or 6½ per cent, on capital. The engineers, reckoning the annual cost of producing small steam power in Birmingham at £10 per indicated horse-power, which will probably be regarded as well within the mark, propose to furnish compressed air at £8 per annum, and it they succeed in carrying out the scheme as planned, it will without doubt be one of the greatest blessings ever conferred on the smaller class of our town's manufacturers.
Fenders and Fireirons.—The making of these finds work for 800 or 900 hands, and stove grates (a trade introduced from Sheffield about 20 years back) almost as many.
Files and Rasps are manufactured by 60 firms, whose total product, though perhaps not equal to the Sheffield output, is far from inconsiderable. Machines for catting files and rasps were patented by Mr. Shilton, Dartmouth Street, in 1833.
Fox, Henderson and Co.—In March, 1853, this firm employed more than 3,000 hands, the average weekly consumption of iron being over 1,000 tons. Among the orders then in hand were the ironwork for our Central Railway Station, and for the terminus at Paddington, in addition to gasometers, &c., for Lima, rails, wagons and wheels for a 55-mile line in Denmark, and the removal and re-election of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham.—See "Exhibitions," "Noteworthy men."
Galvanised Buckets and other articles are freely made, but the galvanisers can hardly be pleasant neighbours, as at the works of one firm 40 to 50 carboys of muriatic acid and several of sulphuric acid aroused every day, while at another place the weekly consumption of chemicals runs to two tons of oil of vitriol and seven tons of muriatic acid.
German Silver.—To imitate closely as possible the precious metals, by a mixture of baser ones, is not exactly a Birmingham invention, as proved by the occasional discovery of counterfeit coin of very ancient date, but to get the best possible alloy sufficiently malleable for general use has always been a local desideratum. Alloys of copper with tin, spelter or zinc were used here in 1795, and the term "German" was applied to the best of these mixtures as a Jacobinical sneer at the pretentious appellation of silver given it by its maker. After the introduction of nickel from the mines in Saxony, the words "German silver" became truthfully appropriate as applied to that metal, but so habituated have the trade and the public become to brassy mixtures that German silver must always be understood as of that class only.
Glass—The art of painting, &c., on glass was brought to great perfection by Francis Eginton, of the Soho Works, in 1784. He supplied windows for St. George's Chapel, Windsor, Salisbury and Lichfield Cathedrals, and many country churches. The east window of St. Paul's, Birmingham, and the east window of the south aisle in Aston Church, are by Eginton. One of the commissions he obtained was from the celebrated William Beckford, Lord Mayor of London, for windows at Fonthill, to the value of £12,000. He was not, however, the first local artist of the kind, for a Birmingham man is said to have painted a window in Hagley Church, in 1756-57, for Lord Lyttelton, though his name is not now known. William Raphael Eginton (son of Francis) appeared in the Directory of 1818, as a glass-painter to the Princess Charlotte, but we can find no trace of his work. Robert Henderson started in the same line about 1820, and specimens of his work may be seen in Trinity Chapel; he died in 1848. John Hardman began in Paradise Street about 1837, afterwards removing to Great Charles Street, and thence to Newhall Hill, from which place much valuable work has been issued, as the world-known name well testifies. Engraving on glass is almost as old as the introduction of glass itself. There
