Sarah Guppy

Many changes have occurred over our human history.  Despite appearances, much of it for the better. Only recently has our habit of measurement and record-keeping enabled quantification. Life expectancy is a pretty fundamental metric. Taking the United Kingdom, over the past 250 years, the mean life expectancy at birth has doubled from roughly 39 years to 80. Great progress.

 

Over the same period, the physical environment has been transformed. In Great Britain, two Scots were among the pioneers: John Macadam (tarmacadam, later tarmac!) and Thomas Telford. Roads, bridges, canals, aqueducts, and harbours appeared. All essential to the Industrial Revolution, powered by the genius of another Scot: James Watt. Steam engines and soon, locomotives, energised the economy. Infrastructure proliferated: rail tracks, stronger bridges, longer tunnels, and termini burgeoned. Henry Bessemer’s steel process was a prerequisite. Advances mirrored throughout Europe and North America. Without steel, no skyscrapers.

 

In England, principally the south-west, one name is particularly associated with these innovations: Isambard Kingdom Brunel. A French university education had been complemented by a period constructing the Thames Tunnel under the supervision of his resourceful father. A similarity between Bessemer and Brunel is that they both had fathers who worked in France but later found success in England. Each family was blessed with an exceptionally talented son.

 

Brunel’s transformation of the Great Western Railway, or GWR, from a plan into a thriving business is widely documented. Steamships, sailing between Bristol and New York, followed. While an industrious, driven character, the scope of Brunel’s ventures relied on a team of trusted lieutenants to enable delivery. One such was Thomas Guppy, who helped complete Brunel’s first two passenger steamships. The latter, the SS Great Britain, was novel, a vessel incorporating both an iron hull and a screw propellor. Also, the first to cross the Atlantic and, for eight years, the world’s largest.

 

Our interest, however, lies not so much with Thomas Guppy, but with his extraordinary mother, Sarah. While women actively engaged in commerce and engineering are common today, Sarah Guppy was a rarity in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. She not only conducted business but demonstrated multifaceted engineering ingenuity.

 

From a wealthy family, well-educated, and married to an accomplished industrialist, Sarah had access to ideas, opportunities and challenges. Her position was privileged compared to many women and girls of the era, but she was sufficiently wise and energetic to capitalise on these advantages.

 

She actively supported her husband by negotiating deals for his manufacturing enterprises, thus expanding her knowledge of engineering. Furthermore, she demonstrated a voracious appetite for reading; until 1811 CE, she borrowed more books from the Bristol Library than any other female reader. It is reasonable to assume that this included works on contemporary science and engineering.

 

Although Sarah Guppy originated a patent related to bridge construction, it's a misinterpretation to link her design with the Menai Straits Bridge or the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Her concept was quite different from the masterpieces of Telford and Brunel, which have antecedents in the Pennsylvania structures designed by James Finley. However, she did advise Telford on piling methods for bridge foundations, and Brunel on vegetation schemes to stabilise embankments.

Driven by an insatiable curiosity, Sarah pursued knowledge across multiple subjects. When her husband, Samuel, ventured into the copper trade, she became interested in protecting ships’ hulls from barnacle growth. She developed a technique to prevent marine fouling, and for this, she received a contract worth approximately £40,000 from the Royal Navy, equivalent to around three million pounds today.

 

For the kitchen, she devised a contrivance that included a tea or coffee urn, while simultaneously cooking eggs using the steam generated, and keeping bread warm.

 

She wrote two children's books, donating the proceeds to a charitable school for girls in Bristol. Later, she published pamphlets on public health, education, and animal welfare.

 

What to make of this energetic personality? Six children, marriage to a successful entrepreneur, and a lively social life would have been more than enough for most. Samuel was an enlightened man for his period, welcoming his wife as a trusted business partner and encouraging Sarah’s inventiveness. The family secured ten patents; a feat that would have been impossible for a woman alone at that time.

 

Perhaps the last words belong to Sarah: “it is unpleasant to speak of oneself – it may seem particularly boastful in a woman”.

 

 

 

RNP – Watt, a self-taught engineer, appears in Jimbo’s Assumption, while Macadam, Telford, Brunel, and Bessemer are personalities to be found in the forthcoming sequel.

 

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