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John Young & William Young Gas and oil: cleaning up the North Esk
John Young (1815-1886) affectionately known as "Jock the Genius" John Young was a self-educated man of great versatility, perseverance and industry, who never lost his faith in self-reliance. Born in Edinburgh in 1815, he moved as a child to Galashiels, where he showed a taste for mechanical and scientific amusements. His first attempt at engineering was in laying pipes on Gala Hill, to carry water to drive minute water-wheels of various constructions, the pipes made by joining together lengths of hemlock. He served his apprenticeship as a shoemaker with his uncle, who had a fair library, and who once a week shared a weekly newspaper with his neighbours. Learning in the paper of the new light introduced into London and other large towns, the shoemaker's apprentice turned away from his miniature water-wheels, and devoted himself to the study and production of gas. He made a friend of an old tinsmith, who taught him to make more durable pipes and let him gain dexterity in handling tools which was very useful in later life. An old kettle was converted into a retort. A butter firkin served for a gasholder, and a washing tub did duty as a tank. Sulphur compounds in those days did not trouble him, and with this limited apparatus he lighted his uncle's workshop, and customers came from far and near to see the light made by the lad they called 'Jock the genius'. Gas light in mill towns allowed the new machinery to be worked through the night. Soon after the introduction of gas into Selkirk's mills in 1840, John Young was appointed gas manager there and remodelled and enlarged the works to his own design. John's wife, Christian Clapperton (1815-1902) came from a radical Chartist family of textile weavers in Galashiels where her father William Clapperton (1785-1860) had helped to found the Galashiels Co-operators (a local equivalent of the Rochdale Pioneers).
William Clapperton the Radical, presented plaid to Kossuth John Young won a silver medal from the Scottish Society of Arts for his improved gas apparatus, and exhibited a model gasworks at the 1851 International Exhibition in London. In 1852 he came from Selkirk to take charge of Dalkeith Gas Light Company, Scotland's second oldest, founded in 1804. He was by now an inspiring and charismatic character in gas and water supply circles, much in demand as a consultant. . John Young's made improvements at Dalkeith and took a keen interest in the other Midlothian gasworks, especially at Lasswade, from where his pupil Alex Bell went out to manage the Anglo-American Gibraltar Gasworks in 1863.
At Penicuik in 1860, John Young supervised the design of a new gasworks for the Cowan papermills at Valleyfield, and this provided light for the streets and houses in Penicuik until replaced by a new town gasworks along Edinburgh Road beside the Shottstown Railway in the 1870s. Some of the early lamps carried the Cowan shell motif: one of them could be seen in Broomhill Road until recently.
Cowan shell Five years later Young found himself in opposition to the Cowans and other papermakers when he gave the scientific evidence in the North Esk pollution case. Originally paper was largely made from pulverised rags, but as various vegetable materials like esparto came to be introduced mid-century, ever stronger chemicals were being used to break them down to pulp. With increasing noxious discharches, the condition of the river downstream became more and more unpleasant. At the time the filthy smell of the river Thames outside Parliament was much in the news, and the river Esk at Dalkeith and Musselburgh became an equal cause for concern. This celebrated environmental cause was pursued in the courts by the Duke of Buccleuch against the North Esk papermakers led by Alex Cowan & Sons.
John Young gave evidence of all the discharges into the river from the paper mills along the banks, and the papermakers were required to control these and mitigate their effects. The case led to the beginnings of the Alkali Inspectorate. John Young engineered Dalkeith's water supply and consulted on other water projects. Not only did he make advances in gas and water, he was one of the first in the country to prepare carbon rods for electrical purposes, and supplied them to James Thomson, the future Lord Kelvin. John Young took a fervent interest in the progress of Thomson's "stupendous scheme" for a transatlantic cable, which after earlier attempts achieved lasting success when the world's largest ship, the Great Eastern finished laying the link in 1866.
John Young's words were reported in a special supplement to the Dalkeith Herald and Advertiser on May 23 1867: "Since I came among you science has made rapid progress, and no student could hope to keep pace with that progress without practising unswerving industry and diligence. To have kept pace with this progress I make no pretensions; but I assure you that, whatever achievements science should accomplish, I have ever entered the desire and fostered a pride that my fellow-townsmen should not be the last to possess the information." "It might be a source of edification to us all, gentlemen, were we to unfold the scientific chronicle of the last 14 years, and examine its records. In that chronicle we would find records of numerous failures as well as marvellous successes. Within that period dates the rise and expansion of that now important branch of industry, the manufacture of paraffin and paraffin oils, --- within that period of time, the railways and the telegraph have embraced a greatly extended area, till hardly a corner of the world is left beyond its pale ; and last, though not least, within that period has been conceived, projected, and realized, the union of the continents of Europe and America by an electrical cable. This last achievement is of such importance to the civilized world as to mark the era of its accomplishment as a red letter day in the world's history." "I am sure you will excuse me when I ask you to linger for a moment, and contemplate the concatenation of circumstances and conditions that have combined to render this stupendous scheme a grand success. It seems as if the Creator of the universe, when he laid the foundations of the earth, and gathered together the waters of the sea, had entertained, as part of his plan, the formation of the cable, and I have no doubt indeed that it was so." "Spread out before you in your mind's eye the map of the world. On the one hand you have the continent of Europe, on the other that of America, with 1600 miles of wild ocean rolling between. On either side we have a people united by ties of the same origin and blood, and speaking the same language. We can almost conceive the two continents themselves desiring to be united in one bond of brotherhood, if we could imagine in the British Isles the outstretched hand of Europe extended in friendly greeting, to meet that of America represented by the island of Newfoundland." "But let us not stop here. Let us look into the depths of the ocean itself. There, between the two nearest points just mentioned, and along the bank of that 'mighty river in the ocean,' the Gulf Stream, lies prepared a comparatively level table land or plateau cushioned with shells, fine as dust, and forming a safe and fitting resting place for the cable. With a breadth of 200 miles this plateau extends from shore to shore, while to its south, the sea bottom descends to almost unfathomable depths, and to the north it 9is furrowed, torn by icebergs drifting from the north, or serrated with their rocky burdens, dropt as they melt in the warmer waters of the Atlantic." "The labour of Lieutenant Maury, in compiling the soundings of the Atlantic, was an important auxiliary ; while the discovery of gutta percha, as an insulating medium, was a necessary condition of success, and no nation but that which could command the services of a 'Great Eastern' would ever have succeeded in accomplishing the world-important task." "The very calamities that beset the undertaking have been overruled for good. The efforts and failure in 1860 was a school of experience in which we learned salutary lessons. The laying of that cable was too much for its strength. The labour of its birth so exhausted its strength that it had only vitality left in feeble breathings to carry the greeting of Britain's Queen to the President of America, and with this task accomplished it ceased to be. But from that we had learned enough ; the practicability was established, and what has been the result ? The failure of ONE cable in 1860 has given us TWO in 1866, now TIME and SPACE have been virtually annihilated, at least so far as America is concerned. The doings of 'Change in London at 4 o'clock in the afternoon can now be read by the merchant in New York before 12 o'clock on the same day, the intelligence having beat the sun in his course by nearly five hours." "But, gentlemen, here I must stop, and, in conclusion, reiterate my grateful thanks for the honour you have this day done me, and I entreat you not to measure the fervency of my gratitude by the imperfection of my reply. But rest assured that your kindness this day has so encouraged my heart and strengthened my arm, that wherever Providence may appoint my sphere of labour, that labour that my hand findeth to do will be done with all my might." "WASTE NOT, WANT NOT"
In 1867 John Young left Midlothian to undertake important work for the Wigan Coal and Iron Company -headed by the Earl of Crawford and at that time the world's largest industrial combine, producing coal, iron steel, chemicals, and with its own ships and railways. In Lancashire he was employed to maximise gas and coke recovery from their raw materials. Effective methods of recovering and coking the coal dross were developed, and these innovative approaches at Wigan were soon noticed across the Atlantic. Andrew Carnegie recalled: "It was Cousin "Dod" (Mr. George Lauder) to whom we were indebted for a new development in our mill operations-the first of its kind in America. He it was who took our Mr. Coleman to Wigan in England and explained the process of washing and coking the dross from coal mines. Mr. Coleman had constantly been telling us how grand it would be to utilize what was then being thrown away at our mines, and was indeed an expense to dispose of. Our Cousin "Dod" was a mechanical engineer, educated under Lord Kelvin at Glasgow University, and as he corroborated all that Mr. Coleman stated, in December, 1871, I undertook to advance the capital to build works along the line of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Contracts for ten years were made with the leading coal companies for their dross and with the railway companies for transportation, and Mr. Lauder, who came to Pittsburgh and superintended the whole operation for years, began the construction of the first coal-washing machinery in America. He made a success of it-he never failed to do that in any mining or mechanical operation he undertook-and he soon cleared the cost of the works. The ovens were extended from time to time until we had five hundred of them, washing nearly fifteen hundred tons of coal daily. I confess I never pass these coal ovens at Larimer's Station without feeling that if he who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before is a public benefactor and lays the race under obligation, those who produce superior coke from material that has been for all previous years thrown over the bank as worthless, have great cause for self-congratulation. It is fine to make something out of nothing; it is also something to be the first firm to do this upon our continent."
John Young's letterhead John Young returned with his family to live at Bonnyrigg in 1873 and travelled widely as a consultant thereafter. He patented an esparto treatment and soda recovery process for the paper industry which was installed at Esk Mills, Penicuik.
Esparto bales at Dalmore Mill 1923 John Young died in 1886, but his children continued to serve Scottish technology in all sorts of ways. William Young, the eldest, was a key innovator in the Scottish oil and gas industries. Local oil production was already well established from animal, vegetable and mineral sources, including the balm bearing deposits around Loanhead. Smith's "Royal Standard Lamp Oil" (sold in Edinburgh at the George Street shop which later became Grays) was such an established brand before crude oil was discovered in America that "Standard Oil" was a natural name for transatlantic oil producers to borrow.
Although the Scottish paraffin industry had been started near Bathgate by James Young (1811-1883, no relation), from the 1860s onwards the Scottish mineral oils were being outclassed in price or quality by the products of American crude. When Alex Bell left for Gibraltar, John Young's eldest son William had been appointed to manage the Lasswade gasworks in his place. William's inventiveness led to trials at the gasworks in Goat Brae to see if he could produce oil and gas from colliery waste. Taking this up in a bigger way at Whitehill Colliery, Rosewell, and later backed by Peter Brash of Leith and the Clippens Oil Company, William Young began to develop better retorts "in which the gas is made to do service" to extract more and higher quality oil and more useful by-products. His Young and Beilby retort patented in association with George Beilby of Oakbank became the industry standard. The high quantities of useful saleable ammonia that it yielded as a by-product made the Scottish industry to viability in the decades that followed. William's emphasis on maximum recovery from waste became a hallmark of Scottish technology. It grew naturally from the sharing of ideas and experience between father and son. And it was extended brilliantly by others, not least by George Beilby in his later work on gold recovery.
As Michael Cotteril states in the Dictionary of Scottish Business Biography: "William was a second generation gasworks engineer with a technological and entrepreneurial flair which gave him a pre-eminence in the industry and a widespread practice as a consultant engineer. A brilliant industrial chemist whose work was his hobby, William had no time for frivolities or outside interests. His retiring nature shunned the publicity that would have dispelled his obscurity. Despite this disposition, technical editor Walter King found him a 'very human, warm hearted, true friend, and transparently honest of purpose.' Enthusiasm, a piercing intellect and remarkably retentive memory kept William at the forefront of developments. One of the greatest authorities on destructive distillation of coal and shale, he also specialised in by-product recovery and fractional distillation and gasification of oils. From 1893 until his death he was a close adviser to the Government Alkali Inspector, R F Carpenter." "The investment pattern in the Scottish gas industry left little scope for talented engineers to profit from their skills by direct ownership. Like waterworks, heavy investment in immovable distribution pipes made monopoly supply the most cost-effective and inhibited rivalry or forced competitors into price-fixing agreements. Monopoly was normal, but was only tolerated uneasily by consumers, from companies owned largely by numerous resident consumer-investors, or municipal authorities. William had other ideas. Bright gas engineers profited mainly as consultants, employed to plan and perhaps supervise construction or alteration of gasworks elsewhere in Britain or abroad. Some also patented equipment, manufactured by ironworks for sale to the industry. William gained from both fields, and went further by promoting a company to supply under licence the oil-gas process he invented." William's earliest childhood recollection, perhaps due to the smell, was of his father experimenting with a water-gas process carburetted with fish-oil. The lives of William's sister and brothers came to revolve around the new gas and oil technologies. For example his brother-in-law George Firth Cusiter -an Orkney-born schoolmaster- took over at Dalkeith gasworks from 1868 until his early death in 1874 having made award-winning improvements in gas meter design. His widowed sister Mary and her family continued to live in the heart at the gasworks there when brother David Young took over as manager from 1874 to 1889. Brother Robert Young became manager of Uphall Oil Works, brother John Young managed the Paris oil refinery beside the Seine at Issy-les-Molineaux, became retorting manager at Oakbank, Midcalder, and later at took his family to Perth, Western Australia. Brother Alex Young managed oil works at Paisley and the Holmes Oil Works in the Lothians, and brother Thomas Young after starting at the Straiton oil refinery emigrated to become a contractor in the new settlement at Emmetsburgh, Iowa, fostered by Sir John Cowan's Scottish-American Investment Trust.
As Cotteril points out: "In youth William assisted his father's extensive practice of analysing the gas potential of coals. and paraffin oil in shales, for industrialists. He may also have helped in experimental projects and with planning the improved water-supply for Dalkeith. Science was an exciting novelty in the household. John was one of the first Scots to make artificial carbons for electricity, and gave public lectures on electricity, chemistry and optics. William certainly assisted with winter evening-classes in science which his father ran at home for young Dalkethians."
Scientific Hall, Dalkeith "William was an idealist and hater of waste. Brought up under Puritan influences, and suffering moderately weak health throughout his life, he later rejected religious dogma yet was considered extremely high principled and a friend to many in need." "During the mid 1850s, William gained the patronage of Peter Brash a soap, candle and oil manufacturer with Messrs Wm Taylor & Co of Leith. Brash had an eye for chemical technology, lent him science books, and encouraged William to attend public lectures in Edinburgh given by Dr Lyon Playfair and other scientists." "He then became an apprentice gasfitter or 'plumber', under Lasswade gas manager Alexander Bell (1836-1910). Bell had trained the same way at Dalkeith under William's father before building Lasswade gasworks to John's designs. Bell's son, Alexander Jnr, later assisted William's experiments. Apprentice William was an innovator, often castigated by Bell for disturbing the conservative workshop routine. As a journeyman fitter he quickly introduced a new system of rolling lead for pipes, which trebled productivity. In 1863 Bell left to manage Gibraltar gasworks, and William at 21 became manager at Lasswade, with a tied-house and annual salary of £75." He soon experimented with bituminous blind-shale and blaes being discarded as waste by Rosewell colliery, and obtained 9,000 cu ft of gas per ton. Then, from oil shales came a rich 30 candle power gas and good paraffin. Unable to persuade his Lasswade directors to permit large-scale low temperature distillation in improved retorts, for both paraffin and gas, William obtained space from Archibald Hood to build a small crude-oil works at Rosewell. "Without a market for the gas, some was burned as fuel to heat the horizontal retorts but most was wasted. This inspired William's attempts to minimise gas production and maximise oil, and led to the study of retort design which remained central throughout his life. Improvements came with deep 'charges' of shale reducing air-spaces, and false-bottomed retorts to prevent the furnace gasifying oil droplets. Real success only came with vertical retorts and the replacement of steam-injection by 'exhauster' fans blowing incondensible gas down the retort to flush all oil-vapour out through its base." "About 1866 William left Lasswade gasworks, to become Brash's manager at Messrs Taylor's oilworks in Musselburgh, and Oakbank, Straiton. Oil companies proliferated after the expiry of 'Paraffin' Young's exclusive patent (1850-1864) and stiff competition was increased by the scarcity of good quality oil shales which rapidly rose in price. Moreover, imports of North American crude oil, exploited since 1859, pushed British oil price down heavily in 1866. The industry still used horizontal retorts which baked and discoloured the oil, making it unattractive to customers. Retorts were small and furnaces large, wasting fuel, causing rapid deterioration of retorts, and preventing the recovery of ammonium by-products which were increasingly profitable at gasworks." Unsuccessful vertical retorts had been tried much earlier, for coal gas by Murdoch, and by Barnet in 1829, and for oil by 'Paraffin' Young in 1854. Interest in them increased in the 1860s, and William's design successfully reduced the charring of oil although, like others, uneven heating caused retort damage. Vapour and tar were recycled to the retort for re-distillation, the first step in fractional-distillation methods which William later developed extensively. "Brash financed further development in return for half of the profits, and became joint patentee with William in 1866. William soon sold his share of the retort patent for ?3,000, but Brash later made more when it was quite widely adopted. William's new retort of 1868 achieved the ideal uniform low red heat which 'Paraffin' Young had advocated 20 years earlier but had been unable to maintain. Some, with an expensive double-casing, were erected at Oakbank in 1871. George Beilby, works chemist there from 1869, recalled fierce controversy between proponents of horizontal and vertical retorts. In 1872 William patented a better, single-casing design using 'spent shale' at the bottom as fuel to heat the top. By burning residual carbon this curtailed the public nuisance of smouldering shale-bings. Retort labourers found it too complex and William lost his rewards to a similar but simplified version by N. M. Henderson in 1873, which swept the industry."
George Beilby
"At Oakbank, Beilby was obliged to operate both types and from 1878 began improving William's design. A gifted pupil of 'Paraffin' Young's chief chemist, John Galletly, he was well equipped for the task, and later became wealthy through his Cassel chemical company." "William joined Clippens Oil Company of Paisley in 1874 and ran their experimental plant at Straiton, using low temperatures to recover ammonia. Later, with Alex Bell Snr, who became its chief engineer, he designed a large new oilworks for them at New Pentland. In 1877 he patented a process to manufacture petrol, then called gazolene, but in the absence of petrol-engines its main use was to make an illuminating gas called carburetted air, using a small apparatus suitable for private houses."
William Young's Clippens Oil Works offices at Straiton [D Kerr]
Clippens Oil Company houses; Thousands of oil barrels await rail dispatch at Straiton in 1895 [British Library] William lit his Bilston home -Seafield Villa- and adjacent houses in this way. Seeking other avenues for his talents, he promoted an early form of management buy-out by leading technologists in the gas industry. With four partners in 1878 he acquired and revitalised the Falkirk gas company before selling it on, and later did the same transformation at West Kilpatrick, Dunblane, Earlston and Busby. Throughout his career, William encouraged Scottish gasworks managers to use the knowledge gained by shale-oil works, and upheld the aims of technical co-operation and efficiency embodied in the North British Association of Gas Managers which his father John Young had helped to found in 1861. Many of William's researches took decades to reach fruition. With his brother-in-law George Cusiter at Dalkeith, William tested paraffin-oil anti-freeze for consumers' water-filled gas-meters after the havoc of frosts in 1860/61 and showed these light oils were unsuitable. They absorbed some illuminating constituents, but because these could be released again by volatisation, oil-washing became later valuable for by-products recovery from waste shale-oil gas. Cotteril continues: "Virtually all coal-gas in Scotland until the 1880s was used for illumination from open-flame burners. Its 'candle power' required a carefully balanced mixture of heat-generating and of soot-generating hydrocarbons. Fine carbon soot became incandescent momentarily before burning away. The development of Welsbach gas-mantles using incandescent minerals permitted the soot chemicals to he phased out, and great improvements made in calorific value for cooking and heating only after 1885. William's first marketable gasworks equipment, for improved 'candle power', was the 'Analyzer' developed in 1874-5 with Henry Aitken of Falkirk, a coal-mine owner and experimentalist at Almond Ironworks. Used at Hamilton and Dalmarnock. it released illuminants by rewarming tar, but was uneconomical. William's water-washer, tried at Lanark in 1880, enabled small gasworks to produce ammoniacal liquor for the boom market in sulphate fertilisers, and was very widely used." "ln 1874 a full scale experiment to produce coal gas in four large vertical retorts was made at Musselburgh gasworks, managed by family friend Andrew Scott. Non-caking Scottish coal suited vertical retorts with great potential advantages, particularly reduced heat loss and deterioration, and automatic gravity feed instead of slow and skilful manual emptying and recharging. Failure resulted from water-gas dilution, and inadequate heat without C. W. Siemens' revolutionary producer-gas furnaces and heat- regenerators. At Straiton, with Alex Bell Jnr, William developed a radically improved two-phase version of his shale-oil retort with steam injection to recover ammonia. Beilby also had devised improvements and in 1881 they collaborated to make the famous Pentland Retort, with producer and regenerators. This doubled ammonia recovery, improved paraffin yield, resuscitated the industry, and made William wealthy. He retired to Priorsford House, Peebles, as a consultant engineer." "For John Fyfe of James Young's Paraffin Co he sought methods of making permanent oil-gas from low value heavy-oils. Helped again by Alex Bell Jnr, then gas manager at Peebles, his very successful 'Peebles Process' of high-candle power enrichment for coal-gas found an eager market since best cannel coal used for enrichment had become very scarce and expensive in 1892. To market it, William formed the Oil Gas Enrichment Co in 1893 [with George Beilby and sixteen other oil and gas engineers]. The process was used at 30 gasworks by 1896, including the main Scottish towns, but William's work on an improved version in 1893 permanently damaged his health." "Many gasworks had adopted horizontal 'regenerative' retorts with higher temperatures causing unwanted naphthalene deposits. Samuel and Thomas Glover, who had used the Peebles Process at St Helens gasworks, visited William for advice about this and with him visited several oil works. They were so impressed with vertical retort efficiency that they persuaded him to help them design vertical gas retorts. The first Glover-Young retort of 1905 gave high caloric gas, coke and by-products, and became a market leader."
William Young with his mother Christian Clapperton (1815-1902) In his later years, William was an enthusiast for gas engines. The company who had produced his gas meter designs, Milnes of Milton House Works in the Canongate, helped to produce them. A powerful gas engine was installed in the Catcune flour mills of William's nephew at Fushiebridge and was the mainstay of production there for many years. William Young died in broken health in 1907 William Young left Harehope Farm at Eddleston to Peebles Town Council for use as a sanitarium. George Beilby led the oil and gas world at his funeral, and one obituarist had this to say: "Though the death of Mr. William Young, of Peebles, yesterday afternoon was not unexpected, the feeling of regret to which the removal from our midst of so distinguished a man gives rise is just as strong as if it had come suddenly upon us. I have known Mr. Young for twenty years -latterly much more intimately than at the first. Like everyone else, I was never in his company but I learned something from him. He was a man for whom the frivolities of life had no attraction. Yet he was one of the happiest of men whenever he found anyone willing to discuss with him some of the problems he had always seething in his mind. It was interesting to hear him relate how he advanced from point to point in the consideration of a particular subject. He was ignorant of finality. When he had reached a certain stage, that was to him firm and sure ground; next time you saw him he was farther on. and saw the thing from a different standpoint. yet maintaining the continuity of his inquiry. The subjects that were next his heart were also on the tip of his tongue. He could speak without cessation upon them, but let him be asked to (say) propose a vote of thanks, and he could not command the language to do it. Probably this quality of his character was accentuated by the state of his health. which shut him out from all sociality, and drove him to his study and his laboratory. For a man who was nearly all his life far from being robust, the amount of work which he accomplished was amazing."
"This country -Scotland in particular- is much the richer in that she produced such a son as William Young. The mind is led to reflect upon what has been Mr. Young's reward for all his toil on behalf of his countrymen. A competency he secured, which is matter for gratification. But honours did not come his way. When we consider that some have risen into celebrity, even earned titles and been admitted into the highest society, whose qualifications have been no more than a versatile imagination, or a capacity for selling groceries, and that here is one who, grappling with the secrets of Nature, has brought millions of pounds sterling into the pockets of the people, yet has been allowed to die without a single title or letter of distinction to his name, and in such obscurity that the leading newspaper in Scotland to-day bestows no more than twenty five lines of print to his memory, we are forced to the conclusion that the system of awarding honours in this world stands very much in need of amending. He received honour, universally, among his scientific brethren; but the world at large, which benefited by his labours, knew him not. Surely, now that he has passed away, his name will not be allowed to be forgotten..." [For more about the rise and fall of the shale oil industry in Scotland see Shale Oil Scotland: 2nd edition by David Kerr, 1999] | ||
