THE ORIGINS OF THE FOUNDERS OF BAKER PERKINS

A few First Thoughts

It is perhaps tempting to think of Jacob Perkins and Joseph Baker as early versions of Charles Rolls and Henry Royce, one an inventor, the other a business man, coming together in the 19th Century to build a new engineering empire. The truth is somewhat different. Firstly, the two gentlemen could not have met – Jacob Perkins died in 1849 and Joseph Baker did not arrive in England until 1876. Secondly, the initial contact between the two families is likely to have been in the 1880's between Joseph Allen Baker (Joseph's eldest son) and Loftus Perkins (Jacob's grandson), when Joseph Baker & Sons became agents for some of the Perkins steam ovens.

It is also interesting to consider that by 1904 when the first factory was built at Westwood, Peterborough, there was no longer any Perkins family involvement in the business. In fact, Loftus Patton Perkins - Loftus Perkins' eldest son – was the last of the Perkins family to be employed in the business having left the company soon after the merger between Werner Pfleiderer and A.M. Perkins Ltd, and this was before the company took the first tentative steps towards discussing a union with Joseph Baker & Sons Ltd just prior to WW1. If it were not for the strong anti-German feeling that existed locally at the beginning of WW1, the new company formed in 1919 might have been called Werner Pfleiderer & Baker or Baker Werner & Pfleiderer.

Although both Joseph Baker and Jacob Perkins were descendents of emigrants to the New World, Jacob's Puritan antecedents made the journey to New England 200 years before Quaker Samuel Baker – Joseph's father – sailed for Canada.

There is another dimension to this story. Quakers had settled in America as early as 1614, with a further major influx of Welsh and Swedish Quakers in 1650. The early Puritan settlers were said to be as punctilious in killing Quakers as they were in massacring the native Indians – all in the name of creating a "pure" society. They considered that "Baptists and Quakers were the devil's agents, Quakers were the worst" It should be remembered that the Puritans had fled England due to religious persecution and were now themselves persecuting others. Therefore it might be thought that if, after two centuries, there had remained any lingering religious animosity between Quaker and Puritan descendants, the creation of Baker Perkins might have proved difficult if not impossible. The fact is, that as suggested above, the union was not between the Perkins and Baker families but between the Baker family and, essentially, a German company, the managing director of which was himself a refugee from a form of persecution – that of Bismarck despotism (See the History of Werner, Pfleiderer & Perkins Ltd.).

JACOB PERKINS

Jacob Perkins was a descendent of John Perkins – born in Newent, Gloucestershire in 1590 - one of the earliest emigrants from the mother country, sailing from Bristol on 1st December 1630, ten years after the voyage of the Mayflower. He was a Puritan whose religious beliefs could not conform to the edicts of the Established Church of the Stuart period of English history. He was among around 1000 like-minded people who left for a new life that year under the leadership of John Winthrop, the founder and first governor of Boston, Massachusetts.

(John Winthrop and his Puritan settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, arrived to the north in Salem. Finding Salem less than desirable for a settlement, Winthrop was invited to visit Shawmut. On September 17, 1630, Winthrop decided to make Shawmut a permanent settlement and renamed it Boston, after his hometown in Lincolnshire, England.)

Jacob Perkins Hannah Perkins

His early experiences in the New World were not all happy. His daughter, Mary, was among those accused of witchcraft during the hysteria of the Salem trials and, although convicted, was discharged as a result of the efforts of her friends.

Jacob was born 133 years and six generations later in Newburyport, Massachusetts on the 9th July 1766 to Matthew and Jane (Noyes) Perkins. He had a sister, Sarah; a brother, Abraham; and a half-brother, Capt. Benjamin. Both his father and grandfather were named Matthew.

He was apprenticed at the age of 12 to Elias Davis who taught him the art of rolling gold sheet from Spanish "Pieces of Gold" and Portuguese "Joes" from which jewellery was made. He became an expert engraver on gold and copper and worked as a silversmith from 1783 to 1816, having inherited his master's business at the age of 17. By the age of 21 he was employed by the State of Massachusetts to make dies for copper coinage. During this time he began his career as a prolific inventor with the development in 1790 of a machine to cut and head nails in one operation. In a portent of future events, the income potential for this was ruined by a lawsuit of 7 years duration disputing the invention, and the mismanagement of his partners involved him in great financial distress. The nail machine was first erected at Newburyport and then moved to Amesbury on the Merimac River. He also erected a mill and waterwheel considered at the time to be wonderful pieces of engineering. Machines, working on the Perkins principle, were also making nails by the million in England.

This nail-making venture was carried out under the direction of two Englishmen, Samuel Guppy and John Armstrong from Bristol. Despite Jacob developing the process and rapidly increasing production, the association ran foul of Jacob’s tendency to divert his attention elsewhere, the partners objecting to his weaning away profits to develop extraneous ideas – something which was to be a frequent source of friction between Jacob and future business associates.

Although credited with making dies for several types of military buttons, his principal die work was for jewellery, buckles and similar articles. His buckle business must have been significant as, in 1793, he advertised in a local newspaper for – “Two or three stout active lads –14, 16 years old – as Apprentices to the buckle making business of Jacob Perkins”.

Jacob was married to Hannah Greenleaf (b. 20th December 1770 – daughter of Ebenezer Greenleaf and Hannah Titcomb) on 11th November 1790. They had 9 children – 2 boys (Ebenezer Greenleaf and Angier March) and 7 girls (Hannah Greenleaf, Sarah Ann, Jane, Louisa Jane, Elizabeth, Henrietta and Mary). His second son, Angier March Perkins, who was to play a major role in the development of his father's business, was born in 1799. They resided for some time in Boston and New York before moving to Philadelphia in 1814, where Jacob became associated with a firm of banknote engravers. It was while he was working in Philadelphia that he was introduced to Oliver Evans whose ideas probably led Jacob to think about developing a refrigerating machine.

Jacob Perkins is credited with filing no fewer than 21 American Patents between 1795 and 1838 and 19 British Patents between 1819 and 1836. Among his earlier inventions were a pump and other apparatus for fire engines, machines for stamping and embossing coins and milling and lettering the edges, marine propulsion and instruments for navigation, ships' ventilation and the reconditioning of naval cannon. Perkins began experimenting with high-pressure steam boilers in 1823 and devised the means to attain working steam pressures of 800-1400 psi. He used the steam to power an engine of 2” bore and 12” stroke which was rated at 10 horse-power. By 1827, Jacob had produced a single-acting single-cylinder engine working at upward of 800 psi. At these high pressures he experienced problems with effective lubrication as the high temperatures encountered caused the oil to char and decompose. He overcame this by using a special alloy that became so polished after some wear that friction was less than where lubricants were used. It is not clear if Jacob patented this material at this time but it is the case that the material was used in his grandson, Loftus Perkins’, steam engine that powered the Steam Yacht "Anthracite" on its transatlantic trials in 1880, exciting much comment. (His grandson is on record as having patented, in 1872, "a new tin/copper alloy from which pistons rings needing no lubrication could be made". It is assumed that this refers to a similar material to that developed by Jacob but forty-five years seems a long time to wait before securing the benefits of such a material by patent).

For more information on the inventions of Jacob, his son, Angier March, and grandson, Loftus, see Early Inventions).

Heating of buildings was to become a significant part of the business of Jacob and his son, Angier, in later years and it is thought that Jacob began perfecting a central heating system in 1810. The first application on a significant scale came with his installation in the Massachusetts Medical College, Boston in 1815. The building was eighty-eight feet long and forty-three feet wide. The whole building was heated by a single stove situated in the cellar, surrounded by a brick chamber from which a brick flue rose to the second storey. This was connected by large pipes, or apertures, to all of the principal rooms in the building. Air, admitted form the outside through a brick passage to the stove, ensured a strong current of heated air rapidly warmed even the largest room. Surprisingly, Jacob received no payment for the use of his idea or for the installation of the heating system, nor did he patent his invention in America though he did obtain a patent later in England.

Jacob's engineering genius had a very significant influence on the banknote printing industry both in the United States and in England and led him to set sail for England on the sailing ship 'Telegraph', with his eldest son, Ebenezer Greenleaf Perkins, his engraver colleagues, Gideon Fairman and Asa Spencer, some workmen and many cases of machinery, on 31st May 1819, in the hope of gaining a contract with the Bank of England. For more details see History of Jacob Perkins in the Printing Industry. This venture, too, failed to live up to expectations but the move resulted in Jacob setting up in London a company to develop printing technology and, later, he and his son, Angier, created the foundations of the engineering enterprise from which may be traced the "Perkins" branch of the later Baker Perkins empire.

NOTE: Nothing much is known about the life of Jacob's eldest son, Ebenezer Greenleaf, after he landed with his father in England in 1819. except that he suffered from an unspecified, long-term disease. "Jacob Perkins - His Inventions, His Times and His Contemporaries", published by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1943 indicates that it was decided in about 1830 that Ebenezer should return to Massachusetts in the faint hope that the long sea voyage and his native land might help his condition. In the event, the change was somewhat beneficial as he lived for several more years, passing away in Newburyport on January 20th, 1842.

Printing was not Jacob's only interest during this time. He spent much of his effort, and a not considerable proportion of the company's money, on his obsession with the use of high-pressure steam. At a time when a pressure of 5psi was considered to border on the dangerous, his process for generating high-pressure steam was seen as something of a miracle. He designed a steam gun capable of firing 0.65" diameter bullets under a pressure of 900 psi. His demonstration in 1825 to the Duke of Wellington on waste ground near Regent’s Park, during which 3-inch bullets were shot off at high speed and penetrated an iron plate 100 yards off, should have made him a fortune as Wellington, the Duke of Sussex and other senior figures were very impressed. However, on learning that the boiler for the gun weighed 5 tons, the Duke saw immediately how impractical it was to transport it across country or field and the British government turned down the invention. (A fuller account of these trials can be found in Augustus Muir’s – "History of Baker Perkins" – Pages 1-3). Later, Jacob designed a gun to work at1500psi that was built for him by John Penn & Son, Millwrights and Engineers of Greenwich. It had a wrought-iron rifled barrel of 3 inches calibre and during trials at the Limekilns, Greenwich proved to be as efficient as Perkins had hoped. Penn did take the gun to Paris and stayed about three months, but the fall of the French government in 1830 ended all interest in the project. This was not the end of the idea as both Jacob’s son and grandson continued to support their father in the device’s development as late as 1862. (See also Early Inventions).

NOTE: The Perkins Steam Gun is on display in the White Tower at the Tower of London.

Jacob’s fertile imagination developed this idea further conceiving of throwing shells and rockets by making these projectiles provide their own source of power. Simply put, the concept was for a rocket to rest in an inclined position within the flame of a furnace. The rocket’s rear end would be closed by a fusible plug calculated to melt at a high temperature, releasing superheated water in a jet of steam, propelling the device into space. This invention was patented in 1824 but it is thought that the idea did not progress beyond the Patent stage.

The Perkins High-Pressure Steam Engine was also considered to be a phenomenon, years ahead of its time:

"The generator, as he called the boiler, was the crucial part of his engine. A cylinder of 3-inch gunmetal, closed at both ends, was fixed in the furnace so that the fire played all around it. Operated by the engine itself, bellows boosted up the heat of the fire until the generator reached a temperature of 450 degrees F, and the superheated water was forced into a pipe, where it flashed into high-pressure steam and exploded at 500 pounds to the square inch into the working cylinder. At 200 strokes a minute, the engine was reckoned to develop ten-horse power. To keep the joints steam tight, Perkins invented the double-cone pipe joint, an engineering device of some importance. In the course of his work on high-pressure steam, he evolved what he later called the Uniflow engine, with exhausts through a number of ports after the engine had completed its stroke, thus dispersing it in a one-way flow."

But commercial success once again evaded him, largely through his own fault. It was left to his son and grandson to attempt to achieve some degree of success. (See History of A.M. Perkins & Son). There was much argument at the time among scientists about his theories and his wild optimism did cause him some harm but, nearly two centuries later, some of his claims have been justified – the use of steam at even higher pressures than Jacob ever envisaged now being possible with advances in metallurgy.

Mention is made above of Jacob's association with Oliver Evans of Philadelphia and his ideas on refrigeration. Jacob had worked on a process of mechanical refrigeration when he first came to London and, although he failed to bring it to a point where it had commercial value, his concept has been described as the parent of all modern compression refrigerators. Again, it fell to his grandson, Loftus, to develop a refrigeration device that had some commercial value.

Jacob was 53 when he came to England and he finally handed over control of the business to his son, Angier, in 1835 at the age of 69. His withdrawal from professional life began in 1833 and was practically complete by 1836. Although in good health, his disappointment with being unable to carry on with his steam engine experiments weighed heavily on him. To counteract this, he conceived the idea of a permanent museum to display the sciences and arts of the day, his own and others' inventions being demonstrated for an admission fee which he hoped would yield an adequate return.

"The Adelaide Gallery of Practical Science" was opened in 1832, near to Charing Cross Hospital. Admission was 1/- daily, Ten to dusk, displaying - "Steam Gun, Steam Boat Models propelled on water; Steam Carriages for Railways; Magnet of extraordinary power, producing brilliant sparks; Electro-Magnet; Cooking by Gas; Distillation of Spirit from Bread; Water compressed by immense power, Fossils, Instrumental Music, magnificent Paintings, etc."

One of the key exhibits was Jacob's Steam Gun. Although considered a failure for the purposes of war, it earned a lot of money for the Gallery as a "Thrilling display" - demonstrations of its power being held daily. The Gallery must have given much pleasure to Jacob in his declining years. The house in Fleet Street also remained one of the gathering places for American visitors and fellow scientists arguing the merits of his inventions.

In 1843, Jacob's son, Angier, moved to a more imposing house in Regent Square as befitted his increasing business prosperity and soon Jacob went to live there, his creature comforts being well attended to by his daughter-in-law, Julia. He was by now enfeebled and house-bound and he died on July 30th 1849, aged 83. He is buried at Kensal Green, London.

In the words of an 1895 biography, he was "an ingenious mechanicke (sic)………. whose track to glory was bloodless, and whose elevation never gave the human heart a pang, nor drew from mortal eye a tear".

Jacob's major fault was that he consistently neglected the business side of his activities, siphoning off money from his partners to fund his obsession with the application of steam to more and more engineering problems. It was left to his son, Angier March, to bring the company back onto a sounder financial footing.

By the end of the 1840s, and before Jacob died, the fortunes of the Adelaide Gallery were in decline and the academic presentation of science gave way to something approaching Vaudeville, before becoming first a Casino, a marionette theatre and then a shooting gallery.

Now see:

History of Perkins. Bacon & Petch.
History of Jacob Perkins in the Printing Industry.
History of A.M. Perkins & Son.
Early Inventions.
Some Historic Correspondence.
Before Westwood.
How it Started.

JOSEPH BAKER

The Baker Family Tree (with acknowledgements to Mary Jo Darrah)

Joseph Baker was the great-grandson of William Baker who, in 1740, left the village of Islington – at the time separated by miles of country fields from the city of London – to settle in Wexford, Ireland. The Baker family had been members of the Society of Friends almost since its foundation by George Fox in the seventeenth century. Samuel Baker, William's grandson, spent his childhood under the system of government established by the British Act of 1782 and he was caught up in the violent rebellion that broke out in 1798. The cruelties and sufferings that he witnessed first hand – including the massacre, within full view of the Baker's home, of 1300 insurgents by King George's soldiers - had a profound effect on Samuel, and through his recounting of these stories to his son and grandson, helped reinforce the Baker family's determination to live by the Quaker doctrines.

Joseph Baker Sarah-Ann Baker

By early middle age, Samuel had seen a continual worsening in the living conditions of all those around him and he resolved to seek a new life in a new country free from the unrest, poverty and sorrow that he had known for so long. In 1819 he chartered a transatlantic vessel and, with his whole family, servants and possessions, started out on the three-month journey to Canada.

After encounters with icebergs, whales and other "monsters of the deep", they sailed down the St. Lawrence River and then travelled overland to Hallowell, Prince Edward's County, Ontario – forty miles from Kingston on Lake Ontario. Samuel purchased 200 acres of land on the 23rd September 1819, settled there on the 29th and by 4th October had sowed five acres with wheat.

In 1823, Samuel's youngest son, Joseph, was born. He passed his youth in Hallowell, preparing to follow in his father's footsteps as a farmer. At the age of nineteen he married Roxa Leavens, settling down in a homestead on the other side of the bay. The homestead, called Maple Ridge and separated from any other habitation by miles of forest, had been given to him by his father who, with his older brothers' help, had cleared it. Five miles from the town of Trenton, Maple Ridge was Joseph Baker's home for many years and remained in the possession of his descendents for much longer.

The Old House at Maple Ridge

Unfortunately, Joseph was not destined to share Maple Ridge for long with Roxa. When her first child, John, was two years old, a baby girl was born but, sadly, Roxa passed away on the day of the birth.

Two years later Joseph married Sarah Ann Brewer, the mother of J. Allen Baker. Sarah's family history had its share of dramatic quality. Her great-grandfather, Elazarus Brewer, whose family had lived in New York almost from the city's foundation, was one of the "United Empire Loyalists" forced to flee the country at the end of the American Revolution. Leaving behind all of his accumulated wealth, he escaped overland to Canada. The journey on foot, through hundreds of miles of unbroken forest and the bitter cold of the Canadian winter, took many weeks before they arrived at the wild, unsettled country around Lake Ontario. Elazarus settled at Elginburgh, near Kingston where his grandson, Philip Brewer, Sarah Ann's father, met his wife Elizabeth.

Four sons were born to Joseph Baker and Sarah Ann at Maple Ridge, the first being Joseph Allen Baker, on April 10th 1852, followed by William King Baker, George and Philip. Growing up in Trenton was full of adventure, not to say danger, and the boys made the most of the opportunities for exploration, log-jumping and ice skating. By the time that J. Allen Baker reached 10 years of age, the area had been developed and settled by organized communities although settlements of red Indians were not far away and, in accordance with the traditional friendship between Indians and Quakers, a 'brave' or squaw would often walk in to Maple Ridge unannounced and stay for hours.

While J. Allen Baker was at High School, Joseph's health gave way and he was unable to carry on the farm at Maple Ridge. More misfortunes followed and, at the age of seventeen, J. Allen had to leave school and join his father in an attempt to make their fortune by "canvassing" books, maps and pictures from house to house. Choosing the Middle West as their "territory", they worked hard at this activity for seven years, with varying success.

After a time, they added to their wares a flour-sifter for household use that Joseph had invented. Joseph had watched his wife engaged in the tedious task of sifting her stone-milled flour to remove the impurities and, possessing a mechanical turn of mind, decided to make a little machine that would make the task easier. The scoop-sifter worked like a charm and the obvious question was asked – "would other housewives like one?" Joseph made a few more to take on his rounds. The device was an instantaneous success and, soon, they gave up the sale of other things, made arrangements for the large-scale manufacture of the sifter, and concentrated on pushing its sale in Canada and the Middle West.

The sifters were made in their little workshop in Trenton and a Canadian patent was taken out on 12th January 1870 with a United States patent just over a year later. The Minerva Lane workshop grew into a small factory and before long, other sizes of sifter with different attachments to handle other food products were added to the range. The Bakers cut a dashing figure in their silk hats and frock coats and were soon giving demonstrations to, and receiving very big orders from, large gatherings of housewives. By now the business was flourishing, the manufacturing department had made economies, and they had thirty travellers on the road. One of these was Richard Moscrip whom J. Allen Baker had met whilst snowed-in at an inn during one of his sales tours - more of him later.

The profit on each sifter was small and there had been talk of opening another factory in Detroit but a threatened lawsuit - an infringement action by two Americans alleging copying of their own device – put a stop to that. The case was still pending when Joseph, considering more ambitious schemes, decided in May 1876 to visit England with his eldest son.

Their first stop was New York, where they learned that the centenary celebrations of the Declaration of American Independence were being held in Philadelphia. The celebrations included the opening of a great international "fair" or exhibition – one of the first to be held – and known ever since as the "Centennial". J. Allen Baker resolved to go with his brother, William, who had travelled to New York to see them off.

The exhibition had a profound effect on J. Allen Baker, in particular, the "products of the world, Europe, Australia, India, China and the rest" and among them the mechanical wonders of the "Machinery Hall". The concept and purpose of the exhibition made a great impression on him but he little thought that at every succeeding international exhibition his company would have a large exhibit in the machinery section. (See also Trade Exhibitions).

The transatlantic voyage was uneventful and they reached Liverpool 10 days later. They spent three weeks in London, seeing the sights and meeting other Friends, before travelling to Ireland to visit numerous friends and relations. A selling trip was then made to East Anglia where they found their sifters and mixers well received, not only by middlemen who hoped to sell them on to housewives, but also by confectioners and chemists. It was decided to set up an English branch and, on August 24th, Joseph sailed from Liverpool leaving his twenty-four year old son to make his way alone.

J. Allen Baker did not start work immediately but spent some time touring the Lake District and also visited Paris for three weeks before the end of the year. At neither place did he attempt to do any business but, between the two, he had spent two months in the Glasgow and Edinburgh areas, working hard and achieving satisfactory results. It was during this time, in early October 1876, that he made his first visit to the family of the aforementioned Richard Moscrip. Here he met Richard's sister, Elizabeth Balmer Moscrip, whom he was to marry on 27th February 1878.

By the time of his marriage, the business was in very good shape. There was a ready market in England for his father's inventions and he set himself the task of creating a wholesale market with the aim of building a business on a scale that would transform both the manufacturing and sales operations. The goods were still supplied from the Canadian factory and, although his father had set up a London office in Finsbury prior to his departure, J. Allen set up another in Liverpool from which he supervised the unshipping and distribution of the goods to the North.

Early in 1877, he sent a cabled order for "2,000 setts" and had calculated that he should be able to sell "at least 100,000 setts and clear upwards of £30,000 above expenses and manufacturing costs". The work load was such that he asked his brother, William, to join him.

The narrowness of his margins did not prevent him from investing a considerable amount of money in circulars and other methods of advertising. Business prospects became so good that his father decided to move his whole family across to England. The house at Trenton was sold, Maple Ridge was given on a long lease to a tenant, the factory left in trusted hands and Joseph Baker, his wife and sons, George (aged 19 and an engineering student) and Philip (a schoolboy of fourteen) crossed the Atlantic to join J. Allen and Elizabeth in their London home.

Now see:

History of Joseph Baker & Sons.
Before Westwood.
Early Inventions.