FEATURED

 

On re-reading Jean Marshall’s history of Cathcart ‘Why Cathcart?’ (published 1969) I puzzled again over this mention of the change in local industry towards the end of the 19th Century … “several local firms closed down, among them …Verel’s Photographic Works and the Cassel (Castle?) Gold Extracting Company …”

 

I knew about the local Mills, Dye and Carpet works; however, I had never thought about the possibility of Gold from the White Cart! Clearly I needed to do some digging (pun intended).

 

Verel’s Photographic Works

 

Searching business sources and Ordnance Survey maps for mid to late 1800s, I discovered an Albion Albumenizing Co., founded in 1864 and located at Cathcart. Albumen was used for paper photography and Gelatine was an ideal binder.  It became F.W. Vérel & Co. around 1891 when the manufacturing company spun-off.  Verel’s works were until then part of the Albion Gelatine/Dry Plate manufactory.

 

 

The factory was located close to a source of water in the White Cart for use in the manufacturing process. It was demolished before World War One to make way for the extended G And J Weir’s Holm Foundry. This itself has recently been demolished to make way for a new housing development. I was making some progress, with the Photographic Works now located, but I could not find any location for the Cassel Company.

 

 

Pumping Gas

 

Time for a name search. First up was a British publisher, coffee merchant and social campaigner named John Cassell, who had struck liquid Gold – Oil – in Pennsylvania in 1859 and began importing it into the UK under a variant of his own name – Cazeline.

 

 

On 27th November 1862 he placed an advertisement in The Times of London for: “…the Patent Cazeline Oil, safe, economical, and brilliant […] possesses all the requisites which have so long been desired as a means of powerful artificial light.”  [Source: Wikipedia]

 

 

A slight difference in spelling of surname but he still had a connection to the chemical industry… perhaps there was still a link? I then found note of court proceedings around the patent for the oil. It turns out that sales of the oil had taken a major downturn during 1863, specifically in Dublin.

 

It transpired that a Mr Samuel Boyd was selling counterfeit Cazeline, changing the name by adding a stroke onto the letter C to ‘create’ Gazeline. Mr Boyd denied imitation. The court ruled in Cassell’s favour – but it’s believed to be the source of a new word to the English language – Gasoline – which is ubiquitous in its use in North America.

 

The Treasure of the Sierra Tharsis

 

However, that Cassell would appear to have no connection with Scotland, let alone Glasgow and Cathcart. A sideways search revealed that a Charles Tennant had shares in the Cassel Gold Extracting Company, as well as a mineral mining venture in Huelva Province in Spain, a place known to the Romans as Tharsis.

 

Charles Clow Tennant (1823–1906) was the grandson of Charles Tennant (1768-1838), the founder of the St. Rollox Chemical Works, and succeeded him in the business.

 

 

 

The mines, in the Sierra de Tharsis, were rediscovered by a French engineer Ernest Deligny in 1853. However, by 1860 there were difficulties especially in relation to transport, and approaches were made to a group of British alkali makers, headed by the second Charles Tennant, to acquire the venture.

 

The alkali makers were primarily interested in the business as a means of obtaining sulphur, a by-product of the process whereby copper is extracted from pyrites. Importantly, gold could also be recovered from the residue. It was agreed and Tennant renamed the company – the Tharsis Sulphur and Copper Co. Ltd., with its Head Office at 136, West George Street, Glasgow.

 

 

Fast forward 20 years and by the 1880s the world’s gold industry was in a precarious state due to the low yields from ores from mines.  Tennant and his partners turned to Henry Rennel Cassel; a German-born metallurgist from New York. The Cassel Gold Extracting Company was formed in Glasgow in 1884 to exploit Cassel’s patents for an electrochemical process. However:

 

“… his activities proved wholly fraudulent. As The Glasgow Herald noted, ‘Yankee cuteness has been too much for Scotch credulity’. Cassel, having swindled the Glasgow adventurers out of some £8 million at today’s value, absconded to the USA…” [Source: New Scientist 29/6/1996]

 

This was more a major blow to pride rather than finances, as it is noted of the Tharsis Company that:

 

“…During the twenty-one years ending December 31st, 1887, the company’s gross profits from all actual industrial and commercial undertakings, have amounted to £5,983,082, of which £3,942,318 have been distributed in dividends. These dividends have, in many instances, been remarkable in their eminently satisfactory character.” [Source: Glasgow Index of Firms, 1888]

 

‘MacArthur’s’ Gold

 

What could be done about the existential problem of low recovery rates from ore..? Step forward Glaswegian chemist, John Stewart MacArthur, who was then working in the laboratory of the Tharsis Company as an apprentice chemist.

 

 

He entered into a partnership with Doctors William and Robert Forest to develop a process using a dilute cyanide solution and then zinc, to dissolve gold, silver and other ores. On the 19th of October 1887, a patent (No. 14,174 of 1887) was granted to J MacArthur and Wm. Forrest for an invention of “Improvements in obtaining gold and silver from ores and other compounds.”

 

 

It soon became the global standard.  Within two years of its introduction in South Africa the total weight of gold produced had risen from forty thousand to one hundred thousand ounces per month. Stagnation in the gold-mining industry was arrested and the new process had striking effects. Instead of being able to refine only around 45% of metal from complex ores, as before, 98% extraction could now be achieved.

 

John Stewart MacArthur went on to develop processes for the use of radium compounds in medicine, and for luminous paints, and died in 1920 at the age of 63 in his home at 12 Knowe Terrace (now Shields Road) in Pollokshields.

 

 

Gold or Poison?

 

The process development was initially housed in doctors William and Robert Forest’s office in the Gorbals. So how did it end up in Cathcart? I went back to the records for the Tharsis Company (which had a stake in Cassel) to look at its ownership and management.

 

“…very large and handsome offices are occupied in West George Street, and the routine business of the concern receives the attention of an executive staff, consisting of Mr. Jonathan Thomson Secretary; Mr. William A. Verel, General Manager; and Mr. Theodore Merz, Technical Manager. At the head of the directorate appears the well-known name of Sir Charles Tennant”  [Source: Bart Glasgow Index of Firms, 1888]

 

So, the connection seems to be Mr William Verel, the owner of the Photographic works. It would be likely that his company would be well suited to this enterprise, given its background in chemicals and the location close to a supply of both power and water.

 

The ‘Spanish’ Connection

 

 

An interesting aside is that the Tharsis Sulphur and Copper Co. Ltd base in Huelva encouraged a flow of students to the University of Glasgow. As a blog post from the University in December 2012 says,

 

“…while looking at the Spanish-born students from the late nineteenth-century, we spotted a increased number of those students born in the province of Huelva … Among the students born in Tharsis around that period were Mercedes Margaret Morton, the daughter of Alexander Young Morton, a medical graduate of the University and a doctor for the Tharsis Sulphur and Copper Company Ltd. She returned to the University, following in her father’s footsteps, and graduated MB ChB in 1917…” [Source: University of Glasgow’s International Story, blog post, December 2012]

 

As well as students coming to Glasgow, Glasgow’s rail infrastructure was added to Spain!

 

“The company added infrastructure, constructing the Tharsis railway along the river Odiel, which was completed and in use by 1871. Its unusual dimensions also had a direct Glasgow connection: with a width of 4 feet, or 1.220 mm, they were the same dimensions used exclusively for the Glasgow underground. The railway had 53 steam locomotives, serving both industry and passengers, and is today the only mining railway in Huelva that is still used for industrial freight.”  [Source: ibid]

 

Cathcart’s long association with Spain continued until ScottishPower, part of the Spanish owned Iberdrola Group, moved to its new offices in the centre of Glasgow.

 

The White Cart is the golden thread that interweaves the industrial, economic and social history of Old and New Cathcart, and indeed much of the Southside. It also created a golden link to a much older story, connecting the Phoenicians who established mining operations in Huelva with Victorian engineering, entrepreneurial expertise and a generous helping of Glaswegian verve.

—

 

By Graeme Boyle

Published 14th September 2024