Facebook post #046 (Dec 2020)
Family tree post 46. In the C19, Birmingham was the workshop of the world. After generations in Knowle, Warwickshire (see post 41), Edward Brittain moved into Birmingham, probably for work. He married Mary Plant in Edgbaston (where development was restricted) in 1813. Of his children, baptised at St Philip’s, later the Cathedral, Charles married Maria Hill in in 1836 in Sutton Coldfield.
These days a chunk of central Birmingham, to the north-west of the cathedral, is known as the ‘Jewellery Quarter’, acknowledged as modern centre of jewellery and a place of unique character in the world for its particular combination of structures associated with jewellery and metalworking. But it was not the jewellery business which brought the Brittain and Larard families together. While it is true that jewellery businesses clustered together to collaborate, the range of small metal products extended from badges to whistles to fittings for beds, doors and coffins. All that glittered in Brummagem was not solid gold or silver.
By 1841, when the couple were 20, he was a silver plate worker, very likely at the Soho Manufactory, an early factory, north west of the Jewellery Quarter, which pioneered mass production. It operated from 1766, was the first site with a Watt steam engine in 1782, and closed in 1848. His brother Edward and cousin George were also silver platers: by 1851, electro-platers. This was a new industry, the new Elkington process having been patented in Birmingham in 1840, and using electric generators from 1844 (surviving part of the Elkington building pictured).
1851 was the year of the Great Exhibition: alongside the iron products (see post 33), electroplated goods were prominent. The process was based on potassium cyanide as an electrolyte, the same highly toxic compound used by Larard gold prospectors – and, famously, as a suicide pill.
It’s worth noting in passing that the Lambert family (post 27) were still making iron. One of Jesse’s iron founder sons was to move from Shropshire to the Jarrow and then Stockton, another to Stoke-on-Trent (my photo is of a sculpture paying tribute to the industry there). One of his daughters was a servant in the great house in Coalbrookdale, overlooking the world’s largest foundry. There is more to come on the Squire side too.
Charles and Maria Brittain moved to Bath Street, now in the ‘Gun Quarter’ (just east of the Jewellery Quarter) , near the Gunmakers’ Arms. His cousin Edward made pistols for Tranter, a precursor to BSA, but Charles’ career took an altogether different path, of which more anon.
