William Aspdin 1815-1864
William Aspdin (b 23/9/1815, Leeds, WR: d 11/4/1864, Itzehoe, Schleswig Holstein) was the inventor of Portland cement in the modern sense of the term.
Having produced a number of biographical notes on cement industry people, the lack of an adequate account of Portland cement's originator has become more and more obvious. However, I approach the prospect of writing a note on Aspdin with some diffidence, because he has been the nemesis of many a biographer. It is a curious characteristic of Portland cement that every writer of a textbook on its manufacture and use has felt compelled to begin with a long chapter on the history of cements. In a sense, Portland cement is a product defined by its history. After long (and usually flaky) dissertations on the Egyptians and the Romans (who, by the way, still exist, in their millions), the narrative comes to a skidding halt in the early nineteenth century with the recognition that the early years of Portland cement are a factual vacuum, filled only with fragments of tenuous speculation. Nevertheless, not being averse to speculation myself, I had better have a go. Others who have tried have included Reid (1877), Redgrave (1895), Butler (1899), Quietmeyer (1911), Davis (1924), Halstead (1961), Francis (1977), Blezard (1998) and Trout (2019). The following is the result of my research plus critical use of the above sources.
His father
William Aspdin's father, Joseph (b 1778, Hunslet, WR: d 20/3/1855, Wakefield: Note 1) is famous for his 1824 patent for "Portland Cement" - a term that he was possibly not the first to use (Note 2). He was a builder and bricklayer (as was his father before him) working in the Leeds area. His product, as is generally acknowledged today, was typical of a number of products produced at the time in order to emulate - hopefully at a lower manufacturing cost - Parker's Roman Cement. The latter was used mainly in stuccoing and other applications requiring a fairly fast set. For mass concrete, it was not at all suitable, and that was not an application considered at the time.
Joseph married Mary Fotherby in 1811. Their children were Caroline (1812), James (b 23/8/1813, Leeds, WR: d 21/12/1873, Wakefield, WR), William (1815), Mary (1816), Charlotte (1818) and Louisa (1820). By 1825 he had set up a cement works in a back-lot on the east side of Kirkgate, Wakefield. In the 1830s, the father and two sons operated this, with James doing the financial work (while also employed by a Leeds woolen firm) and William responsible for manufacturing operations. The site was on land that had been appropriated for the Manchester & Leeds Railway, and it was handed over in April 1838. Equipment was hurriedly moved to the Pear Tree Close site, and production started there in early 1839. Then in 1841 William left. In August 1841, Joseph transferred a half-share of the business to James and re-named it "Joseph Aspdin & Son". He put a notice in the local paper saying:
I think it right . . . to give notice that my late agent, William Aspdin is not now in my employment, and that he is not authorised to receive any money, nor contract any debts on my behalf or on behalf of the new firm. 2nd August, 1841.
In August 1844, Joseph retired: the balance of the business was transferred to James. In 1848, the railway again expanded its land over Pear Tree Close, and the business was moved a short distance away to Ings Road. Taller kilns were installed there, indicating that the firm might at last have started making "true" Portland cement. If this resulted in a better product, it certainly didn't boosr sales, and the plant remained very small for the rest of its existence. Joseph died in 1855, and James continued running the business until his death in 1873, after which it continued fitfully until it finally closed on 31/8/1894. The company was wound up on 30/6/1904.
William's new cement
Various texts say that "he unexpectedly left the firm in July 1841". It's unclear who was expecting what - it might have been expected for years. At the census of 6/6/1841, the family were dispersed. Joseph was living in a small house in North Street, Wakefield, alone except for a servant. James and his wife were still in Leeds. William was in lodgings at a tailor's shop on the east side of Kirkgate, at the top end, north of Pincheon Street. One point that seems to have escaped people's notice is that, on the west side of Kirkgate, north of George Street, Jane Leadman (b 26/8/1816, Barnsley, WR: d 21/2/1894, Dewsbury, WR) - William's prospective wife - was living with her married sister as one of five apprentice milliners at a hat shop, not more than 50 m from where William was living.
The Leadman girls were daughters of a Barnsley butcher. Following his departure a few weeks after the census, William moved to London and set up a "cement manufactory" at Church Passage, Rotherhithe - a place with a wharf and flour milling on hand, and about 100 m from the south portal of Brunel's Thames Tunnel. He made a brief return to Yorkshire around Christmas 1841, and married Jane Leadman at the parish church of Royston, near Barnsley on 28/12/1841. He was 26 and she was 25; their ages were both given on the marriage record as 21 (i.e. "of age"). Her place of residence is given as Barnsley, his as Monk Bretton, a suburb of Barnsley - presumably a very temporary residence. No other member of the Aspdin family was present. Within the next few days, the couple travelled to Rotherhithe. After a few months the business was re-located to Upper Ordnance Wharf, Rotherhithe, and Aspdin put on the market a product that caused a minor sensation.
The London of the time was a civil engineer's paradise. Brunel's world-famous Thames Tunnel had just been opened. Following the 1834 fire, the Palace of Westminster was being rebuilt on a grand scale. Railways and docks were being built. Soon, the London drainage scheme and the Thames Embankment would be constructed.
The question arises: why did William give up working for a going concern and embark on a hazardous new venture in what was practically a foreign country? His father had peremptorily excluded him from the business, maybe because of the sort of financial malpractice that characterised all William's later career, or maybe because of his disapproval of the marriage. Whatever the reason, William left, taking with him knowledge of an improved cement product that might make a fortune for an effective entrepreneur. London, although a daunting place, did offer two obvious advantages - an enormous market with good transport links, and access to chalk, which made manufacture of his product much easier and cheaper.
It has always been my practise, mainly as an aid in the training of process engineers, to suggest that William got fired because of his innovation. It is a principle of cement manufacture still inadequately understood, that improving the product's quality always involves an increase in manufacturing cost. Conversely, the lazy person's way of reducing costs (frequently implemented) is to reduce quality. William's innovation involved an enormous improvement in quality - at a cost. The extra cost manifested itself in three ways:
- It involved using more limestone in the mix - always a difficult prospect at Wakefield with no local source.
- It involved burning hotter, involving greater expense in fuel.
- Perhaps the worst, it involved producing hard clinker, the grinding of which reduced the dress-life of millstones from perhaps a month to the 36 hours or less that later became standard. Re-dressing a pair of stones took a miller a full 12-hour shift (see a brilliant YouTube demonstration).
Presumably, having attempted production of this new product at the Pear Tree Close site, his father no doubt regarded him in true Yorkshire fashion as "too clever by 'arf", and his fate was sealed.
Ten years on the Thames
Francis suggests that for the first 18 months, William conducted the business on his own. He may have "saved up" or taken money from the family business to finance the considerable setting-up expenses, but it is most likely that he had some sort of backer, whose identity has not yet come to light. An extraordinary succession of such backers - usually rich and naive - continued to facilitate William's subsequent career. Anyway, during 1843, a partnership - J M Maude, Son & Co - was established between John Milthorp Maude (b 12/10/1778, Leeds, WR: d 6/1855, Southwark, Surrey) and his son Edmund (b 1/1812, Lambeth, Surrey: d 1869, London). London shipping brokers who must have been fairly wealthy, they originated from Leeds, and were probably known to the Aspdins. The company began by publicising the new product in circulars and periodicals, representing it as having been made for a long time in the North, but offered now in the Metropolis at a price that avoided the large transportation costs from Yorkshire. Thus began the systematic misrepresentation that William deployed with increasing intensity.
This was followed by the commissioning and publication of comparative tests by a reputable independent test-house (Grissell & Peto) showing considerable superiority to cements then on the market. This publicity was later referred to sarcastically by I C Johnson as the "flourish of trumpets" that ultimately caused him to be commissioned by his employers, J B White, to emulate the product. The campaign must have been sufficiently successful to stretch the capacity of the small Rotherhithe site. In 1846, the Northfleet Roman cement producing site of Parker and Wyatt became available. This had several advantages - it was spacious, it had a tidal mill, and it had chalk on-site. William moved his family there in 1846.
J M Maude resigned from the partnership on 2/3/1846, although he remained secretary to the Mexican Mining Company. A new company was formed with partners Edmund Maude, his brother George (b 19/7/1823, Peckham, Surrey: d ?), William Henry Jones and William Aspdin, entitled Maude, Jones & Aspdin. This partnership terminated on 5/6/1847, when bankruptcy proceedings commenced. It is clear that, while the bankruptcy case continued, William was looking for alternative backers. While over the course of the next year the other partners cleared their debts, William apparently did not, but nevertheless commenced a new partnership which bought the half-constructed Northfleet works on 1/1/1848.
The new partnership consisted of William, William Robins and his son-in-law George Henry Goodwin, and was called "Robins, Aspdin & Co." The Northfleet plant was completed, with five kilns and a classic thin-slurry raw material preparation system. The large area of slurry backs guaranteed a high degree of homogeneity in the slurry.
It was during the period of the launch of the larger Northfleet plant, in 1848-1849, that Aspdin published a series of advertisements in The Builder, which, among other absurd claims, said that his father's Wakefield-made cement had been used in 1838 - in preference to other materials - to seal leaks in the Brunels' Thames Tunnel. This claim came to be accepted and repeated almost universally well into the twentieth century, and is still heard today. However the researches of Halstead, Skempton and others from the 1950s showed it to be a barefaced lie: the Brunels made meticulous daily records of the events and materials used in the tunnel, and while they used various brands of Roman cement, and made fulsome testimonials to their quality, Portland cement and Aspdin are nowhere mentioned. Major "irruptions of water" were sealed with puddled clay. The claim typifies William Aspdin's main talent - as an enthusiastic and convincing liar.
On 7/3/1849 (Note 3) Goodwin left the partnership. Having left Rotherhithe, the company now needed a London wharf, and on 19/1/1850 they brought into the partnership John Henry Cox (b 10/8/1822, Derby: d ? Note 4), who had access to an excellent wharf at Great Scotland Yard, Whitehall. This now became their London office. However, the choice of Cox was to prove fatal for Aspdin's plans - he was a lawyer who entered Lincoln's Inn 22/5/1846, and was more acute than most.
That year, William chose a bad time to start a new project, in the form of Portland Hall - an ambitious development on land on the southwest of Windmill Hill, Gravesend. This included a magnificent mansion, and several smaller houses, all designed to showcase the use of Portland cement. He commissioned architects to design the scheme, and work commenced during 1850. During the same period, Cox started looking at the books. There then followed a succession of widely-publicised court cases. On 22/10/1851, William Foyer, who was Aspdin's works foreman, was charged at Rochester petty sessions with theft from the company by taking from the office at Great Scotland Yard a sum for the weekly wages not all of which was actually given to the employees. In June, Cox made an unannounced intervention, and supervised the full payment himself. He discovered that the workers had been instructed to hand the money to Foyer after he had gone. While this case proceeded, Cox also discovered that a sum withdrawn from the company for a new steam engine for Northfleet was misappropriated, since the engine actually installed was the old machine from Rotherhithe. Continued investigation turned up many more abuses, and, more significantly, Aspdin was said to be "combining and confederating with persons unknown to wrong and injure the company". The "persons" made politely anonymous were undoubtedly Thomas and George Sturge, who were planning a cement plant on the adjacent site. All this gave Cox the ammunition to persuade Robins, who had hitherto sided with Aspdin, to split with him.
Foyer was discharged on the admission that he acted under instruction from Aspdin. Cox brought a case in Chancery to have the partnership dissolved, which had effect on 7/11/1851, as did an injunction excluding Aspdin from entering the company's property or conducting any business on its behalf. Robins and Cox then formed a new partnership as Robins & Co. Foyer was re-hired as manager. Cox finally resigned on 31/12/1856.
Twelve years on the run
His ejection left Aspdin with large debts, ongoing expenses and no income. Francis suggests he received consultancy payments from Sturge during the next 6-9 months. Portland Hall stood for a while unfinished, and was put up for sale on several occasions but found no buyers, and was partially demolished at the order of the receiver. But on 4/9/1852, Aspdin announced a new partnership and a new plant, at Gateshead. It is inconceivable that this new plant was raised in as little as ten months, and it must be assumed that this was another of Aspdin's undercover activities during 1850-51, perhaps encouraged by the many London-based Tyne coal merchants with whom Aspdin dealt. Tyneside solicitor George Thirkeld Gibson (b 28/8/1801, Newcastle: d 25/3/1874, Gateshead) had built the plant to Aspdin's specification on the site of a flour mill that he owned, and leased it to Aspdin and his new partner Augustus William Ord (b 1828, Manchester: d ?India). Ord was an East India merchant who was working from Covent Garden in the 1850s, and a source of funds, but probably never visited the Gateshead plant.
Aspdin and his family came to live in Newcastle, and his younger son William was born there. He was elected as a Tory to the council in Gateshead in 1854, but was disqualified following his bankruptcy the next year.
His real collaborator was Gibson. Although not a partner, Gibson intended to recoup his investment with rent and royalties from the plant. He had been bamboozled by Aspdin into including a contract clause to the effect that no rent would be payable until the plant was in satisfactory working order. Despite successful operation requiring uprating of capacity during 1854, Aspdin continued to report that the plant was "not quite right", and paid no rent. Gibson got tired of this and in late 1854 decided to get a consultant to arbitrate on the matter. He first contacted William Robins, and Robins - significantly - suggested I C Johnson, who was by then working on his own account. Johnson visited Gateshead, reported back that the plant was just fine, and Gibson promptly began legal proceedings to rescind his contract with Aspdin and terminate the lease. While this was taking place, various creditors descended on Aspdin, and the partnership was made bankrupt on 17/4/1854, and Gibson cancelled the lease. The plant shut down. In 1856, Johnson was invited to come and run the plant himself, which his company did successfully for the next 60 years.
Once again, Aspdin, resident in Newcastle, was in debt and without income. Ord quite quickly discharged his bankruptcy, and continued with his East Indies business. His wife died at Malabar Hill, Mumbai, and perhaps Ord also died there. Aspdin's bankruptcy was not discharged, but, astonishingly, he found another backer in the shape of William Jackson and built a small plant at Ouseburn near where he was living, trading as Aspdin & Co. However the number of creditors who had by then tracked him down became oppressive, and he and his family did a "midnight flit" to Germany. The partnership with Jackson was dissolved 10/4/1857.
The birth dates of their known children confirm their movements up to that point:
- Caroline Amelia: 21/12/1843, Rotherhithe
- Joseph: 22/3/1845, Rotherhithe
- Mary Jane: ?/12/1846, Northfleet
- Clara: ?/3/1848, Northfleet
- Fanny Sarah: ?/1/1851, Northfleet
- William: ?/4/1856, Newcastle on Tyne
The details of his later life are hard to establish. It would appear that, as with his move to Newcastle, he was aided and abetted by contacts in the Tyne coal trade. In addition to fuelling London, Tyne coal was exported in enormous quantities to every port in Northern Europe, particularly the Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia and Russia, and there was a vast network of traders. Newcastle coal merchants and shipping agents were prosperous and influential in their customers' ports. Aspdin may also have had assistance from Trechmann, who came from Holstein. His first backer was a coal merchant named Fawcus who set him up with a cement plant at his own wharf at Altona, perhaps using chalk ballast as at Gateshead. This operated from 23/10/1857 and continued for 3-4 years. According to Quietmeyer, he also provided consultancy for company Brunckhorst & Westfalen of Buxtehude, who had been making cement since 1850, perhaps with Aspdin's help from the outset. There followed consultancy with Gebr. Heyn at Lüneburg, who soon dispensed with him. Finally in 1862 he found another backer in the form of another Tyne coal merchant - Edward Fewer (Note 5) - and established a plant using local chalk at Lägerdorf, on the site of a plant that still (2025) operates. He soon fell out with Fewer, who paid him £250 to discontinue the partnership. He then moved to Itzehoe where, on 11/4/1864, he was killed in a road accident. His grave is there. Davis gives an illegible photograph of it.
His family immediately moved back to Yorkshire, living mainly in the Heckmondwike/Dewsbury area. His elder son Joseph (d 19/8/1903, Dewsbury, WR) did well as a woollen manufacturer. His younger son William (d 11/3/1908, Dewsbury, WR), subsequent to his birth registration in Newcastle, was always called William Altona Aspdin. He became a very successful maker of carriage rugs, and continued to support his mother for the rest of her life. He provided a certain amount of information about the activities of his father and grandfather to researchers who became interested in the subject in the 1900s.