Henry Cort

		Henry Cort Inventor - Creator of puddled iron - Father of iron trade
		This page is part of a website based on the life and achievements of eighteenth-century inventor Henry Cort. The creator and owner of the site was Eric Alexander who passed away. The site is now hosted by Geneagraphie.com Please contact us with any comments or queries.

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IMAGES OF HENRY CORT

All those seen show profile, facing left.

Mezzotint

Now in British Museum annex near Olympia, open one morning every two weeks.

Probably the original likeness.

Inscribed with quotation from The Times.

To the Iron Trade of Great Britain

This Portrait of the late

HENRY CORT

The TUBAL CAIN of our century & of our country

THE FATHER OF THE BRITISH IRON TRADE

- Times July 29th 1856

Caption below mezzotint

Henry Cort b 1749 d 1800

Iron Master inventor of

the puddling process

Caption, reverse side of mezzotint

The stamp on the reverse side shows the picture was given to the museum in 1931.

Lithograph 1

Also in British Museum annex.

Probably derived from mezzotint, though the appearance is quite different. Caption also quotes the 1856 Times article.

Adam White, I have learned from the Web, "was an Assistant in the Zoology Department of the British Museum from 1835 to 1863, specializing in Crustacea and insects." The year, 1859, in which he donates the lithograph to the museum is towards the end of the period of controversy about Henry Cort. Although there is no mention of the Society of Arts (the main source of this controversy) in White's biography, it is likely he knows many of its members. In particular, William Benjamin Carpenter, who has married Cort's granddaughter, works in a related field.

Lithograph 2

Discovered on the Web in October 2008. In National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

Lithograph 2

Provenance and derivations unknown.

Steel engraving

Present whereabouts unkown. Possibly in archives, Institute of Materials.

Probably derived from mezzotint.

According to Mott's notes in the Coalbrookdale collection, it was presented by William Fairbairn and others to the Cort Memorial Fund set up in 1856.

According to a letter from Charles H. Morgan (to H.H. Suplee, January 24, 1906), it was subsequently "presented to the Iron and Steel Institute by Windsor Richards in 1901". The Institute was later subsumed into the Metals Society, then into the Institute of Materials.

The letter also says Morgan has "a good enlarged copy of the Steel Engraving of Henry Cort which I would be glad to donate to the A.S.M.E." (American Society of Mechanical Engineers). Does ASME now hold this copy?

Model and bronze bas-reliefs

We owe the tablet to an eminent American engineer, who is much impressed with the value of the work Cort did for the world and wishes to rescue his name from an undeserved oblivion. It is a bronze tablet showing Cort's head in good relief. The American donor, who desires to keep his own name back, intends to place a replica of the tablet in Lancaster Parish Church. At the unveiling ceremony he was represented by Mr. J.P. Bedson, of Manchester.

From Manchester Guardian, 10 March 1905.

We now know that the American engineer is Charles H Morgan.

One bronze is at St Johns Hampstead, where Cort is buried.

The other is at St Marys Lancaster. near where he is said to have been born. Weale quotes his birthplace as Ellell, which Mott discovered is in the parish of Cockerham near Lancaster.

Mott says the two bronzes were developed from the original steel engraving. According to the Morgan-Suplee letter, an intermediate stage was "the model from which the Copham Manufacturing Company made the Bronze Tablets", which was then in Morgan's possession.

Plaster cast

At Manchester Materials Science Centre.

The Manchester side of the 1905-6 operation took place on Tuesday 6th February 1906 in the Schunck laboratory, when Mr. Bedson presented to the University a plaster cast of the original bronze tablet. This cast, which is now in room F1 of the new Metallurgy Building, shows Henry Cort in profile and is inscribed

IN MEMORY OF HENRY CORT

BORN AT LANCASTER 1740

INTERRED AT HAMPSTEAD 1800

TO WHOM THE WORLD IS INDEBTED FOR THE ARTS OF REFINING IRON

WITH MINERAL COAL BY

PUDDLING AND ROLLING METALS

IN GROOVED ROLLS.

From commemorative leaflet for University of Manchester Open Day, 20 May 1978.

Evidently also developed from steel engraving.

Book cover

The image on the front cover of the Mott/Singer book Henry Cort: The Great Finer was probably taken from the original steel engraving, since the book was published by The Metals Society

Fareham images

The image used on the flags for Fareham's commemoration of Henry Cort, April-June 2000, was evidently taken from the book: probably from the photograph of the Hampstead tablet rather than the cover.

Website image

The image used in the banner on this and several other pages off this website was developed from a photograph by Eric Alexander of the Lancaster tablet.

Related pages

Cort's birth

Publications about Cort

Memorials to Henry Cort

Henry Cort's character

1856 accolade

Society of Arts

Main sources of information

Contemporary documents

Navy sources

Chancery files

Life of Henry Cort

The pages on this site are copied from the original site of Eric Alexander (henrycort.net) with his allowance.
Eric passed away abt 2012
If you use/copy information from this site, please include a link to the page where you found the information.