to grant him any pecuniary assistance. He was successful, however, in 1786, in forming a company for the prosecution of his enterprise, and shortly afterwards a steam-packet of his invention was launched on the Delaware. His claim to be the inventor of steam-navigation was disputed by James Rumsey of Virginia, but Fitch obtained exclusive rights in steam-navigation in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, while a similar privilege was granted to Rumsey in Virginia, Maryland and New York. A steam-boat built by Fitch conveyed passengers for hire on the Delaware in the summer of 1790, but the undertaking was a losing one, and led to the dissolution of the company. In 1793 he endeavoured to introduce his invention into France, but met with no success. On his return to America he found his property overrun by squatters, and reaping from his invention nothing but disappointment and poverty, he committed suicide at Bardstown, Kentucky, on the 2nd of July 1798.
He left behind him a record of his adventures and misfortunes, “inscribed to his children and future posterity”; and from this a biography was compiled by Thompson Westcott (Philadelphia, 1857.)
FITCH, SIR JOSHUA GIRLING (1824–1903), English educationist,
second son of Thomas Fitch, of a Colchester family, was
born in Southwark, London, in 1824. His parents were poor but
intellectually inclined, and at an early age Fitch started work
as an assistant master in the British and Foreign School Society’s
elementary school in the Borough Road, founded by Thomas
Lancaster. But he continued to educate himself by assiduous
reading and attending classes at University College; he was
made headmaster of another school at Kingsland; and in 1850
he took his B.A. degree at London University, proceeding MA.
two years later. In 1852 he was appointed by the British and
Foreign School Society to a tutorship at their Training College
in the Borough Road, soon becoming vice-principal and in 1856
principal. He had previously done some occasional teaching
there, and he was thoroughly imbued with the Lancasterian
system. In 1863 he was appointed a government inspector of
schools for the York district, from which, after intervals in which
he was detached for work as an assistant commissioner (1865–1867)
on the Schools Inquiry Commission, as special commissioner
(1869), and as an assistant commissioner under the
Endowed Schools Act (1870–1877), he was transferred in 1877
to East Lambeth. In 1883 he was made a chief inspector,
to superintend the eastern counties, and in 1885 chief inspector
of training colleges, a post he held till he retired in 1894. In the
course of an extraordinarily active career, he acquired a unique
acquaintance with all branches of education, and became a
recognized authority on the subject, his official reports, lectures
and books having a great influence on the development of
education in England. He was a strong advocate and supporter
of the movement for the higher education of women, and he was
constantly looked to for counsel and direction on every sort of
educational subject; his wide knowledge, safe judgment and
amiable character made his co-operation of exceptional value,
and after he retired from official life his services were in active
request in inquiries and on boards and committees. In 1896
he was knighted; and besides receiving such academic distinctions
as the LL.D. degree from St Andrews University, he was
made a chevalier of the French Legion of Honour in 1889. He
was a constant contributor to the leading reviews; he published
an important series of Lectures on Teaching (1881), Educational
Aims and Methods, Notes on American Schools and Colleges
(1887), and an authoritative criticism of Thomas and Matthew
Arnold, and their Influence on English Education (see also the
article on Arnold, Matthew) in 1901; and he wrote the article
on Education in the supplementary volumes (10th edition)
of this encyclopaedia (1902). He died on the 14th of July 1903
in London. A civil list pension was given to his widow, whom,
as Miss Emma Wilks, he had married in 1856.
See also Sir Joshua Fitch, by the Rev. A. L. Lilley (1906),
FITCH, RALPH (fl. 1583–1606), London merchant, one of
the earliest English travellers and traders in Mesopotamia, the
Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, India proper and Indo-China.
In January 1583 he embarked in the “Tiger” for Tripoli and
Aleppo in Syria (see Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act I. sc. 3), together
with J. Newberie, J. Eldred and two other merchants or employees
of the Levant Company. From Aleppo he reached the
Euphrates, descended the river from Bir to Fallujah, crossed
southern Mesopotamia to Bagdad, and dropped down the Tigris
to Basra (May to July 1583). Here Eldred stayed behind to
trade, while Fitch and the rest sailed down the Persian Gulf
to Ormuz, where they were arrested as spies (at Venetian instigation,
as they believed) and sent prisoners to the Portuguese
viceroy at Goa (September to October). Through the sureties
procured by two Jesuits (one being Thomas Stevens, formerly
of New College, Oxford, the first Englishman known to have
reached India by the Cape route in 1579) Fitch and his friends
regained their liberty, and escaping from Goa (April 1584)
travelled through the heart of India to the court of the Great
Mogul Akbar, then probably at Agra. In September 1585
Newberie left on his return journey overland via Lahore (he
disappeared, being presumably murdered, in the Punjab), while
Fitch descended the Jumna and the Ganges, visiting Benares,
Patna, Kuch Behar, Hugli, Chittagong, &c. (1585–1586), and
pushed on by sea to Pegu and Burma. Here he visited the
Rangoon region, ascended the Irawadi some distance, acquired
a remarkable acquaintance with inland Pegu, and even penetrated
to the Siamese Shan states (1586–1587). Early in 1588
he visited Malacca; in the autumn of this year he began his
homeward travels, first to Bengal; then round the Indian coast,
touching at Cochin and Goa, to Ormuz; next up the Persian
Gulf to Basra and up the Tigris to Mosul (Nineveh); finally
via Urfa, Bir on the Euphrates, Aleppo and Tripoli, to the
Mediterranean. He reappeared in London on the 29th of April
1591. His experience was greatly valued by the founders of
the East India Company, who specially consulted him on Indian
affairs (e.g. 2nd of October 1600; 29th of January 1601; 31st
of December 1606).
See Hakluyt, Principal Navigations (1599), vol. ii. part i. pp. 245–271, esp. 250–268; Linschoten, Voyages (Itineraris), part i. ch. xcii. (vol. ii. pp. 158–169, &c., Hakluyt Soc. edition); Stevens and Birdwood, Court Records of the East India Company 1599–1603 (1886), esp. pp. 26, 123; State Papers, East Indies, &c., 1513–1616 (1862), No. 36; Pinkerton, Voyages and Travels (1808–1814), ix. 406–425.
FITCHBURG, a city and one of the county-seats of Worcester
county, Massachusetts, U.S.A., situated, at an altitude varying
from about 433 ft. to about 550 ft., about 23 m. N. of Worcester
and about 45 m. W.N.W. of Boston. Pop. (1880) 12,429;
(1890) 22,037; (1900) 31,531, of whom 10,917 were foreign-born,
including 4063 French Canadians, 836 English Canadians,
2306 Irish and 963 Finns; (1910 census) 37,826. Fitchburg
is traversed by the N. branch of the Nashua river, and is served
by the Boston & Maine, and the New York, New Haven &
Hartford railways, and by three interurban electric lines. The
city area (27.7 sq.m.) is well watered, and is very uneven, with
hill spurs running in all directions, affording picturesque scenery.
The court house and the post office (in a park presented by the
citizens) are the principal public buildings. Fitchburg is the
seat of a state normal school (1895), with model and training
schools; has a free public library (1859; in the Wallace library
and art building), the Burbank hospital, the Fitchburg home
for old ladies, and an extensive system of parks, in one of which
is a fine fountain, designed by Herbert Adams. Fitchburg
has large mercantile and financial interests, but manufacturing
is the principal industry. The principal manufactures are
paper and wood pulp, cotton and woollen goods, yarn and silk,
machinery, saws, horn goods, and bicycles and firearms (the
Iver Johnson Arms and Cycle Works being located here). In
1905 the city’s total factory product was valued at $15,390,507,
of which $3,019,118 was the value of the paper and wood pulp
product, $2,910,572 was the value of the cotton goods, and
$1,202,421 was the value of the foundry and machine shop
products. The municipality owns and operates its (gravity)
water works system. Fitchburg was included in Lunenburg
until 1764, when it was incorporated as a township and was
