Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/176

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poses at Openshaw; 25,218l. to other Manchester institutions and charities; 104,966l. to an institute, baths, and hospital at Darley Dale (in which Whitworth's seat of Stancliffe was situate); 12,000l. to the Technical Schools and other institutions in Stockport; and 14,848l. to charities and institutions elsewhere.

Whitworth's mind was not that of a logician, but that of an experimentalist. A man of few words, he encountered each problem in mechanics by the remark ‘Let us try.’ His experiments with rifles are a striking example of the manner in which a mind of the highest inventive order gradually and surely advances towards its object. Tyndall said that when he began to work at firearms he was as ignorant of the rifle ‘as Pasteur was of the microscope when he began his immortal researches upon spontaneous generation.’ In the matter of gunnery (like Darwin in some of his special investigations) he may be said to have proved all things in order to hold fast that which was good. The patience, the step-by-step progress of investigation, the certainty with which conclusions once fairly reached are grasped as implements, the systematic form in which facts are marshalled and results arranged, all indicate, as in the case of a Darwin or a Pasteur, the capacity for taking pains over trifles, and the mastery of large principles, which go to make up a genius.

An excellent full-length portrait of Whitworth by L. Desanges is in the Whitworth Institute at Darley Dale; in the grounds adjoining stands a monolithic obelisk (seventeen feet high), erected by the inhabitants in memory of Whitworth, and unveiled on 1 Sept. 1894; upon the pedestal are portrait and other medallions. Portraits of Whitworth appeared in the ‘Illustrated London News’ on 16 May 1868 and on 5 Feb. 1887. Whitworth's exceptionally fitting motto was ‘Fortis qui prudens.’

[Memoir of Whitworth in the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 1887–8, vol. xci. pt. i.; Instit. of Mechanical Engineers Proc. February 1887; Manchester Literary and Philosoph. Soc. Proc. 19 April 1887; Nature, 27 Jan. 1887; Biograph, ii. 455; Eclectic Engin. Mag. New York, ii. 42, xiv. 196 (by Tyndall); Fraser's Mag. lxix. 639; Trans. of the Royal Soc. 1887; Sir J. Emerson Tennent's Story of the Guns, 1864; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1715–1886; Smiles's Industrial Biogr.; Sutton's Cat. of Lancashire Authors; Times, 24 Jan. 1887; Manchester Examiner and Times, 24 Jan. 1887; Illustrated London News, 1887, i. 149; Debrett's Baronetage, 1887, p. 539; private information.]

T. S.

WHOOD, ISAAC (1689–1752), portrait-painter, born in 1689, practised for many years as a portrait-painter in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and was a skilful imitator of the style of Kneller. He was especially patronised by the Duke of Bedford, for whom he painted numerous portraits of members of the Spencer and Russell families, now at Woburn Abbey; some of these were copied by Whood from other painters. At Cambridge there are portraits by Whood at Trinity College, including one of Dr. Isaac Barrow, and at Trinity Hall. His portraits of ladies were some of the best of that date. There is a good portrait of Archbishop Wake by Whood at Lambeth Palace, painted in 1736. Some of his portraits were engraved in mezzotint, notably one of Laurent Delvaux the sculptor, engraved by Alexander Van Haecken. Whood's drawings in chalk or blacklead are interesting. In 1743 he executed a series of designs to illustrate Butler's ‘Hudibras.’ Whood died in Bloomsbury Square on 24 Feb. 1752. The portrait of Joseph Spence [q. v.] prefixed to his ‘Anecdotes’ was engraved from a portrait by Whood.

[Walpole's Anecdotes of Painters ed. Wornum, with manuscript notes by G. Scharf; Scharf's Cat. of the Pictures at Woburn Abbey; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Chaloner Smith's British Mezzotinto Portraits.]

L. C.

WHORWOOD, JANE (fl. 1648), royalist, was the daughter of one Ryder or Ryther of Kingston, Surrey, sometime surveyor of the stables to James I (Clark, Life of Anthony Wood, i. 227). In September 1634, at the age of nineteen, she married Brome Whorwood, eldest son of Sir Thomas Whorwood of Holton, Oxfordshire (Chester, London Marriage Licenses, p. 1460; Turner, Visitation of Oxfordshire, p. 242). In 1647 and 1648, when the king was in captivity, Mrs. Whorwood signalised herself by her efforts to communicate with him and to arrange his escape. She conveyed money to him from loyalists in London when he was at Hampton Court in the autumn of 1647, and consulted William Lilly the astrologer as to the question in what quarter of the nation Charles could best hide himself after his intended flight. Lilly recommended Essex, but the advice came too late to be acted upon (Lilly, History of his Life and Times, p. 39; cf. Wood, p. 227). Mrs. Whorwood consulted Lilly again in 1648 on the means of effecting the king's escape from Carisbrooke, and obtained from a locksmith whom he recommended files and aquafortis to be used on the window-bars of the king's chamber, but through various acci-