Key Figures
William Strutt 1756-1830
Jedediah's
three sons divided their responsibilities in the business between them.
George, who lived at Bridge Hill House, a mansion overlooking the river
and most of Belper, managed the mills and the estate, while from their
homes in Derby, William and Joseph took charge of the technical and commercial
functions.
William, despite his limited formal education, came to be regarded as an expert in the design of fire-proof buildings, in hot-air heating systems and, following the completion of his tour de force, the Derby Infirmary, in the design of hospitals.
He also corresponded with scholars on mathematical, theoretical and practical problems. Among these was Charles Bage, whom it is likely William Strutt had known from an early age. William and his brother Joseph were well regarded by some of the outstanding literary figures of their time. Coleridge and Southey both visited them.
Erasmus
Darwin’s friendship with William had begun in 1781. It was through
Erasmus Darwin that William Strutt had access to a wider circle, which
included members of the Lunar Society such as Matthew Boulton, James
Watt, William Small, Joseph Priestley and Josiah Wedgwood. At a somewhat
lower level of intellectual and scientific achievement, the Derby Philosophical
Society fulfilled a similar function. It had been founded by Darwin and
Strutt with Erasmus acting as the first president, a role which subsequently
fell to William.
William Strutt’s circle also included the Benthams and Robert Owen, who wrote of William Strutt and his brother Joseph as being among “men of great practical knowledge who were much interested in my views and practical measures… two men whose talents in various ways and whose truly benevolent dispositions have seldom been equalled”.
In public life William Strutt strove to improve the social and physical amenities of his home town. He took an active part in measures to improve lighting and paving and to promote the development of the gas company. He designed several of Derby’s bridges. He promoted Friendly Societies and the Savings Banks.
In his design for the Derby Infirmary he displayed the whole range of his architectural and engineering genius and it became a showplace visited by medical authorities from all over the country and abroad.
William and his brothers were known for their liberal views, support of toleration and humanitarian causes.
William died a respected and much loved figure in 1830, leaving to his son Edward the 1200 acre estate at Kingston on Soar which he had purchased in 1796 using the fortune brought to the marriage by his wife Barbara, née Evans.
William Strutt and his brothers
The development of the Belper and Milford mill sites and the Strutt mill in Derby owed much to William Strutt’s engineering skills and creative talents. The clearance of the Belper and Milford sites c.1960 removed a range of mill structures which, taken together, demonstrated the evolution of William Strutt’s experiments in fire-proofing mill buildings. Of his mill structures, only the North Mill at Belper remains. This remarkable building emerged in 1804 from the burned out shell of Strutt’s second Belper mill. William Strutt used cast iron and brick, incorporating improvements derived from the systems Bage had used in his fire-proof structures at Shrewsbury and Leeds.
William Strutt’s contributions to the Derwent Valley sites continued with the Belper reeling mill in 1808; the South Mill in 1812 (a replacement of the first of the Strutt mills in Belper); and in 1813, the Round Mill, said to have been modelled on the idea of the Panopticon of Samuel and Jeremy Bentham. He also turned his hand to the improvement of mill machinery and is said to have introduced his own version of mule spinning years before it was successful elsewhere.
Unlike the Arkwrights, whose enthusiasm for the cotton industry scarcely outlived Sir Richard, the Strutts continued to innovate, invest and expand - at least while Jedediah’s three sons, William (1756-1830), George Benson (1761-1841), and Joseph (1765-1844) ran the business. During the first quarter of the 19th century it remained a major force in the industry, employing by 1833 as many as 2,000 people. But the centre of the industry had moved north to Lancashire. The business was no longer well served by its location, both in relation to raw materials, the market and for access to new developments.
The Strutts also maintained a commitment to child employment long after it had become clear that with machinery growing in size and complexity the proportion of adults or at least older children employed would have to increase. The Strutts tried to swim against this tide. In Anthony Radford Strutt’s words, “infant labour being so much cheaper than adult, one’s attention is always directed to make such improvements in machinery as to enable children to do with ease and exactness the work of adults” (1833).
The scale of the operation gradually contracted and during the second half of the 19th century, some of the Milford site was given up and let out to other businesses.
When Edward Strutt (1801-80), William’s only son, received a peerage in 1856, taking the title ‘Lord Belper’, the appointment was welcomed in the press as the elevation of a manufacturer, implying that Edward Strutt still earned his living as a cotton master. If he did, and certainly he was still engaged in the business, it was on a very different basis to the daily toil his father’s generation had known. Day-to-day management had passed to paid staff. The Strutts, a generation later than the Arkwrights, came to enjoy a life of landed gentility.