Overview
This letter to James Watt Sr reveals both the closeness of Beddoes’s relationship with the Watt family, as advisors and supporters of pneumatic medicine, and the beginning of the stellar career of Humphry Davy, who would become one of the most significant scientific discoverers of the nineteenth century. Davy, though not yet twenty, was recommended to Beddoes as an assistant by Gregory Watt, who had met him in Cornwall. His precocious ability as an experimentalist and theorist had been demonstrated in papers sent to Beddoes. Beddoes’s willingness to recognise and encourage promise, even when experience was lacking, led him then to employ Davy, who arrived in Bristol to begin work at the Pneumatic Institution in October 1798.

 

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Thomas Beddoes to James Watt, 15 July 1798

Dear Sir

I am sorry to understand that your leg makes slow progress towards recovery — cannot you do any thing by heat or cold, by oxygen or hydrogen to hasten this desireable event?¹

The late Mr Lambton’s executor has been with me; I find that he had left £300 towards the pneumatic Instⁿ² I have been corresponding lately with Humphry Davy of Penzance,³ concerning whom apply to Gregory⁴ — I think him most admirably qualified to be the superintendant — I have read the acc^t of some expts of his; & he appears to me to have uncommon talents for philosophical investigations.⁵ He has besides entered with ardour into the career of chemical physiology⁶ Giddy entertains the same high opinion of his talents⁷ — I know not whether you or others will deem youth⁸ a peremptory & absolute disqualification. But if he & Bristol w^d be agreeable to the most considerable subscribers, the thing⁹ might be set on foot this year – a place called the Red Lodge w^d serve as the house of reception & may be had cheap¹⁰ —

I am going beyond Durham on a professional visit¹¹ — Mrs Beddoes who has never been far north goes too. Considerable latitude as to time was allowed me & I think certainly I can break away without much inconvenience next Saturday night.¹² We shall travel in the mail to Birm^m — where I shall only stay to breakfast — But on my return I hope to see you — If Mr James Watt be returned,¹³ I hope he will give himself the trouble of walking as far as the Castle Inn¹⁴ <on Sunday morning> — — Perhaps he c^d tell me of some thing worth seeing — I w^d have written to him but for my uncertainty as to his locality — I beg (& so does Mrs B) to be remembered to Mrs Watt¹⁵ & Gregory

I am Dear Sir

Yours truly

Thomas Beddoes

15 July

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Notes

1.In April, Watt had hurt his Achilles tendon. From 1795, Watt had been a strong advocate of the benefits of pneumatic medicine, especially the inhalation of hydrogen and carbonated hydrogen. See, for example, James Watt to Thomas Beddoes, 23 January 1797 (LoB MS 3219/4/124/505). Beddoes had also reported treatments with hydrogen: see his letters to Thomas Wedgwood of 9 June 1795 and to Watt of 5 January 1796.

2. Beddoes’s wealthy patient and friend William Henry Lambton had died in Italy in November 1797. The executor was Thomas Wilkinson (1752-1825).

3. Beddoes’s and Davy’s correspondence before September 1798 has not been traced, but see Beddoes’s letter to Davies Giddy of 4 July 1798.

4. Gregory Watt had spent the winter of 1797-98 in Penzance, lodging with Humphry Davy’s mother, Grace Davy, and had been impressed by her teenaged son. Gregory Watt left Cornwall for Birmingham in June and evidently visited Beddoes in Bristol en route, singing Davy’s praises.

5. Davy had conducted experiments on the nature of heat and had, in the second half of April, written to Beddoes offering to send him a manuscript deriving from these experiments. This manuscript, ‘An Essay on Heat and the Combinations of Light’, reached Beddoes in June, probably delivered by Gregory Watt. It is now held at The Royal Institution of Cornwall, Courtney Library, MS DVY/2 and published as Frank A. J. L. James, ‘Humphry Davy’s Early Chemical Knowledge, Theory and Experiments: An Edition of His 1798 Manuscript, “An Essay on Heat and the Combinations of Light” from The Royal Institution of Cornwall, Courtney Library, MS DVY/2’, Ambix, 66 (2019), 303-45. Beddoes published a revised version of it as ‘An Essay on Heat, Light, and the Combinations of Light’, in Contributions to Physical and Medical Knowledge, Principally from the West of England (Bristol: printed by Biggs and Cottle, for T. N. Longman and O. Rees, London, 1799), pp. 5-147.

6. Davy’s manuscript discussed the combination of heat, light and oxygen in the body.

7. Introduced to Davy by Gregory Watt and Thomas Wedgwood, Giddy had encouraged the youth’s interest in experimentation by taking him to the laboratory in Hayle, near St Ives, that was owned by John Edwards (Edwards was the father of Giddy’s and Beddoes’s mutual friend — and Beddoes’s former Oxford student — Richard Edwards). Giddy had subsequently written to Beddoes expressing his approval of Davy in a letter to which Beddoes replied on 4 July.

8. Davy was nineteen.

9. The Pneumatic Institution. Davy was hired in October 1798; the Institution opened its doors to patients in March 1799.

10. The Red Lodge, a building dating from Tudor times in Park Row, Bristol, had been the venue for the lecture courses given by Beddoes and his associates in 1797 and 1798. It did not become the premises of the Pneumatic Institution.

11. Beddoes and Anna Beddoes were going to the family seat of the Lambtons, Lambton Park, north of Durham, because he was to take in and educate Lambton’s two sons, John George (1792-1840) and William Henry (1793-1866).

12. 21 July. Beddoes had returned to Bristol by 19 August.

13. In June, James Watt Jr had left Birmingham to travel in the north of England.

14. The Castle Inn stood in High St, in the centre of Birmingham.

15. Ann Watt, James Watt’s wife.