BESSEMER, Sir Henry 1813-1898. Engineer. An engineering genius, whose most notable (and lucrative) achievement was the invention of a revolutionary steel-making process which bore his name. Henry Bessemer, the eldest of five children, was born on 19 January 1813 in Charlton, Hertfordshire, from a Hugeunot family. As a boy, his father encouraged his interest in engineering and mechanics. The Bessemers moved to Clerkenwell when Henry was 17 and there he set up a workshop. By the 1860s he was a successful entrepreneur, and was married to Ann with several children, Elizabeth, Frances, who died aged 2, Henry, and Alfred George. In the early years, Ann contributed to some of her husband’s ideas.
Bessemer’s first fortune was made when he devised a cheap way of making bronze powder for paint for gilding decorations, the profits from which financed all his later research. At that time, bronze paint was manufactured only in Germany and was expensive. Bessemer went there to learn about the process and on his return improved upon it and reduced the cost, confining knowledge of his method to close family members.
His eponymous steel process, developed in England and Sweden over a four-year period beginning in 1854, revolutionised industry by enabling high quality steel to be made cheaply and increased production of the metal in this country ten-fold, and brought Bessemer honours from all over the world (including having towns in the United States named after him). He was also active in many other areas and took out over 100 patents from 1838-83. His other interests encompassed type founding, stamp embossing, optical glass manufacture and ordnance manufacture. He was also interested in cane sugar refining and plate glass making and exhibited apparatus for both these processes at the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park.
Henry Bessemer retired in 1863, at the age of 50, and devoted time and money to building an imposing residence in Dulwich, called Bessemer House, complete with outhouses, paddocks, shrubberies, hot-houses, a lake, conservatory, grotto, and observatory. He grew exotic plants and vegetables, and kept pigs and poultry. He filled the house with paintings and sculpture and John Ruskin, the eminent Victorian art critic, was a near-neighbour. Part of his estate (now at the back of James Allen’s Girls School, across the railway line) was laid out as a ‘Model Farm’.
Bessemer suffered badly from sea-sickness and created a machine for artificially inducing waves on the lake at Bessemer House, in order to experiment on his prototype ‘Saloon Steamship’, a cross-channel ferry called the SS Bessemer, which had hydraulic stabilisers enabling the passenger portion of the ship to remain steady while the outside hull did the rolling. However, although the saloon was successful, the ship proved impossible to steer, demolished a pier in Calais harbour on its maiden voyage and was abandoned thereafter.
Official acknowledgment of Bessemer’s achievements came late in life. In 1879, aged 66, he received a Knighthood from Queen Victoria, Fellowship of the Royal Society, and Freedom of the City of London. His Coat of Arms was awarded by the College of Arms in 1880. Bessemer received several decorations from European monarchs and His Majesty the King of the Belgians visited Denmark Hill several times. His wife, Ann, died in 1897 and Bessemer himself died on 15 March 1898, aged 85, at his home on Denmark Hill. He was buried at West Norwood Cemetery on 19 March. His monument, a relatively simple headstone of Portland stone with granite landing, is listed Grade II.
Both Bessemer House and Bessemer Grange next door (built as a wedding present for his daughter and later used as an hotel), were compulsorily purchased and demolished in 1948 to make way for the present local authority Denmark Hill housing estate. His autobiography was edited for publication by his eldest son after his father's death in 1898. A concluding chapter has quotes from many contemporary accounts of Bessemer's work and there is also a list of the 13 towns or cities named after him in the United States.
Scientist and prolific inventor.
Patrick Darby and the Friends of West Norwood Cemetery