James 1793-1886 Muspratt

MUSPRATT, JAMES (1793-1886), British chemical manu facturer, was born in Dublin on Aug. 12, 1793. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to a wholesale druggist, but after a quarrel with his master he went to Spain to take part in the Peninsular War. Returning to Dublin about 1814, he began the manufac ture of chemical products, such as hydrochloric and acetic acids and turpentine, adding prussiate of potash a few years later. In 1822 he went to Liverpool and at first he confined himself to the latter product, but in 1823, when the tax on salt was reduced from 15s. to 2S. a bushel, he erected plant for the manufacture of soda from salt by the Leblanc process. In 1828 he built works at St. Helen's and in 185o he started new works at Widnes and Flint. In 1834-35, in conjunction with Charles Tennant, he pur chased sulphur mines in Sicily, to provide the raw material for his sulphuric acid; but on the imposition of the Neapolitan govern ment of a prohibitive duty on sulphur, Muspratt found a substitute in iron pyrites, which was thus introduced as the raw material for the manufacture of sulphuric acid. He died at Seaforth Hall, near

Liverpool, on May 4, 1886.

His eldest son,

JAMES SHERIDAN MUSPRATT (1821-1871), studied chemistry under Thomas Graham at Glasgow and London and under Liebig at Giessen, and in 1848 founded the Liverpool College of Chemistry, of which he acted as director. From 1854 to 186o he was occupied in preparing a dictionary of Chemistry . . . as applied and relating to the Arts and Manufactures, which was translated into German and Russian ; a new supplement to the German edition, under the title of Muspratt's Encyklopii disches Handbuch technischer Chemie, was completed in 1927.