britannicae which Taylor and Wilks printed in three volumes between 1800 and 1804. A hugely popular work, it was reprinted by the firm in 1816, 1818, 1825, 1828 and in 1829 with the English title A Compendium of the English Flora. Richard Taylor’s inked annotation reads: ‘et Soc. i.e. the partners were my Father & R.Wilks, Davis was not in the Firm, but only allowed his name to remain: I acted for my Father, being under age—18 or 19. R.T.’ (Courtesy Linnean Society). 27


that his Flora was published beforehand. The first of its ten beautiful folio volumes, which contained a total of 966 exquisitely coloured plates, appeared in 1806 under Smith’s editorship. Although the second volume did not appear until 1813 and the final volume not until 1840, the series undoubtedly established Taylor’s reputation as a fine printer. The octavo version of the Flora, containing the texts of the first two folio volumes, was also published in two volumes issued as four parts between 1806 and 1816.19 Taylor also received much contemporary acclaim for his printing in 1807 of Francis Douce’s Illustrations of Shakespeare and of Ancient Manners and high praise from William Paley himself for the way he had printed his Natural Theology in 1802. Indeed, business seemed to boom as soon as Taylor made the separation from Wilks. However, the divorce was messy and unpleasant. In November 1803 Wilks sued for arbitration on the grounds that the division of stock and bills outstanding was unfair. (The inventory drawn up in May 1803 set the total value of the partners’ type and stock at £1,296.) However, in November Richard and John Taylor managed to persuade Wilks to agree that they should each simply take £762 worth of stock and debts, and this, barring the official announcement of the dissolution of the partnership in the London Gazette of 12 March 1805, was the end of the affair.20 Wilks was later, for a time, printer to the Society of Arts, but otherwise disappears from history. In March 1804, at the age of twenty-three, Richard completed his apprenticeship and joined the Stationers’ Company. As a Freeman of the City of London he was now eligible to run his own business, to record his vote and play his part in the political affairs of the City, and to rename the firm ‘R.Taylor’. On the dissolution of the Wilks partnership, the firm had become known simply as ‘Taylor’ or sometimes ‘J.Taylor’, which caused confusion when Richard signed himself R.Taylor. In April 1804 he wrote to his father:

Title-page of Flora Graeca, 1806: ‘Dr. Smith has been taking great pains to have me chosen printer of Fl.Graeca, And I have succeeded in executing a splendid specimen, which has pleased him, and Sir J.Banks [President of the Royal Society], who complimented me upon it when I waited on him on Sunday morning’ (Richard Taylor to his father, 17 June 1803). The tenth and final volume was not published until 1840, the whole series containing 966 magnificent hand-coloured plates. (Courtesy Linnean Society). 28


I am glad that you think your losing the name of a Printer a degradation, as it shows how you honour the profession. But I am now sure I meant no such thing; only as in some houses the name only of the real printer is put in the imprints of books. I did the same as soon as I dared…I wish it to be just which way you like best, and thought we should talk about it when you come.21 As a result of their conversation, from the end of 1804 the firm became known as ‘R.Taylor & Co.’. In practice, however, John Taylor was little more than a financial backer, keeping a watchful eye on the accounts and giving Richard advice when the need arose. We shall see in the next chapter that he was Richard’s principal source of support in the speculative venture into mechanised printing. In 1805 Taylor moved into larger premises at 38 Shoe Lane and Eagle & Child Alley (the premises were insured for £2,000), where his presses were to remain for over twenty years until the destruction of the Fleet Market forced him to move. Taylor’s younger brother Arthur was apprenticed to him in the same year and was taken into partnership in 1814, the firm then becoming ‘Richard & Arthur Taylor’. The Roman bronze lamp and the motto ‘Alere flammam’ (to feed, or nourish, the flame) had been adopted as the house emblem late the previous year.22 A burning lamp symbolised for the early nineteenth-century artist and philosopher the belief that the human mind was not just a passive mirror or reflector of external objects, but an organ which illuminated and transformed them. More mundanely, as we shall see, Taylor probably took the device from the fact that the London Philosophical Society, of which he was a member, lit a lamp outside its premises whenever it was in session. One of the first books in which the emblem was used on the title-page was an edition of Orlando in Roncesvalles (1814) by the poet and lawyer J. H.Merivale; it also appears on the last pages of both the Transactions of the Linnean Society and the Philosophical Magazine in 1815. Letters from his sister Susan to their mother imply that Arthur was more a hindrance than a help to Richard. In 1821 Arthur took leave of absence from the firm in order to travel. He claimed none of the profits, and was not answerable for any of the firm’s debts. As a continuing partner, however, he received interest from his half of the business’s profits. This arrangement suggests some unhappiness on 30

Richard Taylor

one or both sides, and in 1823 the partnership was formally dissolved, the firm being known until 1837 simply as ‘Richard Taylor’. Sometime after 1827, Taylor took on, as an assistant, his brother Edward’s son, John Edward Taylor (1809–66), and made him a partner in May 1837. However, the new firm of ‘Richard & John E.Taylor’ was to last only seven years though the business continued under their joint names until 1850. Curiously, little can be gleaned of Richard Taylor’s private life, despite the existence of family correspondence and a series of mainly blank pocket diaries from 1805 until 1818. He joined the Volunteer Corps of Farringdon Without in 1803 in case Napoleon chose to invade England, and this activity eventually led him to join the curiously named ‘The Ancient and Honourable Lumber Troop’, whose ‘Colonel’ he became in 1830.23 He watched Nelson’s funeral with Mrs Opie in 1805 and he was a mourner at Charles Fox’s funeral on 10 October 1806 ‘along with 5 of the Martineaus; contemplating with melancholy pleasure the wonder which the dying patriot draws, inspiring glory through remotest time’.24 And both he and his parents rejoiced in 1807 at the successful conclusion to Wilberforce’s long campaign for the abolition of slavery, his mother expressing her feelings as follows: One of the evils attending our separation from each other is the loss of those precious opportunities which sometimes occur of mingling the finest feelings which belong to this state of existence, to have these feelings reflected from heart to heart is almost necessary to our enjoyment of them for they are too strong to be contained. After reading the Newspaper at breakfast with the only two children that were present to share the pleasure it afforded I ran about embracing everybody that could enter into my sensations, but I did long for you.25 We learn, too, that by April 1811 he weighed 151 1b, and may surmise that he was already becoming the portly figure whom Punch was one day to describe as ‘Corporal Taylor who stalks the streets, A walking corporation’. Amelia Opie (née Alderson) has been mentioned several times. Orphaned at an early age, she had been virtually brought up in Norwich by the Taylors. Hence she ardently supported liberal causes such as the French Revolution, the abolition of slavery, the 31


reform of Parliament and the abolition of the Test and Corporation Acts. In 1794 she went in person to London to report back to her Norwich friends on the trial of John Horne Tooke and other Unitarians and liberals for sedition and high treason. On her marriage to the Cornish artist John Opie in 1798 she settled in London where she played aunt to Richard. In a typical report to Richard’s mother she says: Richard and I have frequent meetings now. On Sunday he is to breakfast with me, squire me to the Catholic Chapel in King Street, where French Bishops (and sometimes the Archbishop of Narbonne) officiate, and then eat his beef with us.26 Agreeable though the companionship of Mrs Opie must have been, Richard’s wide Unitarian connections must soon have brought him into more youthful female company. Yet none of the surviving sources record his marriage in 1807, the reason being that his family papers have been carefully filleted to avoid a public scandal. He lived at a time when madness and illegitimacy were taboo subjects on a par with divorce and bankruptcy. Economy with the truth and solidarity were always essential whenever the respectability of a Victorian middleclass family or business was threatened by disgrace. It seems that the Taylors were extremely successful in covering up a potential scandal that threatened not merely Richard Taylor’s business and libertarian political ambitions, but that of his siblings and especially that of his eminent brother, John. Nevertheless, diligent and time-consuming, though not exhaustive, searches of Census returns, rate books, wills and public records do permit many details of Taylor’s tangled private life to emerge. It has to be stressed that what follows is a speculative reconstruction. The story has been pieced together from innumerable tiny fragments to create an account that will inevitably call to mind Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre.27 Our re-creation of the hidden scandal bears all the marks of restoration, being slightly fuzzy around the edges. It is, however, probably as near as it is possible to get after such a lapse of time to what really happened in Richard Taylor’s life outside the printing works. Richard was married at St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, on 7 April 1807 to Hannah Corke, a spinster of the parish. His signature on the marriage licence compares well with those on his many surviving letters; but her signature in the Register is the sole 32

Richard Taylor

evidence that she ever existed. A Henry Corke (the name and spelling are rare), possibly her father, was a tailor in York Street in the 1820s and 1830s. A possible brother, Thomas Jelf Corke, had been married in St Clement Danes in 1798 with John Lee, a schoolmaster, as witness. The same John Lee witnessed Richard and Hannah’s marriage in 1807. A daughter, Sarah, was born between 1808 and 1810; later Census records completed by her father imply that, like many fathers then and now, he was never certain how old she was. There is no record of her baptism, if indeed it ever took place; nor is there any proof that she was an only child. In the meantime, Richard’s brother John had settled in Tavistock, in Devon where he worked as a mining engineer. He married Ann Pring in 1805 and began to raise a large family in the opulent surroundings of Holwell House, Whitchurch, the former seat of the Glanville family. From 1812 he also joined his brother Philip in a chemical works at Stratford, in the East End of London. Needing somewhere to live when he visited London, John acquired property in Bury Court, a side turning off St Mary Axe. He brought his family here from Tavistock in 1815. A fire in the street in 1819 destroyed four houses (including John Taylor’s), as well as the Leathersellers Hall. Although dwellings were rebuilt, the fire probably caused John Taylor to move his family to an elegant Georgian house at 12 Bedford Row. By 1812 Richard and Hannah’s daughter, Sarah, was no longer an infant and in a Unitarian family in which girls were always well educated it was clear that she would have to have a governess. Her mother’s health was probably already becoming unreliable and Sarah could not be allowed to be brought up by servants, and still less to run wild in the rookeries off Shoe Lane or to be near the noise and dirt of the printing presses that were so dangerous for little fingers. This explains how Richard came to employ the seventeen-or eighteen-yearold Frances Francis. She left their employment suddenly in 1816, no doubt pregnant with Richard’s child, William Francis, who was born on 16 February 1817. All reference to this relationship has been destroyed—for example, there is no mention of William Francis’s birth in Taylor’s diary for 1817. Yet the relationship between Richard and Frances was clearly a marriage in all but the eyes of the law right up to the time William reached his majority. A daughter, Rachel, followed on 31 May 1820. Hannah Taylor was, no doubt, well aware of the 33


affair, which would have improved neither her health nor her temper. Frances Francis’s departure, however, again raised the question of Sarah’s education and future. Whether John and Ann Taylor were aware of the affair at this time is not known; it was sufficient, perhaps, for them to learn that Hannah’s health was poor and that if John took Sarah into his own family, life would be easier for everyone. Sarah would have the company of children of her own age, a comfortable house and lessons with her cousins wherever the family happened to be living. This may explain a strange bill for 3s. 6d. for removing a piano from Shoe Lane to Bury Court on 22 July 1818. John could easily have afforded to buy a piano for his family’s use. Was it the treasured instrument that Sarah refers to as ‘my piano’ in her will? Frances Francis remains almost as hidden to history as Hannah Taylor. She died of uterine cancer at 13a Sekforde Street, Clerkenwell, on 15 October 1854, her age being given as fiftyseven, and her full name as Frances Marshall Francis. No doubt Marshall was the name of her mother or maternal grandmother. According to the 1851 Census she was born at Creed Lane, St Paul’s. Her age at death would place her birth in 1787. From the fact that she and Richard Taylor named their son William, we may surmise that her father was also called William. Frances’s death was reported by her daughter, Rachel, and the death certificate describes her as the widow of Richard Francis, printer. Yet in the 1851 Census she had described herself as unmarried, and not as a widow. Oddly, there was a London letter book printer named Richard Francis married to a woman named Frances recorded in the 1841 Census; but their ages (thirty and twenty-five, respectively) rule them out. It suggests that, faced with a death to register, William and Rachel Francis ‘invented’ a suitable husband, someone whom they knew to be dead and who had been a printer. By filing the name of Richard Francis, Rachel could appear as the legitimate daughter. William Francis appears to have forgotten this at the time of his marriage in 1862 when he identified his deceased father as William Francis! One further confusing complication is that rate returns for Sekforde Street also identify a Francis Francis. More than likely, however, this was Frances’s brother. To sum up, it seems unlikely that Frances Francis was married. Her adoption of the title ‘Mrs’ is readily understandable. Moreover, it seems highly improbable that Richard and Hannah Taylor would have employed a married governess, and if her birth date is more or less 34

Richard Taylor

accurate, she was too young to have been a widow in 1812. It is, of course, conceivable that she subsequently married a ‘Richard’ or ‘William’ Francis in 1816 in order to confer legitimacy on her son; but this, again, seems improbable given that the relationship with Richard Taylor clearly lasted until her death. Frances Francis was, it would appear, her maiden name. Once Sarah had left a disrupted household in Shoe Lane, Richard was able to divide his time between Hannah, Frances and her family, running the business and becoming a Common Councillor in 1818. The departure of his brother Arthur in 1821 was probably a relief to them both. While all the family would have been sympathetic to Hannah’s illnesses, Richard’s mother, a woman of great probity, would never have accepted Frances’s children by Richard, and may never have known of them before her death in 1823. Richard’s four brothers must have known eventually from servants’ gossip if nothing else, and the printing house workforce certainly knew in later years. Maintaining two households would have been a financial drain on the business, explaining the need for his father’s continued financial support and the small profits in the early 1820s. Where were Frances, William and Rachel Francis accommodated? We cannot be certain, though there were several addresses in the fast growing area of Clerkenwell where a ‘Richard Taylor’ paid rates, and where we know that some of Taylor’s apprentices were housed. In November 1827, however, he bought a house in Hastings close to the River Bourne in the parish of All Saints. By the 1820s Hastings was fast becoming a fashionable resort for the retired, for artists and invalids. There were seven schools, both day and boarding, for boys and girls. No tenant was installed in Richard’s house until December 1831, so it is possible that either Hannah and Sarah, or Frances and her children were living there until then. It seems likely that Hannah died at about this time. There is no proof of this, but it is reasonably certain that she was dead by 1833, at which time Richard made the move from Shoe Lane to Charterhouse Square. A petulant letter from his sister Susan Reeve, dated September 1833, admonished him for going to France without a forwarding address. ‘Suppose your office had been burnt or your nearest relative died’, ignorance of his whereabouts would have given ‘great trouble’.28 That Richard’s father was aware of what had happened seems clear from annual payments to an ‘F.Francis’ which appear in a surviving Profit and Loss Account book of his Norwich firm.29 35


It had been a terrible few years for although Taylor’s papers were clearly carefully sorted to suppress all reference to it, the following extremely curious threatening note of c. 1831–2 has somehow escaped the bonfire: Stockdale has just printed a shilling book under the title of Mad Houses. Its contents being such as cannot possibly escape, the sooner you notice it the better especially as your name is so conspicuous in the new volumes of Harriet Wilson. When you have read the libels apply for proofs to J.North, Esq., Upper Berkeley Street, and J.Jeyes, Chancery Lane.30 J.J.Stockdale (1770–1847), who was the publisher of cheap and usually titillating scandalous materials, had become notorious in the 1820s for his publication of the Memoirs of the courtesan Harriette Wilson (1786–1846), concerning which the Duke of Wellington is reputed to have said ‘Publish and be damned!’ However, although Stockdale issued a revised eight-volume edition of her Memoirs in 1831, with an analytical index prepared by the pornographer ‘Thomas Little’, nothing in the Memoirs, apart from an innocuous reference to a ‘blaspheming Taylor’ can be taken to refer to Richard Taylor. The same ‘Thomas Little’ (who was probably Stockdale himself) was the compiler of Mad Houses! Seduction and Treatment il-Legal and non-Medical of Miss Stabback (1824; 3rd edn, 1831). Both Jeyes, a married lawyer, and North, an apothecary-surgeon, appear in this exposure of how Jeyes had seduced a milliner’s apprentice named Elizabeth Stabback and then bribed North to take her baby away and incarcerate her in ‘a celebrated private Mad House’ in Chelsea. As with the Wilson Memoirs, it is impossible to find an explicit connection with Taylor, though since private lunatic asylums were often used to rid families of embarrassing relations, 31 a possible interpretation is that Taylor had been forced to put his wife into care. By 1830 Taylor was a well-known radical Common Councillor, and Stockdale, who was not above blackmailing persons anxious to avoid their exposure in Wilson’s Memoirs, may well have been aware that, while still legally married, Taylor had formed a liaison with a Mrs Francis sometime before or during 1816. There is, however, an alternative and equally tragic interpretation. Ferdinando Jeyes was a solicitor in Chancery Lane. As we saw, 36

Richard Taylor

Richard Taylor had been an apprentice in this street and knew everyone, and they him. We may suspect that in the early 1830s, as his wife’s health worsened, he made a will providing for Hannah, Sarah, Frances and the children. Did Jeyes’s clerks gossip? John North, the surgeon mentioned by the blackmailer, lived in Upper Berkeley Street and specialised in midwifery and the diseases of women and children. Only a year older than Richard Taylor, in 1827 North published an article on ‘hysterical catalepsy’ in the London Medical & Physical Journal, of which he was a co-editor. The article gives a clear and detailed account of a case he had treated. He remarked that the disease was rare, but often diagnosed as chorea, hysteria, epilepsy, apoplexy, lethargy or tetanus. From his description, the condition would have been extremely alarming to those involved: the patient appeared either deranged or feigning illness with a child-like tantrum. The patient became rigid and complained of great but unlocalised pain and was continually exhausted. It is not too far-fetched to suggest that North was, in fact, describing Hannah’s symptoms. He was known to be the Taylor’s physician; hence his name on the blackmailer’s note. Since the only conclusion that could be drawn from North’s article was that Hannah was mentally deranged, the blackmailer concluded that she was mad and had been put away. There is, however, no evidence to support the fact that she was ever admitted to a private madhouse. Inability to eat, together with the use of bleeding as a remedy, would have made her weak and prone to other illnesses. This is probably as near as we are ever likely to get to knowing what happened to Taylor’s wife. It could also explain why their daughter, Sarah, never married. For a woman in her social position to remain unmarried was unusual; perhaps she had been told or advised that her mother’s condition was hereditary? Instead she became her father’s devoted housekeeper at 6 Charterhouse Square (the elegant eighteenth-century house was replaced by a block of flats in the 1930s). The 1841 Census lists Richard as aged sixty, Sarah as aged twenty-five, and two servants; in 1851 the enumerator describes him as a widower aged sixty-nine, with Sarah mysteriously aged only thirty-two, with three servants. As to Frances Francis, suffice it to say that she, too, moved to Clerkenwell in the 1830s. As we shall see, William Francis’s illegitimacy was to provoke a dangerous situation for the firm in the 1850s. If Taylor’s private life remains only too well hidden, his business 37


affairs often brought him into public prominence. In 1785 London journeymen compositors for the first time successfully negotiated a ‘scale of prices’ with their employers, Jonas Davis being one of the signatories. This scale was fully codified and agreed upon by employers and journeymen and formed the basis for further amendments and adjustments throughout the next fifteen years. However, with the expansion of printing business in the 1800s, master printers frequently found qualified staff leaving for other employment of their own volition as competition between establishments increased. In retaliation masters, including Richard Taylor, were increasing the numbers of their apprentices and frequently allowing them to ‘live out’ because of their lack of suitable accommodation. In 1807 Taylor found himself at the receiving end of the following petition from a combination of his journeymen: Sir, In consequence of your communication with Mr. Davenport in which you complain that you cannot retain a sufficient number of compositors to do your work and that you should be under the necessity of increasing the number (to us alarming) of your Outdoor Apprentices, we, the undersigned feel ourselves called upon to state the grievances which we conceive to be the real cause of your complaint. The remedy is easy, and lies within your power. We here beg leave to call your attention to the situation of the compositors in your employ, which operates so strongly injurious as to induce men to leave your house, as soon as they can obtain a situation elsewhere. The letter went on to complain that compositors were kept idle because ‘heavy work’ (a reference to the specialist scholarly work involving multiple type faces that Taylor was undertaking) was not speedily read in the Reading Room, and that they were forced to remain idle or to make up ‘useless letters’ while proofs were read. ‘The clearing away of such letter [types] is a considerable drawback on a man’s time at the end of a week.’ We learn from the complaint that Taylor employed thirty compositors and that, in their eyes, the overseer (works manager) lacked ‘sufficient power’. ‘He should have the same authority in your Reading Room that he has in your Composing Room. Were he to order such works as he should proper to be read in preference, we are all persuaded it will do away much of 38

Richard Taylor

the evil you complain of.’ The letter ended by implicitly blaming Taylor, who would, of course, still have been the Principal Reader of copy at this time, for his frequent absence from the office, and for not employing an Assistant Reader. ‘Most eminent Master Printers of London have not acquired their wealth of professional respectability by apprentices, but their attention to the Management of their business.’ And in a final Wilberforcian thrust, the writer and the fifteen signatories warned Taylor of well-known dangers of cruelty to outdoor apprentices.32 We do not know who Taylor’s overseer was at this time—in the 1820s and 1830s he was to employ a most able binder, Charles Gyde*, whose son Frederick was immortalised in Richard Jefferies’s Amaryllis at the Fair (1887). His own absences from the office are inexplicable (unless to do with courtship and marriage), for he was not yet involved with Koenig in mechanised printing, and he was not made UnderSecretary of the Linnean Society, which involved him in a heavy correspondence, until 1810. In May 1807, George Woodfall, one of the leading London printers, called a meeting of all the London masters at Stationers’ Hall which (supported by the London booksellers) resolved to blacklist any journeymen who left masters without sound reason or who protested over the increased introduction of apprentices. 33 Taylor was a signatory to this resolution, which illustrates how the growing fears concerning the introduction of unskilled and cheap labour into the printing trade were encouraging the emergence of combinations, which were still strictly illegal. At the same meeting, pressmen asked for an increase in wages, which was refused. In 1809 the compositors requested the same, and this led, in March 1810, to another general meeting of master printers at Stationers’ Hall at which representative compositors from thirtynine firms, including Taylor’s, put their case. Since the compositors agreed to withdraw completely from ‘all opposition to business’, the employers agreed to produce a new scale of prices which gave them increases of 2s. to 3s. in the pound, giving them an average weekly wage of 36s. (For example, the rate for ordinary leaded matter was increased from 5¼d. per 1000 letters to 5¾d., foreign language work from 5¾d. to 6¼d.; Greek, which Taylor

* Lancaster recalls that when he joined Taylor & Francis in 1932, the firm’s bindery was located in a small corner building across the Court from the main building in Red Lion Court and that the name ‘Gyde’ still appeared over the doorway of the bindery. 39


frequently set, was paid at the rate of 18½d. per 1000 letters.)34 Similar rises were granted to pressmen according to the number of sheets pulled per hour. Apart from minor adjustments, these scales remained in force until 1891, which meant that employers such as Taylor could price their labour expenses very accurately. A surviving wage book for the period 1806–9, for example, shows that Taylor’s wage bill rarely exceeded £50 a week. More remarkably, although weekly wage bills sometimes reached £70 in the 1840s, a century later, in September 1913, the wage bill of Taylor & Francis was still only averaging £62. The success of the first volume of the Flora Graeca ensured that Taylor was asked to print a number of other highly specialised works. The first of these was a transcription of the Psalms from the Codex Alexandrinus, one of the chief biblical manuscripts owned by the British Museum. This was prepared for the press by the Rev. Henry Baber, who from 1812 was the Keeper of Printed Books at the Museum. An entry in Taylor’s pocket book for 11 November shows the extraordinary pains he took to ensure accuracy—pains which one would have expected the editor to take, not the printer. ‘I have collated the proofs of the first and second sheets with the Codex letter by letter, and I intend, if possible to do the same for all the rest.’ The elegance of this edition persuaded the Trustees of the Museum to print the complete Codex of the Old Testament, which Baber and Taylor produced in three imperial folios between 1816 and 1828.35 This technical success was also no doubt the reason for Taylor being employed as the printer for most of the Museum’s monographs and labelling throughout the century. Furthermore, his ability to set Greek elegantly led to many other contracts—for example, the printing of Matthiae’s standard Greek grammar in the translation by E.V. Blomfield.36 Meanwhile, Taylor’s own growing enthusiasm for Teutonic languages led him to print an edition of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a chronological record of events from the beginning of the Christian era until the twelfth century, which was edited by James Ingram and not published until 1823. Taylor was one of the few printers in London with a supply of Anglo-Saxon types, and so soon gained a monopoly of the market generated by philological interest. In 1826 Taylor became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, whose Secretary, Henry Ellis (1777–1869), was enthusiastic for the publication of AngloSaxon texts. In 1826 the Society published John Conybeare’s Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry which Taylor printed. A few years later the Society formulated a plan to publish ‘Anglo-Saxon and Early English Literary Remains’, from which came Benjamin Thorpe’s 40

Richard Taylor

editions of Caedmon’s Metrical Paraphrase (1832) and the Codex Oxoniensis (1842). Unfortunately, sales were poor, the last straw being Sir Frederic Madden’s multi-volume edition of Layamon’s Brut (1847) which cost the Society £800 to produce. Indeed, by 1844 the experiment had cost the Society £1,135 against sales of only £712, a situation which Ellis unfairly blamed upon the charges made by Taylor. ‘We really should revert to our ancient practice much inculcated in the early Minute Books’, said Ellis rudely, ‘not to take our Tradesmen from Members of the Society.’37 Taylor’s passionate interest in language is best shown in his own edition of John Home Tooke’s E⌸EA ⌸TEPOENTA, or The Diversions of Purley (the Greek title from the Iliad means ‘winged words’). Horne Tooke (1736–1812)—he added the name Tooke to Horne in 1782—an Anglican clergyman who resigned his living in 1773 in order to study law, was imprisoned in 1775 for allegedly making statements concerning the ‘murder’ of American loyalists by Royal troops. In prison he began the work on the analysis and etymology of English words which appeared as the two-volume Diversions (1786 and 1798) in which he stressed the value of Gothic and Anglo-Saxon. His support for political reform led him to be unsuccessfully tried for high treason in 1794, and disquiet at his return as an MP for the rotten borough of Old Sarum in 1801 led to the passage of the still-current Act which declares Anglican clergymen ineligible to sit in the House of Commons. Tooke’s often far-fetched etymologies, which in effect reduced all parts of speech to nouns and verbs, and ultimately to sensations, thereby eradicating the need for ‘innate ideas’ or ‘spirits’, appealed both to Priestleyian Unitarians and Utilitarians. Taylor issued a new edition of the Diversions in 1829, saying in the Preface: In preparing for the press and printing this enlarged edition of Mr. Horne Tooke’s Diversions of Purley, an undertaking assigned to me by the Publisher, on his becoming possessed, by assignment from the Author’s representatives, of the copy containing his last corrections and additions, it has been my endeavour in the first place to remove the many inaccuracies of the former edition by a collation of the citations in which the work abounds with the originals so far as they are within my reach; and, next, to incorporate in it, as well as I was able, the new materials in such a manner as should not interfere with the integrity of the former text. 41


As these additions, written in the Author’s interleaved copy, and which especially in the Second Part are very abundant, were wholly without any references connecting them with the text, and sometimes written at a distance of several pages from the passages to which they seemed to belong, I must beg the Reader’s indulgence if I should at any time have failed in this part of my task.38 However, by the time this edition appeared a new historical developmental philology was emerging on the Continent, and by 1840, when Taylor issued a further edition, a reviewer in Blackwood’s Magazine could say, It is with a mixture of mirth and amazement that we look back to the position it used to occupy; when even those who felt it to be wrong and ridiculous, could only qualify themselves to appear as its opponents by first paying homage to its ingenuity and learning. It reflects little credit on English philology that it should have been so regarded then; and it is not much to our praise now, that it should still be named in works of science of a respectable character…without censure. Its authority and influence have done much harm to us as philologists, both in our reputation and in our progress.39 By then, too, Taylor’s use of Anglo-Saxon letters and Gothic type must have seemed antiquated, though it must be admitted that his range of type-faces and distribution of small type (brevier) notes is a considerable advertisement for his skill as a printer. Taylor’s philological interests also found an outlet in his printing of an incomplete Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words prepared by the Rev. Jonathan Boucher (1738–1804) as a supplement to Johnson’s Dictionary. Although the printing began in 1832, subscriptions and sales must have been poor, for only the section ‘A’ to ‘BLADE’ was published. There may also have been copyright problems since a solicitor’s letter survives in which part-ownership and hence reparation were claimed.40 More successful was his edition of Thomas Warton’s History of English Poetry. Warton (1728–90), the friend of Johnson, had published his valuable history, which covered the period up to the end of the Elizabethan age, between 1774 and 1781. Warton’s notes bringing the history up to the beginning of the 42

Richard Taylor

eighteenth century had been incorporated in a four-volume edition in 1824, and it was this edition, extensively revised by Taylor himself, which he printed in three volumes in 1840. Taylor’s dislike of Walter Scott is apparent in one of his notes, which also illustrates his knowledge of Anglo-Saxon literature: Alfred the Great speaks of Weland ‘the wise smith’ as a renowned personage of the remotest antiquity; and, paraphrasing the reflections of Boethius on the transient nature of human glory, exclaims, ‘Where are now the bones of Weland? or Who knows the place where they were deposited?’ Sir Walter Scott [in Kenilivorth], however, has no scruple in producing him as a matter-of-fact parish blacksmith and mountebank of Berkshire in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, uttering much common-place gossip, shopping in Fleet Street, putting up at the Belle-Sauvage on Ludgate Hill etc. So mean a profanation of an ancient poetic tradition is far from being deserving of praise, but must be considered as one of those bookmaking expedients resorted to for the supply of the incessant demands of a lucrative and recklessly prolific manufacturer.41 Finally, in dealing with Taylor’s own scholarship, we may mention his edition of Joseph Priestley’s Lectures on History in 1826, and a polemic against the compulsory deposit of new publications in copyright libraries.42 Not all of Taylor’s contracts which were aimed at bibliophiles were produced without difficulty. Engravers’ bills troubled the production of George Grave’s Flora Londonensis between 1818 and 1834, for example. More serious was the truncation of the printing of the magnificently illustrated work, The Antiquities of Mexico, which Edmund King, Viscount Kingsborough, commissioned Augustine Aglio to edit. King, who was obsessed with the idea that Israelites had colonised Mexico, conceived of ten luxury volumes, at £210 per set, offering facsimiles of Mexican paintings and hieroglyphics which were preserved in the chief libraries of Europe. The work cost King some £32,000. Pressed by debts, he was arrested and died of typhus fever in 1837 half way through the production. (Ironically, had he lived another year, he would have inherited £40,000 per annum!) Consequently Taylor found himself involved in a protracted legal wrangle between Kingsborough’s executors and the subscribers, the result being that the tenth volume never appeared.43 43


Three long-term money-spinners for Taylor were Michael Faraday’s Experimental Researches in Electricity (1839), Henry Belville’s Manual of the Barometer (1849) and Samuel Parkes’s Chemical Catechism. Parkes (1761–1825), a Unitarian manufacturer of soap in Stoke-on-Trent between 1793 and 1803, had settled in London as a technical chemist and became acquainted with Taylor, who first printed his highly successful Chemical Catechism in 1806. Less a chemical text than a work of natural theology, by 1824 this had reached its eleventh edition. Parkes made Taylor his executor; hence there are many items concerning the Parkes estate scattered among the Taylor papers at St Bride. Taylor published several revisions of Parkes’s text throughout the 1830s and 1840s, employing Edward Brayley, the sub-editor of the Philosophical Magazine, as editor. Faraday’s three volumes consisted of reprints of his articles from Taylor’s Philosophical Magazine and allowed two-thirds of the profits of the sale of 750 copies to Faraday and the other third to Taylor. The arrangement was continued with Faraday’s niece, Jane Barnard, after his death. On the expiry of Faraday’s copyright in 1877, Francis reprinted the work. Faraday’s habit of crossreferencing the paragraphs of his publications had proved troublesome to readers unable to consult back issues of the Philosophical Magazine. For this reason, as he told John Herschel in 1838, he had decided to have all the papers reprinted. 44 Faraday was not the only author to reprint his Philosophical Magazine papers in book form. In 1840, David Mushet (1772–1847), the foremost authority on blast furnace practice, asked Taylor to collect his contributions as Papers on Iron and Steel. 45 Belville was employed by the Royal Observatory to convey ‘Greenwich time’ to London clockmakers. His monograph on the barometer (as well as one on the thermometer) was kept continuously in print, and presumably demonstrates a middle-class interest in the barometer as a household object. In a later chapter we shall examine Taylor’s connection with the development of the commercial scientific periodical. Here we should note how his membership of certain learned societies and the spin-off effect of his reputation as a printer of works of natural and literary history combined to make him the chosen printer for the ever increasing number of learned societies which were established after 1800. We have already seen how he inherited the Transactions of the Linnean Society and how he fostered this connection 44

Richard Taylor

as Under-Secretary of the Society between 1810 and 1857.46 Taylor & Francis was to remain printer to the Society until 1950. With the formation of the Geological Society in 1808, it issued Transactions, which were printed by Taylor from 1822, together with Proceedings from 1834, the firm continuing as the Society’s printers until 1950. Taylor was less successful with the Royal Astronomical Society (founded 1820), of which he immediately became a Fellow. Taylor printed the first three of its Memoirs between 1822 and 1829 after which, following a dispute over his charges, the contract went to John Moyes. Meanwhile, however, Taylor had regularly incorporated news of the Society’s meetings in his Philosophical Magazine, which he specially offprinted for the use of Fellows from 1827 as the Monthly Notices. This arrangement ceased in 1829, 47 though the Monthly Notices subsequently displaced the Memoirs as the main journal of the Society. It would be tedious to enumerate here all the learned society contracts Taylor acquired between 1800 and 1858, ranging as they did from the Zoological and Horticultural Societies, the Royal Botanic Society (on whose Council he served), and the enormous annual Reports of the British Association for the Advancement of Science which he printed for John Murray from 1832, to the many historical reprint societies such as the Roxburgh Club, the Camden Society, the Aelfric Society for producing Anglo-Saxon texts for whom he was Treasurer as well as printer, to the short-lived Historical Society of Science established by J.O.Halliwell in 1843. Such society contracts brought other business—‘individual members naturally followed the example of the societies to which they belonged’.48 It was Taylor’s membership of and connection with learned societies which prompted him to launch a Calendar of the Meetings of Scientific Bodies of London for 1827–8 in 1827. 49 Although no copies of this appear to have survived, mention of it again in the 1840s suggests that it became an annual publication of the firm. The British Library possesses a fairly complete run of the Calendar from 1854–5 until 1907–8, when it seems to have ceased publication. Printed on huge sheets for 6d., and containing the addresses and information on the times of meetings of about thirtyfour societies, as well as all the London museums, it was obviously designed to be wall-posted. A list of a typical week’s printing jobs by his twenty compositors in December 1832 reads as follows (numerals refer to the compositor):50 45

Richard Taylor

1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

Phil. Mag., vol. 7 Job for Henry Bohn, the publisher Royal Society index Linnean Society meeting card G.Samouelle’s Entomology ‘Papering up’ Work of J.N.Lubbock, the astronomer Geological Society Transactions James Sowerby’s English Botany Samuel Parkes’s Chemical Catechism Royal Society Prospectus and Card Flora Graeca, vol. 8 Phil. Mag., vol. 7 John Aikin, vol. 2 Boucher’s Glossary of Archaic Words The Organ of Hearing Charterhouse School Prize Exercises Index to Blomfield [E.V.B.Matthiae’s Greek grammar] Parkes’s Chemical Catechism Lubbock Report of York meeting of British Association for Advancement of Science Geological Society Transactions Charterhouse Prize Exercises Medical Catalogue Proceedings of the Zoological Society The Latin Subjunctive [text-book?] Hampden, vol. 2 Aikin, vol. 2 ‘Equitable Deed of Settlement’ Phil. Trans.

The most prestigious item in this list is the printing of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions. Although he was never elected

Taylor’s Calendar. Taylor began to list the meetings of London’s learned societies in a small way in the Philosophical Magazine in 1827, subsequently off printing the listings on to small cards for the convenience of society members. By the 1850s, due both to the expansion of learned societies in the metropolis and to Taylor’s desire for complete coverage, the listings had become fly-sheets. The British Library possessesa fairly complete set of these for 1854/5 to 1907/8. (Courtesy British Library). 47


a Fellow—no doubt for the same reasons that Alexander Tilloch (Chapter 4) was rejected, that he was too closely connected with trade—his prior printing for the Linnean, Geological and Astronomical Societies, and his brother John’s election to a Fellowship of the Royal Society in 1825, undoubtedly helped him in the tender he made to the Society in 1827. Between 1828 and 1877 the firm regularly printed and sold on commission all of the Society’s publications, including the Philosophical Transactions, the Proceedings (established from 1832), its Council Minutes and the Catalogue of its library in 1839 whose sixty sheets of text locked up enormous quantities of Taylor’s type for several months and seriously threatened his other printing schedules.51 The importance of this contract to Taylor’s business is evident from the rather obsequious letter which he addressed to the Society’s Secretary, J.G.Children, in 1831: Observing in the Royal Society’s Charter [of 1662], which I lately printed, the clause relevant to the appointment of a ‘Typographer’, I was led to recollect (as you probably may, having been in office at the time) that at the time when I had first the very gratifying honour of being employed by the Society, it was not the intention of the Council immediately to confer the appointment of Printer to the Society—but that that would be a subject for consideration afterwards. As I am ambitious of the further honour (should I now be thought worthy of it) of becoming entitled to call myself Printer to the Royal Society, I should feel much indebted to your kindness if you would give me your opinion upon the subject, and if you think it right, your interest in the attainment of my wish.52 The privilege was duly bestowed and, although Taylor used the title sparingly, together with the privileges granted him by the University of London, it undoubtedly gave Taylor a considerable advertising advantage over other London printers who might have sought to break into learned society and educational printing. (As we shall see in the next chapter, these privileges coincided with the improvement of Taylor’s financial position.) The Royal Society privilege was sufficiently important for Taylor to reduce his printing charges from 54s. to 50s. per sheet for the Philosophical Transactions in 1846. 48

Richard Taylor

However, by the 1870s, when under the Presidency of Joseph Hooker the Royal Society was anxious to improve its poor finances, larger printing firms, like Harrison & Sons, or Eyre & Spottiswoode, who had already successfully tendered for the Royal Society’s enormous Catalogue of Scientific Papers (1867–1925), began to be able to offer cheaper rates, and from 1878 Taylor & Francis ceased to be the Society’s printer.53 Taylor remained an active Unitarian throughout the 1830s. In 1834 he claimed that the Bible itself was ‘the best advocate of Unitarian Christianity’ and in the sceptical tradition of his religion, printed a refutation of his position by Daniel French.54 Through his brother, Philip, he also became closely involved in the activities of the French Unitarians and the formation of their Association following the 1830 revolution.55 However, nothing more is heard of his religion in his later life and there is no evidence that William Francis was brought up in the religious tradition of the Taylors. As we saw in Chapter 1, the Unitarians, being particularly conscious of their position as religious and political outsiders and armed with the ideology of man’s perfectibility by constructing an environment and civil and national Government which were in harmony with Nature’s laws, played a role in the reform of British society out of all proportion to their numbers. Their cause of social improvement was, of course, shared by other dissenting and reforming groups. We find, for example, that Taylor was involved in campaigns connected with William Allen (1770–1843) the Quaker philanthropist and pharmacist, Robert Owen (1771–1858) the socialist and factory reformer, and several of the Benthamites and Whig reformers. Quite naturally, and without nepotism, these connections frequently generated important business, for as new reforming organisations, clubs and institutions were formed, so they generated printed matter ranging from Council Minutes to textbooks and works of an ideological character. A common theme in these movements for social reform was education. Allen had met the destitute Quaker Joseph Lancaster in 1808 after he had experimented with a highly disciplined monitorial system of teaching very large numbers of poor children. After Lancaster had failed to interest the Established Church in his methods, Allen, who was much interested in missionary work, set up the British and Foreign School Society in order to promote Lancasterian schools. Taylor was a subscriber and active supporter, along with higher-profile names such as 49


Brougham and James Mill, and printed Lancaster’s History of the Rise and Progress of the Royal Lancasterian System of Education in 1813. 56 By 1814, the reforms and the schooling for factory children which Allen’s friend, Robert Owen, had established at New Lanark were becoming well known. Again, Taylor was asked to print several writings by Owen, whose vision of a new, more equitable society greatly appealed to him. In 1818, together with a group of London Unitarian Whigs, Taylor formed ‘The Friends of Universal Education’, 57 which immediately purchased land in Harp Alley (off Shoe Lane) in order to establish a Lancasterian boys’ school for City children. Taylor remained a trustee and lifelong supporter of the school. In the 1820s, Brougham and other Whig reformers encouraged the development of Mechanics’ Institutes throughout Great Britain for reasons that probably had as much to do with the insurance of social and political cohesion and stability as with the dissemination of scientific and cultural information among the skilled workingand lower-middle classes. The idea for the London Mechanics’ Institute came in 1823 from a patent agent named Joseph Robertson (1788–1852), who had founded the Mechanics’ Magazine the same year. Taylor was elected to the Provisional Committee, which also included George Birkbeck and Taylor’s cousin, John Martineau, in November 1823, and he acted as its Treasurer from 1834 onwards, frequently also chairing meetings at its premises in Chancery Lane. 58 Taylor’s connection with the London Mechanics’ Institute brought him into contact with Francis Place, the radical reformer and journeyman tailor who campaigned in the 1820s for the rights of workmen to form unions and combinations. This was especially necessary in Place’s view because of the breakdown of the apprenticeship system in most trades, concerning which he amassed much evidence. In 1824 Place persuaded Parliament to set up a Select Committee under the MP Joseph Hume (1777–1855), ostensibly to investigate the effects on British trade of laws forbidding the export of machinery and the emigration of skilled workmen, but in practice to reveal the effects of the Combination Acts. Since most journeymen refused to give evidence for fear of compromising themselves, Place arranged for employers whom he knew, such as Taylor and Martineau, to give evidence. 59 During his cross-examination on 23 February, Taylor ridiculed the Combination Laws as of no service to employers in negotiating with 50

Richard Taylor

workmen since they created ‘a good deal of ill blood between’ them. He felt that if all workmen were paid at a piece rate, as in the printing industry, this would encourage the good workman to earn the maximum possible while the poor workman would earn what he deserved. In his experience the morals of workmen had improved, a printing-house having been ‘like a public-house on a Monday, when I was an apprentice, and now we have no drinking at all’—a development which he put down to the fact that the breakdown of the apprentice system had increased competition and given employers greater chances of selecting those who were sober and keen to get on. Although Taylor’s rather paternalistic tone jars today, and his antagonism to the Combination Acts followed logically from his liberalism, it (together with the evidence of other employers) helped Hume legalise trades unions in June 1824. By then, and for the previous six years, Taylor had represented the Ward of Farringdon Without—described by one historian as ‘the most radical ward in the City’60—on the Common Council of the City of London. The City had been divided into twenty-six wards since the sixteenth century and as in other cities, like Norwich, the concept of a democratically elected Common Council had grown from ‘the ancient custom of obtaining the assent of the citizens to certain important acts at the Folkmoot or Husting’.61 The Prince Regent’s arranged marriage with the unfortunate Caroline of Brunswick in 1795 had ended in separation in 1814, but she returned to England to claim the title of Queen when her husband was crowned George IV in 1820. His wish to divorce her was popularly exploited by reformers throughout the country as a way of criticising the Tory establishment, her chief supporter being a former Mayor of London, Mathew Wood. One of the first weekly newspapers undertaken by Taylor was The Brunswick or True Blue, which appeared for eighteen weeks in 1821. 62 As I.J. Prothero has observed, ‘reformers were in the ascendent in the City of London, having done well in the ward elections. Both Common Hall and Common Council declared for the Queen, and late in June [1820] she was welcomed officially on her visit to the Guildhall’. 63 It was on this radicalised Common Council that Taylor served continuously from 24 September 1818 until his retirement due to illness in 1852. 64 During this time he served on virtually every committee of the Council—including that for City improvements, 51

Richard Taylor’s testimonial, 1852. Taylor was elected a member of the Court of Common Council of the City of London for the south side of the Ward of Farringdon Without on 24 September 1818, and he served continuously until illhealth forced his resignation in December 1852. This testimonial from a grateful electorate now hangs in the Board Room of Taylor & Francis, One Gunpowder Square.

Richard Taylor

the London Workhouse (which was to lead in 1837 to the foundation of the City of London School—an important source for the recruitment of scientists later in the century 65 ), the Parliamentary Committee, the Library Committee (which created the great Guildhall collection), the Gresham Trust (which restored Gresham College and rebuilt the Royal Exchange 66 ) and the London Bridge Approach Committee which was destined to alter completely the appearance of Fleet Street and Ludgate Circus. Indeed, ‘in conjunction with Messrs. [Mathew] Wood, [Robert] Waithman and Favell, he soon distinguished himself as an enlightened and consistent friend of civil and religious liberty, advocating Parliamentary Reform, the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, Catholic Emancipation, and the abolition of every restriction on liberty of conscience and the right of private judgement’. 67 During 1827 and 1828 a vigorous campaign was mounted for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts which inter alia required civic office holders to swear that they adhered to the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England. Both Taylor and his cousin, Edgar Taylor, were members of committees appointed to conduct the application to Parliament in May 1827,68 which was successfully achieved with the passage of 9th Geo. IV in May 1828. However, although this allowed Catholics and Nonconformists to hold office legally, as Taylor pointed out to Common Council in June 1834, office-holders were still required to take an oath never ‘to injure or weaken the Protestant Church as it is by law established in England’, which effectively weakened the possibility of criticism of the Church’s bishops and clergy. The Act was accordingly modified to permit a declaration rather than an oath in most offices.69 With the possibility of a Liberal-Whig ministry reaching power, in 1830 Taylor seized the opportunity to move ‘that this Court [of Common Council] do take into consideration the best measures to be adopted for obtaining a real Representation of the People, in lieu of a Nominal House of Commons, the majority of whose Members are returned by the influence of certain Peers, and by means inconsistent with the Laws and Constitution of the Realm’. The Court accordingly agreed to petition Parliament to become more representative. The Taylor family watched proudly and with delight as the First Reform Bill made its way through Parliament during the months of 1831–2. Taylor’s Norwich cousin, Emily Taylor, glowed with excitement: 53


I congratulate you from my heart on all the good that is done, and doing, and I hope, to be done, by the friends of Reform. I assure you there is no lack of interest in the cause, in the country—shilling subscriptions are rapidly raised in every village; and there is the most eager expectation of news on every fresh arrival of the Post. I do think Farmers are all Radicals now; the Clergy can’t stop it, if they would and they really must take care of themselves. I hope the King [William] will come and pay you a visit. I expect to hear you are knighted.70 However, Taylor’s most lasting personal contribution to London was probably the crucial role he played in the establishment of the University of London in 1836, which in turn was to lead to a lucrative printing contact. Although Richard’s brother John had been closely involved in the formation of the non-sectarian University College in Gower Street (which, until 1836, called itself the University of London) during the 1820s, becoming a founder-proprietor in 1826, serving on its Council and acting as its Treasurer from 1842 until 1860, Richard was not a shareholder until both he and George Woodruff inherited shares from Jonas Davis in 1827. (This gave him the privilege of sending William Francis to University College School, but for understandable reasons this was not an option that he took.) It was probably John’s influence which persuaded its Council to employ Richard Taylor to print 450 copies of the initial Prospectus in 182571 and its first Annual Report in 1827—an arrangement which was to continue until 1947. On the other hand, confusingly, the contract for publishing many of the College’s textbooks went to Keats’s publisher, John Taylor of Gower Street, who sometimes contracted Richard Taylor to print them. In 1828, after he had presented the College with a complete run of the Philosophical Magazine, he asked to be designated ‘Printer to the University of London’, and the favour was granted.72 In the early 1830s, following the establishment of the rival Anglican King’s College, many University College proprietors were anxious to transform both colleges into a national university able to confer degrees like Oxford and Cambridge. It fell to Taylor to persuade Common Council, in an eloquent speech on 10 April 1834, that King William IV should be asked for a Charter of Incorporation.73 In the event, since University College was a joint 54

Richard Taylor

stock company whose proprietors theoretically stood to benefit from sales of their shares, Richard and John Taylor had to lobby the proprietors to forgo any financial claims. Having achieved this successfully, royal assent to the Charter, which was printed by Taylor, was given on 28 November 1836. The ‘new’ university was, of course, purely an examining body for the award of degrees, while the real teaching continued at University and King’s Colleges. However, as an examining body, the University needed someone to print its examination papers and the deliberations of its Senate. This work came to Taylor from the beginning and on 13 July 1838, as with University College earlier, his request to be designated ‘Printer to the University’ was granted. Whether there was a political motive behind it is not clear, but a year later the Treasury queried Taylor’s appointment and suggested that since the University was in receipt of a parliamentary grant-in-aid, it should use the Government Printer. The loss of the contract was potentially damaging, as Taylor explained to the Senate: By a Resolution of the Senate of the 20th of February last, I was also appointed Agent to the University for the publication and sale of the Regulation and Examination Papers (my Office being known as the Depôt for the Publications of the Royal Society and several other scientific works of established reputation), and I have been from that time officially announced to the Public in the Advertisements of the University as its Printer and Publisher, with the sanction and by direction of the Senate. And having thus for some time been publicly and extensively known in this capacity; it is impossible for me not to feel that to be discharged from such an honourable employment, though possessing the approbation and favourable wishes of the Senate, would be not only a great misfortune and disappointment to me, but might inflict on the credit of my Printing Office an injury which I cannot estimate, and which, inasmuch as it is I trust unmerited, would be the most severe. Should I be allowed to be continued as the University Printer, it would be my desire to give the fullest satisfaction as to the moderation of my charges, and unreservedly to submit them to whatever regulation and control the Treasury or the Stationery Office might at any time require. I by no means look to the appointment as a source 55


of much profit, but as a distinction which I greatly prize, which it has long been customary for Universities to confer, and to which nearly forty years’ labours in the more difficult branches of my profession, and the spirit in which I have endeavoured to follow that profession and to sustain its character, might fairly lead me to aspire. These have at least obtained for me testimonies of approbation from many scholars of the first eminence from the time of Dr. Paley to the present day. I may add that my present Office is very completely furnished with Hebrew, Greek, Oriental, Saxon, German, and other types: with experienced correctors of the press acquainted with ancient and modern languages, and with a considerable library for the facility of reference, both philological and scientific. These requisites, I trust, may always enable me to save much time and trouble to the University Examiners in the correction of the press, and at the same time to secure the necessary accuracy and despatch in the printing of papers which require critical attention.74 John Lubbock, the Vice-Chancellor, forwarded this letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Francis Baring, who, in view of the Senate’s obvious support for Taylor, agreed that he could continue to be the University’s printer ‘upon condition that [his] accounts be submitted before payment to this Board [of the Treasury]’. This was a most satisfactory outcome for all concerned and, although the Treasury again reminded Senate, in 1852, that Messrs Taylor could charge only ‘at the same rates as those which would be paid for the work if executed by the Government Contract Printer’,75 Taylor & Francis remained the University’s official printer until the end of the nineteenth century. Inevitably, as custodian of confidential examination papers, Taylor was prey to the inquiries of interested students. In one undated letter, Taylor was asked to name his own price for a copy of the forthcoming Matriculation examinations: ‘for though the foreknowledge of them would be of inestimable value to me and of advantage to yourself, it would not in the least injure the others’. The applicant ended with the astonishing caveat that ‘consequences of unusual interest depend [on] whether I pass or not’!76 That being University printer also brought other business is clear from a letter Taylor received in 1840 from a Richard Walker offering him a translation from Italian of an unnamed work on Latin 56

Richard Taylor

inscriptions. This he wanted to issue under the auspices of the liberal University of London rather than the Clarendon Press because of ‘my known Whig principles and guilt in printing two or three Pamphlets in favour of ecclesiastical and University reform’.77 Taylor served the City of London for thirty-five years. His work as a Councillor involved him in an astonishing variety of undertakings remote from printing—the sanitary conditions of the metropolis,78 the state of the City’s hospitals, the duties of the watchmen, precinct clerks and ward beadles of St Andrew’s, Holborn, the contested election of Thomas Wood as Lord Mayor in 1846, the rights of Catholics and Jews to hold office, the creation of the Guildhall Library, and the amendments to the Bribery at Elections Acts of 1827 and 1842 which were being debated when he retired in 1852. Clearly, a monograph could be written about the Common Council, focusing upon Taylor’s contributions. However, we must return to his principal career as a ‘supereminent’ printer (the term was James Edward Smith’s79), for there are two further aspects of it which

Richard Taylor (1781–1858), a painted portrait sketch by Alexander Craig, 1839. Painted at a British Association Meeting in 1839 and acquired by Taylor & Francis in 1989. 57


demand closer attention: his involvement in the mechanisation of printing, and his nurturing of the Philosophical Magazine and other commercial science journals. References 1. ‘Biographical Notice of the Late Richard Taylor’, Annals of Natural History, [3] 3 (1859), 58. 2. C.Humphries and W.C.Smith, Music Publishing in the British Isles (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1970). 3. Mrs John Taylor to Richard Taylor 24 April 1799. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Family Letters 1797–1826. John and S.Taylor’. Jonas Davis’s Address Book also, significantly, contains the address of the Rev.Horne Tooke. See St Bride, Taylor & Francis Archive, vol. 103. 4. The Autobiography of Francis Place (1771–1854), ed. Mary Thale (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1972). See lain McCalman, Radical Underworld. Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographers in London, 1785–1840 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988), pp. 26–8. 5. John Taylor to Richard Taylor 3 July 1798 thanks him for a copy of John Opie’s portrait of him. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Family Letters 1797–1826. John & Susannah Taylor’. 6. Taylor was the printer for Longman’s edition, The Works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld, with a memoir by Lucy Aikin, 2 vols (London, 1825). 7. Diary of Richard Taylor 1797–1798, entry 30 April 1797, St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Family Letters 1800–1851. Other Members of the Family’. 8. Ibid., 3 April 1798. 9. A Catalogue of the Classical and Critical Library of the late John Livie, A.M. …which will be sold…May 20, 1808, annotated by Richard Taylor. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Family Letters 1800–1851. Other Members of the Family’. 10. Deed of Covenant Davis, Taylor & Wilks, 19 April 1800, in St Bride, Taylor Papers, Miscellany folder ‘Printing Machine Technical Details’. Also Articles of Co-Partnership 28 April 1800, in ‘Dissolution of WilksTaylor Partnership 1800–1811’. 11. See file of correspondence 1797–8, Taylor & Francis. 12. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘American Legacy’. 13. Jonas Davis to John Taylor 12 November 1802. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Taylor-Wilks Partnership’. 14. Richard to John Taylor 7 and 15 January 1803. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Taylor-Wilks Partnership’. 15. Richard to John Taylor 17 March 1803, ibid. 16. Ibid., 26 March 1803. 17. Ibid., 23 April 1803. 18. Ibid. 19. Johannes Sibthorpe, Flora Graeca, typis Richardi Taylor et Socii in Vico Shoe Lane, vol. 1 (1806), vol. 2 (1813), vol. 3 (1819), vol. 4 (1823–4), vol. 5 (1825), vol. 6 (1826–7), vol. 7 ed. John Lindley (1830–2), vol. 8 (1833–5), vol. 9 (1837–8), vol. 10 (1840). The unillustrated eight-volume version appeared with vol. 1 (1806–9) and vol. 2 (1813–16). 58

Richard Taylor 20. Envelope of accounts 1800–11 in St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Dissolution of Wilks-Taylor Partnership 1800–1811’. 21. Richard to John Taylor 11 April 1804, ibid. 22. The date 1813 is suggested by a letter to Taylor from David Constable, 16 December 1813, in which he prefers the motto ‘Doctrinae lucerna sine probo vitae oleo extinguitur’. We are grateful to Robin Myers, Hon. Archivist, the Worshipful Company of Stationers & Newspaper Makers for showing us this letter. 23. Vellum scroll 17 November 1830. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘City Life. Societies 1808–1933’. 24. Ibid. Pocket Book 21 April 1806. 25. Mrs J.Taylor to Richard Taylor 26 February 1807, ibid., ‘Family Letters 1797–1826. John & Susannah Taylor’. 26. Cecila Lucy Brightwell, Memorials of the Life of Amelia Opie (Norwich 1854), p. 78. 27. We gratefully acknowledge the help of Dr Peta Buchanan in writing these speculative paragraphs. 28. Mrs Susan Reeve to Richard Taylor, 6 September 1833. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Family Letters 1801–46, John, Edmund, Philip Arthur, Susannah and Sarah Taylor’. 29. Textile Accounts of John Taylor, St Bride, Taylor & Francis Archive vol. 104. Another Account Book in the Taylor Papers, with several pages torn out, purports to list the expenses of ‘Frances’ and Rachel Francis 1845–52, and mentions Frances’s ownership of ‘£20 per annum consolidated long annuities for 80 years from January 1780’. An undated note from a ‘Sarah McGilP (which could have been Mrs Francis’s maiden name) thanks Richard Taylor for helping her and her child. Another, marked ‘Private’ and dated 12 February 1831 pleads, ‘I am actually obliged to borrow money to buy Bread and Cheese with. I have been hoping to see you this month past. Yours affectionately, M.’ Taylor left Frances Francis £30 p.a. in his will. 30. Undated scrap, St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Koenig and Bensley Correspondence’. 31. W.L.Parry-Jones, The Trade in Lunacy (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1972) and Elaine Showalter, ‘Victorian Women and Insanity’, Victorian Studies 23 (1980), 157–81. 32. Petition signed by C.Douglass et al. 21 March 1807, St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Workmen & Apprentices 1803–1901’. 33. Flysheet 1 May 1807. Ibid. ‘Printing Business Letters 1805–1914’. 34. Printed copy of Scale of Prices for Compositors and Press-work, with annotations by Richard Taylor in ibid., ‘Printing Business Letters 1805–1914’. See also Ellic Howe and Harold E.Waite, The London Society of Compositors (Cassell, London, 1948). 35. [R.Taylor] An Address to the Public on the Expediency of Publishing a Facsimile of the Septuagint Version of the Old Testament, as it is preserved in the Codex Alexandrinus in the British Museum, with Proposals for Printing by Subscription (R.Taylor & Co., 1811); H.H.Baber, ed., Psalterium Graecum e Codice Ms. Alexandrine (1812); H.H.Baber, ed., Vetus testamentum. Graecum e Codice Ms. Alexandrino, 3 vols, fol. 1816–21. The last part was in fact not printed until 1828! 59

The Lamp of Learning 36. A.H.Matthiae, A Copious Greek Grammar, 2 vols (1818). Although the translation was completed by Blomfield in 1816, it had to be edited by his brother, Charles, after his death that year. There were further printings by Taylor in 1829 and 1832. 37. Joan Evans, A History of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1956), p. 237. 38. J.H.Tooke, E?EA ?TEPOENTA, Or The Diversions Of Purley. A New Edition Revised and Corrected [and printed] by Richard Taylor, 2 vols. (1829). The work totals 1088 pages. A 2nd edition in one volume of 739 pages was also printed by Taylor in 1840. See Hans Aarsloff, The Study of Language in England 1780–1860 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, N. J., 1967) and Robert O.Preyer, ‘The Romantic Tide Reaches Trinity: Notes on The Transmission and Diffusion of Newer Approaches to Traditional Studies at Cambridge 1820–40’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 360 (1981), 39–68. 39. Blackwood’s Magazine, 47 (1840), 496; quoted in Aarsloff (38), p.113. 40. Joseph Hunter and Joseph Stevenson, eds, Boucher’s Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words (1832). The British Library Catalogue reads ‘with contributions by Richard Taylor’, but no mention of this is made in the editors’ acknowledgments. See also Black & Armstrong to Richard Taylor July 1839, St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Printing Agreements. Copyright Matters. 1816–1877’. 41. Thomas Warton, The History of English Poetry, 3 vols (1840), vol. 1, p. 70. 42. Joseph Priestley, Lectures on History and General Polity (1828) revised from the 2nd edition (1793). Taylor’s notes were chiefly concerned with AngloSaxon history. A Short Plea in Behalf of Learning, against the Claims of Universities and Certain Libraries to Copies of All New Books (n.d.;? 1814). Copy British Library. 43. Augustine Aglio, Antiquities of Mexico, ed. Edmund King, 9 vols, imperial folio 1830–48. At the end of volume 9 of the British Library copy there are fifteen blank sheets paginated 1–60 which were intended to form the beginning of vol. 10. The British Library also possesses one of four copies that Taylor printed on vellum. 44. F.A.J.L.James, ed., The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, vol. 2 (London, 1993), Letter 1 111. 45. D.Mushet, Papers on Iron and Steel, Practical and Experimental (London, 1840). See F.M.Osborne, The Story of the Mushets (Nelson, London, 1952). 46. A.T.Gage, A History of the Linnean Society (Linnean Society, London, 1938), printed by Taylor & Francis. See esp. pp. 15, 158. 47. J.L.E.Dreyer and H.H.Turner, History of the Royal Astronomical Society (Royal Astronomical Society, London, 1923), pp. 36–41. Note also a wellinformed obituary of Taylor in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 19 (1859), 131–2. 48. ‘Biographical Notice of the Late Richard Taylor, FLS’, Annals of Natural History [3] 3 (1859), 59. 49. Journal Book 1813–1832, 8 November 1827. St Bride, Taylor Papers. 50. Day Book, 24 September–8 June 1833. St Bride, Taylor & Francis Archive, vol. 15. 51. Taylor to Royal Society Council 11 November 1832, (MC.2, 142) and 9 June

60

Richard Taylor

52. 53.

54. 55.

56. 57. 58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74.

1836 (MC.2, 213). See Sir A.Panizzi, ed., Catalogue of the Scientific Books in the Library of the Royal Society (1839). Taylor to Royal Society Secretary 24 March 1831 (MC.l, 295). In October 1876, for example, the Society’s printing bill (almost entirely from Taylor & Francis) came to £995. See Minutes of Council January 20, 1870– December 20, 1877, entries for 26 October 1876, 17 May 1877 and 4 June 1877. D.French, A Lecture in Refutation of the Doctrines of Unitarianism. Being a Reply to Mr. Taylor (1834). Isaac Worsley, The State of Religion in France (n.d. [1831]), printed by Taylor, in St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘City Life Religion’. See also printed letter from Philip Taylor, 9 August 1830, describing the 1830 revolution, ibid. ‘Family Letters, 1801–1846’. J.Lancaster to Richard Taylor, illegible date 1813. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Correspondence L–R’. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Schools 1808–1887’. Thomas Kelly, George Birkbeck. Pioneer of Adult Education (Liverpool, University Press, Liverpool, 1957), pp. 82, 86, 135. Note also I.J.Prothero, Artisans and Politics in Early Nineteenth-Century London (Wm Dawson, London, 1979), pp. 175–6. Select Committee on Artizans and Machinery, Parliamentary Papers, 1824, V. Prothero (58), p. 386. Anon., The Corporation of London (Oxford University Press, London, New York & Toronto, 1950), p. 50. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Printing Bills & Receipts 1802–76’. Prothero (58), p. 136. See Minutes of the Proceedings of the Court of Common Council. (Copies at London Corporation Record Office and Guildhall Library.) For Taylor’s role, see A.E.Douglas-Smith, City of London School (Blackwell, Oxford, 1937), pp. 40, 50, 52. See St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Schools’. See R.Taylor’s polemic The Treasury and the Royal Exchange (1839), printed by R. & John E.Taylor. Anon., Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 19 (1859), 131. Thomas W.Davis, ed., Committees for Repeal of the Test & Corporation Acts (London Record Society, 1978). Petition Against the Declaration Required by 9th Geo. IV, printed tract. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Religion’. Emily Taylor to Taylor 4 May [1832]. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Family Letters 1800–1876. Close Friends’. Journal Book 1813–32. St Bride, Taylor Papers. Taylor to Secretary of University College London 4 March 1828 and 8 November 1828, UCL Archives. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘University of London 1834–52’; and letter to Thomas Coates 16 October 1834, UCL Archives. Statements Regarding the Offices of Printer and Publisher to the University of London, pamphlet in St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘University of London’ file. 61

The Lamp of Learning 75. G.E.Trevelyan to Senate 16 March 1852 in ibid. ‘University of London 1834– 52’. 76. Ibid. ‘University of London’. 77. R.Walker to Taylor 15 October 1840. Ibid. Letters Box S-Z. 78. E.g. Health of Towns. Reports of the Speeches of E.Chadwick, Esq., Dr. Southwood Smith, Richard Taylor, Esq., James Anderton, Esq., and others at a meeting held at the London Coffee House on 17 August 1847. Taylor detested Chadwick, whom he calls ‘a conceited spuzzleheaded quack’; letter to Sir Thomas Frankland (Chairman, Poor Law Committee), 6 August 1846. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘City Life. Court of Common Council 1813–1910’. 79. J.E.Smith to Taylor 16 February 1827. St Bride, Taylor Papers, Letters S-Z.

Additional Reading

William Todd, A Directory of Printers and Others in Allied Trades, London and Vicinity 1800–40 (Printing Historical Society, London, 1972). D.F.MacKenzie, Stationers’ Company Apprentices 1701–1800 (Oxford, Bibliographic Society, Oxford, 1978).

62

CHAPTER THREE

Bensley, Koenig, Woodfall and Taylor

Taylor

became a master printer at a period when printing was poised for mechanisation and expansion. During his father’s and his own lifetime the number of master printers in London was to increase from just over a hundred to nearly four hundred, with proportional expansions in the associated trades of typefounders, inkmakers, papermakers, engravers, bookbinders and booksellers. Similarly, annual book production in London trebled, while monthly periodicals, which had multiplied during the eighteenth century from about seventeen in 1700 to nearly a hundred in 1800, were poised for their astonishing exponential nineteenth-century growth to cater for a new mass readership. Although the trade was widely scattered through the City of London, by 1808 some 11 per cent of printing firms had settled their premises in the Blackfriars and Fleet Street region.1 When Taylor began his career, a printer’s work had altered little since the time of Gutenberg. Authors continued to send to press work that was illegible, mis-spelled and with defective punctuation until, in the 1830s, printers began to issue guidelines to authors. The Printers’ Manual (1838), for example, politely stressed that copy should be written on one side of the paper only. This was particularly important because printing was a team effort. Copy was normally sub-divided into gobbets (‘takes’) and given to different compositors who then set the type into page blocks for proofing in galleys. Any lines of copy left over (‘overruns’) by one compositor completing a galley were handed on to the man setting the next section of copy. First proofs, and the copy, were inspected by a reader who marked obvious corrections before the galleys were sent to the author for any further revisions. In the days before typewriters, when all copy was in longhand, such authorial corrections might be very substantial. Taylor’s shop was 63


sufficiently large to allow his compositors to work on several jobs simultaneously, but considerable skills of management would have been necessary to ensure that the work was fairly and evenly distributed and that there were no idle hands or blockages.2 It must also be remembered that types were handmade until the 1860s, when the Monotype casting machine was developed (the Linotype did not arrive until two decades later). Indeed, the want of type in small printing houses had originally been a factor in the adoption by eighteenth-century printers and publishers of serialisation and periodical publication. 3 Given the large range of fonts and alphabets that Taylor required for setting scientific and antiquarian texts, type must have been the most expensive and valuable of his possessions. Each compositor worked at a frame holding hundreds of copies of about 150 different characters in Roman and italic, capital and lower case, together with spaces, punctuation and numerals. Every word and sentence was first set on a composing stick using different spacings (ems and ens) between words to produce a fully justified line before the block was placed on the galley. Accuracy and speed were essential. The introduction of stereotyping slowly released printers from the necessity of holding huge stocks of type, though the messy plaster-of-Paris stereotyping pioneered by Tilloch and others was disliked by compositors because of the extra cleaning work it entailed; this problem was to be overcome with the introduction of papier mâché moulds in the 1840s, followed by electrotyping processes that had the added advantage of allowing the integration of illustrations and type. By mid-century periodicals were commonly printed from stereotypes, a fact that was recognised by increased rates of pay for compositors after 1845. Until the early 1800s, paper was handmade and supplied to printing shops in a large variety of different sized sheets—from which printers forged books and periodicals in octavo, quarto, etc. (Thus, a sheet folded three times could be cut into 8 leaves, or 16 pages, an octavo signature.) In 1804 the Fourdrinier brothers acquired the English rights to a French invention which allowed a continuous roll of paper to be manufactured on a seamless wire cloth operated by rotary motion.4 The process, which was perfected c. 1807 by Bryan Donkin, enabled paper production to be very considerably increased; more importantly, it was a necessary condition for the mechanisation of printing in which Taylor was deeply involved. From the introduction of printing in the fifteenth century until the third Earl (Charles) Stanhope introduced a metal frame 64


compound level press in 1800, press work had involved a slow, laborious impression by a screw mechanism. Stanhope’s press, being made of iron, allowed greater pressures to be exerted, as well as a complete sheet of paper to be printed in one pull, and hence a considerable saving in labour. Since Stanhope never patented his press, various other iron presses quickly became available during the first two decades of the century, notably the American-invented and highly decorative ‘Columbian’ press, which was manufactured in London from 1818, and its British rival, ‘The Albion’, which appeared in the 1820s. An inventory of the Red Lion Court offices made on Taylor’s death in 1858 (Appendix 7) lists an iron proof press (probably a worn-out Stanhope used for rough proofs), a Royal Columbian Press, two Russell Presses (which were manufactured by Taylor & Martineau, the firm established by Richard’s brother, John), two Stanhope Presses and one Albion. Mechanical presses are not listed, presumably because these were housed in Robin Hood Court, the inventory for which has not survived. Seven years older than Taylor, Friedrich König, or Koenig as he anglicised his name, was born in Eisleben in Thuringia in 1774 and apprenticed to the Leipzig printing house of Breitkopf & Haertel. After attending some science classes at the University of Leipzig and spending some time working in his uncle’s library at Greifswald, in 1802 Koenig borrowed 5000 thalers to set up his own bookshop and printing works in the Saxon town of Suhl. Here he succeeded in developing a prototype of a mechanised wooden press which was automatically inked by means of leather rollers, the motive power being supplied by a stationary steam engine. Finding it impossible to make further improvements to the device in Germany, or in Russia, and attracted by the English and Scottish patent system, he moved to London in November 1806, armed with an introduction to the German bookdealer, John Hunnemann. The latter found Koenig work as a compositor and began to introduce him to printers and publishers who might be willing to support further research and development on mechanised printing. Taylor confirmed in 1847 that he had been one of the first people to meet Koenig after his arrival. On 12 March 1807 Hunnemann, apparently acting on Taylor’s advice, introduced Koenig to Thomas Bensley (c. 1760–1835), a well-known Fleet Street printer and Methodist who had established his reputation in the 1790s by producing finely illustrated editions of 65


the classics. 5 In 1807 Bensley produced the first British book illustrated with a lithograph, which suggests that he was known to be interested in technical improvements. Events were to show, however, that Bensley was interested only in improvements he could monopolise to his advantage over rivals. Indeed, he was to prove unreliable, and even dishonest, in his financial dealings with Koenig and Taylor. On 31 March 1807 Bensley and Koenig drew up their first agreement whereby Bensley contracted to buy Koenig’s mechanical press if he could make it work, for which purpose he would provide Koenig with £500. 6 This sum was soon exhausted, but further amounts were beyond Bensley’s resources. In August 1809 Bensley sought partnership with John Walter, the owner of The Times and the tri-weekly Evening Mail, who was known to have invested heavily, and lost money, in supporting early experiments on mechanisation by a British inventor. (In 1805 the production costs of The Times were of the order of £3,500 per annum and Walter was very interested in reducing them.) However, having once burned his fingers, Walter rejected Bensley’s approach. Thus it came about that Bensley asked Richard Taylor and George Woodfall (1767–1844), a distinguished typesetter best known today for his edition of Junius’ Letters (1812), and perhaps the leading master printer in the Stationers’ Company. In a contract signed on 29 September 1809, both Taylor and Woodfall agreed to advance Koenig £500 between them ‘piecemeal as it was demanded’, their share of the completed invention’s sales and profits being in proportion to the sums they were called upon to advance. If all £500 was advanced, three-eighths of the investment would belong to Taylor and Woodfall, three-eighths to Bensley and two-eighths to Koenig. Already in 1809, therefore, Bensley was the dominant partner financially, and a further clause in the agreement,

Friedrich Koenig (1774–1833). The drawing of a printing machine under the baroque portrait of Koenig shows the cylinder and perfecting machine which he patented in 1814. This machine was first used by Bensley in 1816 and is described in the partners’ Prospectus (1817). The first book printed by the machine was, appropriately, a scientific text: John Elliotson’s translation of Johann Blumenbach, Institutions of Physiology (1817). (Courtesy St Bride Printing Library). 66


which allowed for the alternative possibilities of selling or not selling the machine was, with hindsight, obviously deliberately inserted by him. In addition, the partners agreed to pay the £1,060 Koenig estimated he had spent on the machine’s development before he arrived in London—provided that he achieved speeds of 300 impressions an hour with it—and allowed him a monthly salary of £10 during the development stage. We may conservatively estimate, therefore, that between 1809 and 1810 Taylor had to advance at least £450 as his contribution to the partnership, plus a monthly contribution of nearly £2 for Koenig’s salary. There is little doubt that his father’s money lay behind his investment. The agreement is also notable for mentioning the name of Koenig’s mechanic and partner, Andreas Bauer (1783–1860), a skilled engineer who had trained at the University of Tübingen and gained much practical experience in England. He was to be Koenig’s right-hand man both in the British enterprise and later, in the creation of the great Würzburg firm of Koenig & Bauer. Both men wrote and spoke perfect English. By 1810 Koenig had designed a mechanised iron press, closely related to his first Suhl machine, which was easily capable of producing as many as 800 sheets an hour, well over the 300 stipulated in his contract. Apart from feeding and removing sheets of paper, the machine was fully automatic, though the inking mechanism was less than satisfactory. It was patented on 29 March 1810 (BP 3321); no doubt the description of the millwork, which occupied a greater part of the specification, led to the misnaming of the machine as a ‘steampress’. Koenig had completely fulfilled his contract, as was demonstrated in April 1811 when 3000 copies of one signature (H) of the Annual Register were run off the original machine standing in Bensley’s Bolt Court office. By then Koenig could already see that the machine was a deadend, since the replication of the historic handpress’s vertical motion prohibited any further increase in the impression rate. Possibly inspired by the ink-rolling mechanism he had devised, by which ink was injected by piston on to several vertical cylinders which distributed it over the form, Koenig speculated that still higher rates of impression could be achieved if the paper was brought into contact with the moving form of type on its horizontal bed by means of a rotating cylinder. Much historical ink has been spilled over whether Koenig adopted this notion from William Nicholson, 68


Koenig’s first mechanical press of 1810, by which, in 1811, Bensley printed 3000 sheets of the Annual Register. The machine’s chief originality lay in the automatic inking mechanism based upon a vertical array of rollers; otherwise it was simply an automated flat-bed press. The first cylinder machine was patented in 1811. (Courtesy St Bride Printing Library).

who had patented a method of cylinder printing for the calico printing industry as early as 1790, and which he had further described in the first volume of his Journal of Natural Philosophy in 1797. However, apart from the fact that Koenig retained a flat type bed whereas Nicholson proposed to impose the type upon the cylinder itself, which was used as a paper mangle—a brilliant idea, but beyond the technical frontier of the 1790s—we have Koenig’s own word that he knew nothing of Nicholson’s patent until 1810 or 1811 when he and Bensley ‘called to consult him [Nicholson] on some matter relative to the law of Patents on which subject he was in the habit of giving advice’.7 Since Nicholson was a patent agent as well as editor it is possible that they had asked him to prepare the specification of one of Koenig’s first two patents. On 30 October 1811 Koenig, with the support of Bensley, Woodfall and Taylor, patented his first cylindrical press (BP 3496), and mentioned the possibility of a double cylinder version or a circular 69


layout of forms in order to increase still further the rates of impression. ‘Impressions produced by means of cylinders, which had likewise already been attempted by others, without the desired effect’, Koenig later wrote in The Times, ‘were again tried by me upon a new plan, namely to place the sheet round the cylinder, thereby making it, as it were, part of the periphery.’8 The machine’s essential characteristics were well captured in a later description in Bensley’s Literary Gazette: Instead of printing being produced by a flat impression (similar to the press) the sheet passed between a large roller and the types still flat; and in lieu of the old-fashioned balls, used by hand to beat over the types and so to communicate the ink to their surface, skins were strained round smaller rollers, on which it was contrived to spread the ink, and under which the Form i.e. the frame in which the types are fixed, passed in its way to the printing cylinder.9 This machine which, like the first, was capable of up to 800 impressions an hour was built in Koenig and Bauer’s workshop in Whitecross Street, near the modern Barbican Centre, and was ready for its first tests by December 1812. Two of London’s leading rival newspaper proprietors, Walter of The Times and James Perry of the Morning Chronicle, were invited by Bensley to see the machine in action. Both men were impressed. However, Perry declined to purchase, pointing out the likely large investment needed by a proprietor to buy such machines, which compared unfavourably with the contemporary costs of production using a conventional labour force. (It may have been a similar conclusion of the invention’s large cost and low sales potential, together with its potential danger to harmonious relations between employers and employees, that persuaded George Woodfall to withdraw from the partnership late in 1813.) On the other hand, Walter saw the matter differently. As Séan Jennett has put it: At that time The Times was printed on a battery of handpresses, each with two men; and to provide for each press, and to get the paper out on time [daily], the compositors had to set up the copy several times over. The more the circulation grew, the greater the number of presses that had to be employed, and the more times the type had to be set.10 70


Walter, therefore, saw Koenig’s machinery as a way of increasing production with lower long-term costs in type, presses and compositors and pressmen. He was even more enthusiastic concerning the possibility of the ‘double machine’ which promised an hourly impression rate of over 1500. Walter immediately ordered two double machines with engines to be erected in a hired building close to Printing House Square amid tight secrecy in order to avoid conflict with The Times’s regular staff. Bauer bound his men with a £100 bond to divulge nothing. By tricking his staff on the evening of 29 November 1814 that the presses had to be held for important news expected from the Continent, Walter printed the first issue on Koenig’s machines. Subsequently, by threatening to meet objections with the full weight of the law against combinations, and by also offering displaced staff full wages until they found work elsewhere, he avoided a confrontation with the workforce. (Taylor was to cause some offence in 1824 by referring to the way Walter had ruthlessly broken a union in The Times chapel in 1810 when twenty-eight of his compositors walked out. One of the men he had had imprisoned died there.11) On 25 March 1813, Bensley, Koenig, Woodfall and Taylor agreed to form a new partnership for fourteen years under their joint names to work Koenig’s patents. In a separate contract with Walter five days later, the partners agreed upon a selling price of £1,100 for each machine, plus two steam engines at £250 each and an erection charge of £100—a total of £2,800. Walter was to have exclusive use of the machines for fourteen years, during which time he was not to sell them. On their side, the partners agreed not to lend, sell or in any manner dispose of any of the said machines …to any person or persons whomsoever for the purposes of newspaper printing to be used within ten miles of the City of London, nor work, use or employ or permit or suffer to be worked, used or employed any machine or machines that any or either of them may now [or?] hereafter have in use or operation in the printing of any newspapers or newspaper…on more beneficial or advantageous terms…than they have hereby contracted and agreed to sell…to the said John Walter.12 The form of words would imply that Walter forced the patentees to look for markets in book and periodical publishing; if they were to 71


interest other newspaper owners, the machinery might have to differ and yet be sold at the same price. The contract also stipulated that the patentees were to be paid annual premiums proportional to the savings which Walter was bound to make on his running costs. Modifications made to this clause in 1815 and 1816 suggest that the partners experienced considerable difficulty in extracting a fair premium from Walter. Much more seriously, however, through Walter’s insistence upon a fixed-price contract—even though the partners had no experience of building a cylinder press—they soon discovered that they had seriously underestimated the cost by £1,200! As their lawyer later pleaded: One principal reason why the expenditure so far exceeded the calculation was the excellence of the workmanship and the superior quality of the materials used. During the progress of the work Mr Walter was repeatedly informed that the machines would cost much more than the estimated prices stated in the agreement; for which the Patentees must appeal to Mr Walter’s liberality; and Mr Walter’s answers to such remarks encouraging their expectations, no expenses were spared to render the machines as perfect and complete as possible…. On informing Mr Walter that the machines were finished, and that they should be content to receive the bare prime cost of their expenditure, Mr Walter for the first time declared (to their astonishment) that he would not pay one shilling more than the sum for which he had contracted!13 When, in retaliation, Koenig and Bauer refused to deliver or complete adjustments to the machines, Walter threatened legal action, forcing the patentees to comply while ‘reserving to themselves the power of prosecuting their claim to so considerable a sum, which they considered is their just due, either at law or at equity’. Thus, behind the triumph and bonhomie accompanying the successful completion of the machines of The Times lay business discord and financial embarrassment for the partners. Unfortunately, in the view of the Attorney-General, Sir Arthur Piggott, whom the partners consulted, the law was in Walter’s favour unless it could be shown—which it evidently could not—that Walter had fed them with false figures for his savings subsequently. Although Walter was undoubtedly correct that in law he should pay only the sum he had agreed, his behaviour was that of the robber baron. 72


During 1815 he drove further hard bargains concerning the moiety of the savings agreed in 1813, and by 19 November 1816 he was able to force them to accept only the agreed ‘£2,800 in full for the absolute unlimited and unrestricted right of using the said machines…of their claims and demands on account of the savings and profits arising from the use or otherwise from henceforth for ever’. Hence by 1816, not only had the partners lost any compensation for the increased costs of manufacture, but also forgone the receipt of any premium from the machines. Since Koenig was the partner whose only source of income lay in the machines, it was he who stood to lose most heavily; moreover, since the negotiations with Walter had apparently been conducted by Bensley, Koenig became increasingly angry and bitter about the matter, frequently confiding his disappointment and frustration to Taylor. Walter’s triumphant editorial of Monday 29 November 1814, which Taylor immediately dispatched to his father in Norwich, read as follows: Our Journal of this day presents to the public the practical result of the greatest improvement connected with printing, since the discovery of the art itself. The reader of this paragraph now holds in his hand one of the many thousand impressions of The Times newspaper, which was taken off last night by a mechanical apparatus. A system of machinery almost organic has been devised and arranged, which, while it relieves the human frame of its most laborious efforts in printing, far exceeds all human powers in rapidity and dispatch. That the magnitude of the invention may be justly appreciated by its effects, we shall inform the public, that after the letters are placed by the compositors, and enclosed in what is called the form, little remains for man to do, than to attend upon, and watch this unconscious agent in its operations. The machine is then merely supplied with paper: itself places the form, inks it, adjusts the paper to the form newly inked, stamps the sheet, and gives it forth to the hands of the attendant, at the same time withdrawing the form for a fresh coat of ink…and the whole of these complicated acts is performed with such velocity and simultaneousness of movement, that no less than eleven hundred sheets are impressed in one hour.14 However, any hopes that Taylor or his father (who had helped him invest in Koenig, as an indenture of 2 March 1813 makes clear15) 73


may have had that profits would flow from sales and rentals of mechanised presses were very quickly dashed. Three factors were at work. Firstly, like any inventor of genius, Koenig (and for that matter Bauer) was never completely satisfied that his machines had achieved the limits of technical perfection—especially since they wished to reduce the number of complicated working parts. Already, on 24 December 1814, Koenig patented an improved machine which literally offered ‘perfection’—that is printing on both sides of a sheet of paper with perfect register without necessity of feeding it through the machine a second time by human aid. Such a machine was quickly built and Bensley printed the second edition of John Elliotson’s translation of Blumenbach’s Institutions of Physiology by it in 1817 at a rate of 900 perfected sheets an hour. Bensley also began to use it for the new monthly Literary Gazette on its foundation in the same year. Such was Koenig’s fertility, therefore, it must have been difficult for the partners to be certain what exactly they were promising potential customers. A second, much more serious difficulty was that, apart from Walter and Bensley and Taylor themselves, there were no customers for the machines anyway. To stimulate sales in 1817 Bensley, Koenig and Taylor (Woodfall having sold his share to Bensley in 1813) issued an elaborate prospectus (see Appendix 6) which offered for sale or hire three different machines: the ‘completing machines’, which gave 900 impressions an hour, printed in register on both sides; a ‘double machine’, which was an improved version of The Times machine, offering an impression of 1500 an hour on one side only; and ‘a single machine’, which Taylor had installed at Shoe Lane the same year to print Tilloch’s Philosophical Magazine, and which offered between 900 and 1000 impressions an hour. A completing machine cost the very large sum of £2,000, a double machine £1,400, and a single machine £1,000. To these prices had to be added the cost of a steam engine, millwork and installation. Recognising that few printers could afford these sums (£1,000 would then have bought ten Stanhope handpresses) the patentees offered them for hire at annual premiums of £500, £350 and £250 respectively. Despite the issue of a revised prospectus in October 1817 there were neither sales nor leasings. For bookwork publishers and printers used to runs of 500–1000 copies there was no particular additional advantage in the increased speed of production offered by mechanisation; the advantage would come only in twenty or 74


thirty years time when the repeal of taxes on paper, advertisements and newspapers opened up new mass markets of readers of books and periodicals. By then compositors had negotiated special rates for machine composition, while increased production runs offered other kinds of work to displaced pressmen. Indeed, there is no evidence that Taylor actually continued to use his ‘single machine’ for printing the Philosophical Magazine; Johnson, admittedly no friend of mechanised printing, states in his Typographia (1824) that ‘although Mr. R.Taylor has got a machine, yet all his bookwork is done by presses, this gentlemen not finding it answer his expectation in that respect’.16 The only printers who were interested in speeding up production in 1816–17 were owners of newspaper and largecirculation periodicals, and here lay a third difficulty, for the patentees—the behaviour of Walter and of Bensley himself. The latter began to assert his monopolistic inclinations at this time and as the controlling shareholder (nine-sixteenths when Woodfall sold out) he could enforce his views. Jennett has described the consequences effectively: Bensley proved altogether a miserable partner for Koenig. The printer played all sorts of tricks, and made every kind of excuse, to avoid paying to Koenig money he owed him as a result of the agreements they had signed together; and further he made claims against the inventor which can only be described as impudent…Bensley worked on the principle that what he wanted to do was right, and what other people wanted to do was wrong if he did not like it.17 The inevitable consequence was that other inventors and engineers (who often had good ideas for simplifying some of Koenig’s gearing) began to step into the newspaper and periodicals market with cheaper machines. Walter and even Bensley also called in other engineers to maintain and repair their machines, to the disgust and fury of Koenig and Bauer. The breach gave the opportunity to Augustus Applegarth (1788–1871) who, in 1817, together with his brother-in-law, Edward Cowper (1790–1852), developed a rival perfecting machine—initially devised to improve the printing of bank notes to prevent forgery. They also invented a more efficient inking mechanism. After Koenig returned to Germany in 1817, Applegarth and Cowper, stimulated by 75


Thomas Bensley (c. 1760–1835), printer of Bolt Court and chief partner in the syndicate of ‘Bensley, Koenig, Woodfall & Taylor’ which was formed in March 1813 to build and sell Koenig’s mechanical presses. A devout follower of the fanatic preacher, William Huntingdon, for whom he built the new Providence Chapel in Gray’s Inn Lane, Bensley’s premises were destroyed by fire in 1819. Convinced of his own personal salvation, Bensley treated his religiously heterodox business partners with contempt.

the requirements of The Times, became the leading British developers of cylinder presses. In 1827 The Times installed their monster ‘multiple’ machine of four cylinders which was capable of striking off 4000 sheets an hour. 76


Some time in 1817 Koenig, through Taylor, consulted the eminent Whig barrister and MP, Henry Brougham, about the validity of his patents with respect to Nicholson’s earlier cylinder patent, and their possible infringement by Applegarth and Cowper, and others; but Brougham evidently advised that, even though Nicholson’s patent had never been executed, Koenig might find it difficult to win a case against them. It is ironic that Koenig had come to London precisely because he thought the British patent system would offer him better protection than continental systems. In any case, it is clear from surviving correspondence that Bensley was unwilling to support any legal action, being content to enjoy the short-term gains offered by his monopoly—gains which Koenig personally did not enjoy. It is not surprising that Koenig returned to Germany in disgust. Although Koenig’s nineteenth-century German biographer, Theodor Goebel, wrote his book as a vindication of Koenig against British detractors who suggested that he had stolen or, at least, only developed the earlier concepts of Nicholson, Goebel’s bitter denunciation of Bensley is undoubtedly fair. On the other hand, since Taylor, following Woodfall’s early retirement, was the only other partner besides Koenig himself, Goebel tended unfairly to blame Taylor for his cowardice in not standing up to Bensley. However, Taylor’s surviving papers and correspondence with Koenig help explain his predicament, if not his failure to protest more vigorously. Koenig’s vivacious letter to Taylor as he left London on 10 August 1817 is worth extensive quotation for its considerable interest and its demonstration of Koenig’s fine command of English: To be detained here for an unlimited time at the pleasure of a man [Bensley] who breaks his word as often as it is with his purpose, to be tantalised with a sum of £500—to be ground by successive deductions without end—this is a hopeless situation to which I will not submit. Blind cupidity is incapable of understanding its own interests on a large scale and overreaches itself. So it turned out in the transactions with Walter, so it was in the wicked and stupid attempt to entrap Bauer 15 months ago, and so it will be with me now. If I am to speak candidly, I must confess that the cordiality and friendship which has subsisted so long between us, has suffered a little by the discussions with which I have been tormented in the work of this summer [probably a reference 77


to the patent disputes]. Your conduct on several occasions was, to say the least, shortsighted. But having thus eased my mind of everything I have against you, I will not part without the assurance that no illwill or rancour against you remains in my mind and I trust you will not think me so unjust or unfeeling, that I should make no distinction between you and those, whom I have found uniformly and on all occasions mean, sordid and grinding, shuffling, always plotting, incapable of any generous or honourable motive, in fine, contemptible. On the contrary it is but justice to you to say, that by your mild and amiable temper, your good sense and your general fairness you have been the connecting link between such heterogeneous characters and that without you, the connexion would have tumbled to pieces long ago.18 In the Spring of 1818, after Taylor had compensated Koenig with £300 as his share of the premiums due from his purchase of the single machine,19 Koenig warned Taylor from his new workshop at the Oberzell monastery in Würzburg (‘a Fairy Castle compared with White Cross Street’) that he was thinking of taking legal action against Bensley. Taylor was to make up his mind whom he would support in ‘the approaching conflict’.20 No more is heard of such an action, possibly because both Koenig and Taylor felt natural justice had been done to Bensley when his premises in Bolt Court were destroyed by fire on 26 June 1819. In 1820 Taylor became involved in printing his first newspaper on the simple machine—a rival to The Times called, appropriately, The New Times. Either because he got into technical difficulties, or because the machine was too slow, he wrote to Koenig asking whether it could be converted into a double perfecting machine. Koenig replied engagingly: We supposed that circumstances and your necessities had driven you into an alliance with the Bensley’s, Applegarth & Cowpers and that you had turned—a Rat. In justice to ourselves, I must add, that we were not angry or irritated against you on that account. ‘Taylor, good fellow, what can he do? we said, he must recover as well as he can.’ We cannot reproach ourselves of being the authors [of your difficulties with the machine] at least so far, that we never promised positively that such a machine as yours should make register, and provision was made accordingly, to make a completing machine of it, in case it should not 78


answer. On the other hand, I must reproach you with some tardiness in your resolutions, for not having sooner contrived to print newspapers; I recommended it to you before your machine was begun…. The question whether you are to have a Double or another Single machine cannot be decided but by yourself. It depends 1) on present state of your finances. 2) on the work you have to do with it. The last consideration is, in my opinion preponderating. Your customers ought to pay you more for printing so much faster. You have undoubtedly heard, that we have made some alterations for the machines of The Times; they are now printing 1520 per hour. I do not know whether you can show your face at the office of the old Times, as you are printing the new ones. But it would be very interesting to you to see it. If you can afford it, my advise [sic] would be for a Double machine, because you would then have something better for Newspaper printing, than any body else, Walter excepted.21 Koenig drew up specifications for the modifications gratuitously, but the machine nevertheless cost Taylor £1,200. We shall see later how he reduced this cost. Unfortunately, Koenig experienced difficulty with the manufacture of the parts and the machine was not ready until 1826. The Taylor archives contain Taylor’s promissory note of 27 July 1827 in which he agreed to pay Koenig £62 10s. 6d. a year for fourteen years as a premium proportional to the firm’s savings by using the machine. Nevertheless, before then, besides The New Times, Taylor succeeded in printing such weekly newspapers as The Brunswick (1821), and the Whig British Freeholder & Saturday Evening Journal (1820–3). The most extraordinary of these ventures, illustrating Taylor’s love of language as well as of liberty, was the printing between 1820 and 1826 of the Portuguese newspaper, O Padre Amaro ou sovéla politica, histórica e litérária for the Portuguese refugee Joaquin Jose Freitas. This was concerned chiefly with Brazil’s independence movement from Portugal, which was achieved in 1822. Koenig’s ‘feelings of detestation against old Bensley [had] undergone no alleviation or diminution’ in the 1820s and he was already planning to ‘confound the pretended inventors by publishing what has happened to me in England’. This history duly appeared in a German manual of printing published in Frankfurt in 1827. According to Goebel, in the following year Taylor’s sister, Sarah, who since her marriage to John 79


Austin had become known for her translations of German works, translated Koenig’s account. There is no evidence, however, that this was ever published—perhaps because Bensley, Walter and the engineers he accused of patent infringement were all still alive. In 1847, following the death of Walter and the appearance of an obituary in The Times casting Walter himself as the principal agent in the mechanisation of printing, Taylor wrote a short, but fair account of the whole affair in his Philosophical Magazine. Koenig, who had died in 1833, would have been pleased with Taylor’s final curt dismissal of Bensley: Mr. Koenig left England, suddenly, in disgust at the treacherous conduct of Bensley, always shabby and overreaching, and whom he found to be laying a scheme for defrauding his partners in the patents of all the advantages to arise from them. Bensley, however, while he destroyed the prospects of his partners, outwitted himself, and grasping at all, lost all, becoming bankrupt in fortune as well as in character.22 What effect had these speculations in mechanised printing had on Taylor’s success as a London printer? On 13 December 1813 Richard’s younger brother, Arthur, who had been apprenticed to him in October 1805, was brought into partnership, their father investing £12,000 in the firm, to be returned to his estate upon his death.23 In 1823, therefore, when Arthur released himself from the partnership in order to set up his own printing business, Richard became liable for the whole £12,000. When The Times had made its triumphant announcement in 1814, John Taylor had written in relieved and enthusiastic manner to his son: It would appear that I was under the influence of a sort of malignant apathy, as a flu so many years of anxiety and Doubts

The Red Lion Court Printing House, c. 1896. The seventeenth-century house taken by Richard Taylor in 1827 and the offices of the printing houses of ‘Richard Taylor’, ‘Richard & John E.Taylor’ and ‘Taylor & Francis’ until 1969. In this side view, by the lithographer Thomas Way (1861–1913), the firm’s sculptured oil-lamp sign can just be seen in the centre of the building. Reproduced from W.G.Bell, Fleet Street (1912). 80


respecting the ultimate success of our adventure in the improved Printing Machine if I were to receive the Proof which you sent me of it[s] operative excellence without some emotion of pleasure and self congratulation; but I hope I can honestly say that I congratulate the Art itself and mankind who are to be greatly benefited by a disclosure of it. The flattering account of it coming from those by whom it is first brought into action, must indeed be highly gratifying to all of us who have had any, even a remote, share in giving it existence; and I sincerely congratulate you Dear Richard in this happy termination of a speculation which has cost both of us so much money, and you some considerable degree of anxiety from the long suspense.24 He went on to ask whether the compositors had made trouble and what inquiries had been made regarding other sales. Richard’s sister, Susannah, was blunter: ‘I hope it will produce no mutiny or disturbance among the men; to abridge their number must be a great comfort for one of the hardest trials in business is the management of workmen.’25 That Taylor was already in financial difficulties in 1814 is clear from a sterner parental letter a month later complaining that Richard ignored his letters and mentioning a bill of support of £832. He requested ‘the Balance due to my Wool-trade paid in, so that you might not increase your debt to me beyond the £6,000 upon Bond’. Knowing that this is the time of year in which you are in the Receipt of bills, I have from Week to Week put off writing, in constant expectation of hearing from you and receiving a part of this balance of accommodation, or a reason why it is not paid. These things, my dear Richard, grieve me; they are in me ‘a silent sorrow.’ I say little about them, but I feel them not the less. Consider I pray you that I am forced to write in a style of complaint, it is not me who am to blame: when I ceased to be your Partner in business, my solicitude for your welfare, my anxiety to know how you were going on, did not cease; there still subsisted between us a relation of a far more tender nature than that which was dissolved; a bond of union which will never permit me to be indifferent to the state of a concern which, I thought myself happy in being able to assist in bringing it to maturity. Christmas, as I remember was the time fixed on taking stock; this would include the business of a year and a quarter, and it would be improper to defer it longer.26 82


Richard evidently managed to extricate himself, at least temporarily, from his father’s request for repayment by offering ‘a catalogue of present distresses’. No more is heard of their mutual financial arrangements until 1826 when, in his seventy-fifth year, John Taylor resigned from his business as a wool factor and began to put his estate and papers in order ‘to give my executors the least possible trouble and which is much more important, to prevent the possibility of any misunderstanding or break of affection among my family’. It cannot be unknown to you, that I have for some time past, reflected upon your circumstances and situation with very considerable anxiety; more indeed than my affection for you, and the reluctance to hurt your feelings would allow me to express freely; but it is sometimes necessary that we should pause and look backwards and forwards: if we look back we shall see, that far from being a sharer in the Profits of your Business, &c, since from an unwillingness to refuse the supply of your wants, I have embarked in your trade, a considerable part of my Property, yet with the expectation that you would, in a few years create such a capital of your own as should enable you to get free from so great a responsibility: on this I have been disappointed: now let us look to the future…. It must be highly proper for you to consider how you could meet the demands which it is next to certain, must be made upon you for money [when I die]. Probably every one of your Brothers would want to draw from you a part of what you now trade with; they wanting it themselves; and it is by no means certain that your sisters, or those concerned for them, would be content to leave their money in your hands.27 This correspondence suggests that Taylor’s business had been seriously under-capitalised and shows how precarious the firm’s position still was in 1826, despite its public reputation for fine printing. It also implies that Richard’s brothers may have had grounds for jealousy based upon their father’s over-generous financial support for Richard. To add to Taylor’s difficulties at this time, the proposal to demolish the Fleet Market (which lay over the covered River Fleet on the site now occupied by Farringdon Street; it had been erected by George Dance Sr in 1737) forced him to abandon his main printing office opposite the London Workhouse burial ground off Shoe Lane. A statement by John McCreery, composed to support Taylor’s plea for 83


compensation from the City authorities, throws light upon his circumstances: Mr John McCreery, printer, who took Mr Valpy’s printing office in Tooke Court, knows Mr Taylor’s premises in Shoe Lane. They stood as one of the first of the printing-offices of London. Knows of none so good except the new built one of Moyes [James Moyes’ Temple Press, Bouverie Street] which is objectionable in some particulars as far too large and expensive. It would be extremely difficult to get such as Mr Taylor has—knows of none to be had—Mr Taylor must build from the ground if he wishes to have such. Witness considers it extremely difficult to get ground for such a purpose in the District proper…knows the premises in Red Lion Court which Mr Taylor had taken. They were not built for a printing office—they were a Dwelling house. Their capacity is at the outside only two thirds of the old premises. A printer there is not only [sic] a first rate printer but barely a third rate. To get into the same station which Mr Taylor now occupies he must move again when he can find premises. The interruption of work during removal and during the preparation of accounts &c for such a purpose as this must be very great. In the case of printing of periodicals it will be particularly troublesome in the removal of standing forms and work in the press. The removal of a printer’s stock must interrupt the work of every one exceedingly. A printer’s business such as Mr Taylor’s in works of science and the learned languages requires the personal labour and attention of the principal whose time must have been and will continue to be wholly distracted by such a removal…. A stranger would not on finding Mr Taylor in his new situation consider him as occupying the situation he has in fact done.28 The disruption of removal and the decrease in space, which reduced Taylor’s warehousing capacity, were obviously serious matters, though McCreery in supporting Taylor had to explain away the small profitability of the firm in 1825 and 1826 as ‘very bad years everywhere owing to the distress of the times’. Moyes’s establishment of the Temple Press in a purpose-built structure in 1826 was exceptional at this date; most printers continued to practise their craft in dwelling houses in the courts and alleys off Fleet Street, Shoe Lane and Holborn. Extra accommodation when required was simply achieved by purchasing adjacent property and 84


demolishing party walls, leading (as in the Red Lion Court premises) to ‘various levels on the same floor which were reached by narrow, dark, and worn stairs’.29 Far from proving an unfortunate disturbance, Red Lion Court was to become part of the centre of the publishing trade as it expanded along Fleet Street in the 1840s. For over a century and a quarter Taylor’s business was to be associated with Red Lion Court, the problems of space being solved by leaseholds on further workshops in adjacent Robin Hood Court and New Street. However, the enforced move in 1826, coupled with his father’s request for the return of the capital loan, were undoubtedly serious difficulties. John Taylor died on 23 July 1826 and the executor of his estate, his brother, Meadows Taylor (1755–1838), soon began to demand the repayment of the £12,000 bond. Despite two sharply worded letters, Richard Taylor prevaricated. 30 In 1830 Meadows tried a more conciliatory tone: On referring to your letter to me of the 17th October last [1829], I see you gave me reason to expect I should receive from you in 2 or 3 weeks time, a statement of the account between us. I do beg it may no longer delayed [sic], for the existence of long unsettled accounts is now a burden to me.31 To no avail, for nine months later we read: You must let me have a statement of the account between us, as I am not ready to go on any longer without a settlement, if it is not convenient to you to pay all up. And a month later, ‘I am much mortified at not having had my request attended to of receiving a statement of the account between us’.32 Presumably Meadows was reluctant to take his nephew to court. His patience was, in fact, rewarded; a letter to Richard from his nephew, John Edward Taylor (who was to become his partner in 1837), implies that the money was at last returned to his father’s estate in 1833.33 Certainly from this date there are no further references to financial difficulties in the firm. Both the cause and the solution to those difficulties had been Taylor’s involvement in mechanical printing. His investment in Koenig’s machines had been a drain upon his resources, even with his father’s benevolence, and had proved unrewarding until, in September 1828, Taylor persuaded the lawyer James Harmer and the journalist Robert Bell, two of his radical City friends who owned the Weekly Dispatch, to 85


help pay for the new cylindrical press that Koenig was delivering.34 Harmer and Bell paid £700 of the £1,200 the machine cost, while Taylor received 19s. per 1000 copies of the paper printed. Further agreements in 1840 and 1854 indicate that Taylor’s deeper entry into newspaper printing—the spare capacity of his machine also enabled him to contract intermittently for other papers such as the Whig evening Globe— provided him and his successor, William Francis, with financial security for the remainder of the century. The Weekly Dispatch, which had been founded in 1801, had built its initial reputation as a chronicle of pugilism and other sporting events, but became a radical newspaper once it was acquired by Harmer and Bell in the early 1820s. Famous for its ‘scathing denunciation of political, legal and social abuses’, its opposition to the Established Church and its encouragement of Dissent, the paper stood for the causes which Taylor, as printer, espoused.35 Although Harmer’s proprietorship of the paper cost him the Lord Mayorship of London in 1840, it made him a rich man. Outstripped by cheaper newspapers in the 1850s, the Dispatch revived its fortunes in the 1870s under the proprietorship of the politician Ashton Wentworth Dilke, who transformed it into the working-class Sunday newspaper better known to twentieth-century readers as the Sunday Dispatch. Financial records have not survived, though Taylor & Francis appears to have remained its printers until the 1880s. References 1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8.

86

Ian Maxted, The London Book Trades 1775–1800 (Wm Dawson, London, 1977), pp. viii–xxxv. This and the following paragraph draw upon Allan C.Doolley, Author and Printer in Victorian England (University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville and London, 1992). See also Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972). R.M.Wiles, Serial Publication in England Before 1850 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1957). D.C.Coleman, The British Paper Industry 1495–1860 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1958). Memoir in Gentleman’s Magazine July 1836, 100–3. Agreement cited in Anon., The History of The Times. ‘The Thunderer’ in the Making 1785–1841 (The Times, London, 1935), p. 110; also in Theodor Goebel, Fréderic Koenig et l’invention de la presse mécanique (Paris, 1885), p. 60. This is a translation of the original German biography published at Stuttgart in 1883. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Printing Machine Technical Details’, brief to Brougham undated (1817). The Times, 8 December 1814; quoted James Moran, Printing Presses (Faber, London, 1973), p. 106.

Bensley, Koenig, Woodfall and Taylor 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

Literary Gazette, October 1822; quoted W.Savage, A Dictionary of Printing (1841; reprint. Gregg, London, 1966), p. 461. Séan Jennett, Pioneers in Printing (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1958), p. 131. Second Report from the Select Committee on Artizans and Machinery, Parliamentary Papers, 1824, V. History of The Times (6), pp. 112–13. Draft claim by Koenig to a lawyer named Pratt, 25 March 1815, St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Printing Machine Technical Details’. Jennett (10), p. 136; Moran (8), p. 108. Indenture between Bensley, Koenig, Woodfall and Taylor, 2 March 1813, St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Printing Materials-Machinery’. John Johnson, Typographia or the Printer’s Instructor (1824; reprinted Gregg Press 1966), vol. 2, p. 660. Jennett (10), p. 137. Koenig to Taylor 10 August 1817. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Printing Machine Technical Details’. Koenig’s Discharge to Messrs R. & A.Taylor 14 February 1818. Ibid. Koenig to Taylor 1 March 1818. Ibid. Koenig to Taylor 22 December 1820. Ibid. R.Taylor, ‘On the Invention and First Introduction of Mr. Koenig’s Printing Machine’, Philosophical Magazine [3] 31 (1847), 297–301; reprinted Gentleman’s Magazine, December 1847, 594–6, with additional references by Nichols. Bonds dated 13 and 25 December 1813 and 1 January 1823. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Family Letters 1788–1874’. John Taylor to Richard Taylor 3 December 1814. Ibid., ‘Family Letters 1797– 1826’. Susannah Taylor to Richard Taylor 4 December 1814. Ibid. John Taylor to Richard Taylor 17 January 1815. Ibid. John Taylor to Richard Taylor 7 May 1826. Ibid. Statement of John McCreery. Ibid., ‘City Legal Affairs. Property Matters 1817–1903’. W.T.Berry and H.E.Poole, Annals of Printing (Blandford Press, London 1966), p. 216. Meadows Taylor to Richard Taylor 4 May and 6 June 1827. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Family Letters 1800–1851’. Meadows Taylor to Richard Taylor 3 May 1830. Ibid. Meadows Taylor to Richard Taylor 5 February 1831 and 28 March 1831. Ibid. John Edward Taylor to Richard Taylor 9 August 1833. Ibid. Memorandum September 1828. Ibid., ‘Printing Agreements 1816–1877’. H.R.Fox Bourne, English Newspapers, 2 vols (1887), vol. 2, pp. 101–2.

87

CHAPTER FOUR

Taylor and the Commercial Science Journal

P eriodicals,

including newspapers, emerged from the midseventeenth century onwards to serve the needs of booksellers as advertising media for their wares. Their advantage over books, where the risks of over-or under-printing were always great, was that print runs could be pegged to subscriptions. 1 At the same time they guaranteed regular work for printers and frequently offered a ‘ladder by which individuals at a low level of activity could escape from the vicious circle of drudgery and poverty’. 2 By the end of the eighteenth century periodicals had become extremely important for strengthening and linking together a country-wide network of liberals and radicals, as the imposition of government stamp duties on paper and advertisements suggests—though their imposition can also be interpreted as a measure of radical success as much as of the Government’s concern to suppress such views. 3 As we have seen, one of the more successful radical periodicals was the Monthly Magazine, founded by the Leicester republican, Sir Richard Phillips (1767–1840) in 1796, edited by the Unitarian physician, John Aikin, and, from 1800, printed by Davis, Wilks and Taylor. Aikin had already edited an ephemeral monthly journal entitled Memoirs of Science and Arts in 1795, its purpose being ‘to afford by it full information of every thing new that is going forward in science and the arts…both at home and abroad’. 4 He duly adopted this scheme in the Monthly Magazine. Aikin’s idea for a periodical devoted to the progress of the arts (i.e. technology) and science had come from France where, as early as 1771, François Rozier (1734–93), observing the way scientific communication was passing from the reading of books by individuals to the giving of papers to scientific society members, had hit upon the idea of publishing for profit a journal devoted entirely to science. Rozier’s Observations sur la physique, sur 89


l’histoire naturelle et sur les arts moved rapidly from duodecimo to quarto format, and despite the fact that later editors backed the opponents of Lavoisier’s new oxygen-based chemistry, it lasted until 1823. The reasons for Rozier’s success are plain: the official Mémoirs of the French Academy of Sciences were subject to appalling delays of two years or more and in any case only offered their pages to members of the Academy. Rozier, on the other hand, offered regular monthly publication to all comers. Moreover, he was exceedingly successful in obtaining news from both large and small societies in France and throughout Europe as a quid pro quo for gratis copies of his journal.5 In April 1797, the London journalist, inventor and science teacher William Nicholson (1753–1815), whom we have previously met in connection with Koenig and whose name was to be immortalised in 1800 with that of the surgeon, Sir Anthony Carlisle, for performing the first electrolysis of water, founded a monthly Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and the Arts. Owing a good deal to the French Observations, including a quarto format (as Rozier noted in a review) and something to Aikin’s exploitation of scientific intelligence in the otherwise literary and political Monthly, the 48-page journal sold for 2s. 6d. a month and contained some ten or eleven articles, two engravings and an elaborate annual table of contents. After publishing five distinctly luxurious quarto volumes, Nicholson switched to octavo when he launched a new series of the Journal in 1802. This was to become the favoured format for commercial science journals throughout the century. Unique to Nicholson’s Journal, however, were wide margins into which brevier ‘side notes’ and abstracts were imposed ‘at great expense’. Although Nicholson went through many changes of printer and the journal did not survive beyond thirty-six volumes, historians still consult it because of its excellent coverage of the exciting developments in electrochemistry during the early 1800s. 6 As Arnold Thackray has commented, ‘Nicholson’s success invited emulation’.7 Accordingly, in June 1798, Alexander Tilloch (1759– 1825), the Glasgow-born owner of the London evening newspaper The Star, launched a rival Philosophical Magazine ‘to diffuse Philosophical Knowledge among every Class of Society, and to give the Public as early an Account as possible of every thing new or curious in the Scientific World, both at Home and on the Continent’.8 Tilloch confidently excused any lack of originality in the journal’s contents 90

Taylor and the commercial science journal

with a quotation on the title-page (see Appendix 4) from the sixteenthcentury Belgian writer, Justus Lipsius: Nec aranearum sane textus ideao melior, quia ex se sila gignunt. Nec noster vilior quia ex alienis libamus ut apes. This curious quotation was carried by the Philosophical Magazine continuously until 1949, long after it had become a primary journal of original research. Although the first three volumes lack a printer’s impression and say ‘Printed for Alex. Tilloch’, there can be no doubt that they were printed by Jonas Davis. In this way it fell into Richard Taylor’s hands in 1800, and following an intense struggle for existence caused by the competition between rival journals and a hostile environment of extravagantly high taxation on the communication of knowledge, became the London, Edinburgh and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal in 1840. The son of a tobacco merchant and magistrate, Tilloch had graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1771. Ten years later, while working for his father, he rediscovered the method of printing books from plates instead of from movable types. Such a method of stereotype printing had been developed in 1725 by an Edinburgh jeweller named William Ged, who had, however, had his plaster cast process blocked by compositors who were worried about its effects upon their craft. Tilloch was more successful, for in 1784, together with Andrew Foulis, the printer to the University of Glasgow, he produced several books by stereotypes.9 However, for reasons which are unclear, and although Tilloch and Foulis patented the process in both England and Scotland, the technique was not pursued. It was left to Charles Stanhope to improve the process during the early 1800s. Tilloch was obviously an inventive man: he filed many other patents for mill drives, steam engines and printing methods for the prevention of banknote forgeries. Fascinated by judicial astrology, he often used the columns of The Star, which he owned and edited from 1787 until 1821, to expound his views on biblical prophecies. His views were close to those of the Sandemanians, a sect to which Faraday belonged, though Tilloch never formally joined their London congregation. The sale catalogue of his estate shows that he amassed a large collection of paintings, prints, coins and medals, Chinese and Indian furniture and scientific instruments.10 Tilloch belonged to many of the innumerable formal and 91

Alexander Tilloch (1759–1825), the founder of the Philosophical Magazine and its first editor. He shared the editorship with Richard Taylor from 1822 until his death. The engraving, which appeared originally in the Imperial Magazine, formed the frontispiece to volume 58 of the Philosophical Magazine in 1821.


informal societies which formed part of the cultural and social geography of London at the close of the eighteenth century. These included the London Philosophical Society (founded 1794), whose uncompromising intention was to ‘remove that barrier erected by pedantry against universal knowledge which has rendered it the territory of a sect rather than the promise of the world’;11 the British Mineralogical Society (founded 1799) and the Askesian Society (Greek, ‘training’). 12 The Askesian Society, Tilloch tells us, consisted of ‘a select number of gentlemen, associated for their mutual improvement in the different branches of natural philosophy. It was initiated in March 1796, and the regular meetings are held every other week during the winter.’ 13 Besides Tilloch the members included the Quaker pharmacist William Allen, the instrument maker William Haseldine Pepys (1775–1856), another Quaker pharmacist and chemical lecturer named Richard Phillips (1778–1851), who was a former apprentice of Allen’s and who was to become Taylor’s editorial colleague, and the two sons of John Aikin, Arthur (1773–1854) and Charles (1775–1847), both of whom were giving chemical lectures in London at that period. United by their commercial, scientific and political beliefs and aspirations, many Askesian papers were published by Tilloch in the pages of the Philosophical Magazine. Several of the members also formed the nucleus of the more occupationally oriented British Mineralogical Society, and both societies merged into the Geological Society in 1807. Although there is no documentary evidence that Taylor ever became a member of the Askesian Society, we know that its meetings were attended by large numbers of visitors. Given the dissenting nature of the membership, its close ties with commercial London and Taylor’s friendship with the Aikins, and later with Allen and Phillips, it seems highly probable that he attended as a visitor during his apprenticeship. (The fact that his brother, John, became a member of the Mineralogical Society in 1801 is also highly suggestive.) Unfortunately, little is known of the Lambeth Chemical Club, whose surviving registers include Taylor’s membership between 1809 and 1812.14 In format and content the Philosophical Magazine was very similar to Nicholson’s Journal, which it obviously aped. Thus it contained some original papers and letters (Tilloch was ‘happy’ to correct the grammar of ‘practical men’15), reprints or translations from other journals (if necessary in an abbreviated form), notices of books, proceedings of societies such as the Askesian, ‘Intelligence’ 93


(including announcements of courses of scientific and medical lectures in London), lists of recent patents and comments upon the previous month’s weather. In practice, book reviews were few and far between and the majority of papers were translations from foreign journals—itself a valuable service during the Napoleonic Wars when communications with Europe were difficult and one for which it gradually gained a distinct edge over Nicholson’s Journal. The journals developed an intense rivalry over their coverage of the work on electrochemistry which Humphry Davy and others were performing with the Voltaic pile during the early 1800s. In June 1805 Tilloch thought he had stolen a march on Nicholson when he published an exclusive letter from ‘Mr Peel’ of Cambridge claiming to prepare potassium chloride by the electrolysis of water; but two years later he was forced to admit that he had been the victim of a hoax and to apologise for wasting his readers’ time. Tilloch also took a strong interest in steam power. From 1811 onwards he published monthly reports on the performance of steam engines all over Cornwall, and in 1815 he gave publicity to Arthur Woolf’s twocylinder compound expansive engine in which he had a financial interest.16 For the first decade of the nineteenth century readers would have been hard pressed to choose between Nicholson’s and Tilloch’s journals for their coverage of contemporary science, though towards the end Tilloch’s account of Royal Society meetings had become more extensive than those of his rival. Between 1807 when Nicholson faced bankruptcy (Richard Taylor was evidently one of his creditors17) and 1813, when he decided he had had enough of being an editor, Nicholson’s Journal went into decline. ‘Upon many occasions’, he explained in resignation, my Correspondents have complained, that the same academical papers and articles of information have appeared in my Journal as in that of Mr Tilloch, and have requested me to consult with him upon the means of preventing the Philosophical World from receiving the same materials in both. Similar remonstrances have also been addressed to him.18 Hence, from 1814 the journals combined under the title the Philosophical Magazine and Journal under the sole editorship of Tilloch and not the joint editorship which Nicholson (who died the 94


following year) had implied. (Many binders continued to call the continuing series ‘Nicholson’s Journal’ for several years.) Ironically, just as this took place and the cessation of the French wars was making continental communications easier again, Tilloch was faced with a new competitor. It may even have been this threat which had promoted the amalgamation. The new rival was the Annals of Natural Philosophy begun in January 1813 by the Scots chemist Thomas Thomson (1773–1852), who was then working freelance in London before his election to the Regius Chair of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow in 1817. A largely self-taught chemist, Thomson had early established a reputation as a textbook writer in 1802 with his frequently reprinted System of Chemistry and by his tireless advocacy of Dalton’s atomic theory and the Wernerian systems of geology and mineralogy. Chemistry and geology were to be dominant subjects in the Annals and by commissioning articles directly from his great rival, the Swede Jacob Berzelius, and by stimulating and publicising scientific controversy whenever possible, the Annals provided extremely lively competition for Tilloch. Indeed, one might well speculate that if Thomson had not returned to Scotland it might have been the Annals of Natural Philosophy which absorbed the Philosophical Magazine rather than the reverse. However, Thomson’s move to Glasgow in 1817, while the journal remained printed in London by Robert Baldwin, coupled with his preoccupation with efforts to raise the status of chemistry in his university, enabled Tilloch to regain the advantage. He strengthened his position still further in 1822 when, at the age of sixty-three, he made Richard Taylor his coeditor and co-proprietor as well as his printer. Taylor duly celebrated his new position by publishing his only two known scientific papers on ‘the fossil bones on the coast of East Norfolk’.19 Given his connections with astronomy, geology and botany through his printing of the proceedings of the new Astronomical Society and the Geological and Linnean Societies, Taylor’s appointment led immediately to the strengthening of the Philosophical Magazine’s coverage of these sciences. The result was inevitable, though slow in materialising. Despite the appointment of a London editor, Tilloch’s fellowAskesian, Richard Phillips, from 1821, coupled with another peripheral Askesian J.G.Children (1778–1852), to strengthen its biological department, sales of the Annals dwindled. Not surprisingly the then owner of the Annals, the printer and publisher Robert Baldwin, decided to sell the copyright, and because he 95


knew Taylor well through the latter’s distribution of the Royal Astronomical Society’s Memoirs and the printing of Lucy Aikin’s life of her father,20 he agreed to sell the journal to Taylor for £120 in July 1826. It is interesting to note that both Charles Lyell and Michael Faraday continued to refer to the new Philosophical Magazine and Journal, incorporating the Annals of Natural Philosophy as the Annals. Meanwhile, Tilloch, sensing new markets in the development of mechanics’ institutes, launched the Mechanic’s Oracle and Artisan’s Laboratory and Workshop in July 1824. Printed weekly in two columns in a quarto format by another printer, Tilloch’s first editorial provides an illuminating summary of the state of play of commercial science journals at that time. In presenting the Public with a new work, devoted, principally, to the instruction and improvement of the working classes, the Proprietors have no wish to detract from the merits of other Periodical Publications, which contribute to the general diffusion of knowledge. Of these besides the Repertory of Arts [founded 1794], an unassuming, but useful publication, we have now a considerable number; at the head of which, as the oldest, and not the least respectable, stands the Philosophical Magazine & Journal, edited for more than a quarter of a century by Dr Tilloch, and latterly with the able aid of Mr Taylor; a publication which has had no small degree of influence in generating and maintaining, both at home and in the western hemisphere, that love of science and thirst for improvement, which have, since its commencement, called into existence so many journals, all built more or less upon the same model. Among these may be mentioned, the Annals of Philosophy, edited for some years by Dr Thomson, latterly by Mr Phillips, and at this time by Messrs Children & Phillips; the Quarterly Journal of Science, by Mr Brande; the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, edited till lately by Dr Brewster and Professor Jameson jointly, but now by the latter, while another, the Edinburgh Journal of Science, has been commenced by the former, the London Journal of Arts and Sciences, by Mr Newton; and the Technical Repository, by Mr Gill; besides the Mechanic’s Magazine, the Register of Arts and Sciences, the Chemist, and other weekly publications.21 In fact, the Mechanic’s Oracle proved no match for Robertson’s Mechanic’s Magazine; weakened by Tilloch’s death on 26 January 96


1825, the Oracle collapsed in less than a year. Tilloch’s death left Taylor as the sole owner and editor of the Philosophical Magazine, though following the purchase of Thomson’s Annals in 1826, he appointed its editor Richard Phillips as co-editor—a position Phillips filled with distinction until his death in 1851. From 1823 onwards Taylor also employed the translation and sub-editing services of Edward W.Brayley (1802–70), an antiquarian and miscellaneous science writer who was Librarian at the London Institution in Finsbury Circus. Brayley’s services were formally acknowledged from 1835 in a note on the reverse of the title-page and, in 1841 only, on the titlepage; but a serious quarrel in 1845 over Brayley’s fees caused him to withdraw his services.22 Under its new combined editorship, the Philosophical Magazine continued the formula perfected by Tilloch, though more geological papers appeared than before during the 1820s. The exciting palaeontological and stratigraphical findings of Buckland, Coybeare and Sedgwick were enthusiastically reported and the editors were cautiously critical of Lyell’s Principles of Geology when it began to appear in 1830.23 The Philosophical Magazine still had to face many competitors, the chief source of which lay in Edinburgh. There in 1819 the physicist David Brewster (1781–1868), and the mineralogist Robert Jameson (1774–1854), had persuaded Archibald Constable to launch a rival to Tilloch’s and Thomson’s journals called, appropriately, the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal. Unfortunately, despite the quality of some of its contents, production was irregular, sales proved lower than the publisher had anticipated, and the two editors continually feuded. In 1824 Constable dropped Brewster, who promptly founded his own rival journal with Constable’s sworn enemy, William Blackwood. Although Jameson’s Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (‘new’ to show that it had nothing to do with Brewster’s regime) survived into the 1860s, Brewster’s Edinburgh Journal of Science ran into immediate difficulties. In 1827 Blackwood appears to have sold his interest in Brewster’s Journal to his London agent, Thomas Cadell, who, with Brewster’s aid, managed to obtain additional proprietorial help in Edinburgh and Dublin. 24 By April 1829, when this proprietorial triumvirate system was instituted, Brewster’s Edinburgh Journal of Science was in effect an Edinburgh, London and Dublin Journal of Science, lacking only editors in all three capitals. It was this arrangement which probably gave Taylor—by then, as we have 97


seen, the sole owner of the reputable and internationally known Philosophical Magazine, the idea of buying up the still unsuccessful Edinburgh Journal in 1832. Indeed, in a letter to William Harcourt in February of that year Brewster (by now Sir David) had suggested that one of the aims of his brainchild, the new peripatetic British Association for the Advancement of Science, could be to amalgamate existing science journals into a British Journal of Science, and he implied that he would seek Taylor’s opinion. 25 Whatever way negotiations were conducted, the effect was to make Brewster one of the three editors of an amalgamated London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal. Taylor, as proprietor and managing editor, somehow ensured that there was no editorial jealousy such as had occurred between Brewster and Jameson, though Brewster could grumble disloyally and anonymously in 1852 that there was still no really good science journal in any city. The forging of a Dublin editorial connection took another eight years, for Taylor had missed an earlier opportunity. In March 1825, a group of Trinity College dons, including Denis Lardner and Humphry Lloyd, founded a quarterly Dublin Philosophical Journal & Scientific Review, closely modelled on the English journals. However, it collapsed ignominiously after only six issues in 1826 just at the time Taylor was stretched financially through buying the Annals of Natural Philosophy, paying back his father’s loan and when he was in a turmoil over the forced move from Shoe Lane. How, then, did the later Dublin connection come about? Tilloch, who was elected an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy in the early 1800s, not infrequently published accounts of the Academy’s transactions in the first series of the Philosophical Magazine and there were occasional contributions from Irishmen in the magazine before the 1830s. For example, in 1809 one Irish correspondent was suggesting a way of ‘establishing telegraphic intercourse between London and Dublin’; in 1868, William Higgins, the Professor of Chemistry at the (Royal) Dublin Society, reissued his priority challenge to John Dalton and Thomas Thomson over the atomic theory; there were also fairly frequent medical contributions from Robert Healy of Dublin, and occasional chemical contributions from Edmund Davy of Cork. Similarly, from the very beginning, Tilloch had ensured that copies of the magazine were stocked for sale in Dublin by the printers and booksellers, Gilbert & Hodges. 98


By 1831, Robert Kane (1809–90), who founded and edited the Dublin Journal of Medical and Chemical Science between 1832 and 1836 before it turned into an exclusively medical journal (the Dublin Journal of Medical Science edited by R.J.Graves and William Stokes), was sending Taylor and Phillips regular chemical contributions for the Philosophical Magazine. Though little of Kane’s correspondence with Taylor has survived, it appears that with the increased attention being paid to chemistry by Taylor (and all the London medical press) following Liebig’s grand agricultural tour of Great Britain in 1837, and in the absence of his son William Francis abroad, and his co-editor Richard Phillips’s closer concern with old-fashioned analytical and mineral chemistry, Taylor was looking for expertise in the exciting new field of organic chemistry. As a former pupil of Liebig—he had studied in Giessen in 1836— the German-speaking Robert Kane fitted the bill exactly. 26 Moreover, by inviting Kane on to the editorial board from October 1840, Taylor also completed the British university city triangle, making the Philosophical Magazine into the corporate journal for all British science. Although it cannot be claimed that the number of Irish papers increased in the Philosophical Magazine after October 1840, the coverage of French and German chemical developments certainly did, so much so that Kane (who became Sir Robert in 1846) could call it ‘the only chemical journal in the British Empire’.27 However, the German chemist, Justus Liebig, criticised the journal for being ‘a kind of lumber room in which you find Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Mineralogy mixed, higgledy-piggledy up together’. 28 This wider coverage is epitomised by the regular inclusion of William Francis’s and Henry Croft’s ‘Notices of the Results of the Labours of Continental Chemists’ from March 1841. This column was clearly refereed and sub-edited by Kane, 29 and the service continued until the quantity of chemical matter, swollen by the creation of the London Chemical Society, which had no regular journal of its own until 1847, proved so overwhelming that Taylor gladly acceded to Francis’s suggestion in 1842 that Francis and Croft should edit a separate Chemical Gazette. Francis and Croft’s continental abstracting service was not without its intrinsic difficulties. Although they used Berzelius’s formulae, Kane used English equivalent weights, but sometimes French two-volume formulae crept in. Thus readers were frequently faced with articles employing three different systems of atomic weights in one issue of 99


the journal—an illustration, of course, of the confused state of contemporary chemistry. On a personal level, Kane was disappointed in 1841 to find that his co-editor, Phillips, vetoed any review of his Elements of Chemistry in the Philosophical Magazine on the grounds that books by the editors could not be reviewed. Kane had to be content with a reasonably comprehensive list of the textbook’s contents. Although his increasing administrative commitments with the Royal College of Science in Dublin and the Queen’s College at Cork reduced his own research, like Sir David Brewster, he remained a co-editor of the Philosophical Magazine until his death in 1890, when the Irish connection was maintained by the appointment of the mathematical physicist George Fitzgerald (1851–1901). It is to be noted that the forging of the Irish link did not lead to the publication of papers from the great Dublin school of mathematicians—apart from a few of Sir William Rowan Hamilton’s essays on quaternions—since it was Taylor’s deliberate policy to keep the coverage of mathematics low. For, as he remarked in a rare editorial following the publication of an article on Fresnel’s theory of double refraction, It is not in [the editors’] power to admit any very great quantity of pure mathematics. The majority of the readers of the Magazine are more interested in other sciences, and the Magazine would soon cease to exist if it were more than sparingly supplied with articles on lofty mathematical subjects.… The pages of the Philosophical Transactions, of the Memoirs of the Royal Irish Academy, of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, of the Cambridge Mathematical Journal, &c, are much fitter vehicles for extensive mathematical discussion than those of the Philosophical Magazine.30 In practice, this policy owed much to the vehement disagreement among mathematical physicists during the 1830s over the wave theory of light, which Airy, Hamilton and Baden Powell did much to publicise in the Philosophical Magazine despite Brewster’s wellgrounded and provocative objections. Whenever possible, it seems that Taylor and his co-editors avoided unseemly public controversy. One of the few occasions of public confrontation occurred in 1831 after Phillips had reviewed David Boswell Reid’s Elements of Practical Chemistry and accused the 100


author of writing about experiments which did not work in the manner described. Reid promptly published a pamphlet in Edinburgh, where he was an extra-mural chemistry lecturer, vindicating himself and describing Phillips as ‘captious, cavilling, clumsy, audacious and guilty of gross misrepresentations’. Phillips replied in his own pamphlet that Reid belonged ‘among the lower ranks of science’ with the ‘genus irritabile, who are disposed to argue that every criticism is personal’; to which, of course, Reid replied with yet another pamphlet. The dispute was extremely silly and trivial, but no doubt embarrassing for Phillips’s co-editors. Similarly, in the 1860s, when Francis was chief editor, his friendship with Tyndall was sorely tried by the latter’s dispute over ‘calorescence’ (the effect of infrared radiation on gases) with a Hungarian named C.K.Akin.31 The surviving customers’ books and journal books show that Tilloch’s print run for the Philosophical Magazine in 1813 (the earliest figures available) was 1000 copies—an astonishingly high number. Taylor’s printing costs were about £20, but we may assume that he charged Tilloch £40.32 Since the selling price was 2s. 6d., and if we assume that Tilloch sold at least 500 copies, Tilloch’s profit was only £22. However, when Taylor took over completely in the 1820s, he reduced the print run to 500, raising it to 650 between 1848 and 1855. 33 Since Taylor, like other serials publishers, deliberately overprinted in order to sell back numbers (the opening of new series every ten years or twenty volumes also aided in this), actual monthly sales were probably a good deal lower. Hence the Philosophical Magazine can have brought him little more than £20 to £30 profit a month from which overheads such as postage had to be met. The unprofitability of the Philosophical Magazine in the 1830s is confirmed by the important and undoubtedly influential evidence which Taylor presented to the Select Committee on Postage in March 1838. Before the introduction of Rowland Hill’s ‘penny post’ system in 1840 as a result of this Committee’s recommendations, postal charges depended both upon weight (or number of sheets of paper) and the distance involved. When asked what effect this system had upon his publication of journals, Taylor replied: The fact is, scientific journals in this country are supported with very great difficulty; they can hardly be supported at all; I have witnessed in my own recollection a failure of all the scientific journals almost that have been set on foot; in the first place, Nicholson’s Journal; in the next place, Thomson’s 101


Annals; The Royal Institution Quarterly Journal; Brewster’s Edinburgh Journal; The Records of Science, and others; they have all of them failed from an inability to cover their expense and it is almost an impracticable thing to keep a scientific journal alive in this country. The reasons, Taylor claimed, were the inhibiting effects of the expenses scientific authors incurred in communicating with others to collect materials and in sending their findings to a journal, and the editorial expenses of the journal itself on correspondence and posting proofs. I do not think the Journal to the editorship of which I succeeded, the Philosophical Magazine, could have been supported if I were not at the same time the editor, printer and publisher. It has never more than just covered its expenses.34 Taylor also presented evidence of the scandalous way in which packets arrived from abroad, on which he had to pay postage, because British customs officers seized them from travellers who had been asked to deliver them ‘by hand’. The customs then posted the packets to London ‘so extorting from the editor in England an enormous sum for that which may turn out to be perfectly worthless’. He went on to point out that learned societies, as well as publishers, would benefit from a cheaper, rational system of postage and that it would facilitate the exchange of foreign journals. (Taylor was by then exchanging his journals with a wide variety of French and German journals.) That the transmission of scientific journals to Europe and America remained expensive even after the advent of ‘penny’ postage is, however, clear from the creation of a special Committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science to lobby the Government in 1844. The problem was finally resolved—to Taylor’s delight—in 1849 when periodicals were allowed to be sent abroad at the cheaper newspaper, rather than letter, rate.35 The question of postage and the exchange of journals between European editors had become important to Taylor in the 1830s because of his wish to refute the accusation and argument begun by Charles Babbage in 1830 that British science was in a state of decline. If this was true at all, Taylor no doubt reasoned, one factor could be that British men of science were insufficiently aware of the research that was being done in Europe; in which case the solution was to increase the number of translations and abstracts of foreign papers 102


published in the Philosophical Magazine. However, this could only be done if the space available for English research was reduced. In 1836 Taylor hit upon another solution—to publish by subscription a series of translated Memoirs, proudly citing Goethe in support: Every translator ought to regard himself as a broker in the great intellectual traffic of the world, and to consider it his business to promote the barter of the produce of mind. For, whatever people may say of the inadequacy of translation, it is, and must ever be, one of the most important and meritorious occupations in the great commerce of the human race.36 The consequences of failing to translate were painfully obvious, he claimed, citing Lenz’s observation that although Ohm’s law had been published in German in 1826, it was still unknown in France and England in 1833. The first ‘Part’ of Taylor’s altruistic enterprise appeared in July 1836, the plan being to issue the Memoirs quarterly. In practice, although the first volume (price 6s.) containing four parts was complete by the following summer, subsequent parts appeared irregularly. The difficulty was that although unanimously welcomed by every man of science in Great Britain (J.D. Forbes described the plan as ‘brilliant’37) and despite a leading article in the Philosophical Magazine,38 Taylor could boast in 1837 only of a sale of 250 copies. I am very far from having been repaid the cost of publication, to say nothing of the care and labour which have been required: nor could I be expected, having now finished a volume, which, from the nature of its materials, may be considered a complete work in itself, to proceed further unaided, until I have ascertained whether I may calculate upon adequate support.39 At this point, perhaps at the prompting of his many wellwishers, Taylor did something of far-reaching significance—he attended the Newcastle meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (whose Reports he had printed and distributed since 1832 after giving Committee-approved definitive accounts of its sectional proceedings in the Philosophical Magazine) and asked them to subsidise a second volume of the Memoirs. 40 ‘The experiment I have made,’ he stated, ‘notwithstanding the 103


continuance and approbation which have been very gratifying to me, having been attended with a loss of about £200 (there having been a sale of less than 200 [sic] copies) I fear that such work cannot be carried on as the undertaking of an individual.’ As the historians of the early British Association comment, ‘a combination of personal contact, loyal service, and the utility of the project to leading savants ensured [the adoption of the Memoirs] by the BAAS in 1838.’ 41 Ledger figures actually suggest that Taylor’s loss was about £247 at this date; however, the Association’s agreement to underwrite further volumes to the value of £100 and the establishment of a committee consisting of Edward Sabine, John Herschel, Robert Brown and others to supervise further translations ensured the continuation of the series. In fact, the Association’s support ceased with the completion of the second volume in 1841 and Taylor’s determination to continue must be explained in terms of his confidence in long-term sales. By August 1852, when he resigned from the business, Taylor had spent at least £1,800 on the Memoirs and taken some £1,500—a loss of £300 which was not fully recovered by the firm through backsales until 1875. The increasing significance of continental biology in the 1850s persuaded Taylor’s successor, William Francis, to launch a second series of translations in 1853, the biological translations being edited by Francis and the young T.H. Huxley, and the physical ones by Francis and the young John Tyndall. Once again, however, support was relatively poor, and Francis had no compunction in abandoning the series completely immediately the first two volumes had appeared. The complete sequence of seven volumes of the Scientific Memoirs (1837–53) contained most of the major French, German, Italian and Scandinavian papers of the day; here was to be found the information on and interpretations of physics, chemistry and biology of such European leaders as Bessel, Biot, Bunsen, Berzelius, Clapeyron, Ehrenberg, Gauss, Jacobi, Lenz, Melloni, Ohm and Schleiden. Not

Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs. Title-page of the first volume of 600 pages composed of four parts, Part 1 being issued in August 1836. A further four volumes, again issued in parts, appeared in 1841, 1843, 1846 and 1852. A ‘New Series’ begun by William Francis in 1853 was abandoned after the issue of only two volumes. 105


surprisingly, the Memoirs were reprinted in New York in 1966 in recognition of their importance as source materials for historians of science.42 Although Taylor’s enterprises included non-scientific publications—the most important of which was the political journal the British and Foreign Review in which he held shares with J.M. Kemble, the historian and philologist, and T.W.Beaumont (1792– 1848), the politician, as well as acting as its printer between 1838 and 1844,43 it was his ownership and printing of commercial science journals such as the Philosophical Magazine and the Scientific Memoirs which became (and has remained) the outstanding feature of the firm he founded. One estimate suggests that 64 per cent of all nineteenth-century scientific periodicals were commercially published rather than issued as the official journals of learned societies.44 Such journals served a number of important functions. They speeded up publications at times when the proceedings of scientific societies appeared intermittently or only once or twice a year. Given his relationship with the Royal Society, the Geological, Zoological, Astronomical and Chemical Societies and the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Taylor was here at a very great advantage compared with his competitors. The geologist Roderick Murchison, for example, rushed his work on the Silurian system into print in the Philosophical Magazine in 1835 and gave Taylor the printing contract for his huge illustrated book on the subject, which was not complete until four years later.45 Similarly, Michael Faraday first published several of his papers in the journal, including a speculative one on the wave-like nature of electricity. 46 Such journals also provided intelligence of science in foreign journals for those who read no foreign languages or who had no access to large libraries. They also aired controversies or allowed space to issues involved in new research programmes; they accepted for publication the minor and even trivial research with which learned societies could not be bothered, thereby continuing to cater for the popular and cultural (and often provincial) images of science during a time it was undergoing the rigour of specialisation. On the other hand, such journals often accepted for publication original findings or theoretical speculations that were considered unorthodox by the societies. In this respect they kept the scientific societies on their toes, broke their monopolies and made them less authoritarian and cliquish than they might otherwise have been. 106


Such journals, including the Philosophical Magazine, underwent sturdy growth in the period between 1830 and 1860 as the ‘taxes on knowledge’ that had affected and inhibited the development of all newspapers and periodicals were removed. In the 1820s, for example, paper carried both a stamp and excise duty, while advertisements, which were subject to a tax of 3s. 6d. per insertion, could not be used or exploited as a revenue raiser to offset these printing overheads. However, mainly as a result of the growth of a radical, illegal unstamped press which deliberately sought to avoid these taxes, and the emergence of a powerful working-and middle-class lobby for the repeal of all legal restrictions on the press, these taxes were slowly repealed. In 1836 stamp duty was reduced to 1d. a sheet and abolished altogether in 1853 for monthly journals; in the same year advertising duty also disappeared; paper duty was abolished in 1861 and followed considerable reductions in the price of paper itself after the introduction (from 1857) of new methods of manufacture involving esparto grass rather than rags. These changes, which affected and potentially increased the profitability of commercial science journals, occurred during the period between Taylor’s decision to publish the Annals of Natural History and the Chemical Gazette as biological and chemical companions to the Philosophical Magazine, and his retirement from printing. Since these decisions involved his son, William Francis, as much as Taylor himself, as is reflected in the firm’s change of title in 1852, it is to Francis’s period of office that we must now turn. References 1. David E.Allen, ‘The struggle for specialist journals: natural history in the British periodicals market in the first half of the nineteenth century’, Archives of Natural History, 23 (1996), 107–23, at p. 107. 2. Michael Harris, ‘Periodicals and the Book Trade’ in Robin Myers and M. Harris, eds, Development of the English Book Trade 1700–1899 (Oxford Polytechnic Press, Oxford, 1981), p. 77. 3. J.E.Cookson, The Friends of Peace. Anti-War Liberalism in England 1793– 1815 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1982), pp. 22–4 and Chap. 4. 4. Lucy Aikin, Memoir of John Aikin, MD, 2 vols (1823), vol. 1, p. 155. This was printed by Taylor. 5. J.E.McClellan, ‘The Scientific Press in Transition. Rozier’s Journal and the Scientific Societies in the 1770s’, Annals of Science, 36 (1979), 425–49. 6. S.Lilley, ‘Nicholson’s Journal 1797–1813’, Annals of Science, 6 (1948), 78– 101. 7. A.Thackray, ‘William Nicholson’ in C.C.Gillispie, ed., Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 10, p. 108. 107

The Lamp of Learning 8. Preface to Philosophical Magazine, 1 (1798). 9. J.Maclehose, The Glasgow University Press 1638–1931 (Glasgow University Press, Glasgow, 1931), pp. 196–8. 10. Catalogue of Cabinet and other esteemed Paintings…of Alexander Tilloch… deceased (16 May 1825), copy British Library. See memoir Gentleman’s Magazine, 95 (1825), 276–81. 11. Philosophical Magazine, 39 (1812), 142. 12. I.Inkster, ‘Science and Society in the Metropolis: A Preliminary Examination of the Social and Institutional Context of the Askesian Society’, Annals of Science, 34 (1977), 1–32; P.Weindling, ‘The British Mineralogical Society’, in I.Inkster and J.B.Morrell, eds, Metropolis and Province: Science in British Culture (Hutchinson Educational, London, 1983). 13. Philosophical Magazine, 7 (1800), 355. 14. G.Averly, ‘The social chemists; English chemical societies in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries’, Ambix, 33 (1986), 113–20. 15. Philosophical Magazine, 35 (1810), 1. 16. D.S.L.Cardwell, From Watt to Clausius (Cornell University Press, New York and London, 1971), p. 156. 17. R.S.Sloper to Taylor, 2 and 6 April 1807. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘City Life. Court Cases and Legal Affairs 1729–1853’. Nicholson borrowed money from John Taylor, Richard’s father. See Don Locke, A Fantasy of Reason. The Life and Thought of Willam Godwin (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1980), p. 255. 18. ‘To the Public’, Nicholson’s Journal, 36 (1813), 387. 19. Philosophical Magazine, 60 (1822), 132–5 and 63 (1824), 81–5, plus coloured section. 20. Aikin (4); Baldwin to Taylor 22 and 24 July 1826. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Letters’. 21. Mechanic’s Oracle, 1 (1824–5), 1. 22. E.W.Brayley to Taylor 9 May 1845. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Letters’. There are some twenty letters from Brayley in the collection. 23. C.C.Gillispie, Genesis and Geology (Harper & Row, New York, 1959), pp. 119–20, 142. 24. Theodore Besterman, The Publishing Firm of Cadell & Davies. Select Correspondence and Accounts 1793–1836 (Oxford University Press, London, 1938), pp. 50, 54, 82–3. 25. D.Brewster to Rev. W.Harcourt 1 February 1832. Harcourt MSS, Humboldt volume, quoted courtesy of J.B.Morrell. 26. R.Kane to Richard Phillips 8 October 1838. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Letters’. 27. R.Kane to Taylor 18 January 1841. Ibid. 28. J.Liebig, ‘Einleitung’ to the 7th edition of Die Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agricultur (Braunschweig, 1862). He claimed to be quoting an English friend. 29. R.Kane to Taylor 9 November 1840, 24 January and 12 February 1841. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Letters’. 30. Philosophical Magazine (3) 28 (1846), 146. 31. D.B.Reid, An Exposure of the Continued Misrepresentations by Richard Phillips Esq. (Edinburgh, 1831), copy British Library. A.S.Eve and C.H. Creasey, Life and Work of John Tyndall (Macmillan, London, 1945), pp. 106–11. 32. Journal Book of R. & A Taylor 1815–26, St Bride, Taylor Papers. 33. Book work journals for 1821–30 and 1848–53. The latter records the Philosophical Magazine to 1855. St Bride, Taylor Papers. 108

Taylor and the commercial science journal 34. First Report of the Select Committee on Postage, Parliamentary Papers, 1837– 8, XX, 278, evidence of 23 March 1838, QQ 4477–4685. 35. British Association for the Advancement of Science Reports, 1844, p.xxi; Philosophical Magazine (3) 34 (1849), 158. 36. Headpiece to Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs, 2 (1841). 37. J.D.Forbes to Taylor 14 April 1836. See also Sir W.R.Hamilton to Taylor, 8 March 1838. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Letters’. 38. ‘Notice relative to the Publication of the Scientific Memoirs’, Philosophical Magazine (3), 10 (1837), 81–4. 39. Preface to Scientific Memoirs, 1 (1837), dated 29 July 1837. 40. Draft of speech of statement to the Committee of Recommendations of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 20 August 1838. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘City Life’, ‘Societies 1808–1833’. 41. J.Morrell and A.Thackray, Gentlemen of Science (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1981), p. 320; British Association for the Advancement of Science Reports, 1838, xxiv; 1839, xxiv; 1840, xxvii; 1841, xxi; 1842, xxii. 42. Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs, Sources of Science No. 7 (Johnson Reprint Corporation, New York and London, 1966). 43. The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals (Toronto University Press, Toronto and Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1979), vol. 3, p. 62. See J.M.Kemble and T.W.Beaumont to Taylor 3 June 1840. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Letters’. Taylor was also the first printer of the Unitarian weekly, the Inquirer. This was founded in 1842 by the Rev. William Hicks to champion the causes of the abolition of slavery and capital punishment, and the promotion of shorter working hours and the rational use of leisure. 44. W.H.Brock, ‘The Development of Commercial Science Journals in Victo– rian Britain’ in A.J.Meadows, ed., Development of Science Publishing in Europe (Elsevier, Amsterdam, New York and Oxford, 1980), p. 95. 45. R.Murchison, Philosophhical Magazine, 7 (1835), 46–52; The Silurian System (1839). 46. M.Faraday, ‘Thoughts on Ray-vibrations’, Philosophical Magazine (3) 28 (1846), 345–50, reprinted in Faraday, Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics (1859).

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CHAPTER FIVE

The Francis Era

F rancis was ten years of age when Taylor moved from Shoe Lane into the post-Great Fire seventeenth-century red-brick house in Red Lion Court where the firm was to remain established for over a century. One of the many courts and alley-ways leading north out of Fleet Street, Red Lion Court was probably named after a tavern which is mentioned as early as 1592. By the eighteenth century the Court had become closely connected with printing and publishing. It was here, for example, that Mary Harrison carried on her late husband’s printing business between 1769 and 1797 before her sons developed the House of Harrison in St Martin’s Lane. For a time Harrison was in partnership with Parker, another printer in St Martin’s Lane, with Richard Taylor as their bondsman. The deed of partnership, as well as miscellaneous balance sheets, remained in the hands of Taylor & Francis until 1954, when they were given to the House of Harrison. Ironically, the firm was destined to become Taylor & Francis’s chief competitor in publishing the transactions of scientific societies; here, too, the notable Leicestershire antiquarian and bibliophile, John Nichols, printed and published the Gentleman’s Magazine (founded 1731) between 1779 and 1820. Taylor’s house, from which A.J.Valpy had published an ‘interminable series’ of Greek and Latin authors in 144 volumes called ‘The Delphin Classics’ between 1822 and 1827,1 lay at the head of Red Lion Court and the adjacent Crane Court, ‘with its chief entrance and tiny square upon the court named after the impossibly coloured lion’.2 Much modified by successive tenants, it was in fact three houses knocked into one. Abutting on to Taylor’s premises within Crane Court, until it was destroyed by fire in the mid-nineteenth century, was the house which the Royal Society had occupied until it moved to Somerset House in the Strand in 1778. According to Walter Bell, the historian of London, ‘each night when the [Royal] Society was in session a light was shown at the entrance to the court from Fleet Street, 111


to indicate that the lamp of philosophy burnt brightly above’.3 This lamp-lighting convention appears to have been continued by the London Philosophical Society, who used the Royal Society’s old rooms during the early years of the nineteenth century; this may well have

Alere Flammam. Three examples of Taylor’s printing device: (a) Philosophical Magazine, 1815, the first use in the journal; (b) Philosophical Magazine, 1821; (c) Philosophical Magazine, 1827, with Taylor’s initials. ‘Do you see the Lamp?’ asked the old man, when Amaryllis had stared sufficiently at the backs of the books. ‘Yes, I can see the Lamp’. ‘House of Flamma’, said old Iden. (Richard Jefferies, Amaryllis at the Fair, 1887). 112

The Francis era

given Taylor the idea of adopting an oil-renewed Roman lamp, and the motto ‘Alere Flammam’, as his house device in 1813, and of placing a large relief of the lamp with a hand poised to fill it with oil on the Red Lion Court building after 1827. (It replaced the Greek letter digamma, which Valpy had used as his emblem.) Bell, who visited the Red Lion Court printing house shortly after the First World War, described the building as follows: The fine rooms, amply proportioned, with tall doors and wall panelling up to the decorated plaster ceilings, were surely made for hospitality. There is a substantial length of the grand

The Wren Room at Red Lion Court, c. 1920. ‘The whole ceiling is today almost unbroken and as fine as ever, though it looks down now on piles of old books and papers and the odds and ends of a publisher’s store room.’ (Walter George Bell, Unknown London, rev. edn, 1951). Bell himself did not think the house was by Wren and noted the similarity between the ceiling and that of St Vedast Church in Foster Lane. The drawing is by the London topographer, Hanslip Fletcher (1874–1955). (Courtesy British Library). 113


staircase remaining, stout and wide and solid. It turns to the landing on the first floor…. It is characteristic of an age when builders had ideas of solidity, using oak for the twisted balusters and the massive rail, now browned with age and polish…. The same type of twisted baluster and rail is found on the stairs leading to the topmost floor of the incorporated house in Crane Court. But the real delight of the house is its generously panelled rooms, and especially their ceilings…. One of the ceilings has a large circular compartment with rounded, flowered moulding about 3 inches in depth, and the designs in the side compartments are varied in depth according to position, being thickest further from the windows…. Fine door-cases, a great deal of panelling, and valuable old furniture and fittings engage attention in the rooms, littered as they are with printing frames and type and innumerable papers.4 We may imagine that Taylor’s heavy hand-presses were stationed on the ground floor, the composing and press rooms on the floor above, while he and his apprentices lived on the top floor until he moved to his own house in Charterhouse Square in the late 1830s. Richard Jefferies, whose grandfather, John (1784–1868), worked for Taylor, paints a somewhat more realistic portrait of the house as a printing works rather than an architectural curiosity in Amaryllis at the Fair. Smoking was forbidden in the Old House of Flamma because of the worm-eaten beams, the worm-eaten rafters and staircase, the dusty, decayed bookshelves, the dry, rotten planks of the floor, the thin wooden partitions, all ready to catch fire at the mere sight of a match. Also because of the piles of mouldy books which choked the place, and looked fit for nothing but a bonfire, but which were worth thousands of pounds; the plates and lithographic stones, artists’ proofs, divers and sundry Old Masters in a room upstairs, all easily destructible.5 Since Amaryllis at the Fair is largely autobiographical, Jefferies was here probably drawing upon conversations with his grandfather and on visits to Red Lion Court to see his mother’s brother, Frederick Gyde, the engraver son of Taylor’s manager and bookbinder, Charles Gyde.6 Although the Francis era did not strictly begin until 1852, when the partnership with his father began, William Francis was an increasingly important figure in the firm’s direction after 1840, this 114

William Francis (1817–1904). (Courtesy Royal Society of Chemistry) ‘Francis dined with me and we went off to Sydenha in the afternoon. On Thursday last…I was astonished and distressed to learn that Mr. Taylor’s mind had given way. I knew he was very ill but the idea of this dreadful calamity had never crossed my mind. Francis and myself dined that day at the Cheshire Cheese [Fleet Street] and during dinner I asked him whether Mr. Taylor had not a son. He did not answer the question, and after dinner, when we found ourselves alone at his office in Red Lion Court with our cigars quietly burning, he said, “You have asked me a question and I will now answer it. I am Mr. Taylor’s son”.’ (Journals of John Tyndall, 20 june 1852, Royal Institution).


authority being preceded by his apprenticeship with the firm, which dated from 1834. (His Freemanship of the City was granted in 1841.) Only the barest facts are known about his life before the age of seventeen. One obituarist wrote confidentially that Francis was educated at University College School, which is plausible given that Richard Taylor was a College shareholder. However, no ‘William Francis’ appears in the school’s register 7 and the obituarist was probably referring to the later classes he took at University College itself. With more certainty, we know he attended (but not when) the French lycée at St Omer to the south-east of Calais, which before the French Revolution had been a distinguished Jesuit seminary. He left here in 1834, and after a short stay at Krefeld on the Dutch— Westphalian border, he lived for two years in the Thuringian industrial town of Gera. Since Gera, which is to the south of Leipzig, was an important centre for German printing, and Francis was technically apprenticed to Taylor at this time, we may speculate that he received his training as a printer here, as well as perfecting his knowledge of German which was to make him such an excellent translator. He also spent much time ‘in entomological study and pursuits’. He returned to London in 1836, taking practical chemistry classes at University College under Edward Turner and his successor, Thomas Graham, while at the same time acting the proper role of printer’s apprentice in Red Lion Court. It was no doubt at the time of his wife’s death that Taylor told his daughter Sarah of her relationship with William and Rachel Francis. (Rachel was at a Unitarian school at Ilminster in Somerset.) Many years later, after William Francis had confided his paternity to his close friend John Tyndall, Sarah spoke ‘in the most affectionate manner of William’: ‘He is worth them all,’ she said to me after he had left the room. ‘Of course when I first learned his relationship to me it caused me great pain, but now I find that it has proved the greatest blessing of my life. Is it not natural,’ she added, ‘that he should have his father’s business; he has proved himself in every way worthy of it.’8 Francis’s worthiness had first been proved when Taylor sent him to the University of Berlin in October 1839. Accompanied by his nineteenyear-old sister Rachel, for whom he found a governess position with an aristocratic family named Bärensprung who lived next door to the 116

The Francis era

analytical chemist Heinrich Rose, Francis attended the lectures of the renowned microscopist and zoologist, Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (1795–1876), whose researches were chiefly concerned with fungi and the Infusoria. Francis’s letters to Taylor from Berlin, most of them addressed ‘Dear father’, were frequently concerned with Taylor’s failure to write to Rachel. However, despite his determined pleas— ‘sacrifice for once a dinner party or a political party or a Society evening and let us both have a little more news’ (19 January 1840)— Taylor continued to neglect her. Unfortunately, Taylor’s letters to his children do not survive, though it is clear from references to their mother in Francis’s letters that Mrs Francis was still alive. During the summer of 1840 Taylor joined William and Rachel in Berlin, no doubt to discuss the future of the firm’s entry into natural history periodical publishing. ‘I look with joy to your visit,’ wrote Francis continuing disrespectfully: I really long to see you the fat and gouty Common Councilman among us bearded and flink [German, nimble] German students. But pray bring no gout with you here, ‘tis unknown in this country, rather fast a little or you will not be able to ascend the Brocken which is a thousand and a half foot high. (13 June 1840) During his third semester in Berlin (the autumn of 1840) Francis attended the lectures of Heinrich Dove (1803–79) on physics, Gustav Rose (1798–1873) on mineralogy and crystallography, Richard Marchand (1813–50) on the recent progress of organic chemistry, Carl Rammelsberg (1813–99) on ‘the philosophy of chemistry’ and Heinrich Rose (1795–1864) on pharmaceutical chemistry. ‘It was my intention,’ he joked, ‘to [have] heard a course on Logic, but on attending the few first lectures I found it to be (in my opinion) such nonsense and mass of confused terms and ideas that I have given it up as a bad thing fearing lest I might become more stupid than I already am’ (7 November 1840). It seems clear that at this stage, despite his publication of two metallurgical papers, 9 Francis was still dabbling in several sciences. By January 1841, however, he had firmly decided to specialise in chemistry and was wondering whether Taylor would allow him to spend a further year in Germany with the great Justus von Liebig (1803–73), Professor of Chemistry at the tiny 117


William Francis, Admission to the Freedom of the City of London, 6 April 1841. This officially allowed Francis to trade and vote within the City. (Courtesy St Bride Printing Library) Freedoms for William Francis Jr (1886) and Richard Taunton Francis (1904) are also in the St Bride collections. Note his disingenuous claim to be the son of ‘William’ Francis. In Inland Revenue returns made after Taylor’s death, Francis similarly declared that he was ‘a stranger in blood of the Predecessor from whom the said Property is derived’.

University of Giessen. His decision shows that, as far as Francis personally was concerned, his future in the firm of Richard & J. E.Taylor was very uncertain. Giessen as a University has nothing to boast of except its Professor of Chemistry with whom besides my whole time would be taken up. …I have thought that accidents or circumstances might occur which might prevent me from following the [printing] trade I had learnt and were such to happen I might endeavour to obtain a place as lecturer on Chemistry at some of the Hospitals or Institutions in England. (20 January 1841) An additional motive for moving to Giessen was undoubtedly that it was cheaper to take the doctoral degree there than in Berlin. Taylor gave the necessary permission—undoubtedly with the proviso that Francis continue to send translations of important German work in chemistry, physics and biology for the firm’s journals—and following an Easter visit to London, Francis spent the summer semester of 1841 working more seriously in Gustav Rose’s laboratory on the preparation of organic compounds and on a project connected with molybdic acid. 118

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I have but few lectures to attend—one in organic chemistry by H.Rose, one on the formation of the earth by [Emil] Mitscherlich. I have then devoted my attention to Botany and have subscribed to the Berlin Garden whence I receive every week about 50 plants which are examined. From Gustav Rose I have obtained permission to make use of the Royal Mineralogical Cabinet and several mornings I pass there…. [I have been studying] Stephens Anthropology and Philosophy, Kane’s Chemistry, Berzelius’s Animal Chemistry, Lane’s Physics and attended Ehrenberg’s lectures on the organization of the lower chapter of animals. (1 July 1841) Already an Associate of the Linnean Society in 1837, in July 1841 he proudly told his father that he had been elected a Foreign Member of the Hamburg Natural History Society (whose meetings he had presumably occasionally attended when he lived at Gera or in Berlin); and in the same month Thomas Graham elected him an Associate of the newly established Chemical Society in London. Then, in November 1841, following a long vacation walking tour of Italy and Switzerland, he settled in Giessen. His matriculation certificate records him as ‘Sohn des Kaufmanns Francis, William’!10 If it were not for plenty of work I should die of ennui at Giessen, no society, absolutely nothing but work here. I dined with Liebig last Sunday; he is a fine fellow and full of 119


love for his science and I hope to give him much pleasure by my readiness to work, which by the bye is not so pleasant here as in Rose[’s] laboratory, the rooms being filled with various gases &c and we are compelled nearly all day to work over charcoal fires. (undated; November? 1841) The notebook in which Francis recorded Liebig’s chemistry lectures shows that he heard him principally on animal chemistry, or ‘the chemistry of life’ and agricultural chemistry. Liebig’s wellknown interest in fertilisers and the translation of his Organic Chemistry in its Applications to Agriculture and Physiology (1840) by his British pupil, Lyon Playfair, was, said Francis, the subject of a ‘fine’ caricature in which Liebig was portrayed ‘easing himself in a basin held by Playfair’ (26 November 1841). Partly because of the rate of progress in organic chemistry which he had already made before arriving in Giessen, and partly because of his obvious dislike of Giessen itself, through Liebig’s cooperation Francis obtained permission to submit a doctoral thesis at the end of the first semester. His subject was the analysis of the narcotic Cocculus indicus which is extracted from the semina (fruit) of the tropical shrub Anamirta paniculata, the active principle of which is picrotoxin, as the French pharmacist P.F.G. Boullay had shown in 1811. In 1838 Regnault had argued that picrotoxin was free of nitrogen and therefore not a true alkaloid. It was this analysis which Francis challenged, claiming to find between 0.75 and 1.3 per cent of nitrogen in his analyses.11 Although Liebig used the result in the first edition of his Animal Chemistry (1842), Regnault’s earlier analysis was later confirmed by another of Liebig’s pupils. (Picrotoxin is in fact a mixture of picrotoxinin, C H O and picrotin, C H O 12) Perhaps 14 16 6 15 l8 7, Francis learned from this that he was not going to be a successful analytical chemist, for, apart from adding material to the fourth edition of Beckmann’s History of Inventions13 and publishing one or two minor contributions in the Philosophical Magazine and the Chemical Gazette, he did not pursue research any further. The doctorate was conferred on 5 April 1842. ‘Today at dinner and everywhere else,’ he told his father, ladies and gentlemen no longer called me Herrn Francis but Herrn Doctor. On my return home I looked in the glass to see if any change had taken place in my person but I found the 120

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same shaped head fixed upon my broad shoulders as before. I stated in my previous letter that in my opinion a doctor’s title was of no value, but today, when just baked [sic], I found out my mistake, for the girls of which there are presently in Giessen [many] wishing to get a husband, all smiled sweetly at me that I became quite ashamed and confused. (5 April 1842) At the end of April he returned to London with Rachel, who was destined to be a governess in England, ready to help his father ‘stifle all the sixpenny and shilling trash which are stepping into existence’ (2 January 1842). Apart from a holiday in Germany in 1860, he was not to return. Although Francis had become a qualified chemist, his first love was entomology. His first appearance in print had been a signed review of the Herpetologica Mexicana (1834), which appeared in the Philosophical Magazine in 1836 when he was nineteen. At Gera he had become fascinated with Ehrenberg’s work on microscopic organisms, some of which he translated into English for the Philosophical Magazine.14 Very much aware of, and inspired by, the enthusiastic spirit for scientific research which he found in Germany, it was Francis who encouraged Taylor to launch a biological companion journal to the long-established Philosophical Magazine which would, inter alia, carry many translations of the work of German and other continental naturalists. Since the 1820s there had been several unsuccessful attempts to found a journal to cater for the wide, but thinly spread, interest in natural history to be found in the provinces, but the high cost of illustrations made them expensive enterprises for both proprietor and reader, while the achievement of a balance between the technical language of the specialist and the needs of ordinary interested nature-lovers proved particularly difficult to achieve. Typical were the many short-lived enterprises of William Jackson Hooker (1785–1865), the Regius Professor of Botany at Glasgow who became Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in 1841: Exotic Flora (3 vols, 1823–7), Botanical Miscellany (1830–3), Journal of Botany (1834–42), Companion to the Botanical Magazine (1835–6) and the London Journal of Botany and Kew Gardens Miscellany (1849–57). Most of the journals were simply lists recording the characteristics of species at Kew, filled out with handsome handcoloured plates, the latter being the especial attraction of the Botanical Magazine which William Curtis had founded in 1787 and which the Hookers, father and son, edited and wrote for from 1827 until 1904. 121


There were also numerous attempts to capture the ‘gardening market’, the most important and successful of which was by the arbiter of Georgian taste, John Claudius Loudon (1783–1843), with the Gardener’s Magazine (1826–44).15 In 1828, Loudon, expanding on the almost exclusive concentration of commercial journals on descriptive botany and horticulture, founded with Longman and his partners an important bi-monthly journal called the Magazine of Natural History and Journal of Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy, Geology and Meteorology. Taylor would not have failed to notice that the response of Loudon’s readership was enthusiastic, Longman’s initial print run being 2000 copies. By 1834, with the help of an assistant, Loudon’s journal became a monthly at a reduced price and aimed at a less knowledgeable readership. However, with Loudon’s attention drawn by an increasing number of architectural projects, his regular contributors beginning to tire, and rivals appearing, sales of the journal began to flag. In 1837 Loudon appointed the geologist and museum naturalist Edward Charlesworth (1813–93) as editor to try to save the journal and sold it to him for £40 the following year. By then it was too late, for many of Loudon’s contributors had withdrawn to support the Edinburgh-based bimonthly Magazine of Zoology and Botany which the wealthy landowner and naturalist, Sir William Jardine (1800–74) had founded and subsidised since 1836. As Charlesworth tartly noted, echoing the sentiments Taylor was to express to the Select Committee on Postage, The circulation of the English scientific journals is so limited, that, taken in the aggregate, the sum realised by their sale falls short of the actual cost of printing and publishing; a result consequent upon the multiplicity, and perhaps still more upon the very general establishment of museums and public libraries; these institutions affording parties the means of consulting the pages of periodicals, without being obliged to have recourse to individual subscriptions.16 The solution to Charlesworth’s and Taylor’s problem—differential subscription rates for libraries and individuals—was not exercised in the nineteenth century by any commercial publisher. In 1839, in the middle of a dispute over fossils with Charles Lyell and Neville Wood (the editor of another journal called the Naturalist), Charlesworth decided to emigrate and to sell his journal to Taylor for 122

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£100. On hearing of the finalisation of the sale in May 1840, Francis wrote from Berlin: I was not at all astonished at the death of Charlesworth’s Journal, it had been dying for some time, but I little thought you would have bought the copyright. Tis however if it cost but a trifle better that you did as it will put stop to all opposition in London and should you only acquire a hundred subscribers it would make the prospect of receiving more papers and of obtaining more advertisements. (13 June 1840) Encouraged by Francis’s German experience and contacts, and by the increasing difficulty of finding room in the Philosophical Magazine for contributions on physics, chemistry and biology, Taylor had already moved into natural history publishing in 1837. In that year Jardine, finding his Magazine a financial failure (a failure exacerbated by his decision to pay contributors as if it were a literary review), together with his co-editors George Johnston (1797–1855), a surgeon and naturalist of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and John Prideaux Selby (1788–1867), a Northumberland naturalist, decided on the advice of William Hooker to offer the ownership and a co-editorship to Richard Taylor. At the same time Hooker offered Taylor his failing Companion to the Botanical Magazine. This was the origin of the Annals of Natural History, which Jardine, Selby, Johnston, Hooker and Taylor brought out for the first time in March 1838 as a continuation of the Magazine of Zoology and Botany and the Companion. With the further purchase of Charlesworth’s Magazine two years later, Taylor’s Annals and Magazine of Natural History including Zoology, Botany and Geology—to give it its full title—became the leading journal of biology in Great Britain, a position it was to retain until the turn of the century. 17 Jardine’s Magazine, despite its title, had tended to specialise in zoology, which was the principal research interest of its editors. However, it established the tone of Taylor’s Annals: original essays, reviews of English and foreign books and journals, miscellaneous biological ‘intelligence’, proceedings of scientific societies in London, Edinburgh and elsewhere, and a number of engravings, some of which were hand-coloured. In a long and detailed letter to Jardine, Taylor carefully outlined their joint editorial responsibilities. 123


I have mentioned the Title—Annals of Natural History; (for it is to include Geology, as well as Zoology and Botany, as I can obtain valuable assistance in that department:—Sir W.Hooker has spoken to Mr Lyell) and I think it should be made to appear as a continuation or modification of your Magazine, and of Sir W.Hooker’s Companion &c. combined…. With regard to the conduct of the Zoological Department, and indeed of the other departments, it did not strike me that any difficulty would arise in adjusting our shares of responsibility…. Whatever might be sent by yourself & your co-operators (who I am glad to learn are disposed to assist), or by Sir W. Hooker in his department, would be inserted, of course, in such quantities as our space in each number wd admit; but though I should in all doubtful cases be glad to avail myself of the opinion of such able advisers, yet I am likely also to receive contributions from friends here of such undoubted eminence, that you wd not think it necessary that I should forward them to you. (I mention this in consequence of what is said in your letter about the ‘entire power of rejection’.) Sometimes they might be brought with a pressing request for immediate insertion, so as to preclude delay. All litigious & trifling matter I should be careful to reject; &, as I have said before, to avail myself of the opportunity of consulting in every doubtful case & of your advice at all times as to the general conduct of the work. I have already in my hands the principal Foreign Journals, & access here to Foreign Transactions & Memoirs, & have made great progress in arrangements for Translations & Foreign Correspondence, with a view to give early information as to what is done abroad.18 This letter makes it clear that Taylor, as the financial backer of the Annals, was determined to have overall control of the journal. For example, despite Jardine’s disapproval, Taylor was to insist on Geology—or rather ‘Fossil Zoology and Botany’ (palaeontology)— being included in the sub-title in order to draw a geological readership and so attract contributions from both Lyell and Richard Owen. However, it was William Francis who most helped Taylor during the first months of publication. Learning this, and slightly puzzled, Jardine raised the matter with Taylor, who replied: You are rightly informed that I avail myself of the assistance of Mr Francis. It is obvious that the continual labour & 124

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attention requisite for a monthly journal renders necessary the employment of some one who can make it his regular business, especially where Foreign Journals &c have to be looked over, & translations made from them. This is his department, as my assistant: but he always acts under my direction, & with the aid of such advice as I receive from my friends & colleagues. For what is obtained from foreign sources, we have been much dependent upon him; & as he knows & occasionally corresponds with Ehrenberg, Wiegmann, Link, Burmeister, Schleiden in Germany, & others in Holland, Belgium & France, I find his services very useful & likely to contribute to the value of the Annals. Without some such help, I could not do justice to the work.19 Four months later, when Francis left for Berlin, Taylor deliberately remarked to Jardine that Francis ‘will be able to do something for us in the way of foreign communications’ (26 September 1839). Indeed, Francis was not idle. Despite his studies, in one month alone he sent translations of papers by von Buch, Schleiden, Meyer and Phillipi (31 July 1840). To save on costs, illustrative matter, of which Jardine and his northern colleagues wanted more, had to be kept to a strict quota of two plates per issue; though because of the abundance of material, Taylor did agree to Jardine’s suggestion that the index to each semi-annual volume should appear as a supplementary issue containing some fifteen to twenty plates, for an additional 2s. 6d. In this way each volume would contain twenty-five to thirty plates, to the satisfaction of writers and readers. Moreover, by engraving on steel rather than copper, more impressions than were required for the journal could be made, the extra copies being available for other publications at a later date. The correspondence between Jardine, Johnston and Selby shows that, at first, the northern editors were not at all pleased with the way their journal had passed into southern hands. ‘The Annals do not improve,’ thought Johnston, ‘and taken all in all is [sic] inferior to the old series, when we had the assistance neither of the Glaswegians [i.e., Hooker] nor of the Londoners. I again tell you our Magazine [sic] is stupid and must go down; there is no life nor spirit in the thing.’20 Such disloyalty among Taylor’s editorial colleagues came to a head at the end of 1839 when Hooker withdrew on the grounds that he was not being paid21—though it rapidly became clear that this was a pretext to enable him to free himself to launch a new journal, the Journal of 125


Botany. Angered by Hooker’s disloyalty and self-interest, Taylor refused to settle accounts with him and withheld the extremely generous twentyfive complimentary copies of the Annals which Hooker normally received. Although Hooker was replaced by David Don (1800–41), the Professor of Botany at King’s College, London, the coverage of botany in the Annals was to remain weak and this effectively determined its bias towards zoology. From 1842, following Don’s death, the number of editors was brought up to six with the appointment of Charles C.Babington (1808–95), a Cambridge botanist, and John H. Balfour (1808–84), Professor of Botany at Glasgow. In 1862 Babington admitted to Francis that the journal had never been successful in reviewing the field of botany.22 Similarly, although Taylor had insisted on embracing geology, in practice the journal rarely included any. By the 1870s, the Annals was exclusively devoted to zoology and taxonomic questions. As David Allen has commented, what Taylor appeared to have shown was that a natural history journal could only be viable commercially if it was addressed to the entire natural history community. 23 However, in 1841 the entomologist, Edward Newman (1801–76), in partnership with the printer and botanist, George Luxford, brought out the monthly Phytologist as a companion to the Entomologist he had launched the year before; each magazine catered for a separate minority audience. Newman had spotted that the growth of Victorian interest in natural history had increased the size of sub-communities sufficiently to make specialist periodicals viable commercially. In his view, the purchasers of Taylor’s Annals were being forced to pay ‘twothirds of their subscription exclusively for the benefit of others’. 24 In January 1843 he proved his point by establishing the Zoologist (into which the Entomologist was incorporated). It was an outstanding success, perhaps because nothing was refereed. In his editorials, Newman delighted in scoring points against the Annals for its ‘conservative dullness’, ‘prescriptive technicalities and chartered obscurities’. 25 In practice, there was now room for both types of commercial journal: Newman’s popular kind in which contributors determined and made ‘the style and character’, and Taylor’s more staid academic kind that catered for the growing professional scientific group. Their rivalry may well have stimulated Francis, who was aware of the Annals’s weak coverage of botany, to produce the Botanic Gazette, A Journal for the Progress of British Botany and the Contemporary 126

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Literature of the Science in 1849 as a more specialised version of Newman’s Phytologist. Unfortunately, Arthur Henfrey (1819–59), the editor and Lecturer in Botany at St George’s Hospital, was more interested in plant physiology and experimental botany than in the descriptive and taxonomic botany of his potential readership. In consequence, sales were disappointing; the print run which began with 550 copies soon nose-dived to 200 copies, and after three volumes the experiment was abandoned in 1851. From 1840, the new amalgamated Annals and Magazine of Natural History, in its familiar blue covers which remained unaltered until 1952, were an overall success—partly due to Francis’s regular translations of continental biology and partly because the editors chose material which encouraged and stimulated discussion and controversy. By 1842 the Italian ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte could tell Jardine enthusiastically that the Annals ‘became every day more indispensable to the naturalist’,26 while Charles Darwin, who began to contribute articles in 1844, annotated each issue and incorporated much of its material into such works as Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. 27 By using cheaper London engravers than Jardine had employed for his Magazine, such as J.D.C.Sowerby, Taylor kept the monthly costs of production down to between £25 and £30. At 2s. 6d. a copy, Taylor needed to sell between 200 and 240 copies to break even. In practice, with an unaltered print run of 500 copies throughout the century, and with the falling costs of paper, postage and advertisement duty, the Annals probably netted the firm between £25 and £40 profit per month, or £300 to £450 per annum.28 The similar profitability of the Philosophical Magazine allowed Taylor to launch the speculative translations he included in his Scientific Memoirs and to respond to the growing interest in chemistry which, as we have seen, led to the Dublin connection with the Philosophical Magazine in 1840. Although Darwin was an avid reader of the Annals29 the editors did not receive his Origin of Species kindly. ‘Have you seen Wollaston’s attack in the Annals?’ Darwin asked Joseph Dalton Hooker in February 1860. ‘The stones are beginning to fly. But Theology has more to do with [it] than Science.’30 For his part the entomologist, Thomas V.Wollaston (1821–78), urged that it was impossible to give any other origin to the present order of nature than a divine one. And there the matter stopped, for there was no further explicit discussion 127


of evolution, nor any review of Darwin’s Descent of Man in 1871. This was despite the fact that Alfred Russel Wallace’s speculative but seminal paper ‘On the Law that has regulated the introduction of new species’, which inspired Charles Lyell to open a notebook on the species question, had appeared openly in the Annals in 1855.31 Cost of Producing No. 16 (May 1839) Annals of Natural History

The ostracism of Darwin was later justified by Francis in the jubilee edition of the Annals in 1887: 128

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It may be remarked, perhaps, that since the publication of the late Charles Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ and other works, which have produced a greater effect upon human thought, not only in Natural History, but in most varied departments, than any thing published since the days of Newton and Linnaeus, the Editors of the ‘Annals’ have taken a position towards the new doctrine neither opposed, or at least, more or less ‘agnostic’ to use the phrase by which Mr Darwin himself characterized his position with regard to religious matters. This however, has been without prejudice to a sincere admiration of the character and attainments of the man…. It must be recollected that some of the best systematic work done in this country during the last fifty years came from the same hand.32 On the other hand, despite editorial reluctance to confront Darwinism one way or the other, related controversy did often break out. For example, in the 1860s the Scots-Canadian geologist J.W.Dawson claimed that the Eozöon Canadense (or Dawn Animal of Canada) which had been discovered in Canadian-Laurentian limestones, was definitely of organic origin, despite contemporary geological opinion that pre-Cambrian metamorphic rocks were azoic, or lifeless. Dawson’s identification of the eozöon with the microscopic Foraminifera was apparently confirmed by the English naturalist W.B.Carpenter, but challenged by two chemists and mineralogists at Queen’s College, Galway, William King and Thomas H.Rowney. The latter argued that the supposed fossil organism was a mineralogical artifact. This part of the controversy spilled over into the Annals in 1874 when H.J.Carter, a Royal naval surgeon and marine biologist, claimed that the eozöon ‘bore less resemblance to a foraminifer than the legs of a table did to those of a quadruped’.33 Carter’s contribution was immediately challenged by Carpenter, who, in turn, was rechallenged by King and Rowney. Carpenter eventually withdrew, commenting that since ‘I should now no more think of attempting to convince the Galway “infallibles” than of trying to convert the Pope, I leave them in triumphant possession of the field’.34 Dawson then took up the cudgels in a best-seller, Life’s Dawn on Earth (1875) in order to combat Darwin’s use of eozöon in the fourth edition of Origin of Species (1866) as evidence of the long duration of life on earth and of the progression of life from simple to more complex forms. In Dawson’s view, eozöon was evidence for the permanence of species 129


and for God’s continued benevolence. In a long and rigorous review of Dawson’s book in the Annals, King and Rowney returned to their by now impressive proof of the mineral nature of eozöon, which was supported by much recent German research, and berated Dawson for reintroducing natural theology into scientific discourse. Francis refused to publish some of Dawson’s letters, he told Carpenter, because they were ‘merely abuse’.35 In Berlin Francis had met a young London chemist named Henry Croft. Together, as we have seen, they had begun a useful monthly digest of continental chemistry for the Philosophical Magazine, for which they were paid £2 a sheet. Finding that they had far more copy than Taylor could print—for until Charles Watts launched the Chemist in 1840, the Philosophical Magazine was more or less the only outlet for chemical papers in Britain—Francis and Croft gained Taylor’s support to launch the fortnightly Chemical Gazette, or, Journal of Practical Chemistry on all its Applications to Pharmacy, Arts and Manufactures in 1842. Modelled closely on the Philosophical Magazine, the Chemical Gazette consisted of translations, reports and reviews, and performed an important function in the chemical community before the Chemical Society (founded 1841) developed its own regular publications. Croft obtained the Chair of Chemistry at the University of Toronto in 1842, leaving Francis as sole editor. By 1858, however, his heavy editorial commitments on the Philosophical Magazine and the Annals, together with the death of his father, forced Francis to sell the copyright to the energetic William Crookes (1832–1919). The latter transformed it into the weekly Chemical News (1859–1932). Although sales of the Gazette had fallen to a plateau of about 300 copies by the 1850s, it is hard to see why Francis should have sold the copyright without retaining the printing contract, but Crookes took the Chemical News to another printer after the first issue. It suggests that in 1859 Francis did not have the press capacity to print a weekly journal in addition to the firm’s probably more profitable newspaper contracts with the Weekly Dispatch and other papers. In 1840 the Chemist, which was owned by the publisher Robert Hastings, was sued by Taylor for piracy and breach of copyright. In its second issue the Chemist had printed, word for word, a number of chemical papers from the Philosophical Magazine, including translations from the French and German for which Taylor had, of course, paid. Since the Chemist sold for only 6d. a month compared with the Philosophical Magazine’s 2s. 6d. this piracy was endangering 130

The Francis era Sales of Chemical Gazette 1842–48

the loyalty of the Philosophical Magazine’s chemical readers. In an abject apology, Hastings explained that he had known nothing of the plagiary and that he had withdrawn all the offending copies as soon as the injunction had been delivered. It is interesting to note that Taylor’s solicitor evidently advised him that in future he should obtain a clear mandate of copyright from his authors. Accordingly, Taylor drafted the following statement for contributors to sign: …to clothe the proprietors with a clear legal title and protect the copyright on behalf of themselves without subjecting the authors to annoyance it seems to be requisite in the present state of the law that some written authority should be given by the author to the publishers. With this in view the proprietors, subject to you, if you see no objection, that the form at foot may be filled up and signed by the author and have written with the proof to the editors. It would be distinctly understood that the proprietors never intend to set up any power against the author to prevent his using his articles in any way he may think fit…. I hereby assign to Mr. R.Taylor my copyright in the article….36 Unfortunately, there is no surviving evidence that either Taylor or Francis asked authors to sign such a declaration in the nineteenth 131


century; indeed, the firm did not make it mandatory until the 1970s. On the other hand, the Philosophical Magazine does not seem to have been troubled again by piracy. In 1864, when Crookes printed an essay in Chemical News which was also appearing in that month’s Philosophical Magazine because the author had submitted the article to both journals without telling the respective editors, a simple apology sufficed.37 The Annals began its second renumbered series in 1848, having the year before introduced a poem by Taylor’s father on the verso of the title page which was to remain a distinctive feature of the journal until 1967. Although the new series opened with an explicit acknowledgement to the services of Francis ‘from the commencement’, despite Jardine’s retirement in 1850, Francis was not publicly admitted to the masthead of editors until 1859, the admission having been effected in the Philosophical Magazine eight years previously. Taylor had remained at the peak of his intellectual powers until 1852—in 1851, for example, he was quoting from documents of the reign of Edward III to establish the presence of a royal menagerie in London in 136438—but in this year he went into a serious mental decline which precipitated a crisis for the firm. As we have seen, Taylor’s concern had always been a family business. However, the partnership with his nephew John Edward Taylor, which had been started in May 1837, had not proved successful. Although the firm remained titled ‘Richard and John E.Taylor’ until 1851, it seems that John Edward did not continue the option on the partnership after the agreed seven years expired in 1844.39 Taylor’s failure to alter the title of the firm then and there was to cause trouble with his brothers John and Edward in May 1851 when he revealed his intention of taking his illegitimate son into partnership. Although he had been nothing more than a sleeping partner since 1844 and had founded his own printing house, John Edward, supported by his distinguished father, demanded compensation for the dissolution of the partnership. Countering this, Richard Taylor held him to a previous undertaking to carry an unexplained loss he had caused the firm. By the spring of 1851 this family quarrel had reached its head and Taylor’s lawyer advised him not to broach the possibility of taking Francis into partnership until tempers had cooled. The dispute dragged on until May 1852 when John Edward’s solicitors agreed on a settlement in favour of Richard Taylor of £350 if he dropped all further claims against his nephew. At this point Taylor’s mind snapped and he suffered a severe nervous 132

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breakdown. The final details of the compensation were therefore agreed upon by Francis who, legally or not, was forced to take on the complete management of the firm. The establishment of a legal partnership with his son now became a matter of urgency, though rendered difficult by Taylor’s mental incapacity and the threat of scandal if Francis’s blood relationship became public. However, armed with powers of attorney, Sarah Taylor, together with William Francis, instructed the firm’s solicitor to proceed. Accordingly, on 24 May 1852 the firm became ‘Taylor & Francis’ and this title duly appeared on the June imprints of the Philosophical Magazine and the Annals. Matters now took a bizarre turn. Edward Taylor, in consort with his brother, John, furious with Richard Taylor’s treatment of John Edward, and aware of Francis’s real relationship with Richard, determined to prove their brother mad. The new partnership could then be declared null and void. Early in June 1852, two specialists in lunacy, Drs Thomas Mayo and Henry Monro (the author of Remarks upon Insanity (1851) and chief physician to the Bethlehem Hospital) demanded to see Taylor, whom Francis and Sarah Taylor had evidently sent to a private asylum at Sydenham. Fearing the effect that this visit would have upon their father’s sanity, Francis, upon Sarah’s appeal, instructed his solicitor to persuade Edward Taylor to call off the visit. The result is recorded in unpunctuated lawyer’s prose: June 9 [1852] Attending Mr Edward Taylor accordingly long interview with him and his nephew Mr John Edward Taylor when I pointed out to them the injurious effect likely to be produced by a visit from Dr Monro and requested that they would delay for a short time any proceedings they might contemplate as there was reason to hope that by rest quiet and care Mr R.Taylor might recover when they stated that they were acting under advice & considered it their duty to sue for a Commission of Lunacy as a preliminary to which the visit was to be made they had however no particular wish that Dr Munro should go his name only having been suggested by Dr Mayo and they had not made any appointment nor were they aware of the proposed meeting with respect to which they could not interfere without consulting the elder brother Mr John Taylor who was not in Town.40 133


Accordingly, Francis reluctantly agreed that Mayo, but not Monro, should be allowed to speak with his father. Fortunately, by mid-July Taylor had sufficiently recovered his wits to be able to sign for the sale or purchase (it is not clear which) of some mining shares in John’s company, though his ability to deal with printing affairs was still causing anxiety a year later. Francis’s close friend at this period, John Tyndall, who was aware of the machinations of Taylor’s brothers, frequently visited Richard Taylor at the Sydenham private asylum in the company of Francis and Sarah Taylor. On the 5 January 1853, for example, Tyndall found him ‘well and cheerful. Had a long walk and much pleasant conversation—with a trifling exception I was wholly unable to notice that anything had been amiss with him.’41 Earlier he had advised Francis to studiously avoid all the old topics of vexation and still avoid them so as not to arouse his curiosity. He must be treated I imagine on these subjects with apparent frankness for if he gets the idea that you are keeping matters secret, his own imagination will do the rest. Given care and the quiet of Sydenham will I doubt not eventually make his cure complete.42 In September 1853 Francis and Sarah Taylor moved to Alton Lodge, a house in Richmond where they could look after their father. (Tyndall moved into Francis’s old lodgings in London.) As Tyndall’s journal report for November 1853 shows, Taylor had made a remarkable recovery: Went to Richmond and dined with Mr Taylor. I was glad to see the fine old man, and he appeared delighted to see me. We had a long conversation after dinner. It is really astonishing the quantity of knowledge he has amassed, and the width of his memories. He appears to know every body and every thing.43 Here, in Richmond, cared for by Sarah, and surrounded by his books, Taylor ‘gave himself up to Ovid, Virgil, and his old friends Paulus Manutius, Justus Lipsius, Ochinus, Fracastorius, &c.’44 However, in November 1858 he caught bronchitis and began to spit blood. His death a few weeks later on 1 December was movingly recorded in Sarah’s diary. My dear father died, he suffered but a short time with Bronchitis; he died in my arms, the best, the kindest, the most endearing of men. God help me that I maybe fit to 134

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meet him after death. [Added 24 June 1860] He died about five in the afternoon; between 12 and 1 o’clock I read some hymns of his Father’s and of Mrs Barbauld’s to him. After them he asked me to read [Milton’s] Lycidas which he enjoyed as much as ever. I think some suspicion that his last hours were come, was upon him. Ah! my dear father many months have gone since I lost you, how lonely and sad it is without you; oh may I be with you once again and may we never, never part!45 He was buried not in Richmond but in the churchyard of the adjacent Parish Church of St Peter’s, Petersham, close to the Thames, his headstone bearing the familiar burning lamp with the motto ‘Alere Flammam’. The lamp has vanished today after nearly a century and a half. It was Sarah who destroyed most of Taylor’s family papers. From her remarks to Tyndall it is clear that she could cope with illegitimacy and that she remained extremely fond of her step-family. What must have distressed her, however, was her mother’s illness and how it had affected her father and his relationship with her uncle John and his family, as well as her own marriageability. By his will, dated 6 August 1851, which was formulated not to reveal his relationship with Francis, Taylor appointed Francis, and his long-serving printing managers Charles Gyde and William Askham, as trustees of his estate which provided £6,000 for Sarah Taylor, who retained the ownership of the Red Lion Court and Robin Hood Court premises (she was to rent them to Francis), and another £2,000 for Rachel Francis while she remained unmarried. (She was to remain a spinster.) Frances Francis had already died in 1854, though £30 per annum had been intended for her. Following their deaths in the 1860s, Gyde and Askham were replaced as trustees by Francis’s friend, the chemist Edmund Atkinson. In addition to the Fleet Street property, and leases on four houses in New Street Square, Taylor owned houses in Hastings, and shares in railway and mining companies. The total estate was valued at less than £30,000. Intriguingly, both William and Rachel Francis signed declarations that they ‘were strangers in blood of the Predecessor from whom the said Property’ was derived when they claimed their annuities from the estate. Still in his early forties, and living with Sarah Taylor at Alton Lodge, Richmond, Francis now had sole management of the firm, which retained its premier position as the leading printer for scientific work. In 1861 he was employing fifty-two men and 135


twentyone boys. Respected by the London scientific community, and the personal friend of many of ‘the young guard of science’ such as Tyndall, Huxley, Hooker and William Thomson—many of whom he advised on the management of their investments—Francis was well placed to ensure that the firm’s two principal scientific journals, the Philosophical Magazine and the Annals, remained profitable. In a sense, they remained immune to any challenges by other commercial enterprises as long as Francis bowed with the wind which was leading to the fragmentation of scientific culture and pushing the journals in the direction of specialising in physics and zoology. However, the firm’s virtual monopoly of publications for the scientific societies was less easy, indeed impossible, to maintain. That learned societies were becoming more cost-conscious in the second half of the nineteenth century is illustrated by the Royal Society. In 1863, George Stokes, the Society’s Secretary, asked Francis to compute the average cost of authors’ corrections to their Philosophical Transactions articles with a view to charging those authors who exceeded it. Francis made a detailed analysis of the printing costs of twenty-three papers in Part I of the 1863 volume and suggested that 15s. would be a fair sum to allow for each sheet (i.e. sixteen pages). This attempt to make their contributors more meticulous evidently did not prove sufficient for, as we have seen, fourteen years later Taylor & Francis lost the contract. On the other hand, science was generating opportunities for new kinds of journal which would aid in communication, and these were opportunities Francis was quick to exploit. The explosion of information generated by the scientific journals of learned societies from all over the world, as well as the proliferation of periodicals originated by commercial publishers inevitably created complaints about the amount of literature to be read—complaints that were to be found quite early in the nineteenth century. One solution adopted by Thomas Thomson in the Annals of Philosophy had been to issue each January a long résumé of the previous year’s progress in the physical and natural sciences. This solution was pursued in a more elaborate form by Jons Berzelius, whose annual reports to the Swedish Academy of Science were translated into German each year between 1822 and 1850. By then, such an overview had become too onerous an undertaking for one person, and Berzelius’s Jahresbericht was continued in Germany by a team of chemical, physical and mineralogical editors. In 1849 136

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Liebig’s pupil A.W.Hofmann, who was then teaching in London, prepared an English translation of the Jahresbericht, but sales were evidently low, and the publisher, Taylor & Walton, did not continue the translations. Nevertheless, the need for abstracts was still there, but in view of the costs involved it was something which could be better organised by learned societies rather than commercial firms, as experiments by the Chemical and Zoological Societies show. Although the Chemical Society’s publications had passed into the hands of Harrison & Sons, Taylor & Francis was to be closely involved in the attempts to provide abstracts services for zoologists, physicists and geologists. Since the 1820s the firm had been printers for the specialist botanical and zoological catalogues which were issued by the British Museum, as well as for much of the printed labelling of the museum’s specimens. In this way Richard Taylor had been brought into contact with John Edward Gray (1800–75), the Assistant, and then full, Keeper of Zoology at the Museum from 1824 until his death. Francis made Gray a co-editor of the Annals in 1858 in place of Taylor. This relationship was continued with Gray’s successor, Albert Günther (1830–1914), who was made an editor in 1875, having arrived at the Museum from Germany in 1857 to be befriended by the German-speaking Francis. In 1864, Günther suggested that the Annals should publish an annual summary of zoological literature in the manner of Wiegmann’s Archiv für Naturgeschichte. Sensing that the material available might quickly engulf the Annals, Francis took Günther’s proposal to the publisher and naturalist, John van Voorst, many of whose books were printed by Taylor & Francis. Günther duly signed an agreement with van Voorst in February 1865, and, together with the help of the Cambridge ornithologist Alfred Newton, edited the first of the famous series of annual volumes of the Zoological Record in the same year. Francis, who had printed the work, and van Voorst gave a dinner for Günther at the British Association meeting in Birmingham the same year—no doubt in the hope that such publicity might lead the Association to underwrite the production costs in future years. In fact, although the Record was abandoned by van Voorst as unprofitable in 1871, it was rescued by the formation of a Zoological Record Association by the British Association, whose members pledged subscriptions to support the printing. The long-term solution was, of course, for a 137


scientific society to underwrite the production. In 1887 the Record was duly taken over by the Zoological Society, with Taylor & Francis remaining its printers until it passed into the care of the Royal Society’s International Catalogue of Scientific Literature in 1905. 46 The firm’s connections with the physics community were similarly indebted to Francis’s contacts. The siphoning off of papers on biology and chemistry from the Philosophical Magazine into the Annals and the Chemical Gazette inevitably left the former journal with a pool of papers on mathematical and experimental physics—a subject area which was undergoing consolidation and expansion in the 1850s. Francis encouraged many of the young friends he had made in Germany, such as Tyndall, Thomas Archer Hirst, Atkinson, George Carey Foster and Frederick Guthrie to translate papers on contemporary French and German physics. This often worked to the advantage of these translators; for example, as their extensive correspondence shows, Tyndall’s career owed much to Francis, who helped to launch him as a public figure in London science. The translations of German physicists, such as Rudolf Clausius and Hermann Helmholtz on thermodynamics, which appeared in the Philosophical Magazine during the 1850s, attracted in turn contributions from British physicists such as William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) and J.C. Maxwell.47 Since Faraday had already chosen to use the Philosophical Magazine to announce findings in the field of electricity and magnetism, the journal helped to define a separate discipline of physics organised around the themes of thermodynamics, the kinetic theory of gases, the electromagnetic theory of light and their associated experimental phenomena. This bias was reinforced by the appointment of Tyndall as a co-editor from 1854 to 1863 and of Thomson from 1871. Francis, Atkinson and Guthrie were members of the convivial ‘B Club’, named after Section B, the Chemical Section at the annual meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Although trained chemists, both Atkinson and Guthrie found their careers moving in the direction of experimental physics. Atkinson became Professor of Experimental Science at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, where he executed a translation of Ganot’s Eléments de physique which proved one of the most popular and enduring of Victorian physics textbooks. (Several of his Sandhurst colleagues also became friends of Francis’s and translators, referees and contributors to the firm’s journals.) Guthrie, after a varied 138

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career, became Professor of Physics at the reconstituted Royal College of Science at South Kensington in 1872, and published a Practical Physics in 1877. In 1874 both Atkinson and Guthrie were leading forces in the establishment of the Physical Society. Not surprisingly, Francis was invited to join the new Society, and Taylor & Francis duly became the printers of the Society’s Proceedings, its later Science Abstracts and its reprints of the collected Scientific Papers of Sir Charles Wheatstone (1879) and of James Prescott Joule (2 vols, 1884–7). There were also serious discussions concerning translations of important papers as Physical Memoirs, though only one volume was ever issued in 1890. This included van der Waals important Leiden thesis, Continuity of the Liquid and Gaseous States. Although by the 1860s the Annals had ceased to print geological articles (nevertheless retaining ‘geology’ in its sub-title), Taylor & Francis maintained its close connection with the subject by printing for the Geological Society. In 1873, led by William Whitaker (1836–1925), and using the Zoological Record as model and precedent, several geologists persuaded the British Association to underwrite an annual review of the subject. Co-edited by Francis himself, Whitaker duly launched the Geological Record. An Account of Works on Geology, Mineralogy and Palaeontology during the Year 1874 in 1875. However, despite the prestigious support of Darwin, Lyell, Sorby, Bonney and Bowerbank, and the appointment of additional editors to help with the gruelling task of compilation, the Record collapsed in 1889, having succeeded in covering the literature up to only 1884. By then, however, the Geological Society had organised its own service, rendering a commercial venture unnecessary. Like most chemists in the 1840s—one thinks of Liebig, Hofmann, Frankland, Warington and Crookes—Francis became fascinated by the new art and science of photography and made space for it in the Chemical Gazette. At the Chemical Society’s Jubilee celebrations in 1891, for example, he exhibited one of the earliest coloured daguerrotypes of himself made by Robert Warington. The vogue for photography inevitably led to the establishment of photographic societies and periodicals, one of the earliest of which was the Liverpool Photographic Society (founded 1853), whose Journal was first produced by William Crookes in January 1854. However, three months before the establishment of the Liverpool Society, in January 1853, the artist Charles Eastlake 139


founded the Photographic Society of London. Since Francis’s friend, the botanist and translator Arthur Henfrey (1819–59) was appointed the editor of the Society’s Journal, it is hardly surprising that the Journal of the Photographic Society (from 1859, the Photographic Journal) was printed by Taylor & Francis. With a print run of 2500 copies initially, reducing to 2000 by 1861, it was one of the firm’s largest publications at this time—the Philosophical Magazine and the Annals had print runs of only 550 and 400 copies respectively in the 1860s. However, by 1875 sales had nagged to only 500 copies, and two years later the printing contract passed to Harrison, who immediately increased the journal’s revenue by expanding its advertising considerably. 48 Two other specialist fields cultivated by Taylor & Francis were astronomy and ornithology. In April 1877 the firm first printed the Observatory, a monthly review of astronomy under the editorship of a future Astronomer Royal, W.H.M.Christie. This was the first of the firm’s journals to be regularly illustrated with photographs. The contract was maintained until 1946, though unlike ornithology, the connection with astronomy never seems to have led to the publication of astronomical books. In 1858, Newton and the newly appointed Secretary of the Zoological Society, Philip Sclater (1829–1913), who was another keen ornithologist, established a British Ornithologist’s Union whose principal purpose was to publish a special magazine for bird lovers. Since the production of the Zoological Society’s Proceedings had brought him into contact with Francis, who turned out to share an interest in birds, it was again inevitable that the Ibis: A Magazine of General Ornithology should be printed by Taylor & Francis. The first issue appeared under Sclater’s editorship in 1859. The contract with Ibis, which was maintained until 1973, also had the important consequence that the firm began to specialise in the printing of lavishly illustrated ‘bird books’, most notably the comprehensive and authoritative studies by John Gould (1840–81), including his The Birds of Europe (1832–7), of Australia (1840–8), with a Supplement (1851–69), of Asia (1850–80), and of Great Britain (1862–73), as well as the Birds of Europe by R.B. Sharpe and H.E.Dresser. (In this connection, it is interesting to note that it was Richard Taylor who was asked to introduce the American bird illustrator, J.J.Audubon, to the Linnean Society in 1826. 49) Taylor & Francis’s expert printing of such ornithological works 140

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no doubt helped the firm to gain the printing contract from the Secretary of State for India for the protracted series of volumes collectively entitled Fauna of British India including Ceylon and Burma. In September 1881 Sclater presented a Memorial signed by Darwin, Hooker, Huxley and other leading zoologists to the Secretary of State for India which urged the preparation and publication of a series of handbooks of Indian zoology. Upon the sanction of the India Office being given in 1883, the overall editorship was entrusted to the former Superintendent of the Geological Survey of India, W.T.Blanford (1832–1905), who saw the first part of the first volume on Mammalia through the press in the summer of 1888. Before his death Blanford had commissioned and managed thirteen volumes. The series has an exceedingly complex bibliography, partly due to its multi-authorial and edited character, and partly due to its appearance over a period of sixty years. For example, although the first volume of Reptilia and Batrachia appeared in 1890, the second volume on this class did not appear until 1931.50 Other regular book contracts came to Francis through his friendship with van Voorst, who published such texts as Edward Frankland’s Lecture Notes for Chemical Students (1866), in which graphic formulae were used extensively for the first time, and George Lunge’s Gas Analysis (1885). University College, London, and the University of London itself remained very good customers for the setting of large numbers of examination papers and were soon joined by other examining bodies, such as the Royal College of Surgeons, the Conjoint Examining Board of the Royal College of Surgeons and Physicians, Guy’s Hospital Medical School and the Council of Military Education. Schools such as Cheltenham Ladies’ College, Wimbledon School, King Edward School, Birmingham and Stonyhurst College also sent their examination papers to be printed; indeed, Taylor & Francis’s surviving customers’ order books are a vivid reminder of the arrival of the examination machine in Victorian Britain.51 Contracts to print the journals and transactions of learned societies continued, as in Taylor’s day, to lead to the printing of specialised books by individual members; for example, in 1867, through the firm’s printing of the Proceedings of the Ethnological Society, it was asked to print an illustrated work by J.Barnard Davis entitled Thesaurus Craniorum. A significant income earner each year from 1872 was the contract to print the Herdbook of the Shorthorn Society. 141


Sometimes the firm produced fine limited editions of catalogues of private collections—for example, the chromolithographs and text of the Persian Ceramic Art in the Collection of Mr F.Du Cane Godman, F.R.S. in 1891. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s the firm was also still using its now elderly Koenig mechanical press for the production of newspapers such as the Dispatch, the Globe, the Hour and the Financier and Bondholder. Francis moved to Matson Villas in Richmond after his marriage in 1862 to Isobel Gray Taunton (1841–99), the daughter of a London surgeon who had been a fellow member of the London Philosophical Society with Richard Taylor. 52 Their two sons, William and Richard Taunton, were both destined to join the firm; four of their six daughters remained spinsters. Such a large family soon needed more space, so in 1873 Francis purchased the commodious Manor House with 5 acres of ground. The beautiful house, originally the dower house of Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III, and grounds were sufficiently extensive to permit the building of fifty-five suburban houses after 1914, the ground rents of which went into trust for Francis’s unmarried daughters, the last of whom died in 1972 at the age of ninety-three. None of the four ever had to work for a living. Francis’s few surviving diaries from the 1880s suggest a business man devoted to boating and his garden at moments away from the city, and prone to periods of gout. He clearly invested much of the firm’s money in mining, brewery and railway shares, as well as in the English Stock of the Stationers’ Company. He was, for a time, a deputy Chairman of the Croesor United Slate Co. Ltd at Festiniog, a firm which went into liquidation in 1874. 53 By the 1890s a significant amount of Francis’s income was derived from investments rather than from printing. A diary entry for 18 January 1884, for example, records ‘one small cheque in, giving just sufficient to pay next week’s wages’. 54 This was as well, for during the 1870s the firm lost several prestigious printing contracts with scientific societies—that of the Royal Society (except for business connected with the Royal Society Club), the British Association and the Photographic Society, and it nearly lost the Linnean Society’s account in 1875. 55 However, despite such losses, which more mundanely also included the job work contract for Carter’s seeds, 56 Taylor & Francis in 1900 still had the largest portfolio of learned society contracts of any London printer. By then, too, through Francis’s business contacts, the firm was also doing a considerable 142

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amount of job work for the financial houses of the City, for example, mortgage, trust and share forms. Sarah Taylor died at Richmond in June 1884 leaving most of her property to Francis and a £1,000 legacy to his sister Rachel, who had by then retired from governess and housekeeping work in Ilminster and joined her brother in a cottage in the grounds of the Manor House in Richmond, where she died in 1912. Increasingly troubled by gout and his wife’s illness (she died in 1899), Francis took his son William into a one-third partnership in 1897, and handed the editorship of the Annals over to him in the same year.57 ‘Although the publication of this Journal has been by no means a source of any considerable profit,’ he stated in a farewell message to his readers, ‘I have been amply rewarded, as it has procured for me the friendship of most of the eminent men who have contributed so largely to the vast progress of Natural History during Her Majesty’s reign.’ His name was to remain on the title-page of the Philosophical Magazine until his death in January 1904. He was buried in Richmond Cemetery. References 1. Walter Thornbury, Old and New London (1873), vol. 1, p. 108. 2. W.G.Bell, Unknown London and More about Unknown London, 2nd edn (Bodley Head, London, 1951), p. 220. 3. Ibid., p. 220. 4. Ibid., pp. 221–3. 5. R.Jefferies, Amaryllis at the Fair (1887), chap. 27. 6. We thank Cyril Wright, Hon. Secretary of the Richard Jefferies Society for this information. 7. Temple A.Orme, University College School. Alphabetical and Topographical Register for 1831–1898 (1898). 8. Journals of John Tyndall, vol. 2, Sunday 20 June 1852, f. 571. Royal Institution Archives. 9. W.Francis, ‘Examination of a Crystallized Nickel Ore’, Philosophical Magazine, 17 (1840), 335–7; W.Francis and T.Scheerer, ‘Arsenic and Cobalt’, ibid., 331–5. 10. Matrikelliste Nr.1366, 6 November 1841, Universitätsarchiv, Giessen. 11. W.Francis, ‘Chemische Untersuchungen der Kokkelskörner (Semina Cocculus Indicus)’, Annalen der Chemie, 42 (1842), 254–5. 12. J.R.Partington, A History of Chemistry (Macmillan, London), vol. 4, p. 244. 13. John Beckmann, A History of Inventions, revised and enlarged by W.Francis and J.W.Griffith, printed by R. & J.E.Taylor for Henry Bohn, 2 vols (1846). 14. E.g., ‘New Discoveries of Ehrenberg’s Respecting the Bacillariae’, Philosophical Magazine, 11 (1837), 448; ‘On Fossil Infusoria’, Scientific Memoirs, 1 (1837). 15. David E.Allen, ‘The struggle for specialist journals: natural history in the 143


16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

144

British periodicals market in the first half of the nineeteenth century’, Archives of Natural History, 23 (1996), 107–23. Magazine of Natural History, 2 (1837), editorial. William Jardine Papers, Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh. See Susan SheetsPyenson, ‘From the North to Red Lion Court: the Creation and Early Years of the Annals of Natural History’, Archives of Natural History, 10(1981), 221–49. Taylor to Jardine 11 December 1837, Jardine Papers. Taylor to Jardine 6 June 1839, ibid. Johnston to Jardine 30 May 1839, ibid. See also Sheets-Pyenson, (17), p. 240. W.J.Hooker to Taylor 29 November 1839. St Bride, Taylor Papers ‘Letters’. C.C.Babington to Francis 2 December 1862. Ibid. Allen (15), pp. 115–16. Ibid., p. 107. Zoologist, 5 (1847), p. v. Bonaparte to Jardine 20 January 1842, Jardine Papers. Susan Sheets-Pyenson, ‘Darwin’s Data: His Reading of Natural History Journals, 1837–1842’, Journal of the History of Biology, 14 (1981), 231–48. Susan Sheets-Pyenson, ‘A Measure of Success: the Publication of Natural History Journals in Early Victorian Britain’, Publishing History, 9 (1981), 21– 36, for a detailed discussion of expenses. Darwin to Hooker 27 September 1865, in F.Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887), vol. 3, p. 40. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 275. M.Bartholomew, ‘Lyell and Evolution’, British Journal for the History of Science, 6 (1973), 261–303, 265. For Wallace’s paper, see Annals of Natural History [2] 16 (1855), 184–97. Annals of Natural History [5] 20 (1887), Preface. H.J.Carter, ‘On the Structure called Eozöon Canadense’, Annals of Natural History [4] 13 (1874), 189–93, 376–8. See Charles F.O’Brien, ‘Eozöon Canadense. The Dawn Animal of Canada’, Isis, 61 (1970), 206–23. Annals of Natural History [4] 14 (1874), 371. W.B.Carpenter to Francis 14 April 1874. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Letters’. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘City Life—Court Cases and Legal Affairs, 1729– 1853’; also ‘City Legal Affairs. Property Matters 1817–1904’. Taylor’s legal costs amounted to £51 13s. 10d. W.Crookes to Francis 4 June 1864. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Letters’. R.Taylor, ‘Early Notices of the Royal Menagerie in London’, Annals of Natural History, 8 (1851), 348–50. London Gazette, 11 March 1851. See also, Statement of Fees due to Ferdinand Brand by the Executors of Richard Taylor, St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Family Letters 1788–1874, Richard and Sarah Taylor’. Ibid. Tyndall’s Journal, 5 January 1853, f.594. Royal Institution Archives. Tyndall to Francis 12 October 1852, Tyndall Collection, Carlow Public Library, Carlow, Ireland (copy also Royal Institution Archives). Tyndall’s Journal 27 November 1853, f.640, Royal Institution Archives. ‘Biographical Notice of the late Richard Taylor’, Annals of Natural History [3] 3 (1859), 58–61. Pages from Sarah Taylor’s Diary. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Family Letters 1788–1874, Richard and Sarah Taylor’. Albert E.Günther, A Century of Zoology at the British Museum (Dawsons, London, 1975), chap. 22; P.Chalmers Mitchell, Centenary History of the

The Francis era

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

Zoological Society of London (Zoological Society, London, 1929), pp. 114– 23. The firm printed Hirst’s edition of the translations of Clausius’s important papers on thermodynamics as The Mechanical Theory of Heat (1867). ‘Advertisement Charge Book for Photographic Journal’. St Bride, Taylor & Francis Archive, vol. 101. W.Hincks and James Yates to Taylor 8 August 1826. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Letters’. A few further volumes have been printed in India since 1961. For complete collections, see the British Library, the Royal Society and the Linnean Society. Roy MacLeod, ed., Days of Judgement (Nafferton, Driffield, Yorks., 1982). I.Inkster, ‘Science and society in the metropolis’, Annals of Science, 34 (1977), p. 12. The papers of this company were given to the Merioneth County Record Office by Taylor & Francis. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Letters 1839–1908. William and Rachel Francis’. F.Currey and G.Bentham to Francis 16 April 1875. Also Bentham to Francis 9 March 1864. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Letters’. James Carter to Francis 16 October 1876. Ibid. Annals of Natural History [6] 20 (1897), announcement. William Francis Jr. and his wife lived in Filstone House, next door to Sarah Taylor in Alton Lodge.

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CHAPTER SIX

Ups and Downs

The

period around 1900 was a time of change in the world of science. The firm’s files were still bespangled with the names of the great British physicists of the nineteenth century, led by Lord Kelvin and Lord Rayleigh. But the dominance of classical physics was fading, even as its main protagonists aged. Kelvin, who continued as editor of the Philosophical Magazine to the end, died in 1907 at the age of eighty-three. The new names appearing in the files— Rutherford, Soddy and others—were of men involved in the overthrow of much classical physics. With them, the Philosophical Magazine moved into the era of radioactivity and nuclear physics. It quickly came to be regarded as one of the leading journals in this field. Rutherford’s correspondence in the early years of the twentieth century is full of references to papers in the Philosophical Magazine. ‘You will have seen,’ he wrote to a friend, ‘that the last number of Philosophical Magazine was unusually radioactive.’ 1 He himself refereed papers for the journal, and published a great deal of his own work in it. Since material could be published quite rapidly—in a few weeks—he used it as a channel for some of his disputes with others over the nature of radioactivity. ‘The Lord has delivered Becquerel into my hands,’ he wrote of one such debate in 1905, ‘My reply which I hope will appear in January Philosophical Magazine should make him tear his hair.’2 The beginning of the twentieth century had also seen a change in editorship of the Philosophical Magazine. In 1901, G.F.FitzGerald, who had borne most of the editorial duties during the 1890s, died at the early age of forty-nine. FitzGerald was a pioneer of electromagnetic theory, though best remembered today for his contribution to the FitzGerald—Lorentz contraction of special relativity. As a professor at Trinity College, Dublin, he provided the close link between the Philosophical Magazine and the Irish scientific community still claimed on its title-page. His successor as editor, John Joly, continued this link. Though Joly 147


was Professor of Geology and Mineralogy at Trinity College, Dublin, his interests spanned both geology and physics. He was one of the first people to recognise the important effects radioactive minerals could have on the crust of the earth. His work in this and related areas helped establish what is now one branch of geophysics. So, from 1901 onwards, the Philosophical Magazine had an editor who was keenly interested in papers on radioactivity. The other publications which Taylor & Francis printed were also thriving, and kept the firm in contact with leading scientists in other fields. At the Geological Society, there was still T.G. Bonney (who did not die until 1923 at the age of ninety). In astronomy, W.H.M.Christie, knighted in 1904, continued his involvement with The Observatory magazine. In natural history there were yet further correspondents, two of whom will appear later in this chapter. In the world of printing, as in physics, the period around 1900 was a time of major change. Hand composition, which had served the printing industry for so many centuries, was being successfully challenged by mechanical typesetting. The obvious advantage of the latter was the greatly enhanced speed of setting. A less obvious advantage was that the newly cast type did not show wear as did the frequently re-used hand-set type. Both of the basic forms of mechanical typesetting—Linotype and Monotype—began their careers in the United States. Linotype came to Britain first around 1890, mainly for printing newspapers. Monotype, which arrived at the end of the century and spread rapidly, had much more impact on the general printing trade. Within a few years of its arrival, there was general agreement that material set by Monotype could equal in appearance previously hand-set material. Taylor & Francis was not at first greatly affected by this change. The firm’s several ventures into newspaper printing had lapsed by the 1890s. The mainstay of their work continued to be specialised jobs (such as mathematical typesetting) requiring skilled attention, and this still depended mainly on hand-setting. By this time, too, the firm was no longer as dominant in the London printing world as it had been half a century before. Around 1850, Taylor & Francis had been one of only thirteen firms (out of an estimated total of 400) that employed as many as thirty to forty compositors. By 1900, though the number of printing firms in the London area 148

Ups and downs

Taylor & Francis premises in the 1930s. The sculptured ‘Alere Flammam’ obviously dates from the late 1820s when the partnerless Richard Taylor erected the sign ‘R.Taylor Printer’. The lamp remains on the building.

had increased by only 50 per cent, the number of firms comparable in size with Taylor & Francis (which had remained fairly static) had increased several-fold. Some were now much more significant. Eyre & Spottiswoode, for example, employed between 300 and 350 149


compositors around 1900 (with another 100–200 in Hansard’s, which they controlled). But the early 1900s did see an important change in the firm. William Francis died on 19 January 1904, at the ripe age of eightysix. He had controlled the activities of the firm since the 1850s, and it can hardly be a matter for surprise if his later years were rather less enterprising than his earlier. It was still an entirely viable firm that he handed on to his sons, William Francis, Junior, and Richard Taunton Francis. Publishing and printing were still typically run as family businesses at this time; the Taylor & Francis dynasty might be compared with such other contemporaries as the Longmans. In addition, as was remarked in 1930, ‘Twenty-five or thirty years ago it used to be a general article of belief in the book-trade that there were few harder tasks on earth than running a publishing house as a limited company.’3 The younger William Francis was just over forty years old at his father’s death, and should, in principle, have been well suited for his role as the new head of the firm. He had a considerable interest in science, having entered King’s College, London, to take a science degree in 1892. He had left without completing it in order to assist in the firm, replacing his father as an editor of the Annals of Natural History in 1898. After his father’s death he became an editor of the Philosophical Magazine, sharing all the work with Joly until 1911. But he had always suffered from ill-health and became increasingly reclusive as the years passed. Not only did the business of the firm require attention; the social activities expected of him were quite numerous and must have been difficult to sustain. Such events as the annual wayzgoose (defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘an annual festivity held in summer by the employees of a printing establishment, consisting of the dinner and an excursion into the country’) could not be avoided. William Francis Junior gradually withdrew from day-to-day contact with the firm and was happy to let the business run itself under the momentum it had gained during the nineteenth century. This worked reasonably well. Profits were not large, but there was generally a positive balance in the years leading up to the First World War. Most of the old customers remained faithful, though the Physical Society presented problems. Taylor & Francis felt it had a close connection with this society. William Francis Junior was a longterm member, and many of the editors of the Philosophical Magazine were involved in the Physical Society’s operations. G.C. 150

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Foster, in particular, was both one of the founders of the Society and an intimate friend of the Francis family. At the end of the nineteenth century, Taylor & Francis became the first printers of Science Abstracts, produced on behalf of both the Physical Society and the Institution of Electrical Engineers. This was a major new venture: an abstracting service intended both for the home and overseas markets. It formed the basis of what is now Physics Abstracts. For those days it was a large-scale venture with a print run of 4000 copies per issue (for which Taylor & Francis charged some £60). The cost not only of the printing and distribution, but of the abstracting work (over a hundred journals were scanned) proved too much for the Physical Society’s resources. Perhaps in a bid to save money, the printing was taken away from Taylor & Francis. Soon afterwards, the publication became the sole responsibility of the Institution of Electrical Engineers. Whether or not this episode soured relations between the firm and the Physical Society, printing for the latter seems to have tailed off well before the First World War. The involvement with learned societies was not only profitable for the journal printing. Each society had a whole range of additional printing that needed to be done. Though the general availability of photocopiers and high-quality typewriters is relatively recent, it is already becoming difficult to remember how printers were used for every minor job in earlier times. Some indication of the items involved can be gained from a selection of the entries in the Geological Society’s account for 1902:4

By the turn of the century, the process of publishing a research paper had reached much its present form. Submitted papers were sent out to 151


referees for scrutiny before publication. After publication, authors were supplied with reprints of their papers (a much more urgent requirement before the advent of photocopying). Taylor & Francis, therefore, also produced for its societies standard refereeing forms and ‘separates’ for authors—typically twenty-five copies of each article in wrappers. Discussion of photocopying nowadays often involves references to copyright law. In those days there was little such worry. The Copyright Act of 1911 brought UK legislation into something like its present form. In particular, the concept of ‘fair dealing’ for purposes of research and private study, which so worries modern publishers, was introduced. Although the new legislation made the law of copyright in books much clearer, it left the ownership of copyright in journal material still hazy. Taylor & Francis, like most other publishers of learned journals, always claimed copyright in articles as soon as they were published. Besides work for learned societies, Taylor & Francis did much educational printing; this included circulars and prize lists for University College, London and University College School, but, above all, printing for examinations. Examination papers were printed for a number of bodies at home and abroad, but the largest customer (an account worth several hundred pounds a year) was the Conjoint Examination Board of the Royal College of Physicians and Royal College of Surgeons. The money actually came in throughout the year from this source, for, besides the question papers, there was a demand for examiners’ reports, pass lists, regulations and even labels for laboratory chemicals which stated that they had been ‘Officially tested’. The firm continued to produce occasional books and pamphlets. A few reflect its willingness still to be involved with the translation of important work from the Continent. In 1910, for example, it was considered worthwhile to print 1000 copies of the translation by Soddy of Jean Perrin’s book on Brownian Movement and Molecular Reality. But the most important book-length publications continued to be the series on the Fauna of British India. The copyright in these was owned by the India Office, who engaged the editors. Taylor & Francis met all the production costs. The run for the series was set at 1000 copies for each volume at the beginning of the century. The editorial work on this series illustrates the firm’s habit of using eminent scientists as consultants on a continuing basis. Two of the editors of the Fauna, A.E.Shipley and J.Stephenson, were also editors of the 152

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Annals and Magazine of Natural History. Both will appear later in this chapter as advisers of the Francis family. The contract with the India Office brought other profitable ventures. Tide tables for Indian ports were produced at regular intervals, and these brought in well over £300 each time. Some of Taylor & Francis’s most popular publications were pamphlets containing tables. An example is the mathematical and physical tables compiled by James Glaisher, which continued to be republished by the firm long after his death in 1903. Glaisher was an example of someone who came to the firm via a number of mutual scientific contacts—the British Association, the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and so on. Other authors came via the firm’s long-standing interest in ornithology. Major works at this time resulted from proposals to the firm, rather than from specific initiatives by the firm. A good example was The Birds of South America by Charles Chubb and W.W.Knatchbull-Hugesson. It was intended to publish this by subscription in sixteen volumes with hand-coloured plates. The first volume appeared in 1912 and the second (in two parts) in 1916–17. The war and the death of one of the authors then brought production to an end. By 1911 it was evident that the Philosophical Magazine required more editorial assistance than could be provided by Joly and Francis alone. So Taylor & Francis’s network of consultants was again sounded, and three new editors were appointed—Sir Oliver Lodge, G.Carey Foster and J.J.Thomson. Lodge had by this time ceased to be very active in physics research. (He had been Principal of Birmingham University since the beginning of the century.) He had long admired the Philosophical Magazine, noting in his autobiography concerning his first attempts at research that he ‘carried on some investigations, and wrote some papers for the Philosophical Magazine, thereby becoming better known to physicists all over the world’.5 Lodge had done outstanding work in electromagnetism, so becoming a close friend of FitzGerald. He was correspondingly delighted to follow in FitzGerald’s footsteps. Foster, whom we have already met, had been Lodge’s mentor at University College London, and had introduced one of the first experimental physics courses for undergraduates. He had previously been a student in Germany, in the nineteenth-century tradition of Taylor & Francis advisers. This was now changing as higher education in the United Kingdom changed; both Lodge and J.J.Thomson were trained in 153


England. Foster and Lodge could be thought of as classical physicists in the nineteenth-century mould (indeed, Lodge was one of the last defenders of the existence of an aether). The third editor, J.J.Thomson, though brought up in the same tradition, was one of the people mainly responsible for the transition to modern physics. His work on the electron had brought him a Nobel prize in 1906. The year after his appointment as editor he was admitted to the Order of Merit in recognition of his outstanding research career. Yet he was still active in organising research at the Cavendish Laboratory. Altogether, the new editors fully upheld the Philosophical Magazine’s, tradition of eminence. If there could be a criticism, it would be that they hardly injected young blood into the system. In present-day terms, all were at retiring age: Foster was seventy-six in 1911. Lodge and Foster, at least, saw their main duty as the preservation of the Philosophical Magazine in its traditional form. It may be added that the use of elderly and rather conservative editors by Taylor & Francis was not restricted to the Philosophical Magazine. Carruthers, one of the editors of the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, died in harness at the age of ninety-three. The Philosophical Magazine and the other serial publications not only remained the financial mainstay of Taylor & Francis, they also enabled it to avoid some of the problems encountered by other printers. Printers’ estimates had remained surprisingly crude throughout the nineteenth c e n t u r y. Ty p i c a l l y, t h e c o s t o f w a g e s p l u s m a t e r i a l s w a s estimated, and then doubled to reach the final quotation. This meant, of course, that no estimate was made of the overheads. When printers were bidding against each other for contracts, they often lowered their estimates considerably because the

Crane Court c. 1910. The castellated Scots Corporation building at the head of Crane Court, which replaced the Royal Society’s house destroyed by fire in 1877, was contiguous with Taylor & Francis’s printing works in the adjacent Red Lion Court. Gutted by fire-bombs in the Second World War, which also affected Taylor & Francis, the Scots Corporation building has now been demolished. Note the Whelpton house of 1671, also a victim of post-war demolition. (Photograph from W.G.Bell, Fleet Street, 1912, Courtesy British Library). 154


doubling process gave them, they thought, an adequate margin. Some thereby totally removed their profit margin. Taylor & Francis was to some extent protected from this oversimplification by the income from their learned journals. In the first place, so long as these were satisfactorily produced, there was not cut-throat competition over the costing. Secondly, the special requirements of journal publishing meant that the firm had to calculate their estimates rather more carefully than the general printer. Special printing costs (mathematical setting, etc.) typically amounted to between 10 and 12 per cent of the cost of each journal. Despite such accounting deficiencies (which gradually disappeared during the early twentieth century), these were good years for the printing trade. Before the First World War, the printing and bookbinding trade stood tenth in terms of net output among all British industries. Correspondingly, printing employees made determined attempts to improve their lot. A nation-wide ‘ninehour movement’ (i.e. for a fifty-four hour week) in the 1870s had been won in London by the London Society of Compositors (to which Taylor & Francis’s employees belonged). In 1901, they obtained a further reduction in the working hours to fifty-two and a half per week. Some idea of the working week can be obtained from the contemporary rules at Warren’s stationery shop in Winchester (which Taylor & Francis later took over). Similar rules seem to have applied in the printing works. Hours of Business:– 8 till 1, and 2 till 6 daily, except Saturdays, when Business closes at 4.30 pm. Young persons, under 18 years, leave at 4 pm on Saturday. When working overtime:– 6 till 8; 8.45 till 1; 2 till 5; 5.45 till 8. When Business is continued till 10 pm one hour extra is allowed for supper. Though these hours sound arduous today, workers in the composing room at least escaped some of the restrictions imposed on members of staff who had contact with customers. For example: ‘No Male Assistant is allowed to remain in the Stores when a young lady is upstairs.’ Printing disputes in London during the years leading up to the First World War were mainly concerned with pay. In 1906, the London Society of Compositors threatened to call all its members out on strike, 156

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but management, led by the newspaper proprietors who were fearful for their sales, gave way. One result was the formation of a new body—the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association. This was a pointer to the way the printing industry was now moving. Mechanisation had rapidly established itself in the newspaper world. It provided considerably greater efficiency, but the benefits accrued only so long as the presses were kept fully occupied. Simultaneously, such mechanisation was changing printing from a craft to an industrial occupation. Set against this was the continuing semi-autonomy that the division of union members into individual chapels implied. This proved a good recipe for future conflict in the printing industry. A specialist printer, such as Taylor & Francis, moved away from the craft approach to printing more slowly than others, and retained the loyalty and interest of its staff a good deal better. Some aspects of the printing trade changed very slowly indeed. Early in the twentieth century, the number of apprentices relative to the journeymen compositors was finally regulated, and the hours and wages of apprentices were improved. But they continued to be bound for seven years, and their traditional terms of appointment were retained for many years. What they agreed was that the said Apprentice his said Master faithfully shall serve, his Secrets keep, his lawful Commands everywhere gladly do. He shall do no Damage to his said Master, nor see to be done of others, but that he to his Power shall lett, or forthwith give warning to his said Master of the same. He shall not waste the Goods of his said Master, not lend them unlawfully to any. He shall not commit Fornication, nor contract Matrimony during the said term. He shall not play at Cards, Dice, Tables, or any other unlawful Games, whereby his said Master may have any loss. With his own Goods or others, during the said Term, without Licence of his said Master, he shall neither Buy nor Sell. He shall not haunt Taverns, nor Playhouses, nor absent himself from the said Master’s Service without his Consent unlawfully; But in all Things as a faithful Apprentice he shall behave himself towards his said Master and all His, during the said Term. The London Society of Compositors called its members out on strike in 1911 in a new dispute over hours of work, which was not finally settled until the following year. On this occasion—significantly—the 157


Government intervened and fixed a reduced working week of fifty hours for printers. The Liberal administration was by this time considerably involved in social legislation, which affected printing firms along with many others. One example is the Workmen’s Compensation Act which came into operation in 1907. Employers became liable for compensation to employees who contracted an illness caused by their employment. An interesting, and unexpected, result was to show that printers were at appreciable risk from lead poisoning (from their contact with type made predominantly of lead). The various pieces of legislation are reflected in the Taylor & Francis cashbooks for the period. New entries for insurance contributions and visits by doctors to the works are interspersed with older forms of payment—the Poor Rate, School Board, Rector’s stipend, police and sewers. Alongside this typical expenditure for a City firm can be found the personal outgoings that remind us we are dealing with a family business. There are donations to charity, particularly to famine relief in India, which presumably reflects the firm’s special relationship with the India Office. These are accompanied by personal payments in and out to William Francis Junior and R.T. Francis—membership subscriptions to the various scientific societies they belonged to, their investment income (from such diverse bodies as the London & North Western Railway and the Hudson’s Bay Company), and so on. Although Red Lion Court remained the heart of the firm, tax payments on other properties appear and disappear. The premises in Robin Hood Court, where the firm’s mechanised press had been housed, seem to have been relinquished shortly before the First World War. The war was a traumatic experience for much British industry, and not least for printers and publishers. Their raw materials came from overseas, many of their products were exported, and their activities were still manpower-intensive. But the initial impact of the war on Taylor & Francis was small. The main cause for concern initially was their overseas contacts. Germany was still regarded as pre-eminent in science, and the firm had a number of authors and editors from that country. In the phobia for everything German that swept Britain at the beginning of the war even scientific contacts were regarded as questionable. One of Taylor & Francis’s advisers on scientific matters was then A.E.Shipley. He had been a leading zoologist in earlier years, but had become increasingly involved in 158

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administration, being elected Master of Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1910. He was involved in the publications as editor both of The Fauna of British India and of the Annals and Magazine of Natural History. In 1914 he was corresponding with Taylor & Francis concerning the appearance of German names on their publications. Should they be allowed to remain? Shipley advised: ‘I think you should find out if keeping the name is “trading with the enemy”. This we must not do.’6 By 1916, the problems were less easily resolved. Printers were faced with difficulties in three areas—materials, men and money. In February of that year, the Government imposed severe restrictions on the importation of paper, so as to increase the proportion of shipping space available for war materials. Supplies were allocated to users on the basis of their consumption in 1914. By the spring of 1918 only half the usual pre-war quantities of paper and pulp were being imported. This shortfall was counterbalanced, though hardly happily, by the decrease in skilled manpower. By the middle of the war, nearly half the male staff employed by printers at the outbreak had either joined the armed forces, or transferred to work on munitions. Despite attempts to carry on by employing older men, women and boys, most printers had machines standing idle during the later stages of the war. The effect of paper rationing and manpower shortages on the printing and publishing industry is indicated by the wartime production figures for books. In 1914, the number of new titles produced was 11 537; from there, the number per annum declined continuously to 7716 in 1918. At the same time, the process of production took much longer. A book that might have been printed in three weeks before the war took three months by its end. The ultimate impact of all these changes was on the financial viability of printing and publishing firms. The manpower shortage put up wages. In 1914, the minimum rate of pay for a compositor was 32s. 6d. per week. By 1917 this had increased to 41s., and to 60s. 6d. by the end of the war. (Unskilled labour, such as warehousemen, enjoyed an even greater percentage increase in wages.) The price of paper rose even more sharply. One variety of paper used for books and journals started the war at 2½d. per lb., rose to 5d. by the end of 1916, jumped to 10d. in 1917, and ended the war at 1s. 1d. per lb. Printers and publishers were horrified by these increases. Their distaste was compounded by a belief that the Government was dealing with their needs inefficiently. In 1916 one 159


publisher, Heinemann, commented on the Government’s handling of paper supplies: …in view of the fact that the Paper Commission has shown no sign of trying to alleviate, by careful husbanding, of the national necessity, the conclusion is forced upon me that the Commission is mischievous as far as the publishing business is concerned.7 One consequence was that printers became more acutely aware of the need to cost their work accurately. During the latter stages of the war, for example, printers began to institute charges for such items as storage of unbound sheets and rental of standing type. Taylor & Francis, as printers of learned journals, were in a special position. The input of research papers declined during the war due to the disappearance of research personnel to the forces or to war work. The consequent decrease in the length of journals helped to avoid major price increases—which publishers generally regarded as highly undesirable. Even so, it was clear by the middle of the war that the firm could no longer afford to drift. What had been acceptable practice in the days before the war was no longer adequate for the exigencies of wartime. In 1917 William Francis, Junior, agreed to dispose of his share of the business to his brother, R.T.Francis, so that the latter could pursue a more energetic policy of expansion. In the same year, the company took over the ownership (and printing) of the Journal of Botany. This had been founded in 1863, and its first printer was Richard Taylor’s nephew, J.E.Taylor. Richard Francis, like his brother, was interested in science—in his case more especially natural history—but unlike his brother was also interested in business. He had attended Göttingen University (following the family belief in a German education), but his studies had been cut short by a serious cycling accident. His health subsequently was never very good. He had acquired his original experience in the firm as an apprentice to his brother and became much more involved in its day-to-day working: it was his custom to walk round and visit all the employees each morning before settling down to work. But the end of the war and the years after it were testing times for businessmen. The question was whether Richard Francis would have the necessary business acumen or, perhaps, just luck to expand profitably. 160

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It took some time after the end of the war before a reasonable degree of financial stability returned to the printing trade. Paper prices dropped (though to nothing like their pre-war level) in 1919, only to rise again in 1920. It was not until 1923 that they finally stabilised at around the 1916 price level. Wages showed a similar oscillation. The minimum wage for a compositor had increased to 90s. 6d. by the end of 1920, then declined to 70s. 6d. in 1923. (This wage cutback was agreed because so many printers had run into financial problems with the high paper prices.) Even so, the Taylor & Francis wage bill, which had been some £90 per month in the years before the war, more than doubled immediately post-war. Part of this increase was due to a new working agreement which came into force in 1919. It established a fortyeight hour week and improved holidays with pay. Richard Francis could hardly have chosen a worse time to embark on a programme of rapid growth than the years after 1917, but he went confidently ahead. His first and largest investment was in another printing firm, Charles Jones & Co., which was situated near Red Lion Court. In terms of weekly wages, this was a somewhat larger firm than Taylor & Francis, and it had a good reputation. However, management of the firm worsened under the new regime, and it proceeded to make steady losses. Francis’s smaller investments in the early 1920s were also dogged by ill-luck. To finance these activities, he borrowed considerable sums of money from his sisters, the Misses I.Francis, E.Francis and S.D.Francis. The total involved was about £14,000, half of which was used to buy out William Francis Junior and the other half to purchase Charles Jones & Co. In this, Richard Francis was following the usual tradition of treating Taylor & Francis as part of family activities. The same attitude is reflected in little things—such as the unthinking acceptance that maintenance staff from Taylor & Francis should be regularly employed to look after Richard Francis’s house and garden in Surrey. But this relaxed approach to accounting was extended to the use of income from Taylor & Francis to offset the deficit on Charles Jones & Co. Within a few years losses had reached such a level that Francis had to sell the latter company at a very considerable loss. In 1923, the auditors found that Taylor & Francis was consequently insolvent, with liabilities exceeding assets by more than £11,000. There was little the firm could now do, but try to survive from day to day.

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Richard Taunton Francis. The younger son of Dr William Francis, R.T. Francis was the last of the family actively involved in the running of the company. Unlike his brother William, from whom he took over control in 1917, he had ambitious plans for the firm’s development, but was thwarted by the economic constraints of the post-war period.

The mainstay of Taylor & Francis’s income continued to be their journals, and, more especially, the Philosophical Magazine. In the latter part of the 1920s, however, this also entered on a difficult phase of its career. Following the family tradition, William Francis Junior had succeeded his father as an editor of the Philosophical Magazine in 1904. He continued in name even after Richard Francis joined the editorial board in 1917. Obviously, neither of the brothers could act alone without scientific advice and, by the end of the 1920s, the 162

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scientific editors were becoming a distinctly elderly group. All were in their seventies. They were therefore hardly in a position to make major efforts to attract new authors, as now became necessary. James Jeans, then at the height of his fame as an astrophysicist, had become a Secretary of the Royal Society at the end of the war, and continued in this position throughout the 1920s. He soon decided that the standard of physical science in the Proceedings of the Royal Society was too low, and mounted a vigorous campaign to attract more important contributions to that journal. His efforts, which showed a degree of success, had the side-effect of removing some of the material which would normally have been submitted to the Philosophical Magazine. An idea of the financial importance of the journal for the firm’s finances can be gauged from the figures during the 1930s. There were about 900 subscribers plus appreciable sales of individual issues (W.H.Smith regularly purchased twenty to thirty copies from the trade counter at Taylor & Francis for their customers) at an annual rate of £5 2s. 6d. So annual sales were equivalent in amount to half the total deficit that had accumulated. The financial problems proved too much for Richard Francis’s health. In 1928 he suffered a serious breakdown and responded only slowly to treatment. He finally appeared to be recovering from this in 1931, but then succumbed to influenza aged only forty-seven. He left a wife and one son. (Richard’s brother, William Francis Junior, died in the following year.) Shortly before his death, Francis asked his solicitor for advice on formulating a will. The main items suggested to him were: Executors and Trustees One employee of your business who can carry on same and two others who take no interest under your will. Business Full power to be given to your Trustees to either sell or carry on the same in such manner as in their absolute discretion they may think fit with power to convert at any time such business into a private Limited Company. Residue of Estate If upon your Son attaining 25 years your business has not been sold by your Trustees and your Son has for three years immediately previous thereto been taking an active part in 163


your business such business to belong to your Son absolutely subject to his paying to your Wife during her widowhood one third of the net profits.8 Francis accepted these suggestions, but with some modifications. The most important was a much less stringent requirement concerning his son’s future involvement in the firm. The final will simply inform the trustees that ‘They may arrange and agree for the introduction either immediately or at any future time or times of my said Son as a partner’. He appointed as trustees Robert Whitehouse, the cashier at Taylor & Francis, K.Dolleymore, the family solicitor, and Lt Col. J.Stephenson who was closely involved with Taylor & Francis as editor of both the Fauna of British India and the Annals and Magazine of Natural History. However, after Francis’s death Dolleymore and Stephenson both refused to act (the latter died shortly after Francis), because his estate was so heavily in debt. The will was proved by Whitehouse alone, who so became the sole trustee. He was destined to struggle with the firm’s problems for only a short time for in 1933 he, too, died. So, within two years of Richard Francis’s death, no appointed trustee or male relative remained to guide the fortunes of Taylor & Francis. Meanwhile, the firm itself had changed hardly at all since the early years of the century. The old customs, such as employees queueing down the back stairs in order of seniority every Friday afternoon to receive their pay, continued till Whitehouse’s death. Similarly, methods of working had altered very little: most things were still done by hand in the nineteenth-century style. The wrappers in which journals were despatched to subscribers were still individually hand-addressed for each issue. (The firm possessed one typewriter for official correspondence.) More importantly, the lack of mechanised printing was by now affecting the firm’s viability. It had become the custom to farm out general setting to nearby mechanised printers, while the Taylor & Francis compositors concentrated on specialist setting. This arrangement had to change if the firm was to face the future with any hope of improved efficiency, so, in 1930, the decision was taken to purchase three Monotype machines. Their purchase ultimately led to all printing being done in-house, as in the earlier history of the firm. It also led to an appreciable fall in the number of compositors employed, with a corresponding increase in productivity. But, in the early 1930s, it seemed that mechanisation might have come too late. Even the regular customers were beginning to lose patience. It was 164

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reported to the Council of the Linnean Society that Taylor & Francis had the finest stock of broken and battered type of any printer in London. The firm was by now encountering difficulties in making day-to-day purchases, for all credit from the trade had stopped. Even the buildings had deteriorated to the stage where they were no longer safe. The final straw came with the installation of the new Monotype machines. The printing presses were on the first floor of Red Lion Court (with the offices on the ground floor). Their weight was supported by wooden beams, which were sufficient for the hand presses, but not for the Monotype. It was soon evident that the whole first floor required strengthening with steel girders. By 1936, the situation was becoming desperate. It is imperative that the work of repair of the building be begun by October 1st…. as the upper storey is in a state of collapse and at present a great danger to the workers in the business and the outside public. The cost of repair will be at least £2,000…. If the City Surveyor inspects the building before plans for repair are placed before him it is feared that he would condemn the building and the City Corporation would require its demolition in the public interest. The Freeholders would then be left with the site value only less the cost of demolition.9 The responsibility for the firm devolved, after Whitehouse’s death, on to his brother-in-law and sole executor, E.J.Burdon; he found that applying for probate for Whitehouse’s estate implied becoming a trustee of the Francis estate. Burdon had considerable administrative experience as Secretary of the London Hospital Medical College, but he had not previously been involved in the printing industry. Yet, against the advice of both the accountants and the solicitor, he decided not to take the obvious step and wind up the firm. There seem to have been a number of reasons for this, but one was certainly the long history of the firm and its family connections. Isabella and Ethel Francis, though owed considerable sums, wished the firm to continue. Courtney Coffey, a senior member of the firm, also urged Burdon to continue, and agreed to become a joint trustee. After lengthy negotiations, it was agreed that one of the options suggested in Richard Francis’s will—the formation of a private limited 165

George Courtney Coffey. Having joined Taylor & Francis in 1916 as an office boy, Courtney Coffey rose to take over the running of the company from the 1930s until his retirement in 1971. His efforts kept the firm alive during the difficult years before and during the Second World War, and put it in a position to expand and develop.

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company—should be pursued. The debts to the Misses Francis would be dealt with in the following way: (a) They should purchase R.T.Francis’ shares in the freehold and leasehold premises at Richmond, Red Lion Court Fleet Street and Hall Street, City Road at a valuation. His shares have just been valued at £1902.8.3 and their loans will be reduced by this amount. (b) They should take 3000 £1 5% Cumulative Redeemable Preference shares at par in satisfaction of a further £3,000 of their loans. (c) The remaining £1197.11.9 should be taken over by the Company as a loan.10 It was agreed that the first directors of the company would be Burdon (who took over the post of Chairman), the Misses Francis and Messrs Courtney and Brandon. The latter two both worked at Taylor & Francis. Brandon, after long service with the firm on the printing side, had taken over as manager in the early 1930s. But he was already in his sixties and suffering from ill-health. In the reorganisation of 1936, he was appointed Joint Managing Director with Courtney, but died shortly afterwards. The key figure in the reorganised firm therefore became George Courtney. Though he was referred to in this style in his early years, he subsequently expanded his name to Courtney Coffey. This form will be used here throughout. Courtney Coffey had started in the office at Taylor & Francis at the end of the First World War, and had worked his way up through the sales department to appointment as the firm’s cashier. Consequently, when he became the sole Managing Director on Brandon’s death, he was the first senior executive of the firm not to have been previously involved directly with the printing side. He was essentially a salesman, and saw very clearly the need to up-date and expand the firm’s activities. A close observer of the firm noted in 1939: That the business has not gone out of existence is due to the work of Mr Burdon and Mr Courtney. Mr Burdon assumed, voluntarily, most heavy responsibilities, and Mr Courtney has been indefatigable in looking for new work, and in keeping together a most admirable group of willing workers.11 One problem that persisted for a number of years was the exact status of Courtney Coffey’s new appointment. The Misses Francis had 167


provided their support for the firm in part because they hoped that Richard Francis’s son—yet another William Francis—might take a leading role when he reached an appropriate age. The firm had taken over responsibility for supporting Francis’s widow and her son: it was one of the major burdens. In the years 1931–3 payments to them had totalled £2,000, while the firm’s total profit in these years (after deduction of tax) was less than £1,300. Courtney Coffey obviously wished for some measure of security against displacement by the young William Francis. His contract therefore included a statement that the appointment would be for fifteen years, but this did not remove all the worries. The firm’s solicitor commented to Burdon in 1939: I note your instructions as to altering the Articles so as to make it impossible for Mr Courtney to be removed from his position as Managing Director. Don’t you think this is going to cause trouble with the Misses Francis?…I quite understand that Billy [William Francis] should not have power by himself to dismiss Mr Courtney, but I should prefer that the Company should have power to dismiss him by a Special Resolution.12 In 1938, Mrs Francis died, and Burdon became one of the two guardians of William Francis (who was then seventeen years old). An attempt was made to provide him with appropriate experience. He was sent to work at a printers in Bournemouth (where he lived), but he proved to have no particular inclination towards the printing trade. Consequently, by the end of the Second World War, there was no remaining challenge to Courtney Coffey as the key figure at Taylor & Francis. The agreement between the firm and Courtney Coffey stated that the business of the firm was as ‘Printers, Publishers, Booksellers, Stationers and Bookbinders’. This sounds a wide enough range, but actually did not cover all the firm’s activities. They also acted, for example, as subscription agents for important customers, such as the British Museum (Natural History). In fact, Taylor & Francis continued to be a highly diversified firm relative to its size. Correspondingly, the members were given plenty of scope for individual responsibility, as they had been since the early days of the firm. This applied particularly to the processing of journals, where the introduction of Monotype made little difference to the way work was organised. Incoming material, once accepted for a journal, would normally 168

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be given to the senior compositor in charge of that journal. (There were three or four senior compositors at any time, who were called ‘clickers’.) He would either set the material himself, or pass it to one of the junior compositors to do. Galley proofs were run off and given to one of the readers for checking. The readers, four or five in number, were generally elderly compositors who had been with the firm for years. They did their work in small cubicles which were known as ‘reading boxes’. Their activities were made the more necessary, and difficult, by the fact that half of all the papers submitted in the 1930s were still handwritten by their authors. The galleys were returned to the press for alteration, and the revised galleys re-checked by the readers. If satisfactory, they were sent to the authors. When returned, the same sequence of actions was repeated to the page proof stage. All these activities, as with everything else that occurred in the two composing rooms, came under the supervision of the senior compositor who was appointed as the overseer. Taylor & Francis, throughout the ups and downs of its career, always retained members of staff who spent most of their lives with the firm. When a survey of employees was made after Richard Francis’s death, it was found that no fewer than fourteen had more than fortyfive years service behind them. Thus George Spry, who finally retired in 1949 in his eighty-second year, had joined the firm at the age of fifteen. He had progressed through all the posts in the composing rooms, ending as a reader. Like a number of the compositors, he was a character in his own right: a member of the Fabian Society and a correspondent of George Bernard Shaw. When the Second World War broke out, one of the readers due to retire was Charles Townsend, who had been apprenticed to the firm in 1875 and was then almost certainly the oldest working member of the London Society of Compositors. The length of service of Taylor & Francis members, in the days when seniority counted, made them influential figures within their trade union. One, John Galbraith, became Chairman of the London Society of Compositors early in the twentieth century. Another who was frequently elected to the Executive was William Vandy, apprenticed to Taylor & Francis in 1865 and a member of the firm till 1920. The firm’s journals still retained much of their nineteenthcentury appearance. When a new journal covering the history of science—the Annals of Science—was launched in 1936, it followed a similar format to that established long before for the Philosophical Magazine. This is 169


more a tribute to the acceptability of the traditional format than a criticism. After the Second World War, the Royal Society set out a number of influential recommendations concerning the production of learned journals; one of the formats commended was that of the Philosophical Magazine. The journals apart, compositors were allowed considerable freedom in deciding a layout. An apprentice could try his hand (under supervision) at producing small jobs, such as labels or cards. A senior compositor might decide on the layout of the pamphlets or books published by the firm, though the influence of the Philosophical Magazine can generally be discerned in the appearance of these. In the operation of salvaging Taylor & Francis during the latter half of the 1930s, tradition and a sense of the firm’s history played a major role. The London County Council, as part of its campaign to lessen the frequent repetition of street names, turned its attention to Red Lion Court. In 1938, it was proposed that this should be changed to ‘Red Lion Passage’. Taylor & Francis immediately lodged an objection, explaining, As our business is world-wide any change in the address, even from Court to Passage, would, we contend, seriously affect the prestige of the business. In fact, in 1936, the Company considered moving premises in the City of London, but after a very careful consideration, it was agreed that our years of establishment with Red Lion Court as our address was far too valuable an asset to be interfered with.13 Taylor & Francis persuaded the Society of Antiquaries and the Stationers’ Company to join in their appeal, which led to the old name being retained. The discussion of a change in premises was a natural consequence of the poor state of the building at Red Lion Court. Once it had been decided to stay there, the funds for repair had to be found. This priority for new funding, together with uncertainties about the lease, formed a major reason for the lengthy negotiations with the Misses Francis. Isabella Francis, together with Brandon and other members of the Taylor & Francis staff, made additional loans simply to keep the firm running. The financial position in the latter part of the 1930s was such that the only way any dividend could be declared was by putting nothing to reserves, counting debts as assets, and spreading capital expenditure over a period of years to make any 170

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surpluses appear larger. The problems were compounded by the belief among some of Taylor & Francis’s old customers that they had been over-charged in the past. In 1936 the Zoological Society agreed to the firm continuing as its printers, but only in return for a 20 per cent reduction in printing charges. At the same time, University College London decided that most of its printing work (which had been carried out by Taylor & Francis since the nineteenth century) should be put out to tender, unless the firm cut their charges drastically. The change which was ultimately to lead Taylor & Francis out of this financial morass started, appropriately, with the Philosophical Magazine. John Joly had died in 1933. Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir J.J.Thomson continued as editors until their deaths in 1940 (though Lodge offered his resignation in 1938). Clearly, neither was in a position to do more than advise from a distance during the problems of the 1930s. The active editing was carried out by A.W.Porter and J.R.Airey: the former appointed in 1931 and the latter in 1932. Porter maintained the connection with University College London, having been a colleague of Carey Foster. Airey’s background was unusual. He had entered Cambridge as an undergraduate only at the age of thirty-five, having previously been a schoolteacher. His subsequent career was in educational administration. By the early 1930s, both had retired. Though this meant they had more time for editorial work, they were obviously not themselves involved directly in physics research. Moreover, Airey died in 1937; Porter, who had been in poor health for some time, followed in 1939. Consequently, towards the end of 1937 Courtney Coffey approached Lodge and J.J.Thomson and asked for their advice on the appointment of new editors. On their suggestion, he approached two people—Dr Allan Ferguson and Professor P.M.S.Blackett—the former’s immediate acceptance proving to be of major importance for the firm’s future. Ferguson was a figure of some significance in the world of British physics between the wars. He had been on the staff of the East London College (subsequently Queen Mary College) since the early 1920s. From the end of that decade, he had been involved with the publications of the Physical Society, and had been mainly responsible for the introduction of the annual Reports on Progress in Physics. In the year after his appointment as editor of the Philosophical Magazine, he was elected President of the Physical Society for a period of three years. 171

Allan Ferguson. When the company’s fortunes were at a low ebb in the 1930s, Allan Ferguson not only showed sufficient confidence to invest money in the new limited company but also joined its Board of Directors. Having been appointed editor of the Philosophical Magazine in 1937, he retained this position until forced to withdraw through ill-health at the end of the war.

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Blackett declined to become editor; instead, he put a counterproposition to the Board: After discussing the matter with several prominent scientists [Blackett] had put forward that the Philosophical Magazine should be passed over to some Scientific Society as it was considered by many Scientists that the Philosophical Magazine has lost considerable prestige due to the fact that it was owned by Taylor & Francis Ltd.14 This distaste for the commercial connection was relatively new. J.J.Thomson a decade before had painted a rather different picture: I should like to take this opportunity of expressing the debt which science owes to the publisher. Science, I think, owes publishers at least as much as it does to scientific societies. It is due to the publishers that knowledge of science is available for the man who has only a limited amount of time or money at his disposal. If it had not been for the publisher, I cannot see how science would have progressed at all.15 One of Courtney Coffey’s early memories was of J.J. Thomson giving a talk to the Royal Society, then climbing the rickety stairs of Red Lion Court to sit down and write it up for the Philosophical Magazine. But the physics community had itself changed during Thomson’s lifetime. An increasing emphasis on pure science, coupled with a distaste for commercialism, separated many of the leading twentieth-century physicists from their nineteenth-century predecessors. At the same time, the Philosophical Magazine had lost some of its attraction. In an age of increasing specialisation, it continued to follow the generalist approach of a century before. More immediately, the overall quality of the papers published was thought to have declined during the 1930s. Taylor & Francis took Blackett’s suggestion seriously. Courtney Coffey proposed that a subsidiary company should be established. This would buy all the serials being published by the firm (listed as the Philosophical Magazine, Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Journal of Botany, Fauna of British India and Annals of Science) for a proposed sum of £20,000. It was intended that the new body, which would have representation from both scientific societies and Taylor & Francis, should have full governing powers 173


over these and any new publications. Courtney Coffey discussed this idea with A.V.Hill, one of the Secretaries of the Royal Society, who thought it was sufficiently attractive to warrant the firm’s submitting a detailed outline to the Society. At the end of 1937, the Directors approved a statement to go before the Royal Society which proposed that The founding of the new subsidiary company would be on the principles that prominent scientists would be invited to subscribe or apply for Shares and that subject to certain provisions being made to safeguard Taylor & Francis Ltd as printers to the new company, the new company would appoint its own Directors.16 This proposition for a ‘Scientific Publishing Association’—as it was called—was finally discussed by the Officers of the Royal Society in the spring of 1938. But they proved to be less enthusiastic about the idea than A.V.Hill, and the matter was allowed to lapse. Their rejection coincided with a worsening in the financial outlook for Taylor & Francis. At the end of 1937, the working hours of employees were reduced from forty-eight to forty-five per week. From the viewpoint of the firm this represented an increase in production costs. Simultaneously, foreign exchange problems grew in significance. The Romanian government, for example, decided to allow only £200 sterling to be allocated per month for all journal and book imports from the United Kingdom. By the end of the year the loss of journal sales to Taylor & Francis due to such overseas restrictions amounted to some £500 per annum. Ferguson was by this time established as editor of the Philosophical Magazine. He had been dismayed to find that not only was there an appreciable backlog of papers awaiting publication, but that the majority described fairly routine pieces of research. His admiration for the journal, based in part on his interest in the history of science and his recognition of the part the journal had played in the past, remained unchanged. So when, in 1938, the Board of Taylor & Francis decided to increase share capital by a new issue of shares, he immediately purchased £800 worth. The Board’s agreement to this, and its subsequent invitation to him to become a director, reflects a major change in direction which was now occurring. The assumption had always been that the firm would be run by the family with the aid of senior employees; scientists were involved at a more informal level for their advice and the contacts they could bring. Now the firm was 174

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turning to the scientific community both for capital and for active participation in the guidance of its affairs. Ferguson’s introduction soon led to further developments. He was able to persuade the Physical Society, of which he was now President, to appoint Taylor & Francis as their printers from the beginning of 1940. This made the need for the injection of additional capital even more urgent. But Ferguson found, to his surprise, that the articles under which the company had been formed could make investment by outsiders a risky business. He laid out the position in some notes that he drew up for his own use at this time. (1) The Company’s Articles of Association should be so framed that they (a) protect the interests of the firm; (b) protect the interests of Mr Francis; (c) protect the interests of the Misses Francis, and, in particular, make possible the early and full repayment of the loans generously advanced by them; (d) protect the interests of the employees, many of whom have served the firm for 30 or 40 years. The Company, working under the present conditions, cannot adequately fulfil any of these functions. (2) Its business is expanding, but it is forced to live from hand to mouth. The Company, today, has an offer of business [from the Physical Society] which would increase its turnover by £3,000 per annum. To undertake this, it requires additional plant which will cost £800–£900. In the days when it was a private business, in the hands of one man, the necessary capital would have been supplied by Dr Wm.Francis from his private funds. The Company cannot do this; it has to look for fresh capital, or to hamper its activities by borrowing the money, and by making economies, which make it impossible to repay the loans of the Misses Francis by anything, at present, more than trifling installments. New capital is, therefore, a vital necessity. (3) But no one will invest money in a Company working under Articles which may result, through ill-advised action, in its liquidation. One possible investor (Prof Stibbe) has already refused, on these grounds, to put money in the Company; Prof. Ferguson would not have invested £800 in the Company, had he appreciated the full significance of the Articles; and scientific men 175


of standing, who are looking for such an investment as this, cannot be encouraged to investigate the position of the Company. (4) In particular, Prof. Ferguson, as President of the Physical Society, will find it necessary, unless the affairs of the Company are put on an equitable basis, to put the position of affairs before the Society (which Society proposes to entrust its printing to Messrs Taylor & Francis), and to resign his position as Editor of the Philosophical Magazine. These steps will have grave consequences for the firm, and involve Prof Ferguson in the risk of serious pecuniary losses, but, in his view, it is the only possible attitude to take up.17 The situation was further complicated by the Misses Francis’ unhappiness with existing arrangements. The question of the terms of the lease on Red Lion Court had still to be properly sorted out, and payments of the interest due to them on the business were seriously in arrears. Hardly surprisingly, they felt they had a strong call on any new funds. Isabella Francis wrote to Burdon in mid–1939: Neither my sister nor I consider we are asking too much when we insist that the money raised on the new shares should be divided equally between us and the business as they are issued…. As to the payment of the back interest by the end of October which you consider as a harsh condition you forget how long we have been waiting for it, so long indeed that it seems to have been forgotten and not entered on the Auditor’s account.18 However reasonable their position, it was hardly designed to help attract outside investors. Indeed, to ensure that printing for the Physical Society could go ahead, Ferguson found he had to provide a personal loan to the firm. The future of Taylor & Francis looked as uncertain as ever. Courtney Coffey reported to the firm’s solicitor that ‘the company was fast approaching a financial crisis and that unless means were created for the entry of new capital the company may have to be forced into liquidation’.19 The outbreak of the Second World War was the final straw: Taylor & Francis, along with so many other institutions both greater and smaller, seemed ready to be swept away. As in the First World War, the demand for printing fell rapidly: just how rapidly can be seen from the following figures for some of Taylor & Francis’s principal customers. 176

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It is obvious how disastrous the effects would have been without the new Physical Society contract.

In the early days of the war, Courtney Coffey wrote gloomily to Burdon that the conditions in London are extremely bad, unemployment is such that one wonders what will happen, the reason for all this is the rushing out of London of everything and everybody that could have helped to maintain some semblance of business.20 Yet, in the event, Taylor & Francis proved to be surprisingly durable. The first evidence for this was provided by its physical survival. After the long period of the ‘phony war’, bombing of London started in earnest in 1940. It was reported to the Board of Taylor & Francis in October 1940 that air raids ‘were now taking place each and every day at all hours’.21 By this time, bombs had fallen on buildings adjoining Taylor & Francis, and a large bomb had landed in Red Lion Court itself, but without exploding. The firm had so far survived unscathed. Some of its employees were less lucky: they had been bombed out of their homes. Then, right at the end of the year, came the biggest raid of all on the City. An eye-witness recorded the scene: The hub of the English book trade lies in smoking ruins. Such a scene of destruction I have never seen or imagined. For sheer formless desolation it can hardly have been surpassed in Warsaw, Rotterdam or Coventry. With many others Simpkins, Whitaker, Longman, Nelson, Hutchinson, 177


Sandle and, further afield, Collins and Eyre & Spottiswoode are gutted shells. In their basements glowed and shuddered the remnants of a million books.22 But Taylor & Francis was still there. George Lancaster, by then the firm’s accountant, joined up at the beginning of the war. Returning on leave shortly after the raid, he vividly remembers the sight of the old building emerging in solitary splendour from its surroundings. When the staff arrived next day, it was to a scene of total chaos: Red Lion Court was a litter of broken glass and the tide of fire had miraculously halted at the very threshold of the seventeenth century building which has been the home of the firm for nigh on a century and a half; only the devotion and ingenuity of the Managing Director (Mr Courtney Coffey) and his staff staved off a serious dislocation of the work in hand. The supply of gas to the furnaces which melt the type-metal for the casters had failed, and the machines were at a standstill. Primus stoves and paraffin oil were conjured up from nowhere and the work was resumed with but a few hours interruption.23 Just how lucky Taylor & Francis had been was subsequently pointed out to the directors: …at midnight on Dec 29th the fire brigade had informed Mr Courtney by telephone that Taylor & Francis was completely gutted by fire and that nothing could be saved, happily this was not the case as on the Monday Mr Courtney found that although some damage had been sustained it was possible to carry on the business…. The damage to the building was that one section of the roof was completely lost and that a fire had started on the top floor but had burnt itself out without doing any damage, another section of the roof had moved and would need attention…. Another Air Raid on Jan llth 1941 further bombs had been dropped on the ruins of the buildings adjoining Taylor & Francis but no further damage had been sustained. The result of these Air Raids was that 28 printers in London had been bombed out of business with the loss of their valuable plant and equipment so much so that every piece of printer’s plant available in the market had been applied for but this would not in any way meet the demand.24 178

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The directors toyed briefly with the idea of moving into the country, since the loss of Red Lion Court would certainly rep-resent the end of the company, but the decreasing intensity of air attacks persuaded them to stay on. However, in 1942 the building was declared to be in a dangerous condition. There was an urgent need to begin repairs, or the firm could be compulsorily ejected. Legally, the Francis family was responsible for the repairs, but the Misses Francis’s investments had been hard hit by the war. They stated they could not afford to pay, so the firm had to patch the building up as best it could from its own resources. If the air raids left Taylor & Francis in a rather precarious physical condition, they also reduced competition from other printers. This, together with Courtney Coffey’s endeavours, helped compensate to some extent for the decrease in business from regular customers. An important account that started in 1941—actually the return of an old customer, the University of London—illustrates this point. Taylor & Francis was now one of the few conveniently sited printers who could deal with the University’s setting requirements, especially for examination papers containing science, mathematics, or foreign languages. As in the First World War, the problems facing the company fell into three categories—materials, men and money. Paper rationing was introduced early in 1940. Publishers and printers were restricted to 60 per cent by weight of the paper they had used during the twelve months to the end of August 1939. Within weeks of this regulation being introduced the invasion of Norway cut off imports from that source. Shortly after, the capitulation of France ended the supply of esparto grass from French North Africa. Most paper used in the United Kingdom pre-war was either imported or made from imported raw materials. Hence, the collapse of overseas supplies led to an immediate reduction in the allowance for printers from 60 per cent to 30 per cent. After anguished representations from the industry, the figure was temporarily restored to 60 per cent, but early in 1941 it dropped back to 50 per cent. By early 1942 it fell below 40 per cent, and remained there until the end of the following year. By the conclusion of the war it had only been restored to 50 per cent. To some extent Taylor & Francis could cope with these reductions in supply because the number of papers for publications and the number of subscriptions to journals both fell. In fact, to ease the firm’s financial position it was agreed in 1942 to discontinue publication of Annals of Science, and the Journal of Botany ceased to appear at about the same 179


time. An extreme case was G.Talbot’s contribution to the Fauna of British India (its history is recounted in the preface to his volume). The manuscript was completed in 1941, and then ‘lay in safety in a salt mine until returned to the author for revision in September 1943. Printing started in 1944, but with restrictions of war-time proceeded very slowly until 1947.’ But obviously this cutback in use of paper was at the expense of income. Employment problems resembled those encountered during the First World War, with the number of workers in the printing industry decreasing sharply while their wages increased. The Schedule of Reserved Occupations gave some protection to key workers in publishing and printing, but did not prevent a steady flow of staff into the armed forces, or to jobs in munitions factories. By early 1941 the printing industry was experiencing a labour shortage, and this continued throughout the war. In 1939 the industry in the United Kingdom employed some 270 000 people. By mid–1942 this had fallen to about 170 000, and there were further, though smaller, losses in subsequent years. Each year the remaining staff obtained wage increases—sometimes across the board, sometimes differential. A fully fledged compositor such as Fred Fletcher, who left the firm in 1939 with a weekly wage of £4 9s., came back at the end of the war to a wage of £6 5s. As might be expected, Taylor & Francis made a loss each year and failed to declare a dividend throughout the war. The disappearance of overseas subscriptions to the journals was particularly damaging. During November and December 1940—the period when most renewals of journal subscriptions were expected—no mail at all was received from the USA (a result, presumably, of loss or delay caused by enemy action). This corresponded to lost orders for Taylor & Francis worth some £3,000. Yet it was during these depressing days that the developments began which finally set the firm on a sound financial foundation. At the beginning of the war, Ferguson, like many other London academic staff, had been moved out of town—in his case, to Cambridge. There had always been a connection between the Philosophical Magazine and Cambridge physics, but this was now strengthened. In 1941 W.L.Bragg, who took charge of the Cavendish Laboratory in 1938 after Rutherford’s death, and G.P. Thomson, J.J.Thomson’s son, became editors of the Philosophical Magazine. While the ability to attract scientists of their calibre was important for the journal’s prestige, more immediately important to the firm was the stimulus that 180

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Ferguson’s move gave to the acquisition of new capital. Ferguson’s brother-in-law, Dr Harry Banister, worked in the Psychological Laboratory at Cambridge. As a result of their discussions, he applied in mid–1940 to buy a thousand of the Taylor & Francis shares that had not previously been taken up. Banister joined the Board at the beginning of 1941 and, at his first meeting, Ferguson suggested another source of funding even closer to home. …he thought that Mr Courtney Coffey would do well to discuss the matter with Mrs Ferguson who had at all times shown very great interest in the affairs of the company and would he felt sure do all she could to help things along.25 Nesta Ferguson, a botanist of distinction, was certainly concerned with the problems of scientific publishing. Her interest in natural history publications balanced her husband’s in physical science. Another participant, introduced a few months later, also became involved as a consequence of Ferguson’s activities at Cambridge. Dr Ferguson reported that a friend of his Mr Robert S. Whipple a person of high standing in the Scientific Instrument Industry had at his request had a meeting with Mr Burdon and Mr Courtney Coffey so that Mr Whipple could perhaps give the Company the benefit of his advice and wide experience in commercial life. Mr Whipple having known Taylor & Francis for very many years, especially as Treasurer of the Physical Society when Taylor & Francis were printers to that Society, expressed the hope that anything he could do or any advice he could give would be of benefit to the Company, also he would be willing to take up some of the unissued Share Capital if allowed and endeavour to place the remainder with his friends and colleagues.26 Robert Whipple was then just seventy years old. His father had been Superintendent at the Royal Observatory, Kew, and he had been employed there himself for some time. But his career had mainly been spent at the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company where he had started work under its founder, Horace Darwin, the fifth son of Charles Darwin. Whipple subsequently became Managing Director of the firm, which had from the start a close relationship with the University of Cambridge, and more especially with the Cavendish 181


Laboratory. He was one of the founding members of the Institute of Physics, and had been a Vice-President of the Physical Society during 1936 to 1939, so coming into close contact with Allan Ferguson. The two had a common interest in the history of science. Whipple was particularly interested in the history and development of scientific instruments. In 1944 he presented his collection of scientific instruments and books to the University of Cambridge, where it now forms the basis of the Whipple Museum. This taste for the history of science, as with Ferguson, certainly increased Whipple’s willingness to assist the firm. It is noteworthy how common a theme the history of science was among those who came to the firm’s assistance during the 1930s. It is reflected in the firm’s own publications during this period; in particular, by its courageous founding of a pioneering British history of science journal, the Annals of Science, in the difficult days of 1936. Even the name of this new journal reflected the firm’s taste for history, paralleling as it does the old-established Annals of Natural History. The original stimulus for this activity seems to have come from H.W.Robinson, the then Librarian of the Royal Society. At the beginning of the decade he disposed of a number of duplicates from the Royal Society library to the firm of William Dawson. His contact there was Courtney Coffey’s brother-in-law, Herbert Marley, who soon introduced him to Taylor & Francis. Whipple became a director of Taylor & Francis in 1942, and made an immediate assessment of the firm’s prospects—mainly via discussions with his many friends in business. He concluded that any sizable injection of external capital was unlikely in the immediate future. Another option—liquidation followed by restarting the firm— was ruled out on two grounds. Firstly, shareholders would suffer considerable loss; secondly, some of the firm’s main customers were not allowed by their regulations to trade with a company that had at any time been in liquidation. The remaining possibility— amalgamation with some other firm—would be difficult given Taylor & Francis’s current trading position. Throughout the early months of 1943 the directors explored these and other ways forward, but it became increasingly obvious that salvation for the firm was unlikely to come from outside. Discussion therefore turned to what the directors themselves could do. In the latter part of the year, three members of the Board—Ferguson, Banister and Whipple—agreed with the Misses Francis to take over their shares in the company in exchange for promissory notes. Banister and 182

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Whipple also agreed to guarantee a bank overdraft to the firm of up to £2,000. In October 1943, the Misses Francis therefore resigned as directors of the firm. So ended the family connection with the running of Taylor & Francis which had existed for well over a century, and so begins a new chapter in the firm’s history that continues to this day. References 1. L.Badash, ed., Rutherford and Boltwood: Letters on Radioactivity (Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., 1969), p. 255. 2. Ibid., p. 99. 3. A.Waugh, A Hundred Years of Publishing: Being the Story of Chapman & Hall, Ltd. (Chapman & Hall, London, 1930), p. 180. 4. St Bride, Taylor & Francis Archive: Customers Jobs No. 41 (1899–1905) Geological Society 1902. 5. Sir Oliver Lodge, Past Years (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1931), p. 94. 6. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Printing Business’. ‘Letters 1805–1914’. FromA. E.Shipley to Taylor & Francis 11 November 1914. 7. Quoted in: P.J.L.Kingsford, The Publishers Association: 1896–1946 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1970), p. 53. 8. Taylor & Francis, suggested heads for will of R.T.Francis Esq., 22 May 1930. 9. Draft to Mr Rivington (labelled ‘not sent’) September 1936. Ibid. 10. Instructions to Counsel, 2 May 1936. Ibid. 11. Allan Ferguson: notes of a discussion, 19 May 1939. Ibid. 12. Charles Rivington to E.J.Burdon, 20 December 1939. Ibid. 13. St Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Legal Affairs’. Letter dated 6 July 1938. 14. Taylor & Francis, Minute Book No. 1, 9 December 1937. 15. H.Cox and J.E.Chandler, The House of Longman (Longmans Green & Co, London, 1925), p. 63. 16. Taylor & Francis, Minute Book No. 1, 9 December 1937. 17. Undated notes in Ferguson’s handwriting. Ibid. 18. I.Francis to Burdon, 14 July 1939. Ibid. 19. Minute Book No. 1, 31 May 1939. Ibid. 20. Courtney Coffey to Burdon, Undated letter. Ibid. 21. Minute Book No. 1, 3 October 1940. Ibid. 22. A.Waugh (3) p. 139. 23. Taylor & Francis, ‘Taylor & Francis: A chapter in the history of British printing’. An unsigned and undated MS. 24. Taylor & Francis, Minute Book No. 1, 13 January 1941. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., 25 June 1941.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Expansion

R eorganisation

and the end of the war brought no immediate relief to Taylor & Francis. Paper supplies gradually improved, though even at the close of the 1940s paper for periodicals remained subject to restriction. But the main problem was the recruitment of skilled labour. It was estimated at the end of 1945 that, even when demobilisation had been completed, the printing and binding trades would still be some 10000 skilled operators short of their pre-war establishment. When Taylor & Francis tried to recruit twenty men at this time, they actually found only three. Even so, the company did relatively well, having thirtyfive compositors in 1947 compared with twenty-eight ten years earlier. This shortage of manpower naturally led to a rapid escalation in wages. Despite an increase of 7s. 6d. at the beginning of 1946, the year saw a major dispute which eventually went to arbitration. The result was a reduction in the working week to forty-three and a half hours, two weeks paid holiday per year and wage increases up to 10s. per week. The impact of this on Taylor & Francis was immediately evident. In the month after these changes had been agreed, the company became printers again to the Royal Astronomical Society after a gap of over a century. Their estimates for printing the Society’s journals were 25 per cent up on a comparable quotation to the Physical Society earlier in the year. Nor was this the end: the turmoil over wages continued, in part due to inter-union rivalries. The traditionally moderate chapel at Taylor & Francis was mainly concerned in pressing for the maximum amount of overtime. Since the company was short of labour this was not a major problem, and the staff generally proved both cooperative and ingenious in keeping the machines running. (In those day, replacement items often took months to arrive.) The effect of these increased labour and raw material costs is immediately obvious in any comparison of pre-war and post-war 185


printer’s estimates. Take, as an example, a cloth-bound book of 320 pages extent with a production run of 5000 copies. The comparative figures for the major items were as follows:1

The company’s struggle to survive was made more difficult by the British weather. In 1947—the year of the great ‘freeze-up’—there were long electricity cuts in London during January and a total stoppage during February. Apart from the immediate impact of lost power, there was also an indirect effect: the paper mills were stopped, leading to a subsequent shortage of paper. For the employees at Red Lion Court the most immediate problem was keeping warm: the bad state of repair of the building included a deficient heating system. At least the conditions led to one change in the company’s regulations. Employees in the composing room had formerly been allowed to smoke only once an hour, on the hour. During the winter of 1947 they were allowed to smoke whenever they felt like it, to keep their spirits up, and the old rule was never resuscitated. One result of all these problems was that publishing took longer. Printers often required a year between receipt of manuscript material from a publisher and return of the printed product. Though unsatisfactory, this could be tolerated for a book. For a scientific journal, it was quite unacceptable. Consequently, publication delays became one of the main problems as Taylor & Francis struggled to reach profitability. Complaints from customers were a continual source of worry, since they could lead to a subsequent withdrawal of work. An example was the loss of the Linnean Society contract in 1950—a connection that had lasted for 150 years. One particular worry was the Physical Society, by this time the company’s largest customer. Immediately after the war, the Physical Society began to expand its publications, and entertained serious doubts whether Taylor & Francis could meet its new needs. The Honorary Secretary wrote to Courtney Coffey in 1946: 186

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On several occasions during the last few months I have spoken to you about the rapidly increasing amount of publication which the Physical Society is to undertake in the near future and have asked you to consider very carefully what parts of the work Taylor & Francis will be able to undertake with much less delay than at present. On each occasion you have given me your assurance that you would have the necessary labour and equipment and would make the necessary arrangements to do all the work I have mentioned to you…. As you know, I, personally, have expressed doubt whether Taylor & Francis are a big enough concern to continue all the Society’s work in addition to their own group of journals, of which the Philosophical Magazine is but one, the heavy programme of the London University Examinations, and the work of several other bodies…. As to the time factor I must mention again the fact that THE JOURNAL OF SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS has never, as far as I am aware, been late by more than a few days throughout and since the war; and I can now add that SCIENTIFIC ABSTRACTS, have now overtaken the arrears into which they fell some time ago, and the September issue has appeared on its proper date. The Physical Society must aim at this pitch of excellence immediately and then live up to it until the next war!2 The company’s response to these problems was bold. If skilled labour could not be obtained for Red Lion Court, the answer was to purchase another printers elsewhere as a going concern. To anyone acquainted with the company’s history, this decision must have raised unhappy parallels with the period after the First World War. But, at the end of 1947, Courtney Coffey tracked down a firm in south-east London that was available for immediate sale. This firm, Messrs J.Robertson at the Clyde Works in Peckham, had a quite different background from Taylor & Francis, being a general printer whose main customers were sports clubs. The intention behind the takeover was to farm out the straightforward printing to Peckham, so allowing the compositors at Red Lion Court to concentrate on the specialised journal printing. For example, production of the semi-popular meteorological journal Weather was quickly transferred to Peckham before the end of 1948. 187


Some of the other activities, such as binding and despatch of goods, were also moved there, so reducing the amount spent on overtime at Red Lion Court. Shortly before this expansion of printing capacity occurred, another development became possible. The Peckham works were available at a reasonable price, in part because they had suffered from war damage. The damage at Red Lion Court itself had been patched up but never properly repaired due to lack of funds. After the war, an official inspection of the property led to a ‘Dangerous Structures’ notice being issued to the holders of the freehold, the Misses Francis, who were held legally responsible. The sisters’ income had been seriously affected by the war and its aftermath, so now they decided to offer the freehold with its responsibilities to Taylor & Francis. For the still struggling company, the asking price of £15,000 was a major stumbling block. But the directors decided to go ahead both with acquiring the freehold and with purchasing the works at Peckham. These activities obviously required a new and large influx of capital. Fortunately, despite the many problems, the financial returns for 1947 showed considerable improvement, so holding out the promise that the company had now turned the corner. At any rate, the results looked sufficiently good for the company to obtain a loan of £20,000 from the Industrial & Commercial Finance Corporation. Early in 1948, the Misses Francis signed the agreement transferring the freehold to Taylor & Francis, and the last family link with the property was severed. Simultaneously, the directors decided to expand the company’s capital by a new issue of shares. (A smaller issue had already been made in 1946, when the shares were acquired by the Fergusons. Banister and Whipple.) The new expansion was noteworthy because it led to the last recorded intervention of a member of the Francis family in the affairs of the company. W.L.Francis entered an objection to the issue of these shares on the grounds that it could dilute control of the company. His objection was rejected. Though plenty of problems remained, Taylor & Francis had become sufficiently viable to warrant longer-term planning for the future. The crucial question, as always for Taylor & Francis, was the future of the Philosophical Magazine. In the early years of the war, Ferguson developed a progressive paralysis, which was limiting both in itself and because it required treatment by powerful drugs. As the war ended and the number of papers submitted to the Philosophical Magazine began to rise rapidly, it became clear that he could no longer carry all the burden 188

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of the editing himself. The two other editors, Bragg and G.P.Thomson, were appealed to for advice. As a result the company approached Professor Nevill Mott, who was then at the University of Bristol. Mott had already been thinking about the position of physics journals in the post-war world. While at the Cavendish Laboratory in the early 1930s he had acquired the habit of sending his papers to the Proceedings of the Royal Society. In the pre-war days, the American Physical Review had been regarded as a less prestigious publication by British scientists, while the German journals—Zeitschrift für Physik and Annalen der Physik—though prestigious, demanded papers written in German. After the war, this ranking changed dramatically. By the end of the 1940s, the Physical Review had doubled in size, and the average quality of its papers had increased markedly. The German journals had become much less significant, while British physicists were beginning to feel that the Proceedings of the Royal Society was too general a journal to serve the needs of the growing physics community. The Proceedings of the Physical Society, published by the Physical Society—an alternative outlet—was thought by a number of British physicists at the time to be too oriented towards the fields of physics undertaken by the National Physical Laboratory. So, when Taylor & Francis approached Mott and asked him to take over as editor of the Philosophical Magazine, he seized on their offer as an opportunity for setting up a British rival to the Physical Review. Before any attempt could be made to implement this vision, the immediate post-war difficulties had to be solved. A fear that the supply of papers might peter out during the war had led to the acceptance of a considerable amount of sub-standard material. This not only threatened to reduce the prestige of the Philosophical Magazine; it also meant that space in the journal was booked up for two years ahead, so preventing the publication of important new material. Mott’s first action as editor was therefore to winnow through the backlog of papers and reject many, including some that had previously been accepted. At this point, a new approach to the development of British physics journals was proposed. The Physical Society suggested that an editorial committee should be established to oversee all journals in the UK which published research in physics. Mott saw this as a useful rationalisation of effort and, though the original objectives were not fully achieved, it led to cooperation between Taylor & Francis and the Physical Society which continued in various forms with the combined ‘Institute of Physics and Physical Society’ (later renamed the Institute 189


of Physics) after their amalgamation in 1960. However, the old suspicion of commercial publications remained, supplemented now by the general desire to have a major British physics journal. This comes over clearly in a meeting between representatives of the Physical Society and Taylor & Francis in 1947. During the discussion it was generally agreed that the Philosophical Magazine was at present in an unsatisfactory state, and that if it was to be rescued it would be necessary to attract good papers and to eliminate completely the bad ones. Such a step would require first-class refereeing, and while members of the Board might be prepared to give such services voluntarily for the benefit of a Scientific Society, they were not in general prepared to do so in the case of a privately owned publication, where the profits are distributed elsewhere. Reference was also made to the Physical Review and to the excellent way in which this publication covers all advances of American physics, and the suggestion was made that we should have a single national publication on parallel lines in this country to cover all advances in physics in Great Britain. 3 Part of the reason for the proposed cooperation was to try to ensure that physics journals in the UK complemented, rather than competed with, each other. Though no formal agreement was reached on a division of subject matter between the journals, the Philosophical Magazine soon began to move into the area of Mott’s own special interest—solid state physics. It had always been customary for the Philosophical Magazine to have one or two editors who were more involved in the running of the journal than the remainder. This arrangement was now formalised with Mott as the editor and the rest as members of an editorial board. Ferguson, besides being a member of the editorial board, continued to handle the book reviews section. This had become the only part of the journal not devoted to the publication of original research: the pressure for space was such that Mott soon suggested reviews should be shortened. Ferguson then handed over the reviews section to allow the editor control of the whole journal. Mott was joined in his editing work by a former colleague from Bristol, Professor A.M.Tyndall. Tyndall—the second of that name 190

Sir Nevill Mott (1905–96), receiving the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1977 with the Americans John Van Vleck (1899–1980) and Philip W. Anderson (1923– ). After working with Rutherford and Bohr at Cambridge and Copenhagen in the 1920s, Mott was Professor of Physics at the University of Bristol from 1933 to 1953, and Cavendish Professor at Cambridge from 1954 until his retirement in 1971. Knighted in 1962, the Nobel Prize was awarded to him for ‘fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems’. Sir Nevill edited the Philosophical Magazine from 1948 until 1970 and was Chairman of Taylor & Francis from 1970 to 1975.


(though unrelated) to become an editor of the Philosophical Magazine—had been instrumental in having the H.H. Wills Physical Laboratory built there after the First World War. The Laboratory had been opened by Rutherford, a friend of Tyndall; Tyndall ‘used to describe with what excitement in the early 1900s he used to await the next issue of the Philosophical Magazine in which, at that time, Rutherford and his colleagues published much of their work’.4 He retired at about the same time that Mott became editor, and took on much of the routine work of the journal. Most of the papers submitted to the Philosophical Magazine passed through Tyndall’s hands right up to his death in 1961. The fortunes of the Philosophical Magazine were closely tied to the post-war expansion of physics research. The First and Second World Wars have been described by historians of science (somewhat parochially, perhaps) as the ‘chemists’ war’ and the ‘physicists’ war’, respectively. The implication is that major technical developments in the First World War related particularly to chemistry (e.g. explosives, gases); in the Second World War, they were more in the area of physics (e.g. atomic bombs, radar). This is, of course, a gross overgeneralisation, but it is certainly true that wartime developments gave an overwhelming impetus to post-war physics. Before the war, the total number of physics graduates per year in the UK was less than a hundred. By the end of the 1940s, the figure had risen to nearly 500 a year. There was a corresponding change in geographical distribution. During the first half of the twentieth century, physics research in the UK had come to be concentrated in a relatively few centres, of which Cambridge was pre-eminent. After the Second World War, research came to be more widely distributed; a return to the nineteenth-century position, but on a much larger scale. In general terms, such geographical shifts have been reflected in the composition of the Philosophical Magazine’s editorial board. Despite Mott’s personal interest in solid state physics, the commonest topic of submitted papers during the first years of his editorship was, not unnaturally, nuclear or particle physics. But, despite the glamour of nuclear physics, the potentialities of solid state physics were already clear. Both topics were greatly stimulated by developments in wave mechanics during the 1920s. Wave mechanics was applied initially to atoms. Further developments were in two directions—to the nucleus of the atom (whence came nuclear physics), and to collections of atoms (which led to solid 192

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state physics). In the years immediately after the Second World War, research in solid state physics expanded rapidly. The advances ranged from the experimental—leading to the invention of the transistor and the development of the electron microscopeto various theoretical advances made possible by the new electronic computer. The Philosophical Magazine was well poised to benefit from this expansion. The growth and diversification of science after the Second World War was of interest not only to Taylor & Francis. A number of other commercial publishers—some established, some new— realised that here was a fruitful area in which to extend their activities. Whereas Taylor & Francis had previously been unusual in publishing a leading science journal commercially, now they were joined by a number of firms, some at least potential competitors. Scientists were ambivalent in their reactions. The new journals often filled genuine gaps in the literature, for the learned societies were slow to cater for new specialties as they arose. New societies were formed, but usually only after the specialty had established itself. In the meantime, a commercial publisher could step in and produce an appropriate journal. Despite this advantage, suspicion of commercial journals died hard. Many scientists feared that they lowered standards, were not really essential, and cost too much. In consequence, from 1950 onwards scientists, paradoxically, assisted in the foundation of commercial journals while continuing to worry about the consequences. Taylor & Francis occupied a curious intermediate position in this new world. Though still suspect as a commercial publisher, their long tradition of working with the scientific community gave them a degree of acceptability to scientists which other publishers found hard to match. The company, with its unusual concentration of scientistdirectors, also tended to see itself in distinctive terms. It was reported to the directors in 1950 that a commercial firm wished to purchase shares in the company. They replied that ‘the Board could not entertain the proposal in view of their commitments with Scientific Societies and Academic institutions’.5 This interest on the part of another firm, and the directors’ response, reflected the changing financial position of the company. The Board had just successfully initiated another large increase in capital by a new issue of shares, with the result that the number of shareholders had risen to twenty-seven. Whereas the directors had 193


formerly encompassed all interests by their immediate presence on the Board, now the Board had to act as a representative body. Despite this, since purchasers of shares were carefully vetted beforehand, the shareholders continued to form a relatively closeknit community. The financial viability of Taylor & Francis still rested heavily on the Philosophical Magazine. In the early 1950s, subscriptions to this passed the 1500 mark for the first time, and the profit (from sales of back numbers, reprints and advertising space, as well as subscriptions) exceeded £5,000 per issue. Against this had to be offset support for the company’s other journals, all of which were making losses. Two, in particular, were causing problems—the Annals and Magazine of Natural History and Annals of Science. The former made its loss despite the receipt of a small annual grant from the British Museum (Natual History). In the early 1950s, the Museum threatened to withdraw this grant. At the time the directors were anxiously considering the future of another of their publications, the Journal of Botany. This had ceased publication in 1942, allegedly for the duration of the war, but had failed to appear again after the war. The editor, who held a post at the British Museum (Natural History), seemed unwilling to seek new material despite increasingly urgent requests from the company. Both the Annals and the Journal were concerned primarily with papers on classification—an area of research which experienced a relative decline in importance after the war. The obvious way out of the difficulties of both journals was to combine them: a solution made more feasible by the fact that both mainly published work emanating from the British Museum (Natural History). Taylor & Francis reacted to the threatened withdrawal of Museum funds by turning to the relevant societies (the Linnean, Zoological, and so on) for their support. These societies, most of which had longestablished links with Taylor & Francis, indicated that they saw a continuing need for a journal dealing with classification. Their backing was sufficient to persuade the Museum to continue its grant for an interim period while the journals were amalgamated. The result proved to be satisfactory for all the participants: by the mid-1950s, the new version of the Annals was breaking even. The problems presented by Annals of Science, which had also been discontinued during the war, were more complicated. It restarted on schedule after the war with Douglas McKie at Uni194

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versity College London—then the main centre for the history of science in the UK—continuing as editor. But expenditure consistently exceeded income. Shortly after the war—as Whipple immediately reported to the company—a British Society for the History of Science was established. The Society decided to produce a Bulletin, and naturally, since a number of the members had links with Annals of Science, asked Taylor & Francis to act as the printers. Here, too, a possible solution appeared to be an amalgamation of the two publications. The problem was that both the Society and Taylor & Francis wished to retain ownership of their own publications. After lengthy negotiations, a half-way house was reached: the two journals would retain their separate identities, but would be produced together and could be subscribed to jointly. Though this provided some relief, the financial position of Annals of Science continued to be a source of concern. The interesting factor in this development was the way in which Taylor & Francis became a sort of co-publisher with a learned society. Such interaction became part of their new policy. A British Atomic Scientists Association was set up after the war, as a consequence of the sudden widespread realisation of the dangers and opportunities that nuclear energy offered. Mott, as President of the Association, was instrumental in involving Taylor & Francis in the co-publication of the Association’s bulletin, Atomic Scientists News. Although this proved to be financially satisfactory, it involved the company in debates over journal content to which they were unaccustomed. In 1952, for example, they received a letter from Lord Cherwell, Churchill’s wartime scientific adviser, now back in harness as a result of the recent election. He wrote, ‘with reference to the introduction of politics in the News stating that if this policy continued he would resign from the Association’.6 His letter proved to be a forerunner of the growing disagreement among scientists over nuclear policy. Not all the company’s older publications continued their careers. The Fauna of British India, backed by a government grant, had always been one of the company’s most successful ventures. The current editor, R.B.S.Swell, like Stephenson before him, was both a Fellow of the Royal Society and a former senior member of the Indian Medical Service. The prestige, as well as the financial security, of the series was correspondingly high. However, when India gained independence in 1948, the decision was taken to cease publication in the UK. The final 195


volume was produced by Taylor & Francis in 1949: it was the eightyfirst title in a series that had started in 1888. Apart from the profits on the Philosophical Magazine, Taylor & Francis benefited considerably from increased post-war printing for learned societies. By the early 1950s, some seventy-five staff were employed at Red Lion Court, together with about half that number at Peckham. The immediate post-war backlog had, by this time, been eliminated. For the Philosophical Magazine this was achieved during the period 1948–50. In 1948, the average interval between receipt and publication of a paper was twenty months. By 1950, the delay had been reduced to three months. (The beginning of this improvement, in 1948, corresponded to the sesquicentennial of the journal, for which a special commemoration issue was produced.) But Courtney Coffey, determined to maintain the improved financial position of the company, took on as much learned society and examination printing as possible. At this time the firm was printing examination papers for about thirty-five different bodies. In consequence, Taylor & Francis found it hard to handle any material at short notice. In 1949, the Physical Society decided to put the printing of the Handbook for their exhibition that year out to tender, since they regarded the company’s requirement for copy to be submitted four months beforehand as unacceptable. What helped Taylor & Francis retain their customers after the war was their excellent reputation for quality. In 1950, for example, the Examination Department of the University of London told the directors that ‘[We] would like you to pass on to the compositor responsible for setting up the Greek papers, an expression of appreciation of the excellence of his work. It was remarkably good and exceptionally free from error’.7 Apart from delays, Taylor & Francis also suffered from the high cost of labour in the metropolis, added to the escalating cost of materials that was common to all printers. (For example, type metal increased 80 per cent in cost between 1948 and 1952.) At the end of 1950, the company decided not to increase charges to customers, despite a substantial wage increase to staff. The reason was an already discernible trend for societies to move their work to printers in the country, where wages and overheads were generally lower. But this line could hardly be held for long—10 per cent increases had to be imposed in the following year—and customers left. In 1953, the company lost the contract for Weather because their estimates were considered too high. 196

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In terms of skilled staff, Taylor & Francis was caught in a cleft stick. On the one hand, the firm had to pay wages considerably above those offered outside London. On the other, it could not compete with the much higher wages offered by the newspapers a few yards away from Red Lion Court. In 1954, the directors held a special meeting ‘to consider ways and means for solving the many difficulties presented by the diminished staff of compositors due to the attraction of the high rates of wages being paid by the news press particularly during the summer holiday period’.8 The shortage of labour at this time was such that work on examination papers for the University of London had to be suspended and journals were continually delayed. These difficulties kept recurring until the 1970s. In the years succeeding the acquisition of the Peckham works, they were added to by a longrunning dispute between the two branches of the company. The cause was the use of non-union labour at Peckham, for the chapel rules at Red Lion Court insisted ‘That all members of the Chapel decline to work with any Journeyman who does not hold a full London Society of Compositors’ Membership Card’. In 1956 the overseer in the composing room at Red Lion Court asked to be returned to the duties of an ordinary compositor. The anxieties of supervision, especially the delays in production, were affecting his health. This was not long after the worst-ever nationwide labour dispute involving all the composition side of the printing trade. Twenty-nine printing staff at Red Lion Court and nine at Peckham were dismissed for working to rule in accordance with the instructions of the Federation of Master Printers to the whole of its membership. From early on the directors had felt that their various problems could best be solved by acquiring yet another printers, but this time in the country. It became a recurring theme at Taylor & Francis, yet it was years before this aim was achieved. During the 1950s the Board of Directors underwent a number of changes. Ferguson died in 1951, followed by Whipple in 1953. The former was replaced as a director by his wife (who had previously attended a number of Board meetings by invitation). It was hoped to replace Whipple by Mott, but the latter succeeded Bragg at the Cavendish in 1954 and could not afford the time. Another director was not appointed until 1956 at which point Dr J.Thomson was invited to join the Board. The reason for this invitation takes us into a major new development in the company’s publishing programme. 197


Early in the 1950s, Mott received a very long article for publication in the Philosophical Magazine from one of the leading American solid state physicists, F.Seitz, He realised there was a need in the UK for a physics journal that could publish long articles containing much review material. His colleagues on the editorial board agreed with him, so he proposed to Taylor & Francis that a review supplement to the Philosophical Magazine should be produced. The first issue of Advances in Physics appeared in 1952. The new journal helped focus the company’s attention on the possible creation of new titles. The directors were already considering ways of expanding the publishing activities of Taylor & Francis. Mott had earlier suggested that they might consider publishing student texts, and the Board had commissioned one of his colleagues in the Physics Department at Bristol to explore this possibility. However, the colleague made little progress, and the directors decided to exploit the company’s existing expertise in journal production. An obvious way forward was to follow the example of Advances in Physics, and look for other possible spinoffs from the Philosophical Magazine. Courtney Coffey consulted again with Mott, who suggested that a journal dealing with applied aspects of the topics found in the Philosophical Magazine might be worth pursuing. The result was the Journal of Electronics (described in the brochures as ‘a Philosophical Magazine associated journal’) with Thomson as editor. Mott subsequently proposed that Thomson should be invited to join the Board, on the grounds that his engineering background would be valuable in discussing publication plans for the future. Taylor & Francis customarily held Philosophical Magazine lunches once a year to which the editors and their friends were invited. The luncheon in 1954 was turned into a conference to discuss the need for new journal titles. Courtney Coffey’s speech is worth quoting at some length as it illustrates the company’s attitude to the formation of new journals, especially their desire to retain the good will of the scientific community. There is no unemployment in the key sections of the industry and unless an employer is willing to offer at least 20% above the Trade Union agreed minimum wage plus cost of living bonus, plus overtime he has little or no chance in encouraging skilled workers to join or remain in his establishment. The wages offered in other sections of the industry are far above the purse of the scientific societies. Many skilled craftsmen have gone over to the 198

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more popular side of printing such as National Newspapers, Weekly periodicals, and advertising setting, where the work is easier and the wages very much higher. This being the case country printers are now taking scientific letterpress work out of London, and quite a lot of scientific book work is going abroad. I know of one case of an American firm opening offices in London they have obtained a printing works on the continent especially for scientific work from England. This must be considered the beginning of serious competition because oversea sale can bypass the English market and so direct the important dollar sales to the continent at the expense of the English printing and publishing industry. With this in our minds my Directors have given very careful thought as to how we can in our small way help, and we feel most strongly that our attention should be directed to sounding scientific people on the starting of new journals. We do realise the financial obligations and we feel that learned societies cannot be asked to meet increased expenditure, therefore we, Taylor & Francis, are asking for help and guidance in these matters, and we trust that we shall not at any time do anything in this direction which may offend any learned society. Physics today is such a vast subject that is expanding in all directions that it is dividing up into specialised groups these groups must be encouraged if they are to achieve the results they are searching for, this can be helped very considerably if publishing facilities are available for their particular needs, and it is in this direction that several discussions had taken place and for these ‘Advances in Physics’ was started and was received. We have several other specialised journals under consideration and I would ask the learned societies to receive our endeavours in the proper spirit. We do not wish to offend or compete with these societies. What we want to do is to help develop these specialised groups and to try and stop the results of our Scientists work being published abroad, and I can assure you that in any matters affecting the publishing of any work by Taylor & Francis we try and give a free hand and do not interfere in what should be published or rejected by those gentlemen who have given their help to us so freely. This has always been the policy 199


of the company and it will continue so long as I have anything to do with it. We do of course realise that the starting of new journals can be a very costly business and the question of profit must be a long term policy. Also one must consider the number of journals already in publication, but there again we feel that if a particular branch of research is to be helped it should have its own means of publishing, that is what we want to do, and I again say we do not want to be considered as competitors to the societies but rather as a private body trying to help and relieve the societies of the financial costs of sectionising their publications into specialised groups. The question of independently owned journals must at times come into the minds of certain people. I would therefore like to repeat an opinion expressed by the late Sir Ernest Rutherford—Taylor & Francis were asked if they would sell the Philosophical Magazine to one of the Academic bodies and Sir Ernest Rutherford was asked his opinion which was ‘There should always be room for independently owned journals of high standing and it would be a tragedy if the Philosophical Magazine was allowed to pass out of the hands of the present owners’.9 Courtney Coffey’s statement reflects the Board’s optimistic outlook on the financial prospects for new journals. This derived, in part, from their own recent experience. During 1953 and 1954, the company’s outside printing had made small losses, while their own journals were showing improved returns. However, the expanding company was now beginning to experience administrative difficulties, which some members of the Board felt could limit the production of new journal titles: Mott pinpointed areas where he felt Taylor & Francis needed to improve. They needed more efficient salesmanship, more rapid handling of incoming correspondence (and couched in better English) and at least one additional member of the Board, other than Courtney Coffey, who was acquainted with the printing and publishing business. These criticisms represent a commentary on the changing form of administration at Taylor & Francis. During the days when it was a family firm, the senior members had much the same educational background and range of interests as the authors and editors with whom they negotiated. Under Courtney Coffey, the senior members had worked their way up in the firm with either printing or 200

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commercial qualifications—far different from the scientists with whom they had business. Courtney Coffey saw himself as the link between the company’s staff and the scientist members of the Board of Directors. Unfortunately, he knew little of science. One result of this ignorance of science within the company was that the scientific advisers—whom Courtney Coffey regarded with some awe—carried correspondingly high weight in deciding what the company should publish. As Courtney Coffey noted in his talk, the Board already had some new journal titles under consideration. These included a journal on medical physics, under discussion with Professor J. Rotblat of St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School, and one on fluid mechanics in conjunction with Dr G.K.Batchelor at Cambridge. The latter was started eventually, but soon sold to Cambridge University Press. The history of the medical physics journal was more complicated. Following the firm’s new policy, Taylor & Francis decided it should try to obtain the backing of the relevant society—the Hospital Physicists’ Association—for the proposed journal. Consultations dragged on, mainly because the Association was still hoping to publish its own journal. Eventually, a joint journal, Physics in Medicine and Biology, did appear, but problems of cooperation continued. In view of the difficulties that Taylor & Francis encountered during the 1950s in their joint ventures with societies, it might be wondered why they pursued this policy. The answer is that the advantages— guaranteed minimum sales and assistance with editing and refereeing—appeared at that time to outweigh the disadvantages. An example of the strength of this belief can be found in the discussions of a possible new journal in nuclear engineering to be published by Taylor & Francis. It was suggested by the company that such a journal might form the basis for a new society, and they added that the company would be prepared to meet the legal costs of setting up such a society. This emphasis on cooperation between learned societies and commercial publishers is more common today. In the 1950s, Taylor & Francis was helping to establish a trend. The company’s reliance on the advice of senior scientists had the consequence that expansion of the journal list occurred fairly slowly. After the lunch in 1954, it was recorded that ‘We had rather grudging approval of our plans’. Whatever the number of journals in circulation at any given time, scientists have always considered them too numerous. Hence, their collective advice on the advisability of founding new journals often resembles that of Mr 201


Punch on getting married—‘Don’t!’ Mott recalls urging Courtney Coffey to appoint a professional publishing consultant, but Courtney Coffey was unwilling. The slow introduction of new titles had advantages for Taylor & Francis, particularly in preventing the firm from becoming overextended financially. But it had the major disadvantage that other commercial publishers who moved faster could beat them to the post. For example, while the prolonged discussions about a medical physics journal were going on with Rotblat, Pergamon Press approached him with a proposal to start exactly such a journal. Pergamon Press must rank as one of the major new phenomena of British publishing since the Second World War. The firm originated in a post-war attempt by the German publishers, Springer, to enter the British market. Robert Maxwell, who served with the Allied Control Commission in Germany, had been required as part of his activities to help resuscitate Springer. When the firm later became involved with Butterworths in a joint UK venture, Maxwell was also involved. Butterworths subsequently withdrew from the association, and Maxwell established a new company called Pergamon Press. The company continued the publication of three scientific journals started earlier, and began an energetic and successful campaign to increase this number. When Courtney Coffey wanted to expand into the production of more review journals in the early 1960s, he was advised that Pergamon Press had already covered the main topics. The paths of Taylor & Francis and Pergamon Press crossed more than once during the 1950s: with Rotblat they crossed twice almost simultaneously. Besides his involvement in medical physics, Rotblat was also a senior member of the Atomic Scientists Association. In the mid-1950s the Association wrote to Taylor & Francis asking to be released from their contract with the company. They had decided to turn their publication into a larger-circulation, popular journal, and they did not see Taylor & Francis as a suitable publisher for this. The transfer was agreed, on the understanding that the Association would take the work to a general publisher. The Board was subsequently taken aback to find that the Association had actually decided to approach Pergamon Press. Another link that Taylor & Francis shared with Pergamon was in their use of Dr P.Rosbaud as a consultant. Rosbaud had come to the UK from Springer as an editor in the days of the Butterworth— Springer association. He stayed on at Pergamon Press where he helped 202

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build up their policy of ‘publishing journals whose content overlapped, like tiles on a roof’10 Mott had already been in contact with Rosbaud in the late 1940s, before he assumed the editorship of the Philosophical Magazine, to discuss the need for a British physics journal that could compete with the Physical Review. Rosbaud was an early victim of Maxwell’s managerial style. When Maxwell set him adrift, Rosbaud ‘remarked bitterly that his beloved journals were his “ewe lambs” and he cast Maxwell in the role of King David to [his own] Uriah the Hittite’.11 Nevill Mott wanted Taylor & Francis to offer Rosbaud a full-time appointment, but the money was not available. The policy of expanding outwards from the Philosophical Magazine continued through the 1950s. The Journal of Electronics soon widened its scope to cover control processes. By the mid1960s, the influx of papers had risen sufficiently for these two areas—electronics and control—to be split again into separate journals. An optics journal, Optica Acta, was purchased from its originators in Paris, and a new journal, Molecular Physics, was started. The latter is an interesting example of Taylor & Francis spotting a weakness in the provision of publication outlets by learned societies. Some of the more go-ahead members of the Faraday Society had proposed that the Society should start a new journal of chemical physics. The idea was turned down and, as one of the participants later ruefully recorded: ‘Alas, that negative decision led to the birth in 1958 of Molecular Physics [published by Taylor & Francis]. There is no doubt that Molecular Physics has done very well and continued to prosper, but it is hardly the European equivalent of the Journal of Chemical Physics that many of us wanted’.12 In the field of applied physics, the company started to produce Instrument Abstracts in 1960 (and also produced an English translation of a Russian journal on instrumentation), both in association with the Scientific Instrument Research Association (SIRA). Finally, another review journal, Contemporary Physics, appeared. This differed from Advances in Physics in being aimed at a different audience (schoolteachers and undergraduates) and having a wider scope. The idea for Contemporary Physics was originally hatched by Courtney Coffey and Mott. Its development was typical of Taylor & Francis. Thomson, the most recently appointed member of the Board, had been in contact with the senior physics master at Uppingham School, G.R.Noakes, for some time. Partly this was because Thomson’s son was at Uppingham; partly it was via mutual 203


membership of the Education Committee of the Institute of Physics. So when the need for an editor of the new journal arose, Noakes was invited to accept the post. (It was actually he who suggested the title for the journal.) Courtney Coffey had quite grandiose expectations of the new journal. He proposed an initial issue of 12000, of which 5000 specimen copies would be distributed free. In terms of reaching its audience, Contemporary Physics was successful, and Noakes established an impressive editorial advisory committee. But the decision to pay contributors meant that the journal was struggling financially from the start. These new physics titles all had a long way to go before they could compete with their parent journal. By the early 1960s, the print run for the Philosophical Magazine had risen to 2500 with nearly a third of the sales going to the USA. This growth in circulation was accompanied by a growth in the number of papers submitted for publication. The question of splitting the journal into two parts was seriously discussed, but, instead, the decision was made to increase the size of each issue. The editor was now Dr W. H.Taylor, who had succeeded Mott.Taylor, a crystallographer, had been one of Bragg’s students at Cambridge. A meticulous organiser, he was subsequently asked to take over the running of the journal from Mott, when pressure of activities forced the latter to become Consultant Editor. During the 1950s advice on new journals came from other directors besides Mott.Banister contributed a significant new direction to Taylor & Francis via his own interest in the comparatively new field of ergonomics—the study of human factors in work, machine control and equipment design. He suggested that a journal should be started, in cooperation with the Ergonomics Research Society, aimed predominantly at psychologists and physiologists. Although the Society at that stage had a membership of only 150, the importance of the subject was already being recognised, and in 1957 the company launched Ergonomics, with an abstracting journal, Ergonomics Abstracts, being added some years later. Banister was also involved in discussions at Cambridge which explored the need for a new journal covering radiation biology and radiotherapy. This led in 1959 to the launch of the International Journal of Radiation Biology. The word to be noted in this title is ‘international’. British learned societies were basically national in outlook (though a significant proportion of 204

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the papers submitted to their journals came from abroad, as did also many of the subscriptions). Commercial journal publishers, on the contrary, were concerned to stimulate an international authorship and readership for their journals so as to encourage world-wide sales. Unlike most learned societies, they therefore gave their journals an international editorial board; sometimes the involvement of the members was minimal, but often they acted as channels for the inflow of papers from their own country, or as a refereeing panel. The first important example of this new breed of ‘international’ journal was Biochimica et Biophysica Acta published by Elsevier in 1947. Taylor & Francis was therefore well behind the pioneers in this field, though it was a new experience for them. Before the venture started, Courtney Coffey visited the Continent to explore attitudes towards new international journals there. He found that the company’s policy of involving UK national societies in the foundation of journals made it difficult for these journals to be regarded as truly international. It was considered essential for editors from more than one country to be appointed. There was also a strong feeling (which lessened in later years) that international journals must allow publication in at least French and German, as well as English. Taylor & Francis accepted most of the advice they received on this visit. The experience gained in publishing an international journal was to prove valuable to them for both new and existing journals in the 1960s and 1970s. The new journals ran into an old problem—the difficulty of getting printed on time. Courtney Coffey was more concerned that a volume should be completed by the end of the year than that individual issues should appear on specified dates. He argued that the renewal of annual subscriptions depended on the former rather than the latter. The editors were less happy with this viewpoint: they were more concerned with complaints from authors. Finally, in 1958, the company took the step that had been debated for so long. Courtney Coffey found an oldestablished firm of printers in the country, Messrs Warren & Son Ltd at Winchester, who were experiencing trading problems and so were available for purchase. The newly acquired printers were soon helping with the throughput of material. But they could only provide limited assistance with the journals initially, since they had not previously been involved in specialist printing. Unfortunately, the complaints regarding delays in appearance of journals continued throughout the 1960s. In 1969, the contract for printing the Proceedings of the 205


Physical Society was lost, while in 1966, the Royal Astronomical Society decided to transfer their publications to another printers. As late as 1973 the contract for Ibis was lost—after 114 years. At the same time, complaints regarding the company’s contacts with its authors and editors increased. In 1963, Sir Nevill Mott (he had been knighted the previous year) and Taylor commented jointly on the editors’ view of the company: Dr. Taylor reported a case where an author had written twice to the firm and had finally sent a telegram without receiving any reply. Only when he, Dr. Taylor, had intervened had action been taken. Dr. Taylor also reported a serious error in the compilation of the Authors’ Index in the Philosophical Magazine and said that such an error and omission should not occur in a firm having the standing of Taylor & Francis. Professor Sir Nevill Mott, supporting Dr. Taylor, said that his experience in the past had been very similar, on several occasions he had been approached by authors who had been unable to obtain an answer directly from the Company.13 These problems arose from two distinct causes. The first, as we have noted, was that the company’s expansion was not matched by a corresponding reorganisation of the administration. In particular, Courtney Coffey’s style of management, which had been the key to the survival of Taylor & Francis in the 1930s and 1940s, was less suited to an era of rapid growth. Secondly, the premises at Red Lion Court were becoming rapidly less satisfactory. After Mott and Taylor had presented the views quoted above, Thomson added that ‘In his opinion, the firm’s offices were dirty and the accommodation was poor. Until this was put right, Taylor and Francis would not be able to recruit the right kind of staff.’ The composition of the Board of Directors had changed markedly by the mid–1960s. Burdon died in 1957 and was replaced as Chairman by Nesta Ferguson. Banister died in 1963, and Nesta Ferguson retired in 1966. In principle, the Chairman was supposed to retire at the age of seventy, which Nesta Ferguson achieved in 1959. However, as subsequently happened with Mott, she was reelected until she finally decided to step down. Of the Board that had rescued Taylor & Francis during the war only Courtney Coffey 206

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remained. Nesta Ferguson suggested, and it was accepted, that he should become the next Chairman, while still continuing as Managing Director. Burdon’s place had been taken by Lancas-ter, who was now in charge of the company’s finance. Banister was succeeded by H.Marley, who had been in close touch with the company for many years both as Courtney Coffey’s brother-inlaw, and from his vantage point in the publishing trade at William Dawson & Sons. The Board, consequently, had lost most of its scientific character. When Courtney Coffey suggested that the Production Manager at Taylor & Francis should also be appointed to the Board, Thomson objected strongly. He believed that the company was overdue for modernisation, and that a Board recruited mainly internally was unlikely to press for change with sufficient vigour. After a good deal of debate, it was agreed that an attempt should be made to balance internal and external appointments in the future. The first result of this policy was an invitation to Noakes to join the Board. Courtney Coffey completed fifty years with the company in 1966, and it became clear that planning for the future, after his retirement, could not be deferred much longer. Over the next few years the running of the company was divided between three members of staff. C.W.Wheeler was brought back to be General Manager. He had worked for Taylor & Francis before the war, and had returned after his wartime service. But he had become so discouraged by what he saw as a lack of initiative by the Board of Directors that he had resigned some years before. G.F.Lancaster continued in charge of finance, while a newcomer, S.A.Lewis, was appointed to take charge of sales promotion and subscriptions. Throughout the post-war expansion, the Board of Taylor & Francis remained firmly in charge of policy. When Warren’s was taken over, though it was run by a separate Board (recruited internally), ultimate direction remained with Taylor & Francis. This became the standard pattern for subsequent development. So the composition of the main Board, and, in particular, the extent to which it involved members of the scientific community, was important for the future direction of the company. Sir Nevill Mott had been approached more than once to join the Board, but had refused because of other commitments. In 1967 he finally agreed. When Courtney Coffey retired four years later at the age of seventy, Mott was the obvious and unanimous choice to succeed him as Chairman. Wheeler was simultaneously promoted to Manging 207


Director. At Mott’s suggestion, another solid state physicist, Professor B.R.Coles, who had for some years been editor of Advances in Physics, was also appointed to the Board. Thus, by the early 1970s the Taylor & Francis Board had returned to much the same balance that it had had thirty years before (though on a larger scale), with roughly equal numbers of scientists and non-scientists. The agreement in 1972 that Coles should become Vice-Chairman underlined the company’s intention to retain this kind of balance in the future. When Lewis was interviewed for a position in the mid–1960s, he was asked for his impression of Taylor & Francis as an outsider. He replied that it looked Dickensian. In part, this description applied to the running of the company, but it applied just as strongly to the premises. Apart from the poor working conditions, Red Lion Court was also becoming too small for the expanding firm. New printing plant acquired throughout the 1950s and 1960s was sited either at Peckham or at Winchester. Though Taylor & Francis accepted innovation in printing with considerable caution, their acquisition of the Winchester works led to a major involvement in a different kind of printing—offset lithography. This process derives its name from the original practice of creating a drawing on a suitable stone surface—‘lithography’— from which impressions can be taken. In modern litho printing, the text and graphics are produced on metal plates rather than stone, and are then ‘offset’ on to the paper. This means that the impression is not printed directly from the plate, but is transferred to an intermediate rubber cylinder from which it is printed. The machines for this process had first appeared in the early years of the twentieth century, so the company was hardly breaking new ground, but the change did show them that offset litho was valuable for printing scientific journals. The incorporation of photographs, diagrams and text in a single printing process could ultimately lead to savings in money and time. The problem was that it required a major shift in staff expertise to include skills in photography and paste-up of copy. So the decision on whether to expand offset litho printing within the company became mixed up with the need for its more general reorganisation. In 1968 an official inspection of the Red Lion Court premises made it clear that the building no longer had the structural strength to carry the weight of the printing presses. The Board of Directors was already considering the difficulties created by the 208

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old, cramped buildings. The removal of the printing presses to Peckham and Winchester was the final straw. It led to an immediate agreement that the Red Lion Court and Crane Court buildings must be vacated. Further decisions on the future development of the company had to be taken quickly and it was readily concluded that no attempt should be made to expand printing capacity in London. Instead, there would be some growth at the Winchester works, while a major effort would be made to purchase another printers in the country. This should help remove the disadvantage of the higher printing costs in London, which had affected the viability of the company’s printing work ever since the war. But there were good reasons for retaining an administrative presence in London, since both the business and the scientific communities found it a natural centre for meetings. The move therefore meant a split of the head office from the printing activities of the company. The problem of obtaining office space in London was solved fairly easily. Marley suggested that his firm, Dawsons, would be prepared to lease part of their premises to Taylor & Francis. After some negotiation, the company moved to this accommodation, which was a fairly short distance away at 10–14 Macklin Street, W.C.2, off Drury Lane. The last meeting of the Board of Directors at Red Lion Court was held in April 1969. In moving westwards in London, Taylor & Francis was following a general post-war shift of publishing houses. Most of the firms bombed out in the war had sought offices closer to the West End, where they had been joined by new publishers. This geographical change, though small, reflected the twentieth-century trend away from the close association of printers and publishers that had been common in the nineteenth century. Though there were inevitably pangs at discarding the old Taylor & Francis presence near Fleet Street, the predominant feeling of staff was one of relief. They could hope that the new buildings would make working life easier. The sale benefited Taylor & Francis financially: their bank balance in 1970 was double that in 1969. The firm also counted itself lucky to have moved when it did, for not long after the handover of the premises, there was a disastrous fire which required major reconstruction of the old buildings. But a new demand on their funds soon arose. The directors were warned by the Borough of Southwark that the Peckham works lay in an area designated for clearance and would become the subject of a compulsory purchase 209

The Basingstoke offices, printing works and warehouse. Originally built by S. R. Verstage & Sons, the factory was bought by Taylor & Francis in 1973. The publishing and printing offices (front) and warehouse (rear) were added in 1975.

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order. In 1972, terms for the sale were agreed. The need for additional printing capacity was clearly urgent, and Taylor & Francis rapidly bought its way into two printing firms. First the firm purchased the modern printing works and plant from Verstage’s in Basingstoke. This had two advantages: it had ample room for expansion and it was quite close to the company’s works in Winchester. However, Verstage’s had Linotype machinery installed, but no Monotype. To cover their requirements in this latter area, Taylor & Francis also bought a substantial interest in the Lancashire Typesetting Co. Ltd of Bolton. Not long after the acquisition of this additional capacity, the company gave notice to a number of customers—including such long-established ones as University College London—that they could no longer print for them. The reason was that Taylor & Francis intended in the future to give greater attention to its own publications. The increase in printing resources and concentration on the company’s own work finally solved the problems of delay in journal publication that had plagued Taylor & Francis since the war. It had always seemed ridiculous to authors and editors that a publishing firm with its own printers should be less able to get journals out to time than publishers with no printing capacity. Another reason for fewer printing problems in the 1970s was that the print unions were less restive. Union structure in the industry underwent a long period of change after the Second World War. In 1955 the London Society of Compositors amalgamated with the Printing Machine Managers Trade Society to form the London Typographical Society. At the end of 1963, this body combined with the Typographical Association to form the National Graphical Association. There was, at last, a national body to negotiate printers’ wages and conditions of work. (The old London Typographical Society became the London region of the new union.) Other smaller mergers followed, the most important probably being the affiliation of the Amalgamated Society of Lithographic Printers in 1968. These developments eased union negotiations for Taylor & Francis. At the same time, though wages continued to rise, recruitment was less of a problem by the early 1970s. Taylor & Francis’s requirement for more in-house printing capacity was not only linked to the company’s journal publication programme. During the 1960s a significant expansion occurred in the publication of books, a separate company being formed to 211


publish books, mainly in the physical sciences. Because of the Winchester connection, it was proposed to call the company Wykeham Press Ltd, but this could not be registered because it was too close to the name of an existing company. So eventually the company was called Wykeham Publications (London) Ltd. Soon afterwards, Winchester College complained that the newly formed company was making illegal use of the college arms. This was accidental—the crest had been in use by Warren & Son unofficially for many years before. Even so, the company had to discontinue its use. (It may be noted, in passing, that Winchester College found itself involved in a dispute during 1982 over whether its arms had ever been legally registered in the first place.) The new company was entering an entirely new field of publishing for Taylor & Francis—textbooks. By the 1960s education, and especially educational curricula, was coming under increasing scrutiny at all levels from school to university. School science courses were being stimulated, in particular, by the development of the Nuffield Science Programme. In higher education, the designation of the polytechnics and the appearance of new universities (following the publication of the Robbins Report) were leading to innovations in undergraduate science teaching. Both Mott and Noakes were involved with the Nuffield Foundation, and were keen that Taylor & Francis should publish material which would supplement these new approaches to science teaching. It was finally agreed that a series of texts should be produced, ‘to broaden the outlook of the senior grammar school pupil and to introduce the undergraduate to the present state of science’. To make sure that both groups of readers were properly catered for, the main authors would be university teachers, whose efforts would be monitored by experienced sixth-form teachers. The books were referred to as the Wykeham series; though Mott’s preferred series title ‘Dons and Beaks’ was sometimes used within the company. Mott was enthusiastic about the prospects for this kind of publication. He suggested at a Board Meeting in 1967 that, within a decade, textbooks might prove as important as journals for Taylor & Francis. The Board’s concurrence reads oddly in retrospect: ‘It was agreed that the risks involved [in publishing textbooks] were less than those involved in publishing journals.’ 14 Wykeham Publications produced other books, notably an industrial series, while Taylor & Francis also launched into new 212

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types of monographs, including a successful series on ergonomics. These new series were usually based on experience gained in the subject area from their journal publishing programme. The Wykeham series, for example, was initially linked to Contemporary Physics (though the subject matter was intended to range much more widely than physics). Authors of interesting review articles in the journal were asked if they would be prepared to expand their material to book length. An advantage Taylor & Francis could offer over many other publishers was flexibility in the production schedule—a consequence of owning their own printers. In the 1970s one of the authors of the present book was involved with two colleagues in writing a history of the Greenwich Observatory. This had to be published to time in 1975, since that year saw the tercentenary celebrations of the Observatory’s history. The original publisher ran into financial problems at the last moment and was unable to produce the book. One of the authors, meeting a senior Fellow of the Royal Society by chance in a lift at The Times, told him of the difficulty. At a subsequent chance encounter between this senior Fellow and Sir Nevill Mott at the Athenaeum this information was passed on. In consequence Taylor & Francis took over publication at very short notice, and produced an extremely handsome cased set of three volumes on time. As a result of their expansion, Taylor & Francis came increasingly to be accepted as an important publisher (rather than as a printer who also published). In 1967 it was suggested that ‘the Company should join the Publishers Association but it was pointed out that the Association had refused our application for membership last year because we did not publish enough books to justify membership. The Board felt that the Association would now allow us to join if we went into the textbook field in an active way.’15 Indeed, this proved to be the case, and by the 1970s Taylor & Francis was involved in most of the activities which distinguish a book publisher from a journal publisher—meetings and discussions with authors, visits to Frankfurt and other book fairs, contact with bookshops, and so on. But the company remained primarily a journal publisher; though, at the beginning of the 1970s, a somewhat dissatisfied one. Towards the end of 1969, Mott suggested that ‘now was the time for the Company to start six new journals and to “cash in” on the knowledge of Dr. Thomson, Mr. Noakes and himself… Mr. Courtney Coffey said that the Company had published 12 new journals since 1932 and now had 213


14 but we had started no new ones in the past 11 years. Mr. Courtney Coffey said that the Company had been sitting still and doing nothing about new journals whilst other publishers had been bringing out new journals all the time. Mr. Courtney Coffey felt it was time for the Company to expand its journal publishing into fields other than physics.’16 Since Courtney Coffey had been in charge of the company throughout this period, his comments were implicitly a criticism of his own regime. But there was general agreement that the company should make a determined effort during the 1970s to establish new journals. It is only fair to add that Taylor & Francis was nevertheless already a significant journal publisher, with eighteen journals on its list in 1971. Nor was it true that everybody publishing scientific journals necessarily made a profit. Butterworths, for example, had similar problems to Taylor & Francis in the 1950s: ‘…the accounts of Butterworth Scientific Publications Ltd showed a cumulative loss on scientific publishing amounting to £60,929 by 1955, and the amount owing to the parent company was then £158,716. Thereafter the loss was reduced and the business broke even in 1959.’ 17 As with Butterworths, most of the Taylor & Francis journals were much healthier financially by the 1960s. Annals of Science was almost discontinued, but after the death of the incumbent editor in 1967, the scope of the journal was gradually widened and sales picked up to an acceptable level. Contemporary Physics continued to suffer financially from its tradition of paying authors. Annals and Magazine of Natural History, renamed the Journal of Natural History in 1967, benefited from a growing interest in both taxonomy and ecology. In 1971 the frequency of publication was increased because, the editor explained: The present period is seeing something of a revolution in biology, with the previous division into taxonomy, morphology, physiology and so on becoming less rigid, and new techniques such as the scanning electron microscope, computers and quantitative methods lending themselves to a more integrated outlook.18 The Philosophical Magazine and the journals clustered around it continued to expand. One result was the splitting of the Journal 214

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of Electronics and Control into its two component parts; the opportunity was taken to label each part an ‘international journal’. The recurrent question was whether other journals should be created to add to this group of titles. One item that had been under discussion for a long time was the production of a Philosophical Magazine Letters to parallel the American Physical Review Letters . Unfortunately, when the journal—called Communications in Physics—was finally launched in the mid– 1970s, the European physics community it aimed to serve seemed reluctant to imitate the contributors to Physical Review Letters in creating a journal covering the whole spectrum of physics, and the company decided fairly soon against its continuation. This was an interesting, if painful, indication that the rapid growth of the letters journals market in physics, which marked the 1960s and early 1970s, was reaching saturation. Indeed, the response may have been due, in part, to the adverse reaction by some physicists who were becoming worried by the proliferation of physics journals. The immediate cause, however, was the inability of the new journal to attract a sufficient number of papers outside solid state physics of the quality required. Yet many British physicists continued to feel the need for an outlet for short communications, not least because Physical Review Letters was thought by some to handle communications from the UK less expeditiously than was desirable. The initial solution, in 1983, was to add a letters section to the existing journal. Within a few years, this proved sufficiently successful for Philosophical Magazine Letters to begin a career of its own. A new development in the 1960s was the growth of the concept of European, rather than international, journals. The establishment of the European Economic Community stimulated attempts to increase cooperation between the various national learned societies in Europe. Part of the proposed cooperation involved efforts to try to rationalise the structure of European science journals. In physics, the newly founded European Physical Society decided to do this by designating selected journals as ‘Europhysics’ journals. The selection of journals was a difficult matter since there was a natural tendency to build on the journals produced by national societies that had become members of the European Physical Society, but efforts were made to cover all the main branches of research into physics. In return for their designation, the journals had to comply with certain requirements, the most important of which was the 215


creation of an editorial board with members drawn from different West European countries. Highly prestigious commercial journals also had to be considered, and a number of Taylor & Francis’s publications came into this category. For most of these (such as Optica Acta) incorporation into the scheme posed little problem: the subject matter of the journal was well defined, and some attempt had already been made to internationalise the editorial board. But the Philosophical Magazine presented special difficulties, both because the subject matter covered by the journal had never been spelt out in detail, and because the editorial board had always been British. The latter was not an insurmountable problem, since there was general agreement that overseas members could be added—given the proviso that final editorial control remained in the UK. Subject coverage was more difficult. The European Physical Society suggested that the Philosophical Magazine should become the European journal for solid state physics. The Taylor & Francis directors disagreed: it limited the scope of the journal more than they felt desirable. Eventually, the Philosophical Magazine was accepted as a Europhysics journal without a specific content description, though it was tacitly assumed that most papers would be in the solid state field. The consequent adherence of three European editors (one each from France, Germany and Italy) made little difference to the running of the journal. More papers were attracted from Western Europe, but many of these were initially vetted by the new members of the editorial board, so the total workload was not greatly increased. The suggestion that the Philosophical Magazine should be considered as dealing purely with solid state physics reflects the journal’s increasing post-war specialisation. In 1975, E.A.Davis took over from Taylor as editor, and the directors decided to look again at the subject coverage. Davis, who, like Taylor, had been recruited from the Cavendish Laboratory by Mott, found that many of the papers received dealt with a particular area of solid state physics— the mechanical properties of solids. He was therefore asked by the directors to try to widen the scope of the journal. Within a couple of years his efforts proved successful, and he proposed that the time was ripe to split the Philosophical Magazine into two parts. The suggestion had been made before, but this time both the input of papers and the division of subject matter made the separation logical. The newly widened interests of the journal were reflected in its revised description as covering all aspects of the physics of condensed 216

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matter. So in 1978 it was divided into Part A, which dealt with mechanical properties and defects, and Part B, which covered the electronic, optical and magnetic properties of condensed matter. This division also proved to be, to some extent, a division of interest— both of authors and of readers. Part A—which essentially continued the main orientation of the Philosophical Magazine under Taylor’s direction, was of special interest to metallurgists and materials scientists, whereas Part B dealt with topics which appealed especially to physicists. The division of a journal into parts was no new idea. Philosophical Transactions and the Proceedings of the Royal Society had long been separated into A and B sections, while the Proceedings of the Physical Society had more recently been restructured into a Journal of Physics with a number of alphabetically labelled parts. But it marked a major new departure in the history of the Philosophical Magazine. The suggestion that the Philosophical Magazine might become the European solid state physics journal had come originally from the combined Institute of Physics and Physical Society. It will be recalled that the Physical Society had started its existence back in 1874, when it had brought together mainly physicists from the academic world. As physics came to have industrial significance—in electronics, optics and other fields—there grew up a need for a professional body to represent industrial physicists. In 1920, the Institute of Physics was founded for them. With the expansion of physics after the Second World War, this division between academic and industrial physicists became increasingly artificial. So, in 1960, the two bodies were united. At first, the combined society retained both names, but this proved something of a mouthful. More recently, therefore, it has simply been called the Institute of Physics, and we shall use that name to designate the combined body. As we have seen, Taylor & Francis and the Physical Society have had a mild love—hate relationship over the years. This continued with the combined societies. The physicist members of the Taylor & Francis Board felt throughout the 1960s that better coordination of activities was desirable between the Philosophical Magazine and the Proceedings of the Physical Society. The remaining directors objected to this on the grounds that it would curtail the company’s freedom of choice, and they generally won the arguments. Other problems were encountered during the same decade. In 1968 Taylor & Francis registered an objection because the Reports on Progress in Physics, published by the Institute of Physics, had just adopted 217


a cover design similar to that of the company’s Advances in Physics, and was, moreover, proposing to come out in alternate months with the latter publication as though they were connected. But it was agreed that a distinct difference in image could be maintained between the survey articles of Reports on Progress in Physics and the more personal reviews in Advances in Physics. At the same time, the Hospital Physicists’ Association decided that it wished to adhere to the Institute of Physics, and, consequently, wanted Taylor & Francis to sell Physics in Medicine and Biology to the Institute. The company was reluctant to do so, and finally agreed only after lengthy discussions. The link that Taylor & Francis had established via Mott to Rotblat led the company into another area of publishing besides medical physics. In 1955 Bertrand Russell initiated an appeal for a conference of scientists to examine ‘the perils that have arisen as a result of the development of weapons of mass destruction’. Russell turned to Rotblat for advice on organising such a meeting. The question of funding was solved when an American businessman, Cyrus Eaton, provided money for the first conference, to be held in the village in Nova Scotia where he had been born. The name of this village—Pugwash—became attached to the series of conferences, though they subsequently took place all over the world. Their unique significance was that they included scientists from both the East and the West. Taylor & Francis became involved in printing material from these Pugwash conferences, and this turned the company’s attention to peace research. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) had been one of the most significant bodies in this field since it was set up by the Swedish Government. In the mid-1970s, when the Institute’s annual budget stood at about 1 million dollars, the need arose for a new publisher and printer to produce their various publications, including the influential SIPRI Yearbook, and to market them more effectively and world-wide. Although Taylor & Francis had not previously had experience in tendering for major overseas contracts, they were successful with this one, and have been publishing for SIPRI ever since. Peace research was not the only new area of development. In 1973, two additional directors were elected to the Taylor & Francis Board—Dr A.T.Fuller and Professor K.W.Keohane. Fuller, from the Engineering Department at Cambridge, replaced Thomson, who retired in that year. It was expected that he would advise, as 218

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Thomson had done, on the company’s programme of engineering publishing. Keohane, from Chelsea College, was a physicist by training, but had become interested in science education. From 1976 onwards he was Rector of Roehampton Institute of Higher Education. From the beginning, he encouraged Taylor & Francis to move into the field of education, purchasing some existing journals and starting others from scratch. One of the latter, the European Journal of Science Education, required lengthy explorations in Western Europe before it could be launched. It provides a good example of the trend in the company’s publishing policy since the Second World War—from society-linked journals, to international journals and then on to European journals. At the end of the 1970s, Taylor & Francis took over a small educational publisher that had recently been founded, Palmer Press. It had been started by two members of the then Brighton Polytechnic, M.Clarkson and M.Raggett, when traditional publishers cut back on their output of educational titles. Adding the journal titles from this acquisition to those already being published gave a total of nine educational titles under the company’s control. Despite the newness of the field for them, this number already exceeded any other single subject area on their list. The expansion into educational studies fitted into the directors’ view of how Taylor & Francis should grow. This was summarised in 1975 as: (a) (b) (c) (d)

by by by by

starting new journals acquiring existing journals the acquisition of suitable private publishing companies the installation of additional plant at Basingstoke.19

The directors felt the need for a reappraisal of the future at this point because of the increasing success of the company. The problems in recruiting staff had decreased, as had criticism by authors and editors. Finances were in a very satisfactory state, despite the more straitened economic conditions of the 1970s. Under these circumstances, Taylor & Francis had to look more carefully at the possibility of being taken over. The main problem was spelt out to the directors by Lancaster, who drew attention to the situation caused by the death in recent years of members with large holdings of shares. Because of these 219


deaths the Company was unavoidably losing the long established personal contact and interest of its major shareholders. Also in many cases shareholdings were being divided between two or three persons thus bringing the Company nearer to its limit of 50 members…. Whilst little could be done about new members it had been agreed that in future executors be asked to transfer shares into a joint holding which would count as one member rather than divide the deceased’s holdings between two or three names.20 (The magic number of fifty members arose because this was the limiting number of shareholders a private company could have. Shares held by directors or past employees were not included.) The problem, and corresponding development plans, had to be tackled by a new team. Sir Nevill Mott retired as Chairman from the end of 1975, and was replaced by Coles, Keohane becoming ViceChairman. (This did not mark the end of Mott’s association with the company, as he was immediately elevated to the specially created post of President.) Although Professor Coles was, like Mott, a solid state physicist, his affiliation was to Imperial College in London, instead of to the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. Before the end of the 1970s, E.A.Davis, editor of the Philosophical Magazine, had moved from Cambridge to a chair at Leicester. This greater dispersion of Taylor & Francis’s links with the physics community perhaps reflected more fairly the expansion of physics research throughout British universities since the Second World War. The final change in the bias of scientific directors, which occurred when Fuller resigned in 1981 due to ill-health, was the introduction (or, rather reintroduction) of biological interests to the Board. Fuller’s successor was Professor H. Baum, a biochemist from Chelsea College. A major reshuffle also occurred in the senior Taylor & Francis staff during this period. Wheeler retired in 1977 and was replaced as Managing Director by S.A.Lewis. The latter was supplemented on the Board of Directors by the appointment of two senior staff members—A.R. Selvey as Financial Director and M.I.Dawes as Director of Publishing. The fears that Lancaster had sketched out of an attempted takeover bid were realised sooner than he had expected. At the end of 1977 the directors agreed that an investment trust should be allowed to purchase some shares in the company. The trust subsequently asked to 220

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be allowed to acquire more shares, and then, in 1978, made an offer to shareholders for all Taylor & Francis shares. The directors resisted this offer, both because it did not seem to reflect the true value of the shares, and because the trust had little knowledge of the needs of specialised publishing. The shareholders clearly accepted the Board’s advice in this matter, for the trust received hardly any offers of shares and subsequently withdrew. By the end of the 1970s, the printing world was changing rapidly. Within a few years this would raise new problems for publishers, especially publishers of journals. For Taylor & Francis, with their direct involvement in printing, it raised immediate questions. In 1980, the firm moved its headquarters from Macklin Street to newly acquired freehold premises at 4 John Street, near the Inns of Court. Here, with better and more spacious accommodation, they could face up to the need for further developments. Characteristically, change was mixed with continuity. No better example of the latter could be found than in the appointment of two new directors in 1978. These were Mr S.M. A.Banister and Mrs E.Ferguson—the son and daughter-in-law, respectively, of two directors who had earlier ensured the continuing existence of Taylor & Francis. The attempted takeover had been mostly fought off via the block holdings of their two families; so their participation helped guarantee future independence of action. References 1. M.Joseph, The Adventure of Publishing (Allan Wingate, London, 1949), p. 101. 2. Taylor & Francis: W.Jevons to G.A.Courtney Coffey 16 September 1946. 3. Minutes of meeting of the Board of Advisers (Editorial Board) of the Physical Society, 29 October 1947. Ibid. 4. Sir Nevill Mott and C.F.Powell, ‘Arthur Mannering Tyndall’, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 8 (1962), 162. 5. Taylor & Francis, Minute Book No. 3, 16 October 1950. 6. Ibid., 15 September 1952. 7. Ibid., 16 January 1950. 8. Ibid., Minute Book No. 4, 13 May 1954. 9. Ibid., special insert dated 9 June 1954. 10. H.Kay Jones, Butterworths: History of a Publishing House (Butterworths, Sevenoaks, 1980), p. 133. 11. R.W.Cahn, ‘The origins of Pergamon Press: Rosbaud and Maxwell’, European Review, 2, (1994), 37–42. 12. L.Sutton and M.Davies, History of the Faraday Society (Royal Society of Chemistry, 1996), p. 383. 221

The Lamp of Learning 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

222

Taylor & Francis: Minute Book No. 5, 21 March 1963. Ibid., Minute Book No. 6, 24 February 1967. Ibid. Ibid., Minute Book No. 7, 16 October 1969. H.Kay Jones (10), p. 139. Editorial note, Journal of Natural History, 5, 1971. Taylor & Francis: Minute Book No. 7, 21 February 1975. Ibid., 21 November 1975.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Brave New World

T he latter half of the twentieth century has been a traumatic time for printers. Printing technology has changed at a bewilderingly rapid rate as a result of the increasing automation of printing processes. One result has been the deskilling of printing activities. The once proud band of compositors has diminished with startling rapidity in the last two decades of the century. Another problem has been the rapid obsolescence of state-of-the-art hardware and software. This is not only expensive; it also entails continuing changes in staff training and activities. At the same time, improved transport communications have made it feasible for printing to be carried out at remote locations. Even allowing for additional transportation costs, this means that overseas printers have become better placed to offer attractive contracts to British publishers. Putting all these points together, it was already evident by the 1970s that the future of the printing industry in the UK was likely to be troubled. By that time only some 20 per cent of publishers (or their parent groups) still printed and bound their own publications. 1 One of this minority was, of course, Taylor & Francis. The firm was therefore faced in the 1970s with the question—should the company continue in printing, or should it in the future concentrate purely on publishing? Early in 1979, the directors agreed that printing should be continued, but that the activities should be both standardised and rationalised. This meant, on the one hand, that hot metal printing should be phased out; on the other, that printing operations should be concentrated at Basingstoke. The latter activity was actually already under way. The company had a few years earlier seen the need to move into the new technology of computerised phototypesetting and had done so by taking control of a small typesetter in Bristol, whose operations had subsequently been transferred to Basingstoke. 223


Lithographic printing had likewise been introduced to the Basingstoke works from Winchester some time before. It was now decided to close down the printing capacity at Winchester completely, and to sell the pr operty. This move into new technology was confirmed in 1982 by the purchase of a state-ofthe-art Lasercomp computerised phototypesetter. Alongside computerisation of the printing side, the company also began to automate its office activities. In 1980 it purchased a minicomputer to handle the accounts, journal subscriptions, book sales, word-processing and other administrative requirements. This brought the company into contact with a new firm, Libra Computer Systems Ltd, which had been set up in the previous year to provide subscription software for publishers. Taylor & Francis initially decided to purchase a 30 per cent holding in the firm, then, in 1983, they took it over entirely. The rationale behind this move was the need both as printer and publisher to gain a better in-house understanding of relevant software development. (It was clear to most publishers by this time that automation would be having an ever-increasing impact on their future operations.) Unfortunately, the amount of feedback gained from the acquisition of this firm was limited, since, only two years later, it had to be put into liquidation. In the meantime, the Lancashire Typesetting Co. Ltd had also gone into liquidation. It had experienced continuing losses, and the financial position deteriorated further when its owner died. The fundamental problem, however, as for many other printers at the time, was the need for considerable investment in new equipment. By the mid-1980s, the printing industry in the UK had surplus capacity, yet also needed capital investment, probably on a continuing basis, to provide for constantly changing equipment capabilities. This was hardly a promising outlook for the future. On the publishing side, it had long been recognised that Taylor & Francis suffered from lack of an adequate outlet in North America. By the early 1980s, about a third of the company’s turnover derived from the United States and it was felt that this could be appreciably increased by appropriate local support. In 1982, the company made an offer for the International Publications Service, which, despite its name, was a fairly low-key distributor situated in New York. Its main business hitherto had been with handling directories, but Taylor & Francis saw it as an opportunity to establish a base in the United States for their own activities 224

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which would, at the same time, produce a useful turn-over of its own. The New York office proved expensive to run and also required reorganisation, so it was decided to look for an office elsewhere. In terms of transatlantic publishing, an East Coast location made good sense and, as a scholarly publisher, the company wanted to be near the academic community. These considerations led to the purchase in 1983 of a freehold property in Philadelphia. This latter step was taken just as Stanley Lewis retired from the post of Managing Director. No doubt his earlier background in marketing had convinced him of the wisdom of expanding into the United States. The main thrust of North American development came, however, under his successor, Tony Selvey, whose previous concern with the financial side of the firm acted as an even greater stimulant to Westward expansion. Lewis had had contact with the publishing firm of Crane Russak & Co. Inc. in New York, but it was not until the mid-1980s that the firm was actually acquired by Taylor & Francis. Its head, Ben Russak, was then about to retire (and, indeed, died not long afterwards), but Edward Crane was willing to continue with Taylor & Francis. Though not a major player, the firm was a recognised part of the US publishing world, producing some twenty scholarly journals along with a small list of books dealing mainly with politics. Handling these provided a useful introduction to the US market. Such experience was certainly needed, for managing publishing affairs in the United States proved to be less than easy. In the next few years, it led to a much bolder step into the American market. Mergers and acquisitions of publishing firms became commonplace in the years after the Second World War. In the 1960s and 1970s the initiative often, though by no means always, came from US firms. By the 1980s European firms were just as likely to take the lead. The rationale for such expansion lay partly in the belief that bigger was more beautiful, at least in terms of financial management, and that it was more sensible to take over a going concern than to start from scratch. There was also a growing belief that different sorts of communication activity—for example, books, television and software—could usefully be brought together. Along with such integration, the increasing deregulation of markets world-wide encouraged the idea of global publishing. Science publishing, more especially the publishing of scientific journals, was a prime example of the provision of a 225


globally acceptable product. Hardly surprisingly, publishing firms in this area represented attractive targets. The recession at the end of the 1980s—one of the worst during the twentieth century— slowed the number of takeovers and mergers, but they still continued when attractive opportunities appeared. Elsevier’s acquisition of Pergamon Press is a good example: it meant that the second largest publisher of scholarly journals in the world was merged with the largest. By the mid-1990s many hitherto independent publishers had become parts of much larger organisations. 2 This rationale for acquisition obviously influenced strategy at Taylor & Francis during the 1980s and 1990s. But it cut both ways. Taylor & Francis might seek to acquire other firms; equally, other larger firms might see Taylor & Francis as an attractive acquisition. One problem was that the company remained unquoted on the Stock Exchange, so it was difficult to place a valuation on it. An attempt to do so at the end of the 1980s reported it to be worth some £30 million. This was almost certainly an overestimate, but it indicates why the company did not lack suitors. Among other approaches, an offer from Elsevier was turned down in 1984, and another from John Wiley was rejected in 1990. The company’s ability to resist such overtures related directly to its history. Its shareholders had increased slowly in number, and, in 1982, some shares were transferred to a commercial company—3i—for the first time. Yet it remained essentially a tight-knit private company. Most shares were held by the Banister and Ferguson families along with academics who had been involved with Taylor & Francis and ex-employees of the company. The overall result was a majority view that saw Taylor & Francis continuing as an independent private company, though with strong academic links. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, this belief in the company was put to the test. In 1988, Taylor & Francis decided to consolidate its position in the US publishing world by acquiring Hemisphere Publishing Inc. from Harper & Row. Hemisphere specialised in engineering publications, but also published in toxicology, psychology and the environmental sciences. It produced forty-five journals in these fields together with some hundred book titles in the year Taylor & Francis acquired it. The firm had been founded by William Begell, who still headed it. He had strong links with Eastern Europe, and a

226

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considerable proportion of the book list consisted of works translated from the Russian. Problems appeared immediately. The financial losses incurred by Hemisphere were larger than had been supposed. The Russian translations had a limited market, and the circulations of some of the journals were very low. At the same time, other operations of the American arm (which had been established earlier in the 1980s under the name ‘Taylor & Francis Inc.’) were causing concern. Many of the journals were considerably behindhand in terms of publication date, and attempts to catch up were requiring the use of more expensive printers. All this meant there was an urgent need for substantial borrowing if US developments were to continue, and this at a time when interest rates were high. Early in 1989 dividend payments to shareholders were suspended. In the UK, meanwhile, this continuing growth of the company led to the setting up in 1988 of a new umbrella body, the Taylor & Francis Group, with Taylor & Francis Ltd as a subsidiary company within the group. The incorporation of Hemisphere meant that the group had 235 employees, considerably more than the current financial pressures would allow. Restructuring in the United States went ahead immediately. Hemisphere had offices both in New York and in Washington, DC. The New York office was phased out, and the existing Taylor & Francis building in Philadelphia was sold. A new lower-price property outside Philadelphia was leased in the town of Bristol. This was designated as the focus for US marketing and sales, while the Washington office concentrated on editorial activities. Within a year, the total number of US and UK employees in the group was almost halved. However, this did not translate into great immediate savings owing to the need to meet the existing redundancy arrangements at Hemisphere. The financial crisis demanded major cuts in the UK, as well as the USA. Printing activities were requiring new capital investment to provide further modernisation; they were also requiring an increasing amount of management time. It was decided that this nettle must be grasped. In 1990, Taylor & Francis (Printers) Ltd was sold to Burgess of Abingdon, a subsidiary of the Wace Group plc. Thus two breaks had been made in Taylor & Francis tradition within the space of a few years. The first was to extend the old Taylor & Francis name so that it would, in future, describe a range of firms under the same umbrella. The second, more momentously, was to remove the company from an active role in the British printing world for the first time in its history. 227


(A typesetting unit in Washington, acquired as part of Hemisphere, was closed in 1993.) Even this step did not mark the completion of the rationalisation programme. Pressures during the 1980s, such as the rising cost of office accommodation, emphasised the importance of controlling overheads along with the cash flow. Publishers had always used freelance editors. The farming out of straightforward activities, such as copy-editing, now increased. This not only devolved overheads on to the external editor, but also made the need for a constant throughput of material less urgent. By the end of the 1980s, Taylor & Francis Ltd was handling some 115 000 manuscript pages per year. About half of these were marked up by freelance copy-editors at 72p per page. The other half were handled in-house at a total cost of anything from £1.55 to £2.05 per page. The management concluded that as much as possible of the copy-editing should be handled externally as soon as this could be arranged.3 At the end of November 1990 existing assistant editors, who did the bulk of the copy-editing in-house, were made redundant. They immediately mounted a picket outside the John Street office, and continued with it until the following February. Letters were written in their support by Members of Parliament, and it proved to be an unpleasant period for everyone involved. Had they but known, discussion of the potential for rationalisation went much further than copy-editing. It even included an examination of the possibility of ceasing book publication altogether. Though such a move would have appreciably improved the cash flow, it would have had little effect on profits. The decision was therefore made to continue the book programme, but to cut the number of new titles drastically. Nearly 300 titles had been scheduled for publication in 1990, with planned increases in subsequent years. This was almost halved. Among other moves, it was agreed that W.Begell should leave Taylor & Francis, taking some of the existing book and journal titles with him. These moves paid off quite quickly. Taylor & Francis moved back into profitability and the freeze on dividends was lifted. By the end of 1993, all the loans raised for the acquisition of Hemisphere had been repaid. External recognition of this surge forward came in 1994, when Taylor & Francis received one of the Queen’s Awards for their success as an exporter. US performance still lagged behind British results, but the position had regained sufficient stability for the original policy of expansion to be reinstated. The first step was 228

Brave New World

The Queen’s Award for Export Achievement 1994. Taylor & Francis Group Managing Director, Tony Selvey, receiving the Award from Field Marshal The Lord Bramall at Stationers’ Hall, London.

taken in the United States, where, in 1994, a small company named Accelerated Development Inc. was bought. The owner, J.Hollis, was himself a psychologist, and the firm had developed out of his interest in disseminating information about psychology. This new emphasis was soon expanded a good deal further in the UK. In 1995 Taylor & Francis purchased Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd with its headquarters in Hove. Lawrence Erlbaum was a much larger firm than the American acquisition, publishing fourteen journals and a fair-sized booklist, but it, too, concentrated on psychology. The Bookseller noted that Taylor & Francis was continuing ‘its strategy of acquisition-led growth on the back of strong cashflow from operations’. 4 On the same page as this report was another noting that Eyre & Spottiswoode, one of the historic names in British printing, had gone into receivership. This contrast surely underlined the value of the painful rationalisation that Taylor & Francis had undergone. A further purchase was decided on in 1996. This was of UCL Press Ltd, a firm—as its name suggests—partly owned by University College London. One reason was that Taylor & Francis was 229


beginning to develop an interest in GIS (Geographical Information Systems), and the UCL Press booklist included some geography titles. Along with these, the Press brought both social science titles and (a new departure for Taylor & Francis) history titles. But expansion did not always imply acquiring an entire firm. Taylor & Francis had been for some time shopping around for individual journals or booklists that might extend their interests. For example, another development in 1996 was the purchase of a list of toxicology books from Raven Press. When added to previous holdings, this made Taylor & Francis into one of the leading publishers in the field of toxicology. Despite the impact of the recession at the end of the 1980s on their business, the underlying prospects for academic publishers, such as Taylor & Francis, remained good. During that decade the most rapid growth in book publishing had occurred in academic and professional fields. Within the UK, expansion of higher education promised an increasing market in the 1990s, especially for books aimed at undergraduates. Demand for academic and professional books was also growing globally, with the implication that exports should also continue to flourish. By the mid-1990s, the Taylor & Francis Board was told that, ‘out of ten new books published, one would be successful, seven would perform satisfactorily, and two would be disappointing’.5 Although, needless to say, this was taken as a stimulus to greater effort, the success rate actually compared favourably with that achieved by other publishers. Of the titles still in print at this time, the one with the highest sales was part of the Falmer Press stable: it had sold over 40 000 copies in three years. (Books from Falmer tended to do well in terms of lifetime sales, since they remained topical for longer than many scientific texts.) Journal publishing has encountered more problems. Many journals have had to face declining circulations. The main reason has been the ever-increasing cost of journals, more especially of scientific journals. For example, the annual subscription to the Philosophical Magazine (Parts A & B) had risen to £870 by 1997, with Philosophical Magazine Letters costing an additional £242. This may be compared with a total annual cost twenty years before of £68. Inflation, of course, was partly responsible, but equally important was the growth in contents. Corresponding factors had been at work for all publishers, and many journals had become more expensive than the Philosophical Magazine. At these sorts of 230

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price, most sales must obviously be to institutions, not individuals. Library funding for universities in both the UK and North America has barely kept up with the general rate of inflation for many years past, while most journal prices have gone up a good deal more rapidly than that. Various explanations have been put forward for this more rapid rise—for example, the very considerable increase in the cost of paper. One significant factor has been the growing pressure on researchers to publish in leading journals. This has come about, in turn, as a result of the pressures on staff, especially university staff, to improve their record of research publication. Journals have grown in size and have therefore cost more to produce. Faced with effectively constant budgets and increasingly expensive journals, libraries have naturally cut back on the number of journal titles to which they subscribe, and so circulation has fallen. The situation has, of course, been less clear-cut than this summary suggests. For example, many libraries have systematically transferred funding from book purchase to journal purchase. In addition, not all journals must be priced highly, and cheaper journals may be bought by individuals as well as institutions. (American researchers tend to be a good deal more generous than their British counterparts in taking out journal subscriptions.) Taylor & Francis noted in the 1990s that, though their higherpriced, often older-established journals were suffering from declining circulations, their lower-priced, newer journals were frequently doing quite well. This difference reflects a subject bias, for the more expensive journals typically contained science-based research, whereas the cheaper journals were often concerned with the social sciences or humanities. Consequently, though journal publishing became a much harder field in which to make a profit during the 1980s and 1990s, Taylor & Francis continued to develop its list of journals. By 1996, the companies controlled by the Taylor & Francis Group were publishing some 130 titles, which made it one of the major players internationally. A check then made against competitors also had the satisfactory result of showing that rates of renewals of Taylor & Francis journals were distinctly better than average. Some of the new developments in publishing activity at Taylor & Francis in the 1980s and 1990s continued to stem from the initiative of Board members. In the 1980s, for example, Professor Baum proposed that Taylor & Francis should invest in a company 231


to teach the basics of biology via music. The intention was to build on the popularity of the Biochemists’ Song Book, with which he had been involved. (In the end, this novel project came to nothing.) Increasingly, however, new developments have stemmed from the companies that have been acquired. This is where new interests have appeared. Falmer Press, with the encouragement it gave to considering books and journals on education, was an early example. Similarly, acquisitions in the 1990s are leading to more thought about the publishing needs of psychology. While Taylor & Francis has remained a market leader in its established fields, such as ergonomics, it has thus managed to gain a similar status in new fields. The nature of the firms acquired means that publications have become increasingly spread across the sciences and the social sciences. The former remain more significant in terms of journal titles, but the latter are more important for the booklist. The two tables illustrate this for 1995. 6 Plans for the future envisage continuing growth, especially in psychology, but the relative proportions of journal and book titles in the sciences and social sciences is not expected to change drastically. Instead, the intention is to develop the journals and books so far as possible in parallel. The expansion of activities during the 1980s and 1990s necessarily involved a reorganisation of responsibilities. In the latter part of the 1980s, at the time the Taylor & Francis Group was created, the Board of Directors consisted of: Professor B.R.Coles (Chairman), Mr A.R.Selvey (Managing Director), Professor K. W.Keohane (Vice-Chairman), Mr S.M.A.Banister, Professor H. Baum, Mrs E.Ferguson and Mr A.M.Foye (Secretary). The executive directors had thus been reduced to two—Tony Selvey and Tony Foye. The latter, along with his post as Secretary, was in charge of company finance. It fell to Tony Selvey to take the tough measures that were needed to see Taylor & Francis through the recession. However, these were not allowed to impede reorganisation. In 1990, Michael Dawes left the company, and S.B. Neal joined as Group Publishing Director. Stephen Neal had previous experience in a senior post with McGraw-Hill, which had involved him extensively in international publishing. Later, in 1994, R.Horton was appointed Group Sales & Marketing Director. One of his first actions was to reorganise marketing activities so that journals and books could be handled separately. The basic reason was that books required more attention than journals, but produced 232

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less revenue. The problem was not serious when only a few of each were being produced, but became more urgent as the publication programme expanded. Both Neal and Horton joined the Board of Directors, so restoring a better balance between executive and non-executive directors. Their appointments reflected a need, as the Group grew, to import expertise from outside. Yet the Taylor & Francis ‘family firm’ tradition had by no means disappeared. In 1995, Eric Hulley retired after forty-eight years in the editorial department. Keith Courtney, 233


a long-term colleague, spoke at Eric’s farewell. He and David Courtney, also at Taylor & Francis, were both nephews of Courtney-Coffey. Outside the London office, Malcolm Clarkson, one of the original founders of Falmer Press, started working there full-time in 1986. In the United States, Kevin Bradley joined the firm at the time of its move to Philadelphia. As Executive VicePresident, he became the mainstay of operations in North America. Finally, the acquisition of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates brought in Michael Forster, a co-owner of that company, as its Managing Director. The organisational picture that Taylor & Francis presents in the 1990s is therefore of a group of firms, each of which has considerable flexibility, within an overall target, for editorial activity and acquisitions. Most marketing, distribution and accountancy work is handled centrally (though separately for the UK and the USA). One aspect that came to the fore during the reorganisation was the need to provide a scheme for training and updating staff skills. At the end of the 1980s, Taylor & Francis obtained funding from the DTI to hire consultants to advise on the setting up of a training programme. The consultants suggested that the company should become a pilot site for the ‘Investors in People’ programme, a new government initiative designed to recognise good staff training and appraisal arrangements. As a consequence, in 1992, Taylor & Francis became the first publisher in the UK to receive an award under this programme. Not long after, the company also introduced an employee share incentive scheme to encourage continuing staff interest in the company. By the mid-1990s the Board of Directors consisted of: Mrs E. Ferguson (Chairman), Professor B.R.Coles (Vice-Chairman), A.R.Selvey (Managing Director), Professor D.J.Banister, Professor H.Baum, Mr R.Horton, Professor K.W.Keohane, Mr S.B.Neal and Mr A.M.Foye (Secretary). The one change in non-executive directors had occurred in 1991, when Mr S.M.A. Banister had indicated his wish to retire. He had four sons, all in the academic world. It was decided to invite one of them, David Banister, who worked at University College London, to join the Board. Bryan Coles had retired from his Chair at Imperial College in 1991, but immediately took up a Senior Research Fellowship which allowed him to continue his work there. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in the same year, and this soon involved him in matters of interest to Taylor & Francis. In 1993 234

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he was made Chairman of the Royal Society’s Scientific Information Committee, where he took responsibility for a major report on the state of the scientific, technological and medical information system in the UK. This was particularly concerned with the impact of electronic communication on the traditional print-based system. In 1995 he stepped down to the position of ViceChairman of the Taylor & Francis Board, being replaced in the Chair by Elnora Ferguson (who had taken over as ViceChairman from Kevin Keohane in 1993). She not only had knowledge of the company from many years past, but had also been a warm supporter of its expansion and reorganisation. One aspect of this interest had been her insistence on the need for nonexecutive directors to involve themselves in the work of all the companies in the Taylor & Francis Group. The Board now held one of its meetings each year in the United States, which allowed directors to see what was happening there. (American representatives were correspondingly invited to attend some of the meetings of the Board in the UK.) Not long after she took over, an Associate Board of research advisers was established. It was felt that the rapidly expanding interests of Taylor & Francis required more input on the directions in which research was going than could be provided by the Board members alone. In September 1995, the Board laid on a special dinner in Cambridge to celebrate Sir Nevill Mott’s ninetieth birthday, presenting him with a silver replica of the lamp of learning. Sir Nevill had maintained his interest in, and advice to the firm over the previous twenty years during which he had been Honorary President. Meanwhile, his position in the academic community had become ever more distinguished. In 1977 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics and, in 1995, he was created a Companion of Honour. His association with Taylor & Francis was clearly of great value for its image in the academic world. By this time, the Group had started producing a newsletter for internal distribution to act as an additional link between its various components. The first issue in 1996 carried a tribute to Sir Nevill Mott from Kevin Keohane, who commented that he had attended Sir Nevill’s lectures fiftyfive years earlier as a student. Within a few months, Professor Keohane was dead, to be followed not long afterwards by Sir Nevill Mott himself. Early in 1997 Bryan Coles, still in the middle of his research, died unexpectedly. In less than a year, three of the leading academic 235

During 1996 and 1997 three of Taylor & Francis’s most distinguished directors died, Sir Nevill Mott, Bryan Coles and Kevin Keohane. (top) Sir Nevill Mott (1905–1996) on his ninetieth birthday in 1995 receiving a silver replica of the lamp of learning at a dinner in his honour hosted by the company in Cambridge. (below left) Kevin Keohane (1923–1996) Non-executive Director and former ViceChairman of Taylor & Francis died in 1996. (below right) Bryan Coles (1926– 1997) Non-executive Director and former Chairman died in 1997.

Brave New World

figures in the post-war history of Taylor & Francis had disappeared from the scene. The participation of academics in the guidance of Taylor & Francis, along with its status as a private company, had always been seen as positioning it between the general run of commercial publishers, on the one hand, and academic societies, on the other. This long-standing image continued to be cultivated in the final years of the twentieth century. One example was the agreement in 1995 that Taylor & Francis should provide funding to the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry to support a research fellowship. Another was the decision in 1996 to set up a prize, named after Sir Nevill Mott, for the best research thesis dealing with solid-state physics. This bridging position still helped recruit academic participants to such vital activities as refereeing and editing. By the 1990s, however, pressures on university staff had reached the point where even this goodwill could not be pressed too far. The Board’s discussions increasingly examined the way existing journals were run. In 1995, for example, it was noted that The Board questioned the traditional structure of journal editorial boards and suggested that due to increased time pressures associated with leading academics, editorial boards should become more pro-active and perhaps two or three editors should take key roles to ensure continuity and timely production of journals.7 By this time, a larger problem was coming to occupy centre stage—the question of how to move into electronic publishing. In-house operations at Taylor & Francis, as at other publishers, had become increasingly computer-based. By the mid-1990s all books were expected to be submitted on disk, and a growing proportion of journal articles were being input in digital form. Taylor & Francis staff were making extensive use of electronic mail and were beginning to use the resources of the Internet. (The Group established its own Web site.) Meanwhile, a major debate was growing between enthusiasts in the academic world and publishers. Some of the former believed that electronic journals would dominate their printed equivalents, at least in some subject fields, by the end of the twentieth century. They also argued that electronic publishing should be cheaper. Hence, the prices of journals should fall, so alleviating the purchasing problems of university libraries.8 237


From the viewpoint of a publisher such as Taylor & Francis, the situation looked rather different. The cost of moving into electronic publishing was far from negligible. Hardware and software changed rapidly and staff retraining and updating were constantly necessary. Moreover, ways of handling on-line information were still developing. Taylor & Francis had begun its experiments in electronic publishing by putting Ergonomics Abstracts on to CD-ROM, and offering this as an alternative to the printed version. This was not too big a step, since CDROMs could be handled and distributed in much the same way as printed volumes. Unfortunately, because CD-ROMs are best designed for largescale storage of archival material, they are not the answer to electronic provision of single issues of most journals. Taylor & Francis therefore began to experiment in 1996 with mounting selected journals on-line: subscribers were told they could choose either, or both, of the electronic and print versions. Taylor & Francis had been considering how to approach electronic publishing from the beginning of the decade. The firm accepted that the points to concentrate on were the ease of accessing the electronic version together with the added value that it could be given. These were therefore the aspects stressed in advertising the new on-line service, whose special features for 1997 were noted as: unlimited concurrent users on a sitewide network fast service—the issues are available up to six weeks before they appear in print email alert—we will inform all your registered users when each new issue is available fully searchable—with all the detail available in the printed version free software to enable you to access the journals the same subscription price as the paper journal—or for just 20% more, subscribe to both so you can access your journal 24 hours a day Internet servers around the world—to help ensure a prompt service On-line technical support service9 The inclusion of such features meant that Taylor & Francis was well up in current good practice in electronic publishing. Their 238

The Company’s London Headquarters: (above) 4 John Street (1980–1995), near the Inns of Court and (below) 1 Gunpowder Square (1995), just off Fleet Street and close to the original building in Red Lion Court where the Taylor & Francis story began.


approach similarly reflected the universal acceptance by the leading journal publishers that most electronic versions would need to run in parallel with print versions for some time to come, if firms were to remain financially viable. The difficulty was that electronic journals were still not straightforward for inexperienced users to handle; nor were they cheaper than their printed equivalents. (Indeed, since VAT had to be paid on electronic versions, they usually cost more than the print versions.) How quickly subscribers worldwide would find the electronic versions preferable, therefore, remained an open question. One advantage for Taylor & Francis was their spread of publications. The consensus by 1997 was that electronic journals would be popular in scientific fields first, and most journals would go electronic before books. If true, this implied that Taylor & Francis could hope to move into electronic publishing in stages, gaining experience from the responses of authors and readers at each step. Expansion has become an integral part of the group’s forward planning. In the past year a further two publishing houses, both based in New York, have been acquired. Brunner/Mazel specialises in psychology books and journals, and so extends Taylor & Francis’ already strong presence in this field. In fact, psychology publishing within the group has now been reorganised: the psychology publications acquired with Lawrence Erlbaum Associates UK Ltd have been transferred to Psychology Press. The second US acquisition, Garland Publishing Inc, represents a new kind of venture. In the first place, it is the largest company to have been taken over by Taylor & Francis so far. More importantly, as a textbook publisher, it is moving the group back to an area of publishing that figured in the earlier post-War history of Taylor & Francis. Garland Publishing is widely known as the publisher of the world’s best-selling textbook on cell biology, Molecular Biology of the Cell, which has already sold over three-quarters of a million copies. Along with this expansion in traditional publishing, the group continues to explore the possibilities offered by electronic publishing. One development here is an investment in Primal Pictures Ltd, a company which specialises in 3-D computer graphics. Thus the bicentenary year starts with a Taylor & Francis Group which is both considerably enlarged, and which has a strengthened presence in North America. Current book production is now over 600 titles a year, along with all the journal titles listed in Appendix 8. 240

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After the deaths of Bryan Coles and Kevin Keohane, new appointments to the board became necessary. Gus Macdonald became non-executive Chairman (with Elnora Ferguson as ViceChairman). The new Chairman started his career in engineering but turned to journalism. Having worked both on newspapers and in television he has very wide experience in the world of the media. At the same time, Derek Mapp, who also has business experience (currently with the Rank Group), was appointed as a member of the board. The backgrounds of the two new appointees reflect an explicit decision by the board. It was decided that Taylor & Francis needed some members of the board to have a wider knowledge and experience of the business world than hitherto had been necessary. With the present diverse backgrounds of board members, it can be hoped that the group is safely poised to plan for further growth in the uncertain publishing world of the twenty-first century. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the company has expanded in a way that could hardly have been envisaged earlier in its history. Yet much the same factors that guided its development in previous decades—especially the need for independence of action allied to close contacts with the academic world—still influenced its new plans. The past and the present of Taylor & Francis have therefore shown a recognisable continuity. In 1995, the Board decided to move to larger quarters in Gunpowder Square. Though this made good sense in terms of planning for the future, it also had an unavoidable symbolic significance. For Gunpowder Square, just off Fleet Street, is no more than a hundred yards from the building in Red Lion Court where the Taylor & Francis saga began. References 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

P.J.Curwen, The UK Publishing Industry (Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1981), Chap. 5. E.de Bellaigue, ‘Mergers, acquisitions and takeovers in publishing’, Logos, 6 (1995), 6–15. Taylor & Francis Board Minutes, November, 1990. ‘Lawrence Erlbaum falls to T & F cash machine’, Bookseller, No. 4678 (1995), 10. Taylor & Francis Board Minutes, May 1995. Taylor & Francis Group Publishing Plan for 1995–8. Taylor & Francis Board Minutes, May 1995. G.Page, R.Campbell and J.Meadows, Journal Publishing (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997), Chap. 11. Taylor & Francis Journals Price List, 1997. 241

CHAPTER NINE

The Philosophical Magazine

It will be evident by this time that the history of Taylor & Francis has been closely identified throughout with the fortunes of the Philosophical Magazine. In this final chapter we therefore turn to a more detailed look at the development of the journal. Since a good deal has already been said about it in preceding chapters, the idea here will be to present a reader’s eye view of the journal down the years. The first point must concern the order of the volumes. The Philosophical Magazine has traditionally appeared in a sequence of numbered series, with the volume numbering starting again at the beginning of each series. For example, one of Rutherford’s most important papers appeared in 1902 in the fourth volume of the sixth series. The original supposition was that new readers might be deterred from subscribing to a journal which had too long a backrun of published volumes, so numbering was restarted at intervals. This belief was far commoner in the nineteenth century than it is now. Correspondingly, renumbering occurred quite frequently in that century—the fifth series was brought to an end at its close. The pace slowed in the twentieth century: the eighth series was not begun until towards the end of the 1950s. This idea of successive series has been dropped altogether in recent years (and the volumes are now identified by Arabic rather than Roman numerals). The title of the journal has undergone a number of changes during its history (the diagram on page 251 provides an overview). In the early days, these reflected amalgamations and the introduction of new editors. To begin with, the title was allembracing—‘The Philosophical Magazine: comprehending the various branches of Science, the Liberal and Fine Arts, Geology, Agriculture, Manufactures and Commerce’. 243


By the time Richard Taylor joined Tilloch in 1822, the first part of this title had been changed to ‘The Philosophical Magazine and Journal’, but the rest remained the same. When Phillips became an editor the entire title was simplified to ‘The Philosophical Magazine or Annals of Chemistry, Mathematics, Astronomy, Natural History and General Science’. This was altered again, to ‘The London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science’, when Brewster joined in the early 1830s. During the 1830s the title-page adopted a sub-title which also underwent a series of changes, from ‘New and United Series of the Philosophical Magazine and Annals of Philosophy’, through ‘New and United Series of the Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science’, to an amalgamated version—‘New and United Series of the Philosophical Magazine, Annals of Philosophy, and Journal of Science’. Finally, the main title was extended further in 1840, when Kane became an editor, to read: ‘The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science’. This remained the name of the journal for over a hundred years. The next change took place in 1949, after Mott became editor, when the journal was relabelled ‘The Philosophical Magazine’. Subsequently the definite article was dropped in 1976, and in 1978 the journal was split into two parts with differing sub-titles. Part A covered ‘Defects and Mechanical Properties’, while Part B was devoted to ‘Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Properties’. Subsequently, these were somewhat extended by adding ‘Structure’ to Part A, and ‘Statistical Mechanics’ to Part B. Philosophical Magazine Letters was launched as a separate part in 1987 following the earlier inclusion of a letters section in the main journal. Scientists are so accustomed to the name Philosophical Magazine that they often forget its meaning is no longer entirely obvious to modern readers. The old connotation of ‘philosophy’, implying ‘natural philosophy’—that is, something akin to ‘science’—has been lost. In consequence, the modern journal receives from time to time papers by philosophers who have been misled by its name to believe it deals with their subject as defined today. The principal editors of the Philosophical Magazine are listed in Appendix 1 at the end of this chapter. After Brewster became involved, the title-page described the journal as being ‘conducted by’ the editors. So it became customary during the nineteenth century for them to be referred to as ‘conductors’. For example, in 1836 they acknowledged the help that Brayley, the Librarian at the London 244


Institution, had given them in editorial work with the words ‘The Conductors of the London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science beg to acknowledge the editorial assistance…’. The phrase ‘conducted by’ remained in use until after the Second World War. In the early history of the journal, all the editors were involved in the work, but in later years one or more of the editors has come to take a leading role. The first official indication of this division of responsibility appeared when Mott was appointed editor. He was designated simply as ‘editor’, while the remainder were listed as members of the editorial board. Arrangements became much more complicated in 1970: the title-page lists an Editor, a Consultant Editor, a European Physical Society Editorial Committee (with three members) and two Consultants. A few years later, the system was revised yet again. Associate Editors were introduced to process papers in their own specialties along with a specially designated Book Review Editor, while the Consultants disappeared. Boards of Regional Editors were introduced in 1984. A further change took place in 1987, when Philosophical Magazine Letters appeared. E.A.Davis, the Editor of the Philosophical Magazine, was joined as co-editor of this letters journal by S.R. Elliott from Cambridge. The devolutionary approach was extended in 1995 when W.M.Stobbs, also from Cambridge, and J.L.Smith from Los Alamos became Principal Editors of Parts A and B, respectively, with E.A.Davis continuing to act as overall Coordinating Editor. The appointment of an editor from the USA reflected the great importance of the North American market for the Philosophical Magazine. Similarly, Philosophical Magazine Letters acquired a separate North American editor—P.S.Riseborough from New York. However, it would be more accurate to say that the importance of overseas readership as a whole continues to grow. Of the nine Associate Editors of Philosophical Magazine B in 1977, three came from the USA, with one each from Australia, Austria, Germany, India, Sweden and the UK. At infrequent intervals the editors of the Philosophical Magazine have included prefaces addressed to their readers. Typically, these have been brief announcements of some change in the journal. For example, one in November 1982 informed readers that a Letters Section would be launched in the journal beginning in 1983. Three of these prefaces, referring to significant moments in the earlier 245


history of the journal, are reproduced in Appendix 2. The first, by Tilloch, was inserted at the conclusion of the first volume in 1798. The second, also by Tilloch, introduced Richard Taylor to readers. The final preface was published by Taylor himself in 1851 and introduced William Francis. The printer and the printer’s address have varied with much the same frequency as the journal title. Most of the changes similarly occurred in the early history of the journal. Appendix 3 records the variations during the first few years. From 1827 onwards the address remained Red Lion Court, though the printer’s name still underwent some alterations. In 1837 it was recorded as Richard and John E.Taylor, reverting to Richard Taylor in 1851. In the following year it reached the modern form (apart from the twentieth-century addition of ‘Ltd’)—Taylor & Francis. The next change did not occur until over a century later, when the company moved from Red Lion Court to Macklin Street. In the latter half of 1980, this was replaced by the John Street address. At the end of the 1980s, when Taylor & Francis ceased to print their own journals, it became necessary to specify the printer separately. Currently all parts of the Philosophical Magazine ate printed by the Dorset Press in Dorchester. Another development has been the introduction of ‘acid-free’ paper to ensure printed copies will not deteriorate rapidly during the twenty-first century. Along with the printer’s name and address, it was customary to add the names of principal agents who sold the Philosophical Magazine. The variations in these provide some insight into the geographical distribution of the journal. The places listed early in the nineteenth century were London, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dublin, and these were quickly joined by Paris. New York was added before the middle of the nineteenth century, but a German outlet—in Berlin—puts in an appearance only in 1872. In the twentieth century, these official agents decreased in number until just before the Second World War the words ‘sold by’ disappeared, and it was simply recorded that the agents were Wm. Dawson & Sons Ltd. This statement was also removed after the war. The characteristic Taylor & Francis symbol of the lighted lamp with the motto ‘Alere flammam’ was first printed in the Philosophical Magazine in 1815 at the end of the volume. In 1823 it was moved to the title-page. It was transferred back to the end of the volume in 1835, only to be returned to the verso in 1883. In the modern journal, the lamp symbol appears on the front 246


cover. It is now accompanied by the Europhysics symbol inside the front cover. British journals of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries often considered it appropriate to print apposite quotations in their preliminaries. Classical authors were a favourite hunting ground for such extracts, but other sources were also happily mined. Thus, when the journal Nature started in 1869, it was provided with a quotation from William Wordsworth. The Philosophical Magazine was therefore following a common practice when it included in the first and subsequent volumes a few lines in Latin (by Justus Lipsius) on the title-page. Two more Latin quotations—by Hugo de S.Victore and J.B.Pinelli—were added to the verso of the title-page during the 1840s. (Translations of these three quotations are given in Appendix 4.) The Justus Lipsius extract was removed during the reorganisation of the journal in 1949; the other two disappeared in 1978. The presentation of material in the Philosophical Magazine became increasingly formalised during the first half of the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century, for example, references to work by other authors were often given in a fragmentary and inconsistent way. By the beginning of the twentieth century, r efererences, though still sometimes incomplete, were regularly given in footnotes. But it was only in the years leading up to the Second World War that these references were standardised, so that they provided an (abbreviated) journal title, volume and page number and year. It was also during the twentieth century that papers in the Philosophical Magazine began to carry authors’ addresses (though for a long time at the end of the paper, rather than the beginning, as nowadays). Summaries of the papers began to be printed, and then gradually transmuted into the present-day abstracts. These various changes can also be observed in other scientific journals with a long history: the same sequence can be traced, for example, in the Philosophical Transactions. They reflect the gradual tightening of communication procedures as science became increasingly professionalised. (This is reflected, too, in the increasingly formal way in which scientists refer to each other in their papers.) From this viewpoint it is interesting that the Philosophical Magazine tended to lag behind some of its contemporaries in the introduction of standardisation. A major shake up in journal standards was initiated in the UK after the 247


Second World War by the Royal Society. As noted in an earlier chapter, several of the r ecommendations were based on Philosophical Magazine practices. Others were accepted by the jour nal. Consequently, the inter nal layout of the journal represents current good practice among British physics journals. During recent decades, however, competition between journals and their publishers has led to increasing differences between the designs of journal covers and these are now much more striking and colourful than in the past. Some redesign of the Philosophical Magazine was undertaken in the mid-1970s, but a major redesign of the cover occurred in 1997. The contents of the Philosophical Magazine have become increasingly specialised with the passage of time. As its title indicated, the original journal covered an enormous spread of science and technology. Topics that later came under the general umbrella of physics were quite well represented—perhaps a quarter of all the items, but subjects such as chemistry and geography were equally prominent. The emphasis gradually changed so that, by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, 80 to 90 per cent of all articles dealt with physics. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Philosophical Magazine was recognised as being essentially a physics journal. Further change occurred by specialisation within the sub-fields of physics. The first deliberate step in this direction was taken by Mott with his decision to emphasise solid state physics. Even so, it was some years later before the published papers were restricted to the physics of condensed matter only. In 1950, for example, Mott accepted a paper by Claude Shannon, one of the founders of information theory, on ‘Programming a computer for playing chess’. Thereafter an important factor in the split of the Philosophical Magazine into two parts was the growing volume of research into condensed matter. However, the division also reflected an editorial decision. An increasing proportion of submitted papers was coming from departments of materials science and metallurgy. It was felt that the separation of Philosophical Magazine B might encourage more work from physicists, so providing a more balanced coverage of the field. In the five-year period prior to 1978, the average number of papers published annually was 225. By 1991 this number had doubled, partly as a consequence of the division of the journal. Another reason for the expansion of the journal in this period was 248


the publication from time to time of special issues, either Festschrifts in honour of significant birthdays and retirements of distinguished scientists (a notable one, consisting of over 600 pages, was published in celebration of Sir Nevill Mott’s eightieth birthday), or to include the proceedings of workshops and small conferences. Over thirty of these special issues have been produced, each of which has led in turn to the submission of individual papers on the topics featured. The number of manuscripts currently published each year in the latter part of the 1990s is close to 500, with an average length of about 10 printed pages. The rejection rate is approximately 30 per cent with a somewhat higher figure for Philosophical Magazine Letters. Philosophical Magazine has an exceedingly high reputation for the quality of its half-tone illustrations, making it the journal of choice for electron microscopists, who need high definition and contrast in their photographic images. Colour reproduction is being increasingly used where appropriate. While the contents pages of all parts of the journal have been available free of charge on-line since 1995, electronic access to copies of the full articles is provided to readers whose institutions subscribe to the hard copy and/or the electronic versions. Along with the papers presenting original research in some form, the early Philosophical Magazine published a range of other regular items: notices respecting new books, proceedings of learned societies, intelligence and miscellaneous articles, lists of new patents and meteorological tables. Some of these indicate the importance of the Philosophical Magazine for conveying information to scientists in the nineteenth century. For example, a notice in the journal in the mid1860s provided the first opportunity for those involved in electrical work to purchase standard resistances.1 The book reviews continued during the twentieth century, but the others gradually lapsed. The patents and meteorological tables disappeared during the nineteenth century. The ‘intelligence and miscellaneous articles’ continued until after the First World War, though decreasing in extent towards the end. Similarly, the proceedings of the learned societies were first whittled down to the Royal Society and the Geological Society and then, before the end of the nineteenth century, to the Geological Society alone. The latter lingered on, an anomalous item in a physics journal, until the 1930s. Most of the accounts of overseas research, which made the Philosophical Magazine so valuable to British readers during the 249


nineteenth century, were included under intelligence and miscellaneous articles. It is interesting to note that, despite the dominance usually assigned to German physics in the latter part of the nineteenth century, German and French items reported in the journal were in rough balance for most of the period. Apart from these reports, an increasing number of research papers was submitted from abroad. One of the growing sources was the United States, where nineteenth-century physicists had some difficulty in finding suitable outlets for their papers. ‘When in 1873 the young and virtually unpublished Rowland submitted a bold experimental study of magnetisation [to the American Journal], Dana turned to physicists at Yale for an assessment of its merits. Following their advice, Dana rejected the paper, explaining to Rowland that he “needed more study”. Rowland sent the paper to James Clerk Maxwell, who was so impressed that he had it published forthwith in the British Philosophical Magazine.’ 2 Important work came similarly from scientists in European countries who sought a wider audience. An interesting example is a paper on the greenhouse effect by the Swede, S.Arrhenius, which was published in the Philosophical Magazine in 1896. This actually received relatively little attention at the time, but is now regularly cited as a fundamental paper on the topic. 3 After the First World War, the overseas papers came more often from Commonwealth countries, especially from India, but the influx of papers from the USA increased again after the Second World War. More recently, the Europhysics link has led to a growth in submitted papers from Europe. The Philosophical Magazine has generally been well regarded by physicists throughout the twentieth century. One rough way of illustrating this is by examining how frequently papers in the Philosophical Magazine are cited by physicists in their work (as compared with the frequency with which they cite other journals). Relevant data have been collected from time to time and, if not

Title-page of the first volume of the Philosophical Magazine, published in June 1798. Note the absence of a printer’s name and that Tilloch had arranged for continental distribution of the journal through a bookseller in Hamburg. Richard Taylor’s name first appeared on the title-page as Editor in 1822 and that of William Francis in 1851.

250


taken too seriously, provide an interesting insight. The table above indicates the ranking of some leading physics journals in terms of the number of citations they have received for four different years. 4 If the post-war fall in rank of the Philosophical Magazine seems surprising, at least two factors need to be remembered. The first is that the journal became more specialised in its scope from the 1950s onwards. It therefore catered for the interests of a smaller proportion of the physics community than hitherto. The second is that a number of successful new physics journals came into existence between 1954 and 1969 (e.g. Nuclear Physics in 1956; Physical Review Letters in 1958). If anything, the Philosophical Magazine has regained some ground against its old competitors in recent years. The standard quantitative method of assessing journal quality nowadays is via the ‘impact factor’. This essentially compares the number of times papers appearing in particular journals are subsequently cited. In these terms, Physical Review B (the part dealing with condensed matter) remains comfortably ahead with an impact factor of 2.834 in 1995. However, Philosophical Magazine A and B returned the respectable scores of 1.501 and 1.234, respectively, for the same year. This put them ahead of the Proceedings of the Royal Society with its score of 1.174. Although a commercial journal, the Philosophical Magazine has always involved the same scientific community as learned society journals. This point was made by J.D.Bernal in his influential discussion of The Social Function of Science published just before the Second World War. He compared the percentage of papers in different journals in terms of their organisational origin. (He wished to see how many came from industrial or government establishments, rather than from the academic world.) His figures for the Philosophical Magazine 252


and the Proceedings of the Royal Society A clearly show the similar authorship of the two.5

After the war, Mott kept a detailed account of the papers received by the Philosophical Magazine during his first few years as editor. This shows that the proportion of papers from non-academic sources increased after the war. The figures also indicate the shift in interest towards solid state physics and the speeding up of the rate of publication. Throughout its history the Philosophical Magazine has published papers of major scientific importance. The significance of the journal for the development of physics as a whole increased noticeably during the second half of the nineteenth century and probably peaked in the early years of the twentieth. During the first decades of its existence, many fascinating, though hardly fundamental contributions were published—for example, ‘A Report of the State of His Majesty’s Flock of Fine-woolled Spanish Sheep, for the year ending Michaelmas 1803’ by Sir Joseph Banks. It is worth noting that Banks was then President of the Royal Society, and his article’s appearance in the journal reflects the fact that eminent scientists—often personally known to the publishers—contributed from the outset. Among their reports were some which are still regarded as of fundamental importance to the history of science: Faraday on the condensation of gases is a good example. During much of the nineteenth century, authors often contributed accounts of the same research to a number of different journals. Communication problems, particularly between countries, made this the best way of ensuring that the research was recognised. For this reason, some of the papers in the Philosophical Magazine have to share their distinction with other journals. Correspondingly, the journal contributed to the dissemination of overseas research in the UK by publishing translations and commentaries. An example from the early nineteenth century is the 253


presentation—spread over several issues—of Haüy’s fundamental work on crystallography, translated from his Traité de Minéralogie. In the 1860s there were equally important translations of Kirchhoff’s major contributions to research on radiation and spectroscopy. The Philosophical Magazine published some of the most important advances in spectroscopy of the nineteenth century. Just before midcentury, J.W.Draper, an Englishman who had emigrated to the United States, described in the journal the continuous spectra emitted by solids and liquids. Subsequently, Kelvin and Stokes both contributed important comments on spectra. The Kerr effect, relating to the influence of a magnetic field on the plane of polarisation of light, was announced by its discoverer in the Philosophical Magazine in 1877. Some of the earliest reports of Langley’s work on the infrared spectrum also appeared in the journal. The Philosophical Magazine published fundamental contributions to two other major developments in nineteenthcentury physics. The first was electromagnetic theory. For example, Maxwell wrote on this topic in the early 1860s, explaining why Faraday’s concept of lines of force should be taken seriously. The second concerned the nature of matter and, more especially, kinetic theory. The Philosophical Magazine entered this field early. Clausius, one of the founders of the kinetic theory in the 1850s, discovered that he had overlooked a significant contribution by Joule. It had appeared in the Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, a journal not widely read in Germany. To ensure that the research received proper recognition abroad, Clausius persuaded Joule that the paper should be republished in the Philosophical Magazine. This nineteenth-century interest in radiation and matter and their interaction led on to the main areas of publication in the Philosophical Magazine during its golden age. From the last years of the nineteenth century through to the 1920s, the journal was full of papers marking the transition from the old atomic theory to the new. The chief link in this change was J.J.Thomson. In all, a third of his numerous papers appeared in the Philosophical Magazine, including both the first and the last he published. His ideas on the electromagnetic theory of the origin of mass appeared in the journal in 1881. This was followed later in the century by the report of his discovery of the electron, and then, in the early years of the twentieth century, by his attempt to explain the structure of the 254


atom. This latter question also stimulated some of the most important contributions by Rutherford and his colleagues—from the study of a-particles to the nuclear model of the atom. Rutherford’s other main series of papers dealt with radioactivity. His reports and those of his colleagues—especially Soddy— demonstrated both the instability of some nuclei and established the nature of the radioactive products. Around Rutherford’s publications in the Philosophical Magazine clustered articles on most of the significant advances in British physics of that era—from studies of x-rays and atomic numbers by Barkla and Moseley just before the First World War to Aston’s development of the mass spectrograph just after the war. The most important was Bohr’s description of his new theory of the atom, which was published in the Philosophical Magazine in 1913. This work—the foundation of modern quantum theory—came to the Philosophical Magazine as a result of Bohr’s arrival in Manchester from Denmark to work with Rutherford. Other important contributions arrived from the United States, including papers by Richardson and Compton on the photoelectric effect and by Millikan on his oil drop experiment to determine the charge on an electron. The outstanding role of the Philosophical Magazine in the development of ideas concerning atomic structure can be discerned in any catalogue of the key papers produced during this period. For example, one compilation of major physics papers includes a total of sixteen published between 1897 and 1914: of these, thirteen appeared in the Philosophical Magazine.6 Clearly, it would be difficult for any journal to match this range today. The growth of specialisation means that significance must now normally be looked for in the context of particular fields of physics. For the Philosophical Magazine, the question is therefore how important have its contributions to solid state physics been during the past thirty years or more? The answer— as through much of its history—is that, despite important contributions from abroad, the most noteworthy papers have mainly been home-grown. A good example is the series of papers on dislocations published by Hirsch and his collaborators at Oxford during the 1960s. But the outstanding recent example of high-calibre research must be the work reported by Sir Nevill Mott and his colleagues (including the present Coordinating Editor of the Philosophical Magazine) on the physics of the non-crystalline state. It was for his work on this subject, mainly published in the Philosophical 255


Magazine, that Sir Nevill was awarded a Nobel Prize in physics in 1977. Despite its more restricted subject matter, the Philosophical Magazine can evidently still pride itself on the quality of its papers. As we have seen, Philosophical Magazine is now published in three parts: * Part A: The Physics of Condensed Matter: Structure, defects, and mechanical properties; * Part B: The Physics of Condensed Matter: Statistical mechanics, electronic optical, and magnetic properties * The Physics of Condensed Matter: Letters in both print and electronic, on-line, editions. Part A is edited by Dr Lindsay Greer of the University of Cambridge. Dr Greer was preceded by Professor Michael Goringe of the University of Surrey, who took on the role of Acting Editor after the tragic and untimely death of Professor W.Michael Stobbs. Part B is edited by Dr Jim Smith of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Letters is jointly edited by Professor E.A.Davis of the University of Leicester (also the current Co-ordinating Editor), Dr S. R.Elliott of the University of Cambridge; and Professor P.S. Riseborough of the Polytechnic Institute of New York. All three parts are supported by active and international associate editors and editorial boards. In 1998, the journal’s two hundredth anniversary was marked at events in Cambridge and Los Angeles, indicative of its global reach as it enters its third century. References 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

256

B.J.Hunt, ‘The ohm is where the art it: British telegraph engineers and the development of electrical standards’, Osiris, 9 (1993), 48–63. D.J.Kevles, The Physicists (Alfred A.Knopf, New York, 1978), p. 40. E.Crawford, Arrhenius: from ionic theory to the greenhouse effect, (Science History Publications, Canton, USA, 1996), p. xii. H.Dierks, Über die Zitierhäufigkeit von Zeitschriften auf dem Gebiete der Physik (Greven Verlag, Cologne, 1972), p. 27. J.D.Bernal, The Social Function of Science (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1939), p. 425. S.Wright, ed., Classical Scientific Papers: Physics (Mills & Boon, London, 1964).

APPENDIX ONE

Editors of the Philosophical Magazine

The special Commemoration number of the Philosophical Magazine, published in 1948, contained an article on the history of the journal by Allan and John Ferguson. The material presented here in Appendices 1, 3 and 4 is adapted from their article. All editors are included up to 1970. At that point a fairly complex editorial structure was established, so only the person specifically designated as ‘Editor’, or, latterly, ‘Co-ordinating Editor’, has been included in the list below subsequent to 1970.

257

APPENDIX TWO

Early Prefaces to the Philosophical Magazine

(1) Alexander Tilloch (1798)

Having concluded our first Volume, we would be deficient in gratitude did we not return thinks [sic] to the public, in general, for the favourable reception our labours have experienced; and to those Scientific Gentlemen, in particular, who have assisted us with Communications, as well as Hints respecting the future conducting of the Work. As the grand Object of it is to diffuse Philosophical Knowledge among every Class of Society, and to give the Public as early an Account as possible of every thing new or curious in the scientific World, both at Home and on the Continent, we flatter ourselves with the hope that the same liberal Patronage we have hitherto experienced will be continued; and that Scientific Men will afford us that Support and Assistance which they think our Attempt entitled to. Whatever may be our future Success, no Exertions shall be wanting on our part to render the Work useful to Society, and especially to the Arts and Manufacturers of Great Britain which, as is well known, have been much improved by the great Progress that has lately been made in various Branches of the Philosophical Sciences. (2) Alexander Tilloch (1822)

It is now within a few months of a quarter of a century since this work was commenced; a period rich in scientific discoveries, the records of which will be referred to with deep interest by future generations. During this long period no exertion has been wanting on my part to render THE PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE and JOURNAL worthy of the flattering reception it has experienced, not only at home, but throughout the civilized world. That the work is a perfect one, it 258

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would ill become me to assert; but I believe that, without vanity, I may say, that with all its defects, whatever these may be, it has tended not a little to diffuse a love of science and the liberal arts among the present generation. I beg to return unfeigned thanks to my numerous friends for the aids they have afforded me in conducting the work, and rendering my miscellany really useful to the world; and have now to announce, that to render this work still more worthy of the patronage it receives from the public, I have obtained the cooperation of Mr. RICHARD TAYLOR, a gentleman from whose exertions, in conjunction with my own,—and none I am sure will be wanting,—I may, without presumption, hope that THE PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE and JOURNAL will increase in interest and general utility. (3) Richard Taylor (1851)

In commencing with the year 1851, a NEW SERIES OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL MAGAZINE, the Editors are induced to hope that they may refer to the progress and conduct of the work through its existence of more than half a century. Having been begun by Dr. Alexander Tilloch in 1798, with a view to the promotion of science, it has ever been the object both of its original Editor and of his successors, to record all the great discoveries made, since the era of its commencement, as they could be collected from the most authentic sources foreign as well as domestic. In addition to the copious supply which these afford, the numerous Original Communications with which the Philosophical Magazine has been honoured by the most eminent Cultivators of Science of the present day may be stated as giving the work of just claim to general support. As the representative also of the several Journals* which have from time to time merged in this, it has long occupied in all parts of the world a rank similar to that held by the Annales de Chimie et de Physique, by Poggendorff’s Annalen, and others; whilst from its extensive foreign circulation it is the principal vehicle of communication between the Philosophers of our own and of foreign countries, as is shown by the constant reference to its pages, and the frequent translation of its Articles, in foreign scientific works. * Nicholson’s Journal: The Annals of Philosophy: The Journal of Science. 259

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The important duty of making known in this country the labours and discoveries in the various branches of Natural Philosophy abroad, had, it is hoped, been to a considerable extent fulfilled in the great number of Translations and Abstracts which have been given from the principal foreign Journals and Translations, with a view to enable the reader to keep pace with the progress of science in every stage of its advancement. In this, as well as in other departments of the Journal, the Editors will now have the constant aid of Dr. WILLIAM FRANCIS, the Editor of the ‘Chemical Gazette’, to whose services they have long been greatly indebted, and with whose assistance arrangements are made for introducing material improvements in the New Series, and particularly a more regular and fuller account of scientific discoveries in Foreign Countries. The commencement of this New Series suggests the hope that the Philosophical Magazine may at this period receive an accession to the number of its supporters. Those of its Editors who have stood beside it for half a century, and made it their endeavour that it should be honestly, independently and usefully conducted, may be permitted, on this occasion, to urge how much the means of giving additional interest and value to the Journal must depend upon the support afforded to them; in the hope that many lovers of science who are not already subscribers may take this opportunity of adding to the number of those by whose encouragement alone the work has been upheld. In acknowledging the favours of their Correspondents, the Editors confidently request a continuance of them as the best means of insuring their future success.

260

APPENDIX THREE

Early Printers of the Philosophical Magazine

261

APPENDIX FOUR

Translations of Quotations on the Title-Page and Verso of the Philosophical Magazine

Justus Lipsius ‘Nec aranearum…’ (1596) ‘The way the spiders weave, you see, is none the better because they produce the threads from their own body, nor is ours the worse because like bees we cull from the work of others.’ Hugo de S.Victore ‘Meditationis est…’ (c. 1125) ‘Meditation means searching out that which is hidden, contemplation regarding with wonder that which is not. Wonder breeds curiosity, curiosity investigation, investigation discovery.’ J.B.Pinelli ‘Cur spirent venti…’ (c. 1590) ‘Why the winds blow, why fissures appear in the earth, why the sea swells, why the ocean is so salt, why the sun hides his head in ruddy darkness, what makes the comets blaze forth so often and so terribly, what gives rise to clouds, why thunderbolts appear in the sky, and what fire the rainbow flashes, who summons together the heavenly bodies in such varied courses.’

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APPENDIX FIVE

Editors and Series of the Annals of Natural History

First Series, Vol. 1 (1838) Sir W.Jardine, P.J.Selby, G.Johnston, Sir W.J.Hooker, Richard Taylor Vol. 5 (1840) Jardine, Selby, Johnston, D.Don, Taylor Vol. 9 (1842) Jardine, Selby, Johnston, C.C.Babington, J.H.Balfour, Taylor Second Series, Vol. 1 (1848) Vol. 6 (1850) Selby, Johnston, Babington, Balfour, Taylor Vol. 16 (1855) Selby, Babington, Balfour, Taylor Third Series, Vol. 1 (1858) Selby, Babington, J.E.Gray, A. Henfrey, Taylor Vol. 3 (1859) Selby, Babington, Gray, Henfrey, William Francis Vol. 5 (1860) Selby, Babington, Gray, Francis Vol. 20 (1867) Babington, Gray, Francis Fourth Series, Vol. 1 (1868) Babington, Gray, W.S.Dallas, Francis Vol. 16 (1875) Babington, A.C.L.G.Günther, Dallas, Francis Fifth Series, Vol. 1 (1878) Günther, Dallas, W.Carruthers, Francis Sixth Series, Vol. 1 (1888) Vol. 6 (1890) Günther, Carruthers, Francis Seventh Series, Vol. 1 (1898) Günther, Carruthers, William Francis Jr. Eighth Series, Vol. 1 (1908) Vol. 10 (1912) Carruthers, A.E.Shipley, Francis Ninth Series, Vol. 1 (1918) Carruthers, Shipley, Richard T.Francis Vol. 10 (1922) Shipley, Francis Vol. 11 (1923) Shipley, A.S.Woodward, G.C.Champion, Francis Tenth Series, Vol. 1 (1928) Woodward, G.A.K.Marshall, J.Stephenson, Francis Vol. 7 (1931) Woodward, Marshall, Stephenson, C.Tate Regan Vol. 11 (1933) Woodward, Marshall, Regan, W.T.Calman 263

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Eleventh Series, Vol. 1 (1938) Twelfth Series, Vol. 1 (1948) Marshall, Calman, H.L.Hawkins, W.N.Edwards Thirteenth Series, Vol. 1 (1958) Marshall, Hawkins, G.Taylor, E.B.Britton, G.O.Evans Vol. 2 (1959) Hawkins, Taylor, Britton, Evans Vol. 6 (1963) Hawkins, Taylor, Evans, H.Oldroyd Vol. 8 (1965) Hawkins, Taylor, Evans, Oldroyd, G.B.Corbet, W.G.Inglis Vol. 1 (1967) Journal of Natural History Hawkins, Evans, Oldroyd, A.L.Rice Vol. 2 (1968) Evans, Oldroyd, Rice Vol. 4 (1970) Evans, Oldroyd, J.A.Wallwork Vol. 7 (1973) Evans, Oldroyd, V.R.Southgate Vol. 8 (1974) Evans, Southgate Vol. 9 (1975) Oldroyd, Southgate Vol. 13 (1979) Southgate, D.Hollis Vol. 17 (September 1983) Southgate, Hollis, A.A.Fincham Vol. 18 (January 1984) Hollis, Fincham Vol. 22 (1988) Hollis, Fincham, P.G.Moore Vol. 23 (1989) Fincham, Moore, T.Huddlestone Vol. 24 (1990)* Moore, Huddlestone Vol. 29 (1995) Moore, Huddlestone, A.Polaszek Vol. 30 (1996) Moore, Polaszek, P.J.Hayward

* In July 1990 the editors invited “opinion” articles and “correspondence” in order to return the Journal to “its venerable roots” in the Annals of Natural History. 264

APPENDIX SIX

Prospectus of König’s Newly Invented Patent Printing Machine The Patentees of Mr. KÖNIG’S Printing Machine are at length enabled to offer it to the Trade as a matured Invention, which has been accomplished after more than Thirteen Years application, by determined perseverance and great sacrifices. The numberless difficulties to be surmounted, have not been the only cause of delay in the appearance of the present Prospectus, which is owing chiefly to the circumstance, that, on having attained all the success which the Patentees looked for from their first Plans, new Improvements suggested themselves to the Inventor, which required fundamental Alterations in what he had successfully accomplished; and the object of which was so considerable and valuable an extension of the powers of the Machine, as to induce the Patentees to incur the additional expense and delay required for their execution. Thus circumstanced, they did not feel themselves warranted in making a public offer of the Invention till it should be brought to such a state of perfection, that the Inventor himself had ceased to contemplate any further improvement. As the final result of their exertions, the Patentees can now offer Machines of Three descriptions, differing in power and arrangement, but founded upon the same general Principles; 1. The Completing Machine, 2. The Double Machine, 3. The Single Machine, each constructed upon the principle of their fourth Patent, including the latest Improvements. Single and Double Machines with the interrupted Motion of the Printing Cylinder (such as are in use at the establishment of Messrs. BENSLEY, or at the Times Office) they cannot now recommend to the Public, considering them as superseded. 265

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The COMPLETING MACHINE may be [viewed] at work at the Office of Messrs. BENSLEY. The following outline of its action and effect will give some idea of it to those who may not have an opportunity of inspecting it. It has a double apparatus for Inking and Printing, with two Carriages or Coffins, each large enough to admit a Double Demy form, 34½ by 21 inches. The Paper is laid on an endless Web (the Feeder) which revolves at intervals; thence the Sheet passes into the Machine, and is ejected within a few seconds, printed on both Sides, and in Register. It would be tedious here to explain how the Register is produced; and those, who have doubts about it, could not well be convinced, otherwise than by ocular demonstration. Suffice it to state, that Forms of all sizes—being correctly imposed in chases made on purpose—are printed in Register by the Machine, without points. The Speed of the Completing Machine is 900 impressions within the hour, or 1800, taking the reiteration into account. But as Paper of double dimensions, Double Crown, Double Demy, &c. may be printed with equal facility and at no additional expense whatever, the power of the Machine is thereby augmented to 3600. The Mechanism of the Machine, however, is not limited to 900 within the hour, its real limit depending on the practicability of laying on the Sheet with ease and certainty, which may vary according to the dexterity of the person employed in that operation. Messrs. BENSLEY’S Machine goes regularly at the rate of 930, and sometimes at the rate of 1000. To obtain this great result, only two Boys are required, one for laying on the Sheets, the other for receiving them as they are delivered by the Machine. A third person, however, should be near, to inspect the work, and prepare the forms. The Patentees have made inquiries respecting the practicability of procuring Paper of double dimensions; and they are informed that it can be manufactured without any difficulty, and without additional expense, by the Paper Machines, which are now in use in almost every part of the kingdom. As in a Completing Machine the reiteration is printed almost immediately (in less than three seconds) after the first side, it was apprehended that the setting off would have caused great inconvenience. But experience has proved this apprehension to be groundless; 300, 500, and sometimes even 700 or 1000, are wrought off before a change of tympan-sheet is necessary; and this latter 266

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operation being performed in 1½ minute, the inconvenience and loss of time occasioned thereby has been found so trifling, as not to call for any preventive contrivance. A DOUBLE MACHINE, upon the principle of the latest Improvements, is in the principal parts similar to those at the Times Newspaper Office with this difference, that, by the application of the Feeder, it is become practicable to give an uninterrupted motion to the Printing Cylinder, whereby the motion of the Machine is rendered easy, and the Speed increased from 1100 to 1500 in the hour. It is principally calculated for Newspapers, for, though it requires four hands to attend it, yet to the Proprietors of Newspapers it may be of greater importance to procure 1500 impressions in the hour from one form, than 900 on both sides. A SINGLE MACHINE upon the latest plan may be seen at Messrs. Taylors’ office, Shoe Lane. It prints 900 or 1000 an hour on one side, requiring the attendance of two Boys, and may at any future period be converted into a Completing Machine, by adding the parts necessary for the reiteration. The Register in this, as well as in the Double Machine, is obtained in the usual manner, by Points. The Patentees conceive the Single Machine well calculated for the Proprietors of Country Newspapers, and generally for Printers of no very extensive business. The force required for impelling the Machine is but small. A Steam Engine of the power of one horse is more than sufficient for either a Completing Machine, a Double Machine, or two Single ones. Of the quality of the Work, the present Prospectus as well as several volumes that have been printed by Double Machines may be considered as fair Specimens. And as the use and management of the Machines become more familiar to the attendants, the Work improves; and the Patentees are confident that the general quality will be far above that which is produced by hand, under the denomination of common work.*

* The Printing of the Times & Evening Mail Newspapers which for nearly 3 years has been performed by Machines may be considered as a specimen of what they were capable of producing, before their execution previous to the application of latest improvements. 267

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Works of long number are certainly the best adapted to the Machine; yet, as the Forms can be removed and others fixed in ten minutes, and as the operation of making Register on the coffin is not required, the loss of time with small numbers is by no means considerable. It is well known to every Printer, that the Wood or Iron Press is never made with such accuracy as to produce a perfectly equal impression; thence the necessity of overlays, &c. The Machine is entirely free from this defect; overlays are never wanted. The Cylindrical Impression, if accurately executed, is perfect, requiring nothing but a proper adjustment of the Printing Cylinder; and such adjustment will last for months. It had been conjectured that the Types would sooner wear out by the Cylindrical Impression than by that of the common Press; but experience has already proved the fallacy of that supposition, and there are reasons which render it probable that the contrary will be the fact. By the late Improvements, the various parts of the Machine have been brought to a degree of simplicity and perfection which could hardly have been expected, if the complexity of the operation of Printing is considered. Persons unacquainted with Mechanics, seeing a number of wheels and motions in the Machine, are apt to think it complicated. But, to form a just opinion, the effect must be compared with the means. At the common Press, the man who pulls has to perform twenty-two distinct manual operations before one Sheet is printed on both sides, to which must be added the work of the other Pressman, who takes and distributes the ink and beats the form. All those manual operations are here reduced to two; and, as all the rest must be performed by Mechanical means, and with Sixfold Speed, it will be admitted that such an Engine cannot be as simple as a Cornmill. There is besides some confusion of ideas in the use of the word Complexity. The mere multiplication of parts and motions, acting on simple and tried principles, is not complexity, which, in Mechanics, designates rather an aggregate of difficult and illcombined motions, tending to frequent self-destruction. But there is now nothing in the Mechanism of the Printing Machine which in that sense can be called complicated; and that such Machines will cost less in repairs than many others thought very simple, and used for the most ordinary purposes, the Patentees are confident. They derive that confidence certainly from the manner in which the 268

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Machines are executed: no expense is spared; and they are made throughout with a degree of care and accuracy, which has perhaps never been surpassed. Besides the general solidity of the workmanship, there are several expedients to obviate the neglect or forgetfulness of the workmen. Among other contrivances, is one, which reduces the Speed by an easy transition, and which for that reason is called the Slow Motion. This prevents any jar from sudden stoppage. The several means invented for the preservation of the Machine can merely be indicated here; they must be seen to be understood and appreciated. To some Printers, who still object to the Machine on the ground of complexity, it may be interesting to be informed, that the Inventor has a plan for Printing Machines upon the same general principles, which would be extremely simple, and much cheaper. They will produce perhaps only half the quantity of work, and require at least one additional hand; but they may answer the purpose of those who look principally for simplicity and cheapness. To facilitate the introduction of the Machines, the Patentees offer them on terms usually adopted for patent inventions, namely, an Annuity for a certain number of years, exclusively of the purchase money. If, however, a specific sum, including both the price of the Machine and an equivalent for the Annuity, should be preferred, no objection will be made to such an arrangement. The Price of a Completing Machine is £2,000 a Double Machine… 1,400 a Single Machine…. 1,000 By which is to be understood, the Machines delivered in London complete, with all the Safety provisions and the Slow Motion, (the latter without Shaft, but finished so far as to be quite ready to go on the Fly-wheel Shaft of the Engine.) The transport from London to any other part of the kingdom, as also the expenses of erection (which are inconsiderable) are not included. The Patentees recommend, for convenience and expedition, several additional implements or appendages, which are not included in the above-mentioned sums, namely, a cast-iron Imposing Plate, some Chases upon the new plan, &c. 269

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Though the Prices of the Machines may seem high, to persons unacquainted with the cost of Machinery, it will appear very different to those who have experience, and are judges of accurate workmanship. In truth, the Patentees do not expect any part of their remuneration from the Sale of the Machines, which they are well convinced can never be made for less; and, as no expensive part of them is liable to suffer much by wear, they will doubtless be worth their full price even when the Patent is expired. To make a fair comparison, it should be moreover considered, that 12 Presses of the best manufacture would cost £1,200, without saving any thing. The annual Premium which the Patentees expect for the free and unlimited use of the Machines, is For a Completing Machine £500 Double Machine 350 Single Machine 250 To prove that this demand is moderate, the Patentees are prepared to submit detailed estimates on the expense and savings of the several Machines, to such Gentlemen as may be disposed to adopt them. Communications are requested to be addressed to the Patentees of the Printing Machine, 6, Bolt Court, Fleet Street, or 38, Shoe Lane.

LONDON, October, 1817.

Note: This 8 pp. pamphlet ‘printed on double demy by Bensley and Sons, with the Completing Machine’ is dated 4 April 1817. We have reproduced a corrected copy in Richard Taylor’s hand dated October 1817. This, and several other proof copies, are located in St Bride, Taylor Papers ‘Printing Machine Technical Details’. 270

APPENDIX SEVEN

Inventory and Valuation

Of the Printing Materials together with the Printed Stock, Paper and other Effects on the Premises Nos. 8 and 9 Red Lion Court the Property of The late Mr Richard Taylor (St. Bride, Taylor Papers, ‘Family Letters 1788–1874’) 53 Whole Frames with Racks & Bulks 3 Half Frames 3 Double Imposing Tables with Drawers & Iron Slabs 1 Double ditto with stone 2 Single ditto with ditto The Reglet & Furniture in the Drawers of the several Imposing Tables and Store Room 3 Treble Imposing Tables with Drawers & Stones 1 double Imposing Table with Drawers & Stones 6 Brass Galleys 5 Royal Board Racks & Boards 7 Demy Board Racks & Boards 3 Perkins’s Hot Water Stoves with pipes running over the whole of the premises The Gas Burners (No. 98) in the several Rooms 22 Common Case Racks 4 Fount Case Racks 160 Royal Chases 256 Demy Chases 12 F.Cap & 153 Job Chases 621 Pairs Cases 29½ Pairs Fount Cases 1 Iron Proof Press 1 Royal Columbian Printing Press with Bank Horse & Inking Frame 2 Royal Russell Printing Press with Bank Horse and Inking Frame 2 Royal Stanhope Printing Press with Bank Horse and Inking Frame 271

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1 Royal Albion Printing Press with Bank Horse and Inking Frame 1 Fixed Table for Ink 2 Paper Bulks 1 Table with Drawers Sundry Shelves 1 Hydraulic Press with 10” Ram 16 Iron Plates 1 Bed 16 Mahogany Pressing Boards 180 Gross Glazed Boards (old) A Small Hydraulic Press (imperfect) 1 Double Form Rack 1 Random Galley Sundry Shelves & Stools Fitting of one Reading Closet & Glass Enclosure Lead Platform of Wetting Stage sides lined with Lead, Cistern, Trough & Stages 2534 feet Poling & Bearers throughout the Houses The Gathering Boards & Supports in Warehouse 3 Warehouse Tables Sundry Shelves Pair of Steps Cutting Press & Plough, Shaving Tub & Knife, &c. Loose Arnott Stove 2 Small Tables Closet with folding Doors & Brackets 12 Paper Stands Loose Board as Slides 3 Nests of Shelves in Stereotype Room 1 Letter Closet & Door 4 Old Inking Tables 1 Bulk Lead Sink & Wetting Trough Supply Pipes, Force Pump, 18 Wetting Boards, 1 Bulk, 1 Step Ladder, Fall down Boards A Bookcase with Deal Doors & Shelves Library Table Sundry Shelves Mahogany Wash hand Stand Journal Room Range of Bookshelves 11 feet Nest of Pigeon Holes 2 Tiers of Shelves 4 feet each

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Deal Closet with folding Doors

Writing Table & Drawers

Reading Closet The fittings of 3 Closets with Desks, Shelves, Glazed Partition & Doors complete Editor’s Room Mahogany Bookcase with Drawers & Glazed Doors Deal Bookcase with Drawers & Glazed Doors Writing Table, Library Table, Deal Table, 6 Cane bottomed Chairs, Small Glass & Frame, Deal Steps, Fender & Fire Irons General Counting House Mahogany 2 Flap Desk Single Desk & Enclosure with dwarf Framing A strong Iron Closet with folding doors, Lock & Key A Deal Closet with Shelves, Mahogany Table, Mahogany Reading Table Umbrella Stand, Cloak [?], 2 Stools 2 Chairs 9 Prints & Frames Mr Taylor’s Room A Knee Hole Writing Desk with Drawers Mahogany Bookcase with 16 Drawers 8 feet long Mahogany Book Shelves with doors, linen Panels 10 feet long A Deal Enclosure forming 3 Closets An Iron Safe built into Wall, Two Doors Locks & Key An Oval Glass & Frame, Writing Table, 4 Chairs, 1 Pair Steps, 24 Prints in Frames, 1 Inkstand, 1 Candlestick, Letter Scales, Paper Weights, Small Letter Press Publishing Office Mahogany 1 Flap Desk on Stand Mahogany Top Counter & Flaps Skeleton Racks, forming Bookshelves, Nest Pigeon Holes & Sundry Shelves, A Bulk, A Table, 2 Chairs, 1 Stool, 1 Deal 273

Appendix

Desk 508 1bs Old Copper Plates Type comprising Greek, Hebrew, Persian, Saxon, Scrip, Blacks, Nonpareil, Brevier, Bourgeois, Long Primer, Small Pica, Pica, English, Capitals, Figures & Miscellaneous sorts with Leads of various Lengths weighing 72,375 ils White and Printed Paper Books 123 Reams being oddments various sizes white Paper 600 Copies Philosophical Magazine 600 ditto Magazine Natural History 400 Faraday’s Experimental Researches on Electricity 3000 Belville on The Barometer 90 Griffith on Urine 430 Daubeny [on Volcanoes] 1584 assorted Volumes of Books 8vo & 12mo 210 assorted Volumes of Books 4to & folio 49 Cut Waste Paper I value the foregoing Printing Materials, Printed Stock Paper and other Effects at the sum of Three thousand six hundred and sixty two Pounds and nine shillings. £3,662.9.0 James Arding 62 Dorset St., Fleet St Decr. 20th. 1858

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Index References to Taylor & Francis when it is known by other names are included under the heading Taylor & Francis. All references to the Philosophical Magazine are included in that heading, although the journal has been known by other titles. Books are indexed under the name of their author, proceedings and transactions of learned societies are under the society name. Abbreviations—references to Taylor or Francis refer to the firm’s founders Richard Taylor and William Francis and Annals is used for the Annals of Natural History. Page references in italic refer to an illustration or to captions to illustrations. Accelerated Development Inc 229 Advances in Physics 198, 207–8 Aelfric Society 45 Aikin, Arthur (1773–1854) 93 Aikin, Charles (1775–1847) 93 Aikin, John (1747–1822) 22, 89, 93, 96 Aikin, Lucy (1781–1864) 22, 96 Airey, J.R. 171, 257 Alderson, Amelia (Mrs Opie) 8, 9, 20, 22 Alere Flammam 30, 112, 113, 149, 246–7 Allen, William (1770–1843) 49, 93 Amalgamated Society of Lithographic Printers 211 Ancient and Honourable Lumber Troop, The 31 Anderson, Philip W. 191 Annals and Magazine of Natural History 194 renamed Journal of Natural History 214 Annals of Natural History 107, 123, 127, 128 controversy at 127–30 editors 123–6, 132, 143, 150, 263–4 Annals of Natural Philosophy 95, 96, 136 Annals of Science xii, 169–70, 182, 214 and World War II 179, 194–5 Annual Register 68, 69 Applegarth, Augustus (1788–1871) 75–7 Askesian Society 93, 94, 95 Askham, William 135 Aston, Francis William 255 Atkinson, Edmund 135, 138, 139 Atomic Scientists Association 202 Atomic Scientists News 195 Audubon, J.J. 140 Austin, John 15 wife (Sarah Taylor) 8, 15, 16, 80 Babbage, Charles 102 Baber, Rev. Henry 40 Babington, Charles C. (1808–95) 126, 263

Baldwin, Robert 95–6 Balfour, John H. (1808–84) 126, 263 Banister, Prof. David. J. 234 Banister, Dr Harry 181, 182–3, 204, 206 Banister, Mr S.M.A. 221, 232, 234 Banks, Sir Joseph 20, 27, 28, 253 Barbauld, Anna (1743–1825) 8, 20 Basingstoke offices 210, 211, 223 Batchelor, Dr G.K. 201 Bauer, Andreas 68, 71, 72, 74 Baum, Prof. H. 220, 231–2, 234 Beckmann, John 120 Begell, William 226, 228 Bell, Robert 85–6 Bell, Walter George 80, 111–14, 113, 154 Belville, Henry, Manual of the Barometer 44 Bensley, Thomas (c. 1760–1835) 65–6, 76 and mechanical presses 68–75, 77–80, 265–6 Bernal, J.D. 252–3 Berzelius, Jacob 95 Berzelius, Jons 136 Biochemsts’ Song Book 232 Biochimica et Biophysica Acta 205 Birkbeck, George 50 Black Horse Court 24, 25, 261 Blackwood, William 97 Blackwood’s Magazine 42 Blanford, W.T. 141 Blumenbach, Johann, Institutions of Physiology 66, 74 Bohr, Niels 255 Bonaparte, Charles Lucien 127 Bonney, T.G. 139, 148 Botanic Gazette 126–7 Botanical Magazine 121–2 Boucher, Rev. Jonathan, Glossary of Archaic and Provincial Words 42 Bradley, Kevin 234 Bragg, W.L. 180, 189, 257

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Index Brayley, Edward W. (1802–70) 44, 97, 244 Brewster, Sir David 96, 97, 98, 257 British Association for the Advancement of Science 12, 14, 45, 102, 138 and Geological Record 139 and Memoirs 103, 105 Reports 45 and Zoological Record 137 British Atomic Scientists Association 195 British and Foreign Review 106 British and Foreign School Society 49 British Freeholder & Saturday Evening Journal 79 British Mineralogical Society 93 British Museum 40, 137, 168, 194 British Ornithologist’s Union 140 British Society for the History of Science 195 Britton, E.B. 264 Brougham, Henry 49, 50, 77 Brown, Robert 105 Brunner/Mazel 240 Brunswick, The 79 Brunswick or True Blue, The 51 Burdon, E.J. 165, 167, 168, 181, 206 Burgess of Abingdon 227 Butterworths 202, 214 Cabinet, The 9–10 Cadell, Thomas 97 Calendar of the Meetings of Scientific Bodies of London 45, 46, 47 Calman, W.T. 263, 264 Cambridge 126, 159, 191, 192, 218 and Philosophical Magazine 180–2, 216, 245 Whipple Museum 182 Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company 181 Cambridge University Press 201 Camden Society 45 Carlisle, Sir Anthony 90 Carpenter, W.B 129, 130 Carruthers, W. 154, 263 Carter, H.J., Life’s Dawn on Earth 129 CD-ROMs 238 Champion, G.C. 263 Chancery Lane premises 19, 23, 27 Charles Jones & Co 161 Charlesworth, Edward (1813–93) 122–3 Charterhouse Square 35, 37, 114 Chelsea College 219, 220 Chemical Gazette 99–100, 107, 131, 139 Francis writes for 120, 130 Chemical News 130, 132 Chemical Society 119, 130, 139 Chemist 96, 130 Cherwell, Lord 195 Children, J.G. (1778–1852) 48, 95, 96 Christie, W.H.M. 140, 148 Chubb, Charles, Birds of South America, The 153

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City of London see London City of London School 53 Clarkson, Malcolm 219, 234 Clausius, Rudolf 138, 254 Codex Alexandrinus 40 Codex Oxoniensis 41 Coles, Prof. Bryan R. 207–8, 220, 232, 234, 235, 236 Combination Acts 50–1 Common Council 10, 35, 51–3, 52, 54, 57 Communications in Physics 215 Companion to the Botanical Magazine 121, 123 Compton, Arthur Holly 255 Constable, Archibald 97 Contemporary Physics 203–4, 213, 214 Conybeare, John, Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry 41 Cook, Susannah 6 Copyright Act, The (1911) 152 Corbet, G.B. 264 Corke, Hannah, (Mrs Richard Taylor) 32, 33, 35, 36, 37 Courtney Coffey, George 166, 167–8 becomes Chairman 206 and finances 165, 181, 196 and journals 173–4, 198–202, 205 Contemporary Physics 203–4 new titles 213–15 nephews 233–4 retires 207 in World War II 177, 178, 179 Cowling, Jane (Mrs Samuel Taylor) 6 Cowper, Edward (1790–1852) 75–7 Crane Court 111, 114, 154, 155, 209 Crane, Edward 225 Crane Russak & Co. Inc 225 Critical Review 20 Croesor United Slate Co Ltd 142 Croft, Henry 99–100, 130 Crookes, William 130, 132, 139 Curtis, William 121 Dallas, W.S. 263 Dalton, John 98 Darwin, Charles 127–9, 139 Descent of Man 128 Origin of Species 127, 129 Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication 127 Darwin, Horace 181 Davis, E.A. 216, 220, 245, 257 Davis, J Barnard, Thesaurus Craniorum 141 Davis, Jonas (c 1755–1827) xiii, 19, 20, 22–4, 38, 54 prints Philosophical Magazine 91, 261 Davy, Edmund 98 Davy, Humphry 94 Dawes, M.I. 220, 232 Dawson, J.W. 129, 130 Dawsons 207, 209, 246 Dilke, Ashton Wentworth 86

Index Dolleymore, K. 164 Don, David (1800–41) 126, 263 Dorset Press 246 Douce, Francis, Illustrations of Shakespeare and of Ancient Manners 28 Dove, Heinrich (1803–79) 117 Draper, J.W. 254 Dresser, H.E. 140 Dublin Journal of Medical and Chemical Science 99 Dublin Philosophical Journal & Scientific Review 98 Duff Gordon, Lady Lucie 15–16 Eagle & Child Alley premises 30 Eastlake, Sir Charles 5, 140 Eaton, Cyrus 218 Edinburgh Journal of Science 96, 97, 98 Edinburgh Medical & Surgical Journal 15 Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 97 Edinburgh Philosophical Journal 96, 97 Edinburgh Review 15 education and social reform 49–50 Edwards, W.N. 264 Ehrenberg, Christian Gottfried 117, 119 Elliotson, John 66, 74 Elliott, S.R. 245 Ellis, Henry 40–1 Elsevier xi, 205, 226 Equitable Assurance Society 22 Ergonomics 204 Ergonomics Abstracts 204, 238 Ergonomics Research Society 204 Ethnological Society 141 European Journal of Science Education 219 European Physical Society 215–16, 245 Europhysics journals 216, 250 Evans, G.O. 264 Evening Mail 66, 267 Eyre & Spottiswoode 49, 149, 229 Falmer Press 219, 230, 232 Faraday, Michael 91, 96, 106, 138, 253, 254 Experimental Researches in Electricity 44 Faraday Society 203 Farringdon Without 31, 51, 52 Fauna of British India 141, 152–3, 159, 180, 195–6 Federation of Master Printers 197 Ferguson, Prof. Allan 172, 182, 188, 197 as director 174–6, 182–3 edits Philosophical Magazine 171, 173, 174, 190, 257 moves to Cambridge 180 Ferguson, Mrs Elnora vii, 221, 232, 234, 235 Ferguson, Mrs Nesta 181, 197, 206 Fincham, A.A. 264 Fitzgerald, George (1851–1901) 100, 147, 153, 257 Fleet Market 83

Fleet Street 63, 84, 85, 111 Forster, Michael 234 Foster, George Carey 138, 153, 154, 257 Foulis, Andrew 91 Fox, Charles James 10, 31 Foye, Mr M.A. 232, 234 Francis, Ethel 161, 165, 167, 183, 188 Francis, Frances Marshall 34–7, 117, 135 Francis, Isobella (1868–1956) 165, 167 lends money 161, 170, 176 sells interest 183, 188 Francis, Rachel 33, 116–17, 121, 135, 143 Francis, Richard Taunton 118, 142, 160, 162 at firm 150, 160–3, 257, 263 will and estate 163–4, 165 Francis, Sarah Duncan 161 Francis, Dr William (1817–1904) 115, 118 and Annals 124–5, 132, 263 birth and parents 33, 34, 115, 118 and Botanic Gazette 126–7 and Chemical Gazette 99–100, 130 death of 143, 150 education 116–21 and entomology 121 and Philosophical Magazine 132, 246, 257, 260 writes for 120, 121 and photography 139–40 religion of 49 and Scientific Memoirs 105 at Taylor & Francis 114, 116, 132–43 translations for 99–100, 125, 127 wife and children 142, 143 Francis, William Jr. (1863–1932) 118, 142, 143, 150, 160, 163 journals edited 150, 162, 257, 263 Francis, William Litchfield (1921–74) 164, 167–8, 188 Freitas, Joaquiín Jose 79 Fresnel, Augustin Jean 100 Fry, Elizabeth (1780–1845) 8 Fuller, Dr A.T. 218–19, 220 Galbraith, John 169 Gardener’s Magazine 122 Garland Publishing Inc 240 Ged, William 91 Gentleman’s Magazine 111 Geological Record 139 Geological Society 93, 95, 148 John Taylor treasurer of 12, 14 in Philosophical Magazine 249 printers for 45, 139, 151 George IV 51 Germany 153, 158–9, 250 education in 116–21, 125, 160 Giessen 118, 119–20 Gilbert & Hodges 98 Glaisher, James 153 Glasgow, University of 1, 91, 95, 121, 126 Globe 86

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Index Godwin, William 6 Goebel, Theodor 77, 79–80 Gould, John, Birds of Europe, of Australia, of Asia, and Great Britain 140 Graham, Thomas 116, 119 Grave, George, Flora Londonensis 43 Gray, John Edward (1800–75) 137, 263 Gresham College 13, 14, 53 Guildhall Library 57 Gunpowder Square premises xiii, 239, 240 Günther, Albert (1830–1914) 137, 263 Guthrie, Frederick 138, 139 Gyde, Charles 39, 114, 135 Gyde, Frederick 39, 114 Halliwell, J.O. 45 Hamilton, Archibald (1719–93) 20 Hamilton, Sir William Rowan 100 Harcourt, William 98 Harmer, James 85–6 Harper & Row 226 Harrison & Sons 137, 140 Harrison, Mary 111 Hastings, Robert 130, 131 Hawkins, H.L. 264 Healy, Robert 98 Heinemann 160 Helmholtz, Hermann 138 Hemisphere Publishing Inc. 226, 227, 228 Henfrey, A. 263 Henfrey, Arthur (1819–59) 127, 140 Herschel, John 44, 105 Higgins, William 98 Hill, A.V. 174 Historical Society of Science 45 Hofmann, A.W. 137 Hollis, D. 264 Hollis, J. 229 Hooker, Joseph Dalton 48–9, 121–2, 127 Hooker, Sir William Jackson (1785–1865) 121–2, 123, 124, 125–6, 263 Horsley, Samuel (1733–1806) 22 Horticultural Society 45 Hospital Physicists’ Association 201, 218 Houghton, Rev. John 19 Hume, Joseph (1777–1855) 50, 51 Hunnemann, John 65 Huntingdon, William 76 Ibis: A Magazine of General Ornithology 140, 206 India Office 141, 152, 153, 158 Inglis, W.G. 264 Ingram, James, Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, The 40 Institute of Physics 182, 190, 217 Reports on Progress in Physics 218 see also Physical Society Institution of Electrical Engineers 151 Instrument Abstracts 203 International Journal of Radiation Biology 204–5 International Publications Service 224–5

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Investors in People programme 234 J.Robertson (firm) 187 J.Taylor (firm) 28 James, Jeans 163 Jameson, Prof. Robert 96, 97 Jardine, Sir William 122, 123, 124–5, 132, 263 Jefferies, John 114 Jefferies, Richard, Amaryllis at the Fair 39, 112, 114 Jeyes, Ferdinando 36–7 John Street premises 221, 228, 239, 246 John Taylor & Sons 14 John Wiley (firm) 226 Johnson, Samuel, Dictionary 42 Johnston, George (1797–1855) 123, 125, 263 Joly, John 147–8, 150, 171, 257 Joule, James Prescott 254 Journal of Botany 121, 125, 160, 179, 194 Journal of Chemical Physics 203 Journal of Electronics 198, 203 Journal of Electronics and Control 214–15 Journal of Natural History 214, 264 Journal of Natural Philosophy, Chemistry and the Arts 90, 94 Journal of the Photographic Society 140 Journal of Physics 217 Kane, Sir Robert (1809–90) 99–100, 257 Elements of Chemistry 100 Kelvin, Lord (William Thomson) 138, 147, 254, 257 Kemble, J.M. 106 Keohane, Prof Kevin. W. (1923–96) 218, 219, 220, 232, 234, 235, 236 King, Edmund, Viscount Kingsborough, Antiquities of Mexico, The 43 King, William 129, 130 King’s College London 54, 55, 126, 150 Knatchbull-Hugesson, W.W., Birds of South America, The 153 Koenig, Friedrich 65, 66, 67 mechanical presses 66, 68–75, 69, 77–80 prospectus for 265–70 Lambeth Chemical Club 93 lamp emblem xiii, 30, 111–13, 246–7 view of 80, 81, 112, 149 Lancashire Typesetting Co. Ltd 211, 224 Lancaster, George 178, 206–7, 219–20 Lancaster, Joseph 49, 50 Langley, Samuel 254 Lardner, Denis 98 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd 229, 234 learned societies xii, 148, 150–2, 154, 156 co-publishing with 195, 199–200, 201 Linnean Society 27, 44–5, 95, 186 printers for 44–9, 136, 142–3 loss of contracts 142, 150–1, 186,

Index 205–6 and Taylor 44–5, 93, 106 see also British Association; Physical Society; Royal Society Lewis, Stanley A. 207, 208, 220, 225 Libra Computer Systems Ltd 224 Liebig, Justus von 99, 117–18, 119–20 Linnean Society 10, 20, 119 Transactions 20, 30 printed by firm 27, 44–5, 95, 186 Lipsius, Justus 91, 247, 262 Literary Gazette 70, 74 Liverpool Photographic Society 139 Livie, John 22 Livie, Mrs 25 Lloyd, Humphry 98 Lodge, Sir Oliver J. 153, 154, 171, 257 London 15, 51, 118 City of London School 53 Common Council 10, 35, 51–3, 52, 54, 57 printing in 63, 196–7, 209 Stationers’ Company 28, 66, 142, 170 see also King’s College London; University College London; University of London London Chemical Society 99 London, Edinburgh and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal 91, 244 London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal 98, 244 London Gazette 28 London Institution 97, 244 London Journal of Arts and Sciences 96 London Philosophical Society 30, 93, 112 London Society of Compositors 156–7, 169, 211 London Typographical Society 211 Longmans 122, 150 Loudon, John Claudius (1783–1843) 122 Lyell, Charles 96, 122, 124, 128, 139 Principles of Geology 97 McCreery, John 83–4 MacIntosh, James (1765–1832) 7 McKie, Douglas 194–5 Macklin Street premises 209, 221, 246 Madden, Frederick, Brut 41 Magazine of Natural History and Journal of Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy, Geology and Meteorology 122 Magazine of Zoology and Botany 122, 123 Marchand, Richard (1813–50) 117 Marley, H 207, 209 Marshall, G.A.K. 263, 264 Martineau family 5, 8 Martineau, John (1789–1831) 6, 14, 20, 50 Martineau, Philip 24 Martineau, Philip Meadows 8 Matthiessen, A. 257 Maxwell, James Clerk 138, 250, 254 Maxwell, Robert 202, 203

Meadows, Margaret (1718–81) 5 Meadows, R.M., engraving by 7 Mechanic’s Institutes 50 Mechanic’s Magazine 50, 96 Mechanic’s Oracle and Artisan’s Laboratory and Workshop 96 Memoirs of Science and Arts 89 Merivale, J.H., Orlando in Roncesvalles 30 Mill, John Stuart 15 Millikan, Robert Andrews 255 Molecular Physics 203 Monthly Magazine 22, 89 Morgan, George Cadogan 22 Morgan, William (1750–1833) 22 Morning Chronicle 6, 70 Moseley, Henry 255 Mott, Prof. Sir Nevill F. (1905–1966) 191, 236 at Cavendish 197 death of 235 edits Philosophical Magazine 189–90, 204, 245, 248, 257 Nobel Prize awarded 191, 235, 255–6 and Nuffield Foundation 212 preface by vi–vii President of British Atomic Scientists Association 195 at Taylor & Francis 203, 206, 235, 237 as Chairman 207, 220 new journals 198, 203–4 Moyes, John 45, 84 Murchison, Roderick 106 Murray, John 45 National Graphical Association 211 Neal, Stephen B. 232, 233, 234 New Street premises 85 New Times, The 78 newspapers xi, 89, 267 see also periodicals;Times, The Newton, Alfred 137, 140 Nichols, John 111 Nicholson, William (1753–1815) 69, 77, 90, 94 Noakes, Mr 207, 212 Nobel Prizes 154, 191, 235 North, John 36, 37 Norwich 1–2, 5, 8, 10–11 see also Octagon Presbyterian Chapel Nuffield Science Programme 212 Observatory 140, 148 Octagon Presbyterian Chapel 1, 2, 3, 7, 8 Taylors in choir 3, 19 Oldroyd, H. 263, 264 Opie, John 32 Opie, Mrs John 8, 9, 20, 22, 31, 32 Optica Acta 203 Owen, Richard 124 Owen, Robert (1771–1858) 49, 50 Paley, William, Natural Theology 28

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Index paper supply problems 64, 159–60, 161, 179, 185 taxation on 107 Parkes, Samuel, Chemical Catechism 44 Parry, Sir William (1790–1855) 5 Peckham Works 187, 188, 196, 197, 208 sale of 209, 211 Pepys, William Haseldine (1775–1856) 93 Pergamon Press 202–3, 226 periodicals xi–xii, 89, 107 commercial science journals 89–107, 193 see also by name electronic journals 237–8, 240 newspapers xi, 89, 267 Perrin, Jean, Brownian Movement and Molecular Biology 152 Perry, James 66 Phillips, Richard (1778–1851) 93, 95, 96, 97, 100–1, 257 Phillips, Sir Richard (1767–1840) 89 Philosophical Magazine 90–1, 93–102, 243–56 and Advances in Physics 198 authors in 44, 106, 138, 253–6 Cambridge connections 180–2 citations of 250, 252 combines with other journals 94, 95–6 commercial nature of 106–7, 173–4, 252–6 Rutherford on 200 controversy in 100–1 copyright issues 130–2 Dublin connections 98–9, 100 editors 153–4, 244–5, 257 Ferguson 171, 172, 173, 174, 257 Francis 132, 246, 257, 260 Francis, R.T. 162, 257 Francis, William, Jr. 150, 162, 257 Kane 99 Mott 188–9, 204, 245, 248, 257 Taylor, W.H. 204, 257 Thomson, G.P. 180, 189, 257 Thomson, Sir J.J. 153, 171, 173, 257 Tyndall, A.M. 190, 192, 257 Tyndall, J. 138, 257 and electronic publishing 249 as Europhysics journal 216, 250 expansion of 107, 248–9 format 93–4, 97, 189–90, 247–8 commended by Royal Society 170 and Francis becomes editor of 132, 246, 257, 260 writes for 120, 121 illustrations in 249 lamp and motto device 30, 112, 246–7 launch xii–xiii, 90–1 letters section added 215 and mechanical presses 74, 75, 80 and Monthly Notices 45 and Mott vi, 191 as editor 188–9, 204, 245, 248, 257

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prefaces to 245–6, 258–60 printers of 20, 27, 91, 246, 261 quotations in 247, 262 and Royal Society 163, 249, 252, 253 sales and costs 101, 194, 204, 230–1 and society proceedings 93–4, 103 special issues 249 subject matter vi, 190, 192–3, 248, 252 mathematics 100 radioactivity 147–8 split by 216–17, 244 and Taylor & Francis xii–xiii, 106, 243 and Tilloch 27, 90–1, 94, 98, 246, 258–9 title-page 250, 251 titles 91, 94, 96, 98, 243–4 translations for 138 United States 204, 245 volumes and series in 243 Philosophical Magazine Letters 230–1, 244, 245, 249 Photographic Journal 140 Photographic Society of London 140 Photography 139–40 Physical Review 189 Physical Review Letters 215 Physical Society 139, 182, 217 Ferguson President of 171, 173 and physics journals 189–90 post war expansion 186–7 Proceedings 189, 217 and Taylor & Francis 139, 205 Reports of Progress in Physics 171 Science Abstracts 139, 150–1 Scientific Papers of Sir Charles Wheatstone 139 and Taylor & Francis 139, 150–1, 175–6, 177, 186–7, 205 physics classical overthrown 147–8 European Physical Society 215–16 growth after World War II 192–3 journals for 199–200, 215 and Philosophical Magazine vi, 147–8, 190, 192–3, 248, 252 and Taylor & Francis 138–9 see also Physical Society Physics Abstracts 151 Physics in Medicine and Biology 201, 218 Piggott, Sir Arthur 72 Pinelli, J.B. 247, 262 Place, Francis 50 politics 8–9, 48–54, 89 Porter, A.W. 171, 257 postage 101–2 Priestley, Joseph 3, 9, 23 Lectures on History 43 Primal Pictures Ltol 240 Pring, Ann, (Mrs John Taylor) 33, 34 printing x, 63, 148–50, 223 apprenticeships in 157 employees hours 156

Index finances in 154–5, 160, 185–6 industrial disputes 38–40, 156–8, 185–6 union amalgamations 211 mechanical presses 65–6, 68–80 cylinder machines 66, 67, 69 prospectus for 265–70 methods 63–5, 91, 148, 157, 208 Taylor’s opinions on 51 wages in 39–40, 159, 161, 180 and World War I 159–60, 161 and World War II 176–7, 179, 180 labour shortages 185–6 see also paper; periodicals Printing Machine Managers Trade Society 211 Publishers Association 213 publishing electronic 237–8, 240, 249 post war mergers 225–6 Pugwash conferences 218 Purcell Club 19 Quarterly Journal of Science 96 Queen Anne Street premises 14 Queen’s Award for Export Achievement 228, 229 R.Taylor & Co 30, 261 R.Taylor (firm) 28, 261 Raggett, M. 219 Rammelsberg, Carl (1813–99) 117 Raven Press 230 Rayleigh, Lord 147 Red Lion Court premises 80, 81, 84–5, 113–14, 113, 149 1850s inventory 271–4 bombing of 177–9, 188 inadequacy of 206, 208 name change proposed 170 ownership 135, 167 in Philosophical Magazine 246 presses at 65, 114, 165 proximity to Fleet Street 111 staff employed at 196 unions at 197 vacated xiii, 208–9 Reeve, Henry 15 wife (Susan Taylor) 15, 35 Regan, C.Tate 263 Register of Arts and Sciences 96 Reid, David Boswell, Elements of Practical Chemistry 100–1 religion 1–4, 8–9, 49 Reports on Progress in Physics 218 Rice, A.L. 264 Richard & Arthur Taylor 30, 261 Richard and John E.Taylor 31, 80, 132–3, 246 Richard Taylor (firm) 31, 80, 246, 261 Rigby, Edward 5 Rigby, Elizabeth (1809–93) 5 Rigby, John 5 Riseborough, P.S. 245

Robertson, Joseph 50 Robin Hood Court premises 65, 85, 135, 158 Robinson, H.W. 182 Robinson, Henry Crabb (1775–1867) 8 Rosbaud, Dr P. 202–3 Rose, Gustav (1798–1873) 117, 118, 119 Rose, Heinrich (1795–1864) 117, 119 Ross, Janet, Three Generations of Englishwomen 15–16, 16 Rotblat, Prof. J 201, 202, 218 Rowney, Thomas H. 129, 130 Roxburgh Club 45 Royal Astronomical Society 45, 185, 205–6 Royal Botanic Society 45 Royal College of Science 100, 139 Royal Observatory 44 Royal Society Catalogue 48 Catalogue of Scientific Papers 49 and Coles 234–5 and George Stokes 136 International Catalogue of Scientific Literature 138 John Taylor elected fellow 12, 14, 48 and Philosophical Magazine 163, 249, 252, 253 Philosophical Transactions 47, 48–9, 136, 217 premises 111–12 Proceedings 48, 163, 217, 252, 253 recommendations for journals 170, 248 and Sir Joseph Banks 20 and Taylor & Francis journals 174 Rozier, Francois (1734–93) xii, 89–90 Russak, Ben 225 Russell, Bertrand 218 Rutherford, Sir Ernest 147, 192, 200, 255 Sabine, Edward 105 St Bride Printing Library xiv Savace, William, Dictionary of the Art of Printing, The x Scientific Instrument Research Association (SIRA) 203 Scientific Memoirs 103, 104, 105, 106, 127 Sclater, Philip (1829–1913) 140, 141 Scott, Sir Walter 43 Seitz, F. 198 Selby, John Prideaux (1788–1867) 123, 125 Selby, P.J. 263 Selvey, A.R. 220, 225, 232, 234 Shannon, Claude 248 Sharpe, R.B. 140 Shipley, A.E. 153, 158–9, 263 Shoe Lane premises 30, 35, 74, 83–4 Shorthorn Society, Herdbook 142 Sibthorp, John (1758–96), Flora Graeca 27–8, 28, 29, 40 SIPRI Yearbook 218

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Index Smith, J.L. 245 Smith, Dr James Edward (1759–1828) 8, 10, 19–20, 27, 28 Compendium of the English Flora 26, 27 Flora Britannicae 27 Introduction to Botany 27 Smollett, Tobias George 20 Society of Antiquaries 40–1, 170 Society of Arts 28 Society of Toxicology and Chemistry 237 Soddy, Frederick 147, 152, 255 Southgate, V.R. 264 Spectator, The 13, 14 Springer xii, 202 stamp duty 89, 107 Stanhope, Earl Charles 64–5, 91 Star, The 90, 91 Stationers’ Company 28, 66, 142, 170 Stephenson, Lt Col. J. 153, 164, 263 Stobbs, W.M. 245 Stockdale, J.J. (1770–1847) 36 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) 218 Stokes, George 136, 254 Sunday Dispatch 86 Taunton, Isobel Gray (1841–99) 142, 143 taxation 89, 107 Taylor (firm) 28, 261 Taylor & Francis acquisitions 187, 219, 224–7, 229–30, 232 Alere Flammam 30, 112, 113, 149, 246–7 book publishers 141, 152, 219 current titles 228, 230, 232–3 Wykeham Publications launched 211–12 and British Museum 40, 137, 168 copyright issues 130–2, 152 Courtney Coffey at see Courtney Coffey directors 174–6, 206–8, 218–21, 232–5, 236 Frances, Misses, cease as 184 scientists as 180–4, 193–4, 207–8 and electronic publishing 237–8, 240, 249 employees 39–40, 169, 227 and examination papers 55–6, 141, 152, 196 expansion xiv, 224–7, 228–30, 232 family connection ends 183, 188 financial difficulties 83, 158, 161, 163, 164–7, 170–1, 173–7, 180–3, 185–6, 188, 193–7, 198–9, 219, 226–8 foundation of xii–xiii Francis at 116, 135–43 translations for 99–100, 125, 127 and Francis, R.T. 150, 160–3 and Francis, William, Jr. 150 industrial disputes 38–40, 157, 197, 228 journals vii, 230–1, 233, 275–6 biological science 121, 122–3

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on CD-ROMs 238 electronics 237–8, 240, 249 Ergonomics 204 European 215–16, 219 international 204–5 new titles 198, 199–202, 203–4, 213–15 Physics in Medicine and Biology sold 218 prints Photographic Journal 140 production process 1930s 168–9 subsidiary company considered 173–4 see also Annals of Natural History; Annals of Science; Philosophical Magazine lamp emblem and motto xiii, 30, 111–13 in Philosophical Magazine 246–7 view of 80, 81, 112, 149 and learned societies see learned societies as limited company xiii, 165–7, 219–20 names, former and current 30, 31, 133, 227 and newspapers 78, 85–6, 142, 148 and Pergamon Press 202–3 premises see Basingstoke Offices;Black Horse Court;Crane Court; Eagle & Child Alley;Gunpowder Square; Macklin Street; New Street;Peckham Works; Red Lion Court; Robin Hood Court; Shoe Lane; Winchester works printing 27–8, 39, 40–8 ceases 227–8 computerisation of 223–4 Monotype machines xiii, 164, 165 New Times, The 78 offset lithography 208 Philosophical Magazine 27, 91 restrictions in 211 for University of London 54 Warren & Son Ltd 205 as publishers xiii, 213 in North America 224–5, 226–7, 228–9 Queen’s Award for Export Achievement 228, 229 scientists at 180–4, 193–4, 200–1, 237 source material for xiv–xv subjects 229, 230, 232 astronomy 140 biology 137–8 ergonomics 204, 232 history of science vi–vii, 181–2 ornithology 140–1, 153 peace research 218 photography 140 physics 138–9, 199–200 success of xii takeover possibilities 219–21, 226 tradition at 170, 233–4 training at 234 typesetting in 63–4 Web site established 237

Index and World War I 158–60 and World War II 176–80, 185 Taylor, Arthur (1790–1870) 15, 30–1, 35, 80 Taylor, Edgar (1793–1839) 6, 53 Taylor, Edward (1784–1863) 8, 13, 14, 19 Taylor, Emily 6, 53 Taylor, G. 264 Taylor, Jane (Mrs John Martineau) 6 Taylor, John (1657–1722) 1 Taylor, Dr John (1694–1761) xviii, 1–2, 1, 3, 4–5 The Hebrew Concordance 1 Taylor, John (1750–1826) 6, 7 children of 12, 13, 14–17, 16 and Frances Francis 35–6 ill health and death 10–11 loans to Richard Taylor 68, 73–4, 80 repayment difficulties 82–3, 85 partnerships 23–4, 25, 28, 30 religion and politics of 8–9 wife (Susannah Cook) 6–7, 11, 35 Taylor, John (1779–1863) 34, 93, 133–4 Fellow of Royal Society 12, 14, 48 and Taylor & Martineau 65 and University College 14, 54, 55 wife (Ann Pring) 33, 34 Taylor, John Edward (1809–66) 14, 31, 132–3, 160 Taylor, Meadows (1755–1838) 6, 85 Taylor, Philip (1747–1831) 6 Taylor, Philip (1786–1870) 14–15, 33, 49 Taylor, Colonel Philip Meadows (1808–76) 6 Taylor, Richard (1719–62) 5, 6 Taylor, Richard (1781–1858) (founder of Taylor & Francis) 19–58 and Annals 123–6, 263 apprenticeship of xiii 19–20, 22–3, 28 on British Science 102–3 at Charterhouse Square 114 children see Francis, Rachel; Francis, William; Taylor, Sarah and Combination Acts 50–1 on Common Council 10, 35, 51–3, 52, 54, 57 and compositors disputes 38–40 dislike of Walter Scott 43 family background viii–ix, 1–17 financial difficulties 82–6 lends Koenig money 66, 68 loans from John Taylor 68, 73–4, 80 with mechanical presses 71–4, 79, 85–6 and Francis Frances 33–5 ill health and death of 115, 132–5 and learned societies 44–9, 93, 106 on London Mechanic’s Institute committee 50 and mechanical presses 69–70, 71–4, 85–6 and Koenig 65, 66, 68, 77–80

for Philosophical Magazine 74, 75 prospectus issued 74, 265–70 papers published 95 partnerships Arthur Taylor 15, 30–1, 35, 80 Bensley, Koenig, Woodfall & Taylor 71–3 John Edward Taylor 14, 31, 132–3 and Philosophical Magazine 97–8, 99 co-editor of 95, 257 prefaces to 246, 259–60 printer for 27, 91 and politics 48–54 portrait ii, 21, 57 on postage 101–2 printing firms of see Taylor & Francis private life of xiv, 31, 32–7 religious beliefs 49 scholarship of 40, 41, 42, 43 and Scientific Memoirs 103, 104, 105 and University of London 48, 54–7, 116 wife (Hannah Corke) 32–3, 35, 36, 37 and Wilks 23–5, 27, 28 Taylor, Richard Cowling 6, 23 Taylor, Samuel (1757–1841) 6 Taylor, Sarah (1793–1867) (Mrs John Austin) 8, 15, 16, 80 Taylor, Sarah (1808–84) 33, 34, 37, 133, 134–5 attitude to Francis 116 death 143 Taylor, Sarah (d. 1773) 5 Taylor, Susan (1778–1844) 15, 35 Taylor, Dr W.H. (no relation) 204, 206, 257 Technical Repository 96 Temple Press 84 Test and Corporation Acts 9, 10, 53 Thomson, G.P. 180, 189, 257 Thomson, Dr J. 197, 198, 203, 219 Thomson, Sir J.J. 153, 154, 171, 173, 254–5, 257 Thomson, Thomas (1773–1852) 95, 98 and Annals of Natural Philosophy 95, 96, 136 Thomson, William (Lord Kelvin) 138, 147, 254, 257 Thorpe, Benjamin, Metrical Paraphrase 41 Tilloch, Dr Alexander 48, 91, 92, 93, 96–7, 257 and Philosophical Magazine 27, 90–1, 94, 98, 246, 258–9 Times, The 15, 66, 80 hand presses at 70 mechanical presses 70, 71, 72, 73, 80 Applegarth and Cowper’s 75–7 printing speed of 79 in prospectus 265, 267 Toleration Act (1689) 3 trades unions 50–1 Turner, Edward 116

287

Index Tyndall, Prof. A.M. 190, 192, 257 Tyndall, John 115, 116, 134, 138, 257 Typographical Association 211 UCL Press Ltd 229–30 Unitarians 2–4, 9, 49 United States 224–5, 226–7, 228–9 and Philosophical Magazine 204, 245, 250 University College London 14, 54–5, 153 Banister at 234 examination papers for 141, 152, 171 Francis attends 116 McKie at 194–5 part owner of UCL Press Ltd 229–30 University College School 116, 152 University of London 12, 48, 54–7 examination papers 141, 179, 196 Valpy, A.J. 111, 113 van Voorst, John 137, 141 Verstage & Sons, S.R. 210, 211 Victoire, Hugo de S. 247, 262 Wace Group 227 Wallace, Alfred Russel 128 Wallwork, J.A. 264 Walter, John 66, 70–5, 77, 80 Warington, Robert 139 Warren & Son Ltd 205, 212 Warton, Thomas, History of English Poetry 42–3

288

Watts, Charles 130 Weather 187, 196 Web site established 237 Weekly Dispatch 85, 86, 130 Wesley, John 2, 3, 5 Wheeler, C.W. 207, 220 Whipple, Robert S. 181–3, 195, 197 Whitaker, William (1836–1925) 139 Whitehouse, Robert 164, 165 Wilberforce, William 31 Wilks & Taylor 23, 261 Wilks, Richard 23–5, 27, 28 William Dawson & Sons 207, 209, 246 Wilson, Harriette, Memoirs 36 Winchester works 205, 208, 209, 224 Windham, William (1750–1810) 8 Wollaston, Thomas V. (1821–78) 127 Wood, Neville 122 Woodfall, George (1767–1844) 23, 39, 54 mechanical presses 66, 69–70, 71–3, 74 Woodward, A.S. 263 Workmen’s Compensation Act 158 Wykeham Publications (London) Ltd 211–13 Wykeham series 212, 213 Zoological Record 137–8 Zoological Society 45, 138, 140, 171

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Two Nations (Francis Boyer Lecture)

Economics and Its Enemies: Two Centuries of Anti-Economics

Imitations of Life: Two Centuries of Melodrama in Russia

Germans and African Americans: Two Centuries of Exchange

Francis Bacon - Of Riches

Francis Bacon - Of Fortune

Francis Bacon - Of Usury

Francis of the Filth

Francis Bacon - Of Plantations

Francis

Dictionary of Publishing and Printing (Dictionary of Publishing & Printing)

Pharmaceutical Formulation Development of Peptides and Proteins (The Taylor & Francis Series in Pharmaceutical Sciences)

A Cross of Centuries

Forty Centuries Of Ink

Francis

B3 Adrenoreceptor (Taylor & Francis Series in Pharmaceutical Sciences)

The Origins of Christian Morality. The First Two Centuries

Centuries of June

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A Cross of Centuries

Two Centuries of Compensation for U.S. Production Workers in Manufacturing

Dictionary of Publishing and Printing

Two Centuries of Compensation for U.S. Production Workers in Manufacturing

Aliya Baban and the Cave of Pleasure A Desires of the Lamp Tale -- Book Two

Queen's Agent: Francis Walsingham at the Court of Elizabeth I

The Life Of Francis Marion

Forty Centuries of Ink

A Cross of Centuries

Alison Taylor, ABC of Subfertility

Lamp of Learning: Two Centuries of Publishing at Taylor and Francis

Fragmented France: Two Centuries of Disputed Identity

Two Nations (Francis Boyer Lecture)

Economics and Its Enemies: Two Centuries of Anti-Economics

Imitations of Life: Two Centuries of Melodrama in Russia

Germans and African Americans: Two Centuries of Exchange

Francis Bacon - Of Riches

Francis Bacon - Of Fortune

Francis Bacon - Of Usury

Francis of the Filth

Francis Bacon - Of Plantations

Francis

Dictionary of Publishing and Printing (Dictionary of Publishing & Printing)

Pharmaceutical Formulation Development of Peptides and Proteins (The Taylor & Francis Series in Pharmaceutical Sciences)

A Cross of Centuries

Forty Centuries Of Ink

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B3 Adrenoreceptor (Taylor & Francis Series in Pharmaceutical Sciences)

The Origins of Christian Morality. The First Two Centuries

Centuries of June

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A Cross of Centuries

Two Centuries of Compensation for U.S. Production Workers in Manufacturing

Dictionary of Publishing and Printing

Two Centuries of Compensation for U.S. Production Workers in Manufacturing

Aliya Baban and the Cave of Pleasure A Desires of the Lamp Tale -- Book Two

Queen's Agent: Francis Walsingham at the Court of Elizabeth I

The Life Of Francis Marion

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