JOSEPH GILLOTT.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1831, 5 January 1880, Page 3

JOSEPH GILLOTT.

[“ Groat Industries of Great Britain.” Joseph Gillott was a Sheffield artisan, who, soon after he became of ago, was compelled fay stress of poverty, occasioned by long depression of trade, to leave the parental hearth, and to seek his fortunes elsewhere’ Ho found his way to Birmingham, and entering the town on foot stopped for rest and refreshment at an old public-house in Digbeth. Long after, when Joseph Gillott had become a millionaire, and was buying up valuable properties in and about the town, this house came into the market for sale. Gillott bought it ; and when it was being razed to the ground, to make way for the Museum Palace and Concert Hall, that now stands on its site, ho directod the workmen to cut out a particular square of the settle, or seat, running round the tap-room, and to send it to his bouse to bo made up into a chair that should be handed down ss an heir-loom in his family. It was the first seat he had sat on in Birmingham, and the place where he had spent his last penny before pushing on into the town whose fame and wealth he was destined so largely to share and to increase. He soon found employment as a maker of buckles, a trade then enjoying a temporary spurt, and soon, with characteristic energy, was working on his own account Those were days when it was more easy than it is now to become one of a class which Birmingham has always been famous for—garretmasters. These are a sort of half-workman, half master, who buy their own materials, make up their own work with their own hands and tools, and sell their finished goods to the merchants and factors, who pay money down. When the little trade can be extended so as to call for the employment of more hands than those of the garret-master and his family, a shop may be built in the back-yard or rented elsewhere, and in due time the shop may become a factory, and the factory may develop into enormous “ works.” Many a great trade has been built up in this way in the Midland metropolis, and many a colossal fortune has been made from such beginnings. The most remarkable instance of such a career is presented in the life of Joeeph Gillott. In the garret of a very small house in Bread street—a locality marked down for destruction as a “ slam"—Gillott made buckles and other “ steel toys.” “He made very excellent goods,” said the merchant who used to buy of him, and “ came for his money every week.” His work showed evidences of a taste beyond that commonly possessed by a workman, and this ensured him plenty of orders; while a native ingenuity enabled him to execute them in the readiest way, with the least expenditure of time and labour, and with the directest aid from mechanical means. There is no doubt that he was perfectly familiar with the powers of the foot-lathe and stamp and of the hand-press, and that he could make tools for these machines, or perhaps construct the machines themselves to suit the purposes of his trade. At this critical juncture, chance guided his efforts in a new direction, and to an El Dorado which he could have had little conception of. Ho was engaged to a young woman in his own rank of life whose two brothers, John and William Mitchell, were working in about the same style as himself on the “new thing”—just beginning to be inquired after—steel pens. Their sister was helping them, and in the confidence of courtship would often explain to her lover the nature of her pursuits. No doubt the brothers were working by “ rule of thumb,” producing by painful labour of clipping, shearing, filing, and punching by band, a fairly saleable article. But Gillott saw at once that the press could be made available for nearly every process, and that the production could bo multiplied ad infinitum. Aided by his skill in tool-making, which stood him in good stead during all the greater part of his career, he worked secretly in his garret till he had perfected appliances which enabled him to make, single-handed, as many pens as could be made by twenty persons in the same time under the old system, and of a better and more uniform quality than had yet been seen. He found ready sale for all he could make, and in a short time the demand grow faster than his power of production, and he wanted help. Then his sweetheart, Miss Mitchell, agreed to his proposal that they should marry and work together, and reap the golden harvest while it was ripe. In after years, Mr Gillott used often to tell how, on the very morning of his marriage, he began and finished a gross of pens, and sold them for £7 4j, before going to church.