This site celebrates the life and work of sculptor John
Cassidy (1860 - 1939).
The name of Joule is known everyone who has ever studied science at school, as it was chosen as the name for the SI unit of work and energy; very appropriately as James Joule's greatest work was to quantify the equivalence between energy in its various forms. Joule died in 1889, and that year an International conference decided to use his name for a unit - initially defined as the energy dissipated in one second by current of one ampere flowing through a resistance of one ohm. In 1960 it was confirmed as the official SI Unit for energy in all forms, officially the amount of work done when a force of one Newton moves through one Metre. It is also used to measure an amount of heatm although the use of the Calorie (kcal) - originally the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 °C - lives on, convroversially, especially in contexts of energy derived from food, although now defined simply as 4184 joules.
James Prescott Joule was born in the house adjoining the Joule Brewery in New Bailey Street, Salford, on 24 December 1818, the son of Benjamin Joule (1784 – 1858), a brewer.
His early schooling was by home tutors in the family home 'Broomhill', Pendlebury, near Salford, then in 1834 he was sent, with his elder brother Benjamin St John Baptist Joule (who later became known as an organist and composer of music, and 1861 bought Tory Island, off the coast of Donegal in Ireland) , to study under Manchester's other famous scientist John Dalton at the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, in 1850, he was made president of the Society.
He became the manager of the family brewery until it was sold in 1854, leaving him with more time for scientific research. ('Paddy's Goose' in Bloom Street, Manchester, near the coach station, originally The Fleece, is said to be the only surviving pub which once served Joule's ales.)
A great deal has been written about Joule, his experiments and his discoveries in the field of electricity, heat and energy, there is little point in summarise his career in any detail here: Wikipedia's article forms a useful starting point, as does D.S.L. Cardwell's biography.
Put simply, he established that mechanical work and electrical current generated heat, and that there is a fixed ratio between the various forms.
In 1843 the family moved house from Pendlebury to Oak Field, Upper Chorlton Road, Whalley Range, on the south side of Manchester, and Benjamin Joule had a laboratory built for his son. Here he carried out is famous experient with a paddle-wheel in a bucket to establish the amount of heat generated by work.
In 1847 he married Amelia, daughter of Mr. John Grimes, Comptroller of Customs, Liverpool, and before the birth of their son Benjamin Arthur in 1850 they moved into a house of their own, 1 Acton Square, The Crescent, Salford, which still exists, now known as 48-49 The Crescent, 'Joule House', opposite the Salford Museum and Art Gallery.
On a personal note, when I think of of Joule, an anecdote passed on by one of my early teachers comes to mind: he is said to have spent time on his honeymoon in Switzerland trying to measure the water temperature at the top and bottom of a waterfall in an attempt to relate the hearing of the water to the potential energy lost in the fall.
Tragically, his wife Amelia died early (1854), leaving him one son and one daughter; a second son, Henry James, had died in infancy in 1854.
By the 1860s he had moved his family to 'Thorncliff' on the Stretford Road, in Old Trafford, south of Manchester, then a high-class suburb: there he ran into trouble with the neighbours, who objected to his steam engine.
The 1871 census has Joule living at 5 Cliffs Point, Lower Broughton, Salford with his older brother Benjamin, his son, Benjamin Arthur, and other family members. He was at the same address in 1877 when awarded a pension by the Government in recognition of his discoveries.
By 1881 he had moved to his final home at 12 Wardle Road, Sale, Cheshire. He described himself as 'DCL, LLD, Physicist' and his household included his unmarried elder sister Mary ('assistant') and his son Benjamin Arthur Joule, described as Artist (Painter.) Also resident were Sarah Coward, cook and Mary Adshead Hewitt, housemaid.
Joule's children
James's son Benjamin Arthur Joule's career as a painter does not appear to have brought him fame; he pops up the 1901 census as a guest in a hotel at 28 Bath Street, Waterloo, near Liverpool, describing himself as 'living on own means.' In 1911 he described himself as 'married for 10 years', yet he was living in a boarding house at 44 Princes Street, Southport with no sign of a wife.
However, one writer states that he had a son, Frederick, born in 1869 (yet in 1871 Benjamin was living at home and a student at Onwens College), and died in 1948, and that Frederick married and had several children.
Benjamin died in 1922, and the Manchester College of Science Technology (later UMIST and now part of the University of Manchester) bought what remained of his father's scientific apparatus, some of which is now on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.
James Joule's Daughter Alice Amelia Joule married John Clement Joule (a distant relative?) in 1879, and their daughter Lilian Alice Mary Joule, born in 1885, married Frederick William Thomson, manager in a Patent Medicine Company, in 1906. In 1911 they were living on the Wirral Peninsula at 15 Malpas Road, Wallasey, a semi-detached house which still exists in 2009. They do not appear to have had any children,
Links and references
'James Joule – Brewer and Man of Science', by Alan Gall. Brewery History, 115, pp. 2-6. (Available online)
James Joule – A biography by Donald S.L. Cardwell, (Manchester University Press, 1989) (Preview on Google Books)
Public Sculpture of Greater Manchester by Terry Wyke, page 394 (Google Books preview)
Joule in Wikipedia
Sale and Altrincham (the Luso Pages)
Friends of Worthington Park
Special thanks to Brenda and Philip Scragg for the pictures of the bust, and to Michael Riley, Parish Archivist for St. Paul’s Parish Church, for the picture and information about the pew.
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James Prescott Joule: Worthington Park, Sale
It was 1901, some years after his death in 1889, and eight years after the statue of Joule by Alfred Gilbert had been unveiled in Manchester Town Hall, that a proposal appeared to create a memorial in Sale, Cheshire, where Joule had lived from the 1870s. The suggestion was to build a 'tower to be used for meteorological observations' in Sale Park, which had been created in 1900 on land donated to the town by a wealthy local Widow, Mrs Mary Worthington. Mrs Worthington donated £100, and contributions were received from scientists around the world. However, the money raised was not enough for the proposed tower, and not much happened until the fund was re-launched with Dr Charles Herbert Lees (1864-1952), then of the Physics Department of the Victoria University of Manchester, as chairman, this time with the memorial to be a bust, which would be created by John Cassidy.
We are fortunate in having this picture of Cassidy with the clay model for the bust, more or less complete, in his Lincoln Grove studio, probably early in 1905 - from the proceedings of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society.
The Manchester Guardian of 7 April 1905 (page 5) has a picture of the clay model and reports: 'The work has been entrusted to Mr John Cassidy, the well-known scultor, of this city ... Mr Cassidy has succeeded in giving much character to the head and face, and there is a great deal of detail in the work. Joule is represented as reading to the audience a scientific paper, the subject of which can be guessed from the disgram upon it, illustrating his famous "tangent galvanometer." The expression of intellectual absorprion in his theme is happily conveyed. Although Mr Cassidy's work in the clay will soon pass into the hands of the bronze founders, it is not expected that the unveiling ceremony will taken place before the beginning of next month.' In the event, several months passed.
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IN MEMORY OF DR. JOULE.
Unveiling the Monument at Sale. Manchester Evening News, 28 October, 1905. The memorial to the distinguished physicist Dr. Joule, which has been erected by subscription in Sale Park, was unveiled this afternoon by Sir William Bailey, president of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. The memorial is in the form of a bust mounted on a pedestal, and a suitable inscription records the fact that Dr. Joule died at Sale after living there for a number of years. The afternoon's gathering included a large number of scientific men from Manchester and elsewhere, professors at Victoria University, and members of the Sale District Council. The monument was unveiled by Sir William Bailey, who, on behalf of the subscribers to the memorial fund, handed over the statue to the chairman of the District Council (Mr John Davis), "to perpetuate the memory of the late Dr. James Prescott Joule." In the course of an eloquent tribute to the memory of Joule, Sir William mentioned the fact that he was born in New Bailey Street, Salford, in the year 1818 and that he studied under Dalton, the celebrated discoverer of the atomic theory. His great discovery was the "mechanical equivalent of heat." He determined the relation between units of heat and energy, by his various methods, and he declared the rate of exchange - the bank rate - between heat and work. The gift of the monument was gratefully accepted by Mr. Davis on behalf of the town of Sale, and a vote of thanks to Sir William was proposed by Mr. Alfred Hopkinson, Vice-Chancellor of Victoria University. This was seconded by he Rev.Canon Jones, and carried with applause. |
The bronze bust stands today, in need of a clean, on its stone plinth in a pleasant garden within the park, which was renamed Worthington Park, after the donor, to celebrate its jubilee in 1950. The Park is off Cheltenham Avenue in Sale. (Map)
Cassidy had to work from pictures of the man, since he had died 25 years earlier.
The Tangent Galvanometer
was a device used by Joule to measure
electric current. The original device, now in a museum in Glasgow, is
shown to the right: it consists of a magnetic compass set inside a coil
of wire through which current is passed. The greater the current, the
more the compass needle will be deflected from its normal
north-pointing position. James Joule suffered from a deformity of the spine, and it his later years was in poor health. He died in 11 October 1889, and is buried in Brooklands Cemetery, Sale, Cheshire.
His gravestone, it is said, carries the number 772.55 and a quotation from the Gospel of St John, "I must work the works of Him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work" (9:4).
772.55 was the number established by Joule of the Mechanical Equivalent of heat, established in old-style units as foot-pounds per British Thermal Unit.
He is commemorated in Manchester by a statue in the entrance of the town hall, opposite a statue of another great Manchester scientist, John Dalton. The illustration in the left column shows Joule's head from the Town Hall statue, which is by Alfred Gilbert (1854 -1934) and dates from 1893. Gilbert was one of the greatest sculptors of the era: he created the famous work known as 'Eros' in Piccadilly Circus, London. Dalton's Town Hall statue is by Francis Legatt Chantrey.
Joule's house at 12 Wardle Road, Sale - once called 'Rutland House' - still exists (unlike some other other Victorian villas in the Road) and has been named 'Joules House' by its current (2009) owners, Creative Support, who provide residential accommodation for people with mental health problems. There is no sign of any 'blue plaque' commemorating him, though - perhaps because his time in Sale was not at the height of his career.
St Paul's Church in Sale has a brass plaque on the pew used by Joule, seen in the picture above.
TO THE GLORY OF GOD
AND IN MEMORY OF
JAMES PRESCOTT JOULE
WHO USED THIS PEW
-----------------------
He was eminent as a Scientific
----- Investigator. -----
BORN 1818 AT SALFORD
DIED 1889 AT SALE
AND IN MEMORY OF
JAMES PRESCOTT JOULE
WHO USED THIS PEW
-----------------------
He was eminent as a Scientific
----- Investigator. -----
BORN 1818 AT SALFORD
DIED 1889 AT SALE
The hassock, depicting one of Joules mecahnical equivalent of heat experiments, was made in 1989 for the centenary anniversary of his death.
Recently, and most appropriately in light of his brewing career, the name 'the J.P. Joule' has been given by the JD Wetherspoon company to a pub opened in 1997 in Sale town centre.
In London, Joule is commemorated by a white marble tablet in the North Choir aisle of Westminster Abbey, in company with other famous scientists.
Appendix 1: Pronunciation
The name 'Joule' can be, pronounced in at least three ways, rhyming with 'fool', 'fowl' or 'foal.' The present writer knew a family in Derbyshire who definitely referred to themselves as 'Joal.' 'Jool' - is the accepted pronunciation for the name of the famous scientist, the SI unit, and the Library named after him at The University of Manchester. Some have claimed that this is a French pronunciation, which James would not have used.
However, what might be seen as a definitive statement, and certainly relevant to this article, would appear to be that in a letter from Professor Lees, published in Nature, Vol. 152, 602-602 (20 November 1943):
If the desire is to pronounce the
name as it was pronounced by the
family and by the friends of Dr. Joule, there can be no doubt it is
'Joole', so as to rhyme with cool, tool or rule. Professors of the
University of Manchester, in the eighties of last century, such as
(Sir) Henry Roscoe, Balfour Stewart, (Sir) Arthur Schuster and Osborne
Reynolds, all friends and some close friends of Dr. Joule, all
pronounced his name in this way. Forty years ago, when as chairman of a
committee for erecting a memorial to Dr. Joule in Sale Park, I met his
son, Mr. B. A. Joule, he told me 'Joole' was the right
pronunciation, and that in old family deeds the name was written
'Youle', like the name of the village Youlgreave in Derbyshire in
which the family lived. It would be interesting if the upholders of the
pronunciation 'Jowl' would cite their authorities.
Appendix 2: Sale
Sale is an old township - now in the borough of Trafford but historically in Cheshire - on the Bridgewater Canal, five miles from Manchester. By the time Joule moved there it had become a busy commuter suburb, thanks to the frequent train service provided by the Manchester South Junction and Altrincham Railway, which a century later became part of Manchester's Metrolink light-rail system.
Appendix 3: Beer
Although Joule's Manchester brewery closed down in the nineteenth century, the name remained associated with beer for many years afterwards thanks to another branch of the family. Francis Joule, born in Youlgreave, set up a brewery in the town of Stone, Staffordshire in the eighteenth century. It passed to his son, who sold it in 1873, but the new owners kept the name of Joule's. It became part of the large Bass Charrington group in 1970 and production in Stone ceased four years later, although some of the buildings are preserved.
Thanks to www.thepotteries.org for this information.
Written by Charlie Hulme, February 2009. Updated May 2009.