tician and philologist; a daughter, Emma, married her first cousin, Charles Robert Darwin. The works at Etruria are still carried on by a grandson and other descendants of the second Josiah Wedgwood.
A good portrait of Wedgwood, painted in 1783 by Sir Joshua Reynolds, now belongs to Miss Wedgwood of Leith Hill Place, Dorking; it has been twice engraved, once in mezzotint by S. W. Reynolds. The Earl of Crawford owns an early copy in oil by John Rising. George Stubbs painted in oil a family picture with nine figures, four being on horseback, also a large portrait in enamel on earthenware; both these works are now in the possession of Mr. Godfrey Wedgwood. A portrait of Wedgwood on horseback, also painted in enamel on earthenware, is owned by Lord Tweedmouth; an engraving of this picture is given in F. Rathbone's 'Old Wedgwood.' A cameo medallion-portrait, modelled by William Hackwood, was made at Etruria. On the monument in Stoke-on-Trent church there is a posthumous relief by Flaxman, while there is a modern bust by Fontana in the Wedgwood Memorial Institute at Burslem (founded 1863). A bronze statue of Wedgwood is at Stoke close to the railway station; it is the work of Mr. E. Davis, of London. It is belived that a wax cameo portrait of Wedgwood was executed shortly after 1781 by Eley George Mountstephen.
[Among the sources used in preparing this memoir are Meteyard's Life of Josiah Wedgwood, 1865; Ward's Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent, 1843; Gatty's Cat. of Liverpool Art Club Loan Collection, 1879; F. Rathbone's Cat. of the Centenary Exhibition at Burslem, 1895; Church's Portfolio Monograph on Josiah Wedgwood, 1894. The Stafford Advertiser of 29 June 1895 contains an account of the proceedings at Burslem at the centenary of Josiah Wedgwood's death.]
WEDGWOOD, THOMAS (1771–1805), the first photographer, born at Etruria Hall, Staffordshire, on 14 May 1771, was the third surviving son of Josiah Wedgwood [q.v.] He was educated almost entirely at home, but spent a few terms at Edinburgh University between 1787 and 1789. For a very short while he worked energetically at the potteries, but was soon compelled by bad health to lead a wandering life in vain search of cure.
The name of Thomas Wedgwood is chiefly remembered in connection with photography. It had long been known that nitrate and chloride of silver are affected by light under certain conditions, but the idea of making practical use of this property does not seem to have occurred to any one before it occurred to Wedgwood. In the 'Journal of the Royal Institution of Great Britain' for 1802 we find 'An Account of a Method of copying Paintings upon Glass, and of making Profiles by the agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver, invented by T. Wedgwood, esq., with Observations by H. Davy' [see Davy, Sir Humphry]. Wedgwood showed that a copy or a silhouette of any object could be obtained, when its shadow was thrown on a piece of white paper or leather which had been sensitised by being moistened with nitrate of silver. In a similar manner a silhouette of a picture painted on glass could be obtained by placing the glass in the light of the sun upon the sensitised surface. The 'primary end' of his experiments was to obtain photographs in a camera obscura, but in this endeavour he was unsuccessful, as no effect could be obtained 'in any moderate time.' Moreover he failed to discover any method of fixing his picture, and the copies made had to be kept in the dark. Miss Meteyard tries to connect the Daguerre, whose name is known in connection with the Daguerrotype, with a certain Daguerre with whom Josiah Wedgwood had business dealings, and in this way to trace back the origin of these early French photographic inventions to Thomas Wedgwood; but it is probable that there is no justification whatever for these surmises. Although Wedgwood failed to discover a practical photographic process, to him appears to be due the credit of first conceiving and publishing the idea of utilising the chemical action of light for the purpose of making pictures, either by contact or in the camera, and of taking the first steps towards the realisation of his project [see Talbot, William Henry Fox].
On his father's death in 1795 Wedgwood inherited a considerable property, and spent much of his fortune in aiding men of genius. When in 1798 Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a candidate for the pastoral charge of the unitarian chapel at Shrewsbury, in order to enable him to devote himself entirely to philosophy and poetry Wedgwood and his brother offered him an annuity of 150l. a year, the value of the emolument, the prospect of which he abandoned by accepting this offer. Thomas Wedgwood's half of the annuity was secured legally to Coleridge for life. Sir John Leslie [q.v.], whose acquaintance he made at Edinburgh, was also assisted in a similar manner. During the alarm of invasion in 1803 and 1804 he equipped at his own expense a corps of volunteers raised in the country round Ulleswater. They were known as the 'Loyal
