My Life and Work

Abstract

THE author of this autobiography comes of a family which has exercised a fnarked influence on the industrial development of South Lancashire. Its members, moreover, have played no inconsiderable part in the social and intellectual life of Liverpool. To his father, James Muspratt, belongs the credit of founding the alkali manufacture in Lancashire. His life is one of the romances of chemical industry. Born in Dublin, of English parents, in 1793, he was apprenticed, when fourteen years of age, to a wholesale druggist in that city, but losing both his parents when he was scarcely eighteen, he broke his indentures and embarked for Spain in the hope of obtaining a cornetcy in a cavalry regiment in Wellington's army. A youth of fine physique and of a splendid constitution, Muspratt had all the physical qualifications for a successful soldier, but unfortunately he had no social influence, and in those days commissions in mounted regiments were reserved for those favoured in high quarters. Still, he had some experience of the Peninsular campaign, was stricken with fever in Madrid, and was in Hill's retreat down the valley of the Tagus. He then joined the Navy, and as a midshipman in the Impetueux took part in the blockade of Brest and in one or two frigate actions. He soon threw up this career, and making his way back to Dublin, started chemical manufacturing with the aid of a small inheritance which had been saved from the results of a Chancery action.

My Life and Work.

By Dr. E. K. Muspratt. Pp. xi + 320. (London: John Lane, 1917.) Price 7s. 6d. net.