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This site celebrates the life and work of sculptor John
Cassidy (1860 - 1939). ![]() The name of Joule is known by 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 heat, 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, controversially, 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. On the Joule trail![]() His childhood home, 'Broomhill' in Pendlebury (marked above on an 1893 map) has vanished under suburban development, including a street named 'Broomhill Road.' ![]() In 1843 the family moved house from Pendlebury to 'Oak Field', Upper Chorlton Road, Whalley Range, on the south side of Manchester, shown on the 1848 map above. Benjamin Joule (senior) had a laboratory built there for his son; there he carried out his famous experiment with a paddle-wheel in a bucket to establish the amount of heat generated by work. The house no longer exists; sometime between 1908 and 1920 it was demolished and replaced by a small estate of semi-detached houses, typical of the period, with streets named Whitethorn Avenue and (appropriately) Oakfield Avenue, which still stand today. In 1847 James Joule married Amelia, daughter of Mr. John Grimes, Comptroller of Customs, Liverpool. They initially lived with Joule's father at 'Oak Field' but in 1849, before the birth of their son Benjamin Arthur Joule in 1850 they moved into no. 1 Acton Square, The Crescent, Salford, which still exists, opposite the Salford Museum and Art Gallery. The house, one of a row of three Georgian town houses built on the corner of Crescent and Acton Square, is now shared by the Centre for Applied Archaeology and the University of Salford Centre for Sustainable Urban and Regional Futures (SURF). ![]() The plaque mounted on the elevation to 'The Crescent' of the building states that Joule 'lived there 1819 to 1854' which seems to contradict other sources. ![]() A plaque on the Acton Square side, presented by the Rotary Club, curiously exhibits a variation on his middle name. Tragically, his wife Amelia Joule died early (1854), leaving him with one son and one daughter; a second son, Henry James, had died in infancy in 1854. It seems he then moved back into 'Oak Field' for a while. ![]() In 1861 (1858 in some sources) he moved with his family to 'Thorncliffe' (or 'Thorncliff') on the Stretford Road, in Old Trafford, close to its junction with Chester Road, just under three miles from Manchester City Centre, a house built on land which had been sold by the de Trafford family in 1849. The map extract above, from 1891, shows the location, opposite the Manchester South Junction and Altrincham Railway (now part of the Metrolink tram system). It lies just outside the boundary of the City of Manchester. The previous resident appears to have been John Haworth, one of the pioneers of tramways in the Manchester area. He gave 'Thorncliff' as address on his Patent application for a method of building 'tramways in ordinary streets and roads'. The Patent was granted in 1860, and involved a wheel central guide rail which would keep the main wheels on flat rails either side, of the vehicle but in the event his design was passed over by the Manchester Carriage Company in favour of the simpler system of street tramway still used today. At 'Thorncliffe' (pictured below and in the main text) Osborne Reynolds relates that Joule unfortunately ran into trouble with the neighbours, who objected to his steam engine. ![]() James and Benjamin Joule sold the house in 1868 to Frederick Jardine, of Kirtland & Jardine, organ builders, a firm still in business in 2012 as Jardine Church Organs. By 1895 the householder was John James Kent Fairclough, anaesthetist at the Victoria Dental Hospital in Manchester. ![]() From 1907 until around 1910, 609 Stretford Road was the home of William Furber and his family, including his widowed daughter Ella Smith and her daughter Dorothy 'Dodie' Smith (1896-1990), famous for her novel, made into a Disney cartoon feature, One Hundred and One Dalmatians. She, rather than Joule, is commemorated by a 'blue plaque' on the building, with the quotation 'It was so quiet and semi-rural that the corncrake could still be heard' - above the noise of passing trams, trains and ships, presumably. The 1901 Census gives their address as 586 Stretford Road, which was the Kingston House' mentioned in biographies of Dodie Smith. This house was demolished c. 1907 to make room for widening of the railway cutting, and the family moved to 'Thorncliffe'. Dodie Smith moved to London when her widowed mother married again, and went on to have a long career as a playwright. She revisited 'Thorncliffe' in 1958: her biographer Valerie Grove describes the experience: 'Thorncliffe still stood, black with dirt. There was a solicitor's office on the first floor, in her grandmother's bedroom, so the room once papered in rosebuds and satin stripes was now Dickensian with dusty files.' 'Thorncliffe' has survived many changes in the Old Trafford area, latterly as offices for a series of organisations. In 2012, following some sprucing-up, under the name of 'Democracy House' it is the home of the Black Health Agency. ![]() The row of houses then known as Cliff Point, his next home, apparently still exists, within a Conservation Area (picture above from Google) although the house numbering now follows that of Lower Broughton Road; further investigation is needed to establish which one was the Joule home. Still at this adress in 1877, he was awarded a pension by the Government in recognition of his discoveries. ![]() Later that year he moved is familty to their final home at 12 Wardle Road, Sale, Cheshire. (the view above is from the Trafford Lifetimes website) In the 1881 Census 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 childrenJames'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 Owens 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. ![]() Joule 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 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. |
James Prescott Joule, Worthington Park, Sale (1905)
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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. |
Crosbie Smith, ‘Joule, James Prescott
(1818–1889)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/15139,
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2012]
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