of the law,’ but that he himself had doubts on the point. Through the influence of the family of Eliot he was returned to parliament in 1768 for their pocket-boroughs of St. Germans and Liskeard, and preferred to sit for the latter constituency. He represented Liskeard during the three parliaments from 1768 to 1784 (having from 1774 to 1780 Edward Gibbon as his colleague), and sat for Aldeburgh in Suffolk from 1784 to 1790. In politics he was a whig. ‘He was a shy man,’ says Lamb, ‘… indolent and procrastinating,’ very forgetful and careless in everything, but ‘you could not ruffle Samuel Salt.’
Salt died at his chambers in Crown Office Row, Inner Temple, on 27 July 1792, and was buried in a vault of the Temple Church. A shield with his coat-of-arms is in the sixteenth panel (counting from the west) on the north side of the Inner Temple hall. He married young (it is said that his wife was a daughter of Lord Coventry), and lost his wife in childbed ‘within the first year of their union, and fell into a deep melancholy’ (Lamb, Benchers of the Inner Temple).
John Lamb, father of Charles Lamb, the ‘Lovel’ of the essay on the Inner Temple benchers, was Salt's clerk for nearly forty years. Charles was born in Crown Office Row, where Salt ‘owned two sets of chambers,’ and it was the home of the Lamb family until 1792. He procured the admission of Charles to Christ's Hospital, and made himself answerable for the boy's discharge, giving a bond for the sum of 100l. Through Salt's influence as a governor of the South Sea Company, Charles and his elder brother obtained clerkships under the company, and in his will Salt made provision for his old clerk and his wife.
A medallion portrait of Samuel Salt, executed in plaster of Paris by John Lamb, belonged to Mrs. Arthur Tween.
[Masters of Bench of Inner Temple, 1883, p. 83; Gent. Mag. 1792, ii. 678; Notes and Queries, 7th ser. vi. 85, 217; Official Return of Members of Parliament, ii. 137, 138, 150, 163, 181; Lamb's Inner Temple Benchers in Essays of Elia (ed. Ainger), pp. 122–5, 128–9, 394–6; Johnson's Christ's Hospital, pp. 254, 274.]
SALT, Sir TITUS (1803–1876), manufacturer, was the son of Daniel Salt, white cloth merchant and drysalter, of Morley in the West Riding of Yorkshire, by his wife Grace, daughter of Isaac Smithies of Morley. He was born there on 20 Sept. 1803. When Salt was about ten years old his father gave up his business, and took a farm at Crofton in Wakefield. Titus was educated at the Heath grammar school, Wakefield. In 1820 he was placed with Mr. Jackson of Wakefield to learn the wool-stapling business, and in 1822 entered the mill of Messrs. Rouse & Son of Bradford, where he spent two years. The elder Salt, not succeeding with his farm, removed in 1822 to Bradford, where he started in business as a wool-stapler, at a time when the worsted trade was shifting its quarters to Bradford. Titus Salt joined his father as partner in 1824. He first showed his enterprise by introducing Donskoi wool for worsted manufacture. The difficulty of dealing with this Russian wool, owing to its rough and tangled nature, had hitherto prevented its use in the worsted trade. Salt, finding himself unable to persuade manufacturers to make use of the wool, determined to do so himself, and after careful experiment fully succeeded, by means of special machinery which he set up in Thompson's mill, Bradford. After this discovery his business rapidly increased, and in 1836 he was working on his own account four mills in Bradford.
In 1836 Salt made a first purchase from Messrs. Hegan & Co. of Liverpool of alpaca hair. Though no novelty in this country, the hair was practically unsaleable owing to difficulties attending its manufacture, and a consignment of three hundred bales had long lain in the warehouses of the Liverpool brokers. Salt saw in this despised material a new staple, bought the whole quantity, and, after much investigation, produced a new class of goods, which took the name of alpaca. He rapidly developed his discovery, and acquired considerable wealth. He was elected mayor of Bradford in 1848, and, after some hesitation as to whether he should retire from business, began to build in 1851, a few miles out of Bradford above Shipley on the banks of the Aire, the enormous works which eventually grew into the town of Saltaire. The main mill, with its five great engines and some three miles of shafting, was opened amid much rejoicing in September 1853. From a sanitary point of view the new works were much superior to the average factory then in existence. Especial provision was made for light, warmth, and ventilation. Eight hundred model dwelling-houses, with a public dining-hall, were provided for the workpeople, and during the next twenty years the great industrial establishment was methodically developed. A congregational church was completed in 1859; factory schools and public baths and washhouse in 1868; almshouses, an infirmary, and club and institute were added in 1868–9, and the work completed by the presentation of a public park in 1871. Money
