4 - Molineaux, Webb, Ellis & Co

This particular plate has often been wrongly identified as American. Some of these early plate designs also appear in catalogues from France and Belgium and are in some cases identical to the Molineaux Webb designs. The meaning of this is open to interpretation. My guess is that in the very early days of pressing, mould making was centralised and the same or similar designs may have been produced for many glassworks from the same source, perhaps Birmingham or other places.

Here we have the real thing picked up in an eBay auction, an example of Molineaux Webb plate 4. It is a very early pressing. You can tell because of the roughness of the finished piece. It is only partly formed at one end so that even the lacy pattern fades off. The surface of the glass is heavily pitted, a sign of impurities in the glass mixture at the time of manufacture, a type of defect that tends to occur pre 1850.

It may well be that Birmingham remained the centre for mould manufacture for some time. There is an advert placed by Molineaux Webb in an 1869 edition of the Birmingham Daily Post which reads:

To glass mould makers and diesinkers - wanted, a workman to cut from the plain surface.

This suggests such skills were still rare or unavailable in the Manchester area 40 years after the first pressed moulds were made.

Ancoats in the 1840s

By this time Ancoats had become known as the world's first industrial suburb. The glass industry must have added considerably to the chimney-stack skyline and local pollution - in fact, Molineaux & Webb were served an abatement order for just such pollution in 1878, guilty of "the emission of dense black smoke from their premises."

Contemporary reports of Manchester from the 1840s set the scene:

(The King of Saxony's Journey Through England and Scotland in the Year 1844)

I could not help being forcibly struck by the peculiar dense atmosphere which hangs over these towns in which hundreds of chimneys are continually vomiting forth clouds of smoke. The light even is quite different from what it is elsewhere! What a curious red colour was presented by the evening light this evening! It is not like mist, nor like dust, nor even entirely like smoke, but is a sort of mixture of these three ingredients, condensed moreover by the particular chemical exhalations of such towns. The peculiar tint which the country around such a city assumes, cannot be better designated than by the phrase factory tint!

Friedrich Engels gave particular attention to Manchester in his 1840s book, the Condition of the Working Class in England. He had this to say of glass workers:

In the manufacture of glass, too, work occurs which seems little injurious to men, but cannot be endured by children. The hard labour, the irregularity of the hours, the frequent night-work, and especially the great heat of the working place (100 to 130 Fahrenheit), engender in children general debility and disease, stunted growth, and especially affections of the eye, bowel complaint, and rheumatic and bronchial affections. Many of the children are pale, have red eyes, often blind for weeks at a time, suffer from violent nausea, vomiting, coughs, colds, and rheumatism. When the glass is withdrawn from the fire, the children must often go into such heat that the boards on which they stand catch fire under their feet. The glass-blowers usually die young of debility and chest affections.

Map of the Molineaux & Webb site in the mid 1840s

Employees Leaving Service

Bearing in mind the awful conditions in the trade, it was perhaps not surprising that people walked out of their work contracts. There were two such cases in the summer of 1845 that made the local press...

Leaving employment without notice

On Saturday, William Skerratt, a glass maker, was charged at the Borough Court with having left the service of Messrs. Molineaux, Webb, and Co. glass manufacturers, without notice. The prisoner was one of a number of men who turned out on the 2nd and, by not fulfilling their contract to give a week's notice, caused a loss to their employers of about £50. Several of the men returned to their work, and were not proceeded against; but the prisoner was believed to be one of the ringleaders, and therefore the prosecutors pressed for punishment. It appeared that he had been fetched by Inspector Green from Ireland. He was committed to prison for 21 days.

In the second case, Thomas Webb made a personal appearance in court to "make an example" of an errant employee...

CHARGE OF BREACH OF CONTRACT OF SERVICE

On Thursday, at the Borough Court, a young man, named Henry Robinson, was brought up charged with having left the employment of Messrs. Molineaux, Webb, and Co. flint glass manufacturers, Kirby Street, Ancoats, before the completion of his contract. Mr. Monk appeared for the complainants, and stated the circumstances of the case. The defendant had served his apprenticeship with the complainants, and, on the 9th of October, 1843, he was engaged by them as a journeyman. The agreement was that he was to receive 14s per week, whether employed or not, and all that he could earn above that sum; and there was an understanding that the contract should terminate on a week's notice being given by either party. He was engaged as a “press glass man,” and worked with other men by turns, according to the practice in the trade.

On Monday morning he went to work at seven o'clock, and left at one; his next turn was at seven o'clock in the evening, when he attended, but did not resume work. Some dissatisfaction existed amongst the men, and he and others then intimated that they should turn out; and since that time he had not been at his employment. In consequence of the men leaving when they did, without notice, the materials which were then in a state of fusion, and which were worth 28s per cwt, were reduced in value to that of broken glass; and the whole loss to the complainants by the breach of contract on the part of the men was about £50.

Five of the men who accompanied the defendant on the occasion returned to their employment, or they would have been included in the charge. Three others, including the defendant, did not return, and warrants were taken out against them, as their conduct showed that they had been the leaders in the turn-out; two of then engaged to attend in court, and were not taken into custody; but they had not done so, and it was supposed that they had absconded.

Mr. Thomas Webb, one of the complainants, and John Booth, a mechanic in their service, proved the above facts. In answer to a question from the bench, Mr. Webb said, the men frequently earned their wages in three days, and the rest of the week was overtime. The defendant had earned £1 per week on an average.

Mr. Maude: “Well, Mr. Webb, here is a clear case of breach of contract, and a very injurious one to you. I do not know what your object is in bringing him here.”

Mr Webb: “I wish to make an example to the other men; they will ruin us.”

Mr. Maude asked what the defendant's behaviour had been while in his situation. Mr. Webb replied, that he had lost a great deal of time through drinking. Mr. Maude said, the magistrates were always unwilling to send a man to prison against whom no charge of dishonesty was made, but they had no alternative in this case. He then ordered the defendant to be committed for 21 days to hard labour, and to forfeit the wages (about 5s) owing to him.

Dead Employees

To counter the enthusiastic prosecution of employees, we have an example of the company writing to a newspaper to defend the character of one of their commercial travellers, a Mr. Robert Roberts. A newspaper had reported that Mr. Roberts was found dead underneath a railway viaduct in Salford, after earlier being seen in a drunken state by witnesses. The following week, Molineaux, Webb, Ellis & Co. wrote to the editors of the newspaper:

December 30th 1843 - The Late Mr. Robert Roberts - To the Editors of the Manchester Times

Gentlemen, a grossly erroneous statement having gone the round of the Manchester papers respecting the death of our late traveller, Mr. Robert Roberts, exceedingly painful to his family and friends, as well as to ourselves, in justice to his memory, we can truly state that during the twelve years he was in our service we never once saw or heard of an instance in which he was the worse for liquor. We always found him an upright, steady, sober man; and we deplore that an incautious newspaper paragraph should be the means of injuring a character so well and deservedly respected throughout all his acquaintance and connexions up to the time of his ill-fated death.

Molineaux, Webb, Ellis & Co

Manchester Flint Glass Works

Kirby Street, Canal Street

Dec 27th 1843

Changes in glass trade practice

Until the mid 19th century the glass trade was held back by two taxes. The Window Tax, which ran from 1695 to 1851, was applied relative to the number of windows in a house. The Glass Excise Tax, which ran from 1745 to 1845, was a tax on glass by weight. It held back British glassmakers in comparison to their European competitors.

Until the Glass Tax was repealed, Molineaux, Webb, Ellis & Co. were likely to be producing mainly blown glass. Pressed glass was a mechanised process and much cheaper to produce, but as a heavier glass product would have been more heavily taxed. C.P. Hampson, in his article from 1932 on the Lancashire glass trade, commented that the Webbs changed their method of glass production for taxation reasons.

A letter describing mass production of pressed glass from the company in 1848 survives. It was from the Webbs to the Robinson & Skinner glass works in Warrington. The letter is unusually open in revealing the company business practices. The letter lists the pay rates for glass workers and gives a description of the current factory production, which included; tumblers, dishes, plates, mustards, pickles, pots... all of various sizes.

Also dating from 1848, an advert appeared in the London Times from Molineaux & Webb, advertising for "a first rate glass engraver. A Bohemian would be preferred."

Partnership Dissolved

Notice is hereby given, that the Partnership between the undersigned, Thomas Molineaux, Thomas Webb, Mary Ellis, and Boulton Molineaux, carrying on business, at Manchester, as Glass Manufacturers, under the firm of Molineaux, Webb, Ellis, and Company, was dissolved on the 1st day of January 1848. All debts due to or by the said firm will be received and paid by the said Thomas Molineaux and Thomas Webb, who carry on the business as heretofore:

As witness our hands this 8th day of January 1848.

Thomas Molineaux

Thomas Webb

Mary Ellis

Boulton Molineaux

In 1848, Mary Ellis and Boulton Molineaux left the company partnership. The Ellis family played no further part in the glass industry. Boulton Molineaux retired from business soon after this date and moved from Warrington to Timperley in Cheshire. Over twenty years after the founding of the firm, only Thomas Molineaux and Thomas Webb remained from the original partnership. It was at this point that the company became known as "Molineaux, Webb & Co."

David Wilkinson, a businessman originally from London, joined the firm as a partner in the late 1840s.

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