Charles Tennant

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Charles Tennant was born on the 3rd of May 1768 at Laigh Corton in Alloway, Ayrshire. He was the sixth of thirteen surviving children of a farmer named John "Auld Glen" Tennant. Bales of unbleached cotton piled up in Scottish warehouses because the bleaching process of the day took many months. Cloth was treated with stale urine, then spread across open bleachfields and left in the sun to whiten slowly. Robert Burns, a family friend, mentioned Tennant in verse as "wabster Charlie." The nickname referred to the weaving apprenticeship he had taken at Kilbarchan in Renfrewshire. But Tennant looked at the bleachfields and saw not just a problem but a missing solution. Why would a skilled, well-paid weaver walk away from a secure trade? And what idea was forming in his mind that the rest of the industry had overlooked?

  13

• 2. Chlorine and Lime

  ›

  In 1788, Tennant acquired bleachfields at Darnley, in Glasgow, and turned his attention to improving the process. Others had already made progress: by replacing sour milk with sulfuric acid, they had cut bleaching time from eighteen months down to four. Some bleachers had begun experimenting with lime, though they kept it secret for fear of harmful effects. Tennant's original idea was to combine chlorine with lime. He worked on that combination for several years. On the 23rd of January 1798, he was granted patent number 2209. The patent covered a bleach liquor made by passing chlorine into a mixture of lime and water. Lime replaced the potash generally used at the time, making the product cheaper. That patent was later declared invalid on two grounds. The specification was incomplete, and the invention had been anticipated at a bleach works near Nottingham. Tennant persisted. On the 30th of April 1799, he was granted patent number 2312. The new patent covered a bleaching powder produced by reacting chlorine with dry slaked lime to form calcium hypochlorite. His fellow chemist Charles Macintosh, born in 1766, played a significant part in this discovery. The two men had already collaborated to found Scotland's first alum works at Hurlet in Renfrewshire. Macintosh would remain one of Tennant's closest associates for years to come.

  1310

• 3. Four Partners

  ›

  Around 1794, while still managing his bleachfields, Tennant formed a business partnership with four friends. Dr. William Couper served as legal advisor. Alexander Dunlop, whose brother had married Charles's eldest daughter, handled the accounts. James Knox managed sales. Charles Macintosh served as the group's scientific partner. After the 1798 patent was granted, the partners purchased land on the Monkland Canal, just north of Glasgow, to build a factory. The area was called St. Rollox, named after a French holy man. Lime was nearby, the rural land was inexpensive, and the canal provided a reliable freight route. In 1798, Knox and Charles's younger brother Robert traveled to Ireland and struck a deal with local bleachers for use of the process. Those bleachers later admitted saving more than £160,000 in 1799 alone by using the Tennant method. They paid nothing, despite their agreement. Further losses came from patent challenges in England and Ireland, and from open infringement of the process. Despite these disputes, the partnership was profitable. It ran for fourteen years, until the patent rights expired. When it ended, Tennant bought out the company and took sole ownership.

  1103

• 4. St. Rollox

  ›

  The first year of production at St. Rollox, in 1799, yielded fifty-two tons of bleaching products. By the fifth year, output had exceeded 9,200 tons. By 1815, the enterprise operated under the name Charles Tennant & Co. and had expanded into other chemicals, metallurgy, and explosives. During the 1830s and 1840s, St. Rollox grew into the largest chemical works in the world. It covered more than one hundred acres, with 250,000 square feet of floor space. Over one thousand people worked there, and the plant dominated the local economy. A second facility at Hebburn eventually brought bleaching powder production alone to 20,000 tons by 1865. The company also held interests in the early Scottish rail network and in mines in Spain. By 1832, the plant consumed thirty thousand tons of coal every year, a volume the existing transport system was never designed to handle.

  3101

• 5. Railways and Reform

  ›

  George Stephenson, a talented railway engineer and a personal friend, gave Tennant the ideas he needed to solve that transport problem. Tennant designed a new approach: wagons pulled by steam engines, running on iron rails laid on a level roadbed. From 1825, he became one of the prime influencers behind railway expansion in Scotland. He played a central role in bringing a railway line into Glasgow. The canal proprietors opposed the project fiercely, seeing it as a threat to their trade. The same years also saw him working as a committed political reformer. The Napoleonic Wars had brought wealth to the manufacturing classes and poverty to workers, and years of social unrest followed. Tennant spent many years in the reform movement before seeing any results. He was sixty-four years old before his efforts bore fruit in the Reform Bill of 1832. After the bill passed, Tennant became a prominent supporter of the campaign to honor Thomas Muir of Huntershill. Reformers called Muir Scotland's Political Martyr.

  1310

• 6. Empire and Monument

  ›

  Tennant died at his home on Abercromby Place in Glasgow on the 1st of October 1838, aged seventy. His eldest son John became managing director of Charles Tennant & Co. and held that position for the next forty years. In 1830, Charles had arranged for his nephew William Sloan, the son of his sister Sarah, to receive several small schooners. The vessels were intended to move chemical products to nearby markets. By the time Sloan died in 1848, those vessels had grown into the largest fleet in Glasgow, running nineteen vessels. Under John's leadership, the empire expanded into explosives, copper, sulphur, gold mines, and banking. The explosives work brought a partnership with Alfred Nobel. Charles's grandson Charles Clow Tennant, born in 1823, became the first baronet of Glenconner. The chemical firm eventually became the United Alkali Company Ltd. and, in 1926, merged with others to form Imperial Chemical Industries. The chemical works at Springburn closed in 1964. In 1842, workers erected the St. Rollox Stalk at the chemical works, also known as Tennant's Stalk. It rose 435.5 feet into the air, with a base forty feet in diameter at ground level. At the time of construction, it was the tallest such structure in the world. The Townsend Chimney at Port Dundas, less than a mile away, surpassed it seventeen years later. In 1922, lightning struck it, and the Stalk was dynamited down; four workmen died when part of the structure collapsed during the process. Tennant himself is buried in the Glasgow Necropolis, where a monument on the upper plateau marks his grave. The sculptor Patrick Park, who lived from 1811 to 1855, depicted Tennant in a notably relaxed, almost slumped seated posture. The pose is thought to have been modeled on Francis Chantrey's statue of James Watt, displayed in the nearby Hunterian Museum. Tennants Consolidated Ltd., the privately owned offshoot of Tennant's original firm, still operates from London. It trades in chemicals, colours, and distribution with every continent.

  16892