Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 11.djvu/469

 118. XL JUNE 12, 1915.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

459

College in London, and buy such marks o honour for themselves and their cousins -uncles, aunts, &c., at stated prices, there seems some principle in practice which doe; not appear in the common theory of heraldry Perhaps it is a barbarous survival of the clar or tribal totem idea.

GEO. JEFFERY, F.S.A. Cyprus.

OLD IRISH MARCHING TUNES (11 S. x 447 ; xi. 75). Although not ancient, the air of ' The Mulligan Guards,' especially in th< chorus, is a most stirring one. J. K.

South Africa.

AN ALPHABET OF STRAY NOTES (11 S. xi 335). "To make Hair to Grow." Anoint- ing with a boar's tooth being a matter of obvious difficulty, I verified the quotation, with this result : " For to makyn heer to

growyn take the broth of a boores

mouth," &c. Q. v.

(11 S. xi. 413.)

A petition is here mentioned of Springett Perm, William's grandson, to George I.

I have an elaborately tooled volume of a French work, inscribed in gold on cover : " Sarah Springett, Proemium, 1759." Was she of the Penn family, and where did she receive this book as a prize ?

GEORGE POTTER.

296, Archway Road, Highgate, N.

ELECTRO -PLATING AND ITS DISCOVERERS <11 S. xi. 297, 365). The facts as to the early attempts to deposit ^silver on copper by electricity, up to about 1838, will be found in many treatises on electro -metal- lurgy as Gore's, Macmillan and Cooper's, "and others. The problem then was to find a method which should advance laboratory experiments into an industrial art. The first patent in this direction was taken out by George Richards Elkington and Ogle- thorp Barratt of Birmingham, 23 Jan., 1839 ; and from that time Elkington, aided by Barratt and Alexander Parkes, was in his workshops steadily advancing towards a satisfactory plating of candelabra, salts, and other articles for commercial purposes. His success enabled him, with his cousin Henry Elkington, to obtain provisional letters patent, 25 March, 1840.. Before the expiration of the six months allowed in which to lodge a detailed specification, it Was found that John Wright, a Birmingham (not a Sheffield) surgeon, had hit upon cyanide of potassium as giving the magic touch required to perfect the process. By

agreement this was embodied in the Elking- tons' specification, and the patent was com- pleted on 25 Sept., 1840. This is the master patent dominating all electro plating from that date. The Elkingtons at once began to manufacture by this process in their own works, and they granted licences to others to use their patent. The first licence for Sheffield was taken out by John Harrison, 13 June, 1843 ; the second by William Carr Hutton, 14 June, 1843. Harrison engaged George Walker, a table-knife cutler, as operator. As caretaker in the laboratory of a chemical class, founded in the spring of 1843, he had devoted his leisure hours to imitating the students' experiments ; and Harrison sent him to Elkingtons' works to be instructed in the manipulation of their process. Harrison, with Walker as journey- man, began plating for the public on 1 July, 1843 ; and by the summer of 1845 had paid royalties on some thousands of ounces of deposited silver.

Then George Walker, obtaining a licence, set up in business for himself. He opened works at the end of September, 1845, under the style of Walker & Coulson. This, which later became the firm of Walker & Hall, was thus established five years after Elkingtons had been working their patent, and more than two years after Harrison and Hutton had been electro -plat ing in Sheffield.

John Wright, who is entitled to be re- garded broadly as the inventor of electro- plating, was never in practice in Sheffield. Descended from a family settled where Derby- shire and Nottinghamshire meet Yorkshire, le was born in the Isle of Sheppey, 26 Nov., 1808 ; was educated near Doncaster ; was apprenticed to a Rotherham surgeon ; studied afterwards in Edinburgh and Paris ; qualified in London ; and practised in Birmingham from 1833 to his death there, 3 May, 1844.

The facts above concisely stated are established by original documents still in existence. They were set forth by me more "ully in The Sheffield Telegraph, 8 Jan., 1914, and on other dates, especially 24 Jan. and 25 Feb., 1914. R. E. LEADER.

Oakleigh Park, N.

The following is from ' Peak Scenery ; or,

The Derbyshire Tourist,' London, 1824. The

author, Ebenezer Rhodes (1762-1839), is

tated in the 'D.N.B.' to have been in

808 elected Master Cutler of Sheffield,

sphere he resided all his life.

"As an inhabitant of the town of Sheffield and nterested in whatever is connected with its pros- erity, I trust the following short digression may