Ɛpsilon

From Thomas Beddoes to James Watt   8 January 1795


8 Jany 1795

Dear Sir

In considering what you say, it strikes me that my coming to Birmingham will for the present answer every purpose as to the proposal & subscription – It wd be much less inconvenient to me to return hither & go to London at some future time than be away so long at once.1 At this particular moment & for several days to come I shall be detained here by necessary attendance on patients. I will come as soon as possible, giving your father notice beforehand – The first Edition2 is now as good as gone – the London booksellers wrote pressingly for 200 copies – I have not ten – Your father will no doubt allow me to reprint his improved description – I hope he will not insist on the omission of his speculations; let him new model them, if he has leisure & welcome3 –

I have recd for Mr Gladwell’s machine Mr Coates will pay for Ld Daer’s4 the moment it arrives – & I will then remit or bring the amount of these two & my own – Mr Tobyn5 & Mr Acland did not propose paying me – In this mist of speculation, it is pleasant to discern one fact clearly & oxygene air has so repeatedly & distinctly removed Mr Gladwell’s sickness that I do not doubt of its power – I brought on sickness by digitalis & it took this off –

Believe me Dear Sir
Yours

T. Beddoes

I am only sorry for the delay you mention as inevitable on acct of the bad prospect of the times. This opinion led me to publish the proposal6 at the time I did in hopes of raising the sum before the day of great & general national distress.7

1
On 2 January, Watt Jr had suggested that Beddoes come to Soho to discuss the promotion of the Pneumatic Institution and then go to London where ‘applications must be made to sundry great aristocrats’ (LoB MS 3219/6/7/23). But he thought the London campaign might be left until spring when the session of parliament was over and political men had time to attend to other matters. A personal campaign in London was needed because subscriptions had been scarce there, the attempts by the Duchess of Devonshire and James Watt Sr in December 1794 to gain the imprimatur of Sir Joseph Banks having failed. Watt Jr told Beddoes of this failure in a letter of 20 December (LoB MS 3219/6/7/21-3). Banks has ‘traced your cloven Jacobin foot and does not choose to patronize any new fangled innovations’.
2
Considerations on the Medicinal Use of Factitious Airs (London: printed by Bulgin and Rosser, for J. Johnson, 1794).
3
The 2nd edn of Considerations (London: printed by Bulgin and Rosser, for J. Johnson, 1795) did contain an amended text of the discussions of airs that Watt had made in the 1794 edition. It was shorn of some of the indiscreet commentary by Beddoes to which Watt had objected (notably, Beddoes’s comment that Watt’s speculations were ‘jocular’ (1794, p. 46) was removed). For Watt’s objection and Beddoes’s self-justification, see Beddoes to James Watt, late October 1794.
4
The Watt air apparatus that had been sent to Lord Daer and left unused was to have been transferred to Gladwell after Daer’s death (see Beddoes to Watt Jr, 12 December 1794). Evidently, the delay by Daer’s family in sending the apparatus meant that Gladwell had instead been sent a new machine and Daer’s old apparatus was now to go to Coates (either William Coates (dates untraced) or his brother Matthew (d. 1819), neighbours of Beddoes in Clifton; William was a subscriber to the Pneumatic Institution).
6
A Proposal towards the Improvement of Medicine had been printed by July 1794 and circulated from September.
7
Bad harvests and war with France had pushed grain prices up; recession and food shortages became widespread.

Please cite as “BEDDOES-LETTER-147,” in Ɛpsilon: Thomas Beddoes Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/epsilon-testbed/beddoes/letters/BEDDOES-LETTER-147