Prosser the Engineer

Description

A forgotten Birmingham genius

By Susan Darby

“Richard Prosser, of Birmingham, an engineer of high original faculties and great attainments, has died suddenly…” – The Spectator 27th May 1854

These are the opening words of an obituary of a man who Sir Henry Cole, Prince Albert’s trusted adviser, described as “a patentee of considerable eminence… he invented more things, I believe, than almost any man of his day”. 

Prosser helped shape Victorian Britain. Then inexplicably vanished from history.

Richard Prosser (1804–1854) was one of the most inventive – and contentious – engineers of 19th-century Birmingham. Born in the town’s industrial heart, Prosser rose without formal education to become a significant figure in Britain’s engineering community.

Closely involved in battles over the Midlands nail and metal tube industries, his patented machinery enhanced the industrial manufacture of both, the latter advancing the railway and steamship age. The resulting bruising litigation involved some of Birmingham’s most powerful businessmen and political figures.

His ‘dust-pressed’ process patent instigated the mass production of durable cheap ceramic buttons and the decorative wall and floor tiles that beautified public buildings, pubs and homes and transformed Victorian sanitation. Collaboration with the eminent potter Herbert Minton led to his introduction to leading exponents of Victorian art and design (and Prince Albert). His patent incited well-publicised disputes in England and the USA.

A fierce advocate for inventors’ rights, Prosser was at the forefront of the campaign culminating in the reform of Britain’s arcane patent system in 1852. 

His own life was marked by drama: a family feud that led to Prosser being accused of forgery and disgrace and exile for his brother Thomas (who later prospered in the USA); and a second ‘marriage’ that defied the law.

In his final months he was drawn into the debate over firearms production on the eve of the Crimean War, giving evidence to Parliament on a matter of huge consequence to Birmingham’s gun trade.

In Prosser the Engineer, Susan Darby follows a trail of family clues, newspapers, archives and courtroom battles to reconstruct an extraordinary life. From industrial intrigue in Birmingham to the Great Exhibition era and the American Civil War, this is part biography, part detective story – and a vivid portrait of a Birmingham genius.