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Rh to grant him any pecuniary assistance. He was successful, however, in 1786, in forming a company for the prosecution of his enterprise, and shortly afterwards a steam-packet of his invention was launched on the Delaware. His claim to be the inventor of steam-navigation was disputed by James Rumsey of Virginia, but Fitch obtained exclusive rights in steam-navigation in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, while a similar privilege was granted to Rumsey in Virginia, Maryland and New York. A steam-boat built by Fitch conveyed passengers for hire on the Delaware in the summer of 1790, but the undertaking was a losing one, and led to the dissolution of the company. In 1793 he endeavoured to introduce his invention into France, but met with no success. On his return to America he found his property overrun by squatters, and reaping from his invention nothing but disappointment and poverty, he committed suicide at Bardstown, Kentucky, on the 2nd of July 1798.

He left behind him a record of his adventures and misfortunes, “inscribed to his children and future posterity”; and from this a biography was compiled by Thompson Westcott (Philadelphia, 1857.)

FITCH, SIR JOSHUA GIRLING (1824–1903), English educationist, second son of Thomas Fitch, of a Colchester family, was born in Southwark, London, in 1824. His parents were poor but intellectually inclined, and at an early age Fitch started work as an assistant master in the British and Foreign School Society’s elementary school in the Borough Road, founded by Thomas Lancaster. But he continued to educate himself by assiduous reading and attending classes at University College; he was made headmaster of another school at Kingsland; and in 1850 he took his B.A. degree at London University, proceeding MA. two years later. In 1852 he was appointed by the British and Foreign School Society to a tutorship at their Training College in the Borough Road, soon becoming vice-principal and in 1856 principal. He had previously done some occasional teaching there, and he was thoroughly imbued with the Lancasterian system. In 1863 he was appointed a government inspector of schools for the York district, from which, after intervals in which he was detached for work as an assistant commissioner (1865–1867) on the Schools Inquiry Commission, as special commissioner (1869), and as an assistant commissioner under the Endowed Schools Act (1870–1877), he was transferred in 1877 to East Lambeth. In 1883 he was made a chief inspector, to superintend the eastern counties, and in 1885 chief inspector of training colleges, a post he held till he retired in 1894. In the course of an extraordinarily active career, he acquired a unique acquaintance with all branches of education, and became a recognized authority on the subject, his official reports, lectures and books having a great influence on the development of education in England. He was a strong advocate and supporter of the movement for the higher education of women, and he was constantly looked to for counsel and direction on every sort of educational subject; his wide knowledge, safe judgment and amiable character made his co-operation of exceptional value, and after he retired from official life his services were in active request in inquiries and on boards and committees. In 1896 he was knighted; and besides receiving such academic distinctions as the LL.D. degree from St Andrews University, he was made a chevalier of the French Legion of Honour in 1889. He was a constant contributor to the leading reviews; he published an important series of Lectures on Teaching (1881), Educational Aims and Methods, Notes on American Schools and Colleges (1887), and an authoritative criticism of Thomas and Matthew Arnold, and their Influence on English Education (see also the article on ) in 1901; and he wrote the article on in the supplementary volumes (10th edition) of this encyclopaedia (1902). He died on the 14th of July 1903 in London. A civil list pension was given to his widow, whom, as Miss Emma Wilks, he had married in 1856.

See also Sir Joshua Fitch, by the Rev. A. L. Lilley (1906),

FITCH, RALPH (fl. 1583–1606), London merchant, one of the earliest English travellers and traders in Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, India proper and Indo-China. In January 1583 he embarked in the “Tiger” for Tripoli and Aleppo in Syria (see Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I. sc. 3), together with J. Newberie, J. Eldred and two other merchants or employees of the Levant Company. From Aleppo he reached the Euphrates, descended the river from Bir to Fallujah, crossed southern Mesopotamia to Bagdad, and dropped down the Tigris to Basra (May to July 1583). Here Eldred stayed behind to trade, while Fitch and the rest sailed down the Persian Gulf to Ormuz, where they were arrested as spies (at Venetian instigation, as they believed) and sent prisoners to the Portuguese viceroy at Goa (September to October). Through the sureties procured by two Jesuits (one being Thomas Stevens, formerly of New College, Oxford, the first Englishman known to have reached India by the Cape route in 1579) Fitch and his friends regained their liberty, and escaping from Goa (April 1584) travelled through the heart of India to the court of the Great Mogul Akbar, then probably at Agra. In September 1585 Newberie left on his return journey overland via Lahore (he disappeared, being presumably murdered, in the Punjab), while Fitch descended the Jumna and the Ganges, visiting Benares, Patna, Kuch Behar, Hugli, Chittagong, &c. (1585–1586), and pushed on by sea to Pegu and Burma. Here he visited the Rangoon region, ascended the Irawadi some distance, acquired a remarkable acquaintance with inland Pegu, and even penetrated to the Siamese Shan states (1586–1587). Early in 1588 he visited Malacca; in the autumn of this year he began his homeward travels, first to Bengal; then round the Indian coast, touching at Cochin and Goa, to Ormuz; next up the Persian Gulf to Basra and up the Tigris to Mosul (Nineveh); finally via Urfa, Bir on the Euphrates, Aleppo and Tripoli, to the Mediterranean. He reappeared in London on the 29th of April 1591. His experience was greatly valued by the founders of the East India Company, who specially consulted him on Indian affairs (e.g. 2nd of October 1600; 29th of January 1601; 31st of December 1606).

See Hakluyt, Principal Navigations (1599), vol. ii. part i. pp. 245–271, esp. 250–268; Linschoten, Voyages (Itineraris), part i. ch. xcii. (vol. ii. pp. 158–169, &c., Hakluyt Soc. edition); Stevens and Birdwood, Court Records of the East India Company 1599–1603 (1886), esp. pp. 26, 123; State Papers, East Indies, &c., 1513–1616 (1862), No. 36; Pinkerton, Voyages and Travels (1808–1814), ix. 406–425.

FITCHBURG, a city and one of the county-seats of Worcester county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., situated, at an altitude varying from about 433 ft. to about 550 ft., about 23 m. N. of Worcester and about 45 m. W.N.W. of Boston. Pop. (1880) 12,429; (1890) 22,037; (1900) 31,531, of whom 10,917 were foreign-born, including 4063 French Canadians, 836 English Canadians, 2306 Irish and 963 Finns; (1910 census) 37,826. Fitchburg is traversed by the N. branch of the Nashua river, and is served by the Boston & Maine, and the New York, New Haven & Hartford railways, and by three interurban electric lines. The city area (27.7 sq.m.) is well watered, and is very uneven, with hill spurs running in all directions, affording picturesque scenery. The court house and the post office (in a park presented by the citizens) are the principal public buildings. Fitchburg is the seat of a state normal school (1895), with model and training schools; has a free public library (1859; in the Wallace library and art building), the Burbank hospital, the Fitchburg home for old ladies, and an extensive system of parks, in one of which is a fine fountain, designed by Herbert Adams. Fitchburg has large mercantile and financial interests, but manufacturing is the principal industry. The principal manufactures are paper and wood pulp, cotton and woollen goods, yarn and silk, machinery, saws, horn goods, and bicycles and firearms (the Iver Johnson Arms and Cycle Works being located here). In 1905 the city’s total factory product was valued at $15,390,507, of which $3,019,118 was the value of the paper and wood pulp product, $2,910,572 was the value of the cotton goods, and $1,202,421 was the value of the foundry and machine shop products. The municipality owns and operates its (gravity) water works system. Fitchburg was included in Lunenburg until 1764, when it was incorporated as a township and was