Abstract
Joseph Priestley (Fieldhead, nr. Leeds, 24 (13 O.S.) March 1733-North-umberland, Pa., U.S.A., 6 February 1804) was the son of a cloth finisher, Jonas Priestley (apparently of substance, since his father, another Joseph Priestley, employed at least thirty hands); his mother, who died in 1739, was the daughter of a farmer. In 1742 he was adopted by his aunt Mrs. Keighley who, until her death in 1764, was in every way a parent to him. The Keighleys were people of substance; Mrs. Keighley was widowed soon after Priestley went to live with them. She was a strict Nonconformist and he acquired his religious convictions at that time. He was educated partly by private study and partly at ‘a large free school’, supposed to be at Batley. At the age of sixteen he was sickly but he recovered. He acquired a knowledge of Latin and some Greek, and somewhat later he learned the elements of Hebrew. At one time he contemplated going into business and therefore learnt some French, Italian, and German. With the help of a Dissenting minister he learnt something of geometry, mathematics, and natural philosophy, and the rudiments of the Chaldee (Aramaic) and Syriac languages. He also knew some Arabic. He then decided to study for the Nonconformist ministry and, at the age of nineteen, entered the famous Dissenting Academy at Daventry to study under Dr. Ashworth, the successor of Dr. Doddridge.
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Footnotes
A. S. Davies, Trans. Newcomen Soc., 1951–3 (1956), xxviii, 203–5.
A. S. Davies, Trans. Newcomen Soc., 1951–3 (1956), xxviii, 203–5.
S. Timmins, Dr. Priestley’s Laboratory, 1791, London, 1890 (BM 8709. bb. 2.c.5.1); McKie, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 1956, xi, 114.
Priestley, Heads of Lectures on a Course of Experimental Philosophy, particularly including Chemistry, delivered at … Hackney, London, 1794.
Maxwell, A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, Oxford, 1892, i, 83.
Burkhardt, Ann. Phys., 1869, cxxxvi, 634.
Robison, Elements of Mechanical Philosophy, ed. Brewster, Edinburgh, 1822, iv, 73.
See Faraday, Phil. Mag., 1833, ii, 383 (390).
P. E. Browning, J. Chem. Educ., 1934, xi, 170.
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Phil. Trans., 1775, lxv, 384; for dates see Meldrum, (1), 1930, 49 f.; Hartog, Nature, 1933, cxxxii, 25;id., (5), 31.
IV, 1775, ii, 34; VI, 1790, ii, 106; Philosophical Empiricism, 1775, 48; Caven, Nature, 1933, cxxxii, 25; Hartog, ib., 1933, cxxxii, 25; id., (3); id., (5); McKie, 1933; Holt, 1931, 69 f., 101: ‘in the laboratory at Bowood, the small room at the end of the long library’, but Priestley had his own house at Calne.
Bolton, 1892, 40; McKie, Notes and Records of the Roy. Soc, 1956, xii, 114; Archives, 1956, ix, 117.
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G. Wilson, Life of Cavendish, 1851, 99.
Berthollet, Ann. Chim., 1789, iii, 63 (79); Priestley’s reply, VI, 1790, iii, 554 f.
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W. Hewson, Experiments on the Blood, Phil. Trans., 1770, lx, 368–413 (373); repr. in his Experimental Inquiries: Part the First. Being a Second Edition of an Inquiry into the Properties of the Blood, 1772, 10; The Works of William Hewson, ed. G. Gulliver, 1846, 11 (the note says ‘perhaps Mayow’s nitro-aerial spirit may be here confounded with nitre’).
Edmund Goodwyn, M.D., The Connexion of Life with Respiration; Or, an Experimental Inquiry into the Effects of Submersion, Strangulation, and the Several Kinds of Noxious Airs on Living Animals … , 8°, London, 1788; he mentions Lower, p. 55, but not Mayow.
Priestley, Nicholson’s J., 1800, iv, 193, found that nitrogen is evolved when ice from air-free water is melted; even when frozen nine times without exposure to air, the same water when the ice was melted gave nearly the same amount of nitrogen. His erroneous experiments on the conversion of water into air are dealt with later (p. 345).
Bolton, 1892; Dickinson, James Watt, Cambridge, 1936, 119, 157; A. Holt, 1931, 127; E. Robinson, Ann. Sci., 1956 (1957), xii, 296; 1957 (1958), xiii, 1; R. E. Schofield, ib., 1956 (1957), xii, 118; S. Smiles, 1874, 292; 1904, 336; Thorpe, (3), 94.
G. Marryat, A History of Pottery and Porcelain, 2 ed., 1857, 151; Church, DNB, 1899, lx, 140; Wedgwood’s Letters to Bentley, 1762–1780, 2 vols., 1903; Correspondence of Josiah Wedgwood, 1781–1794, 1906; E. Robinson, Ann. Sci., 1957 (1958), xiii, 1; Schofield, Chymia, 1959, v, 180; Priestley’s letters to Wedgwood in the period 1781–92, and to Keir in the period 1782–1788, are described and quoted by G. Wilson, Life of Cavendish, 1851, 90–106; the Wedgwood Muséum is at Barlaston, Stoke-on-Trent.
R. B. Litchfield, Tom Wedgwood the First Photographer, 1903 (Wedgwood himself always signed his letters ‘Thomas’).
IV, 1777, iii, 170; further literature, see Abegg, Handbuch der anorganischen Chemie, 1933, IV, iii, pt. 2A, 337.
Krause, Erasmus Darwin, tr. Dallas, 1879, 2 ed. 1887; Pearson, Dr. Darwin, 1930; Robinson, Ann. Sci., 1954, x, 314; Seward, Memoirs of the Life of Erasmus Darwin, 1804; Shurlock, Sci. Progr., 1924, xviii, 447 (portr.).
Watt, Manchester Mem., 1790, iii, 599; Crell’s Ann., 1790, I, 511; Parkes, Chemical Essays, 1823, i, 313; Fowles, Chem. News, 1927, cxxxv, 309 (repeats that it came from Alston Moor).
Martyn, Phil. Trans., 1729, xxxvi, 22: ‘a coarse talcky spar’; see R. Watson, Chemical Essays, 1793, i, 46; 1796, iii, 285.
An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Properties, London, 1785; A Botanical Arrangement of all the Vegetables naturally growing in Great Britain, 2 vols., London, 1766, and later eds.; on Withering see Boulger, DNB, 1900, lxii, 268; F. A. Crew, Life, in Withering Memorial Lecture, Univ. Birmingham, London, 1927; Faujas Saint-Fond, Voyages en Angleterre, etc., Paris, 1797, ii, 393; L. Roddis, Ann. Med. Hist., 1936, viii, 93; id., William Withering, New York, 1936 (Isis, 1937, xxvii , 379); W. Withering, Miscellaneous Tracts, with a Memoir of his Life, by his Son, 2 vols., London, 1822; T. C. Allbutt, Greek Medicine in Rome, 1921, 262, makes Withering speak of ‘that monster phlogiston’, and says he wrote an essay on ‘The Death and Burial of Phlogiston’.
See p. 89; Faujas Saint-Fond, Voyages, 1797, i, 29–41.
Pelletier, 1785; Memoires et Observations de Chimie, 1798, i, 252: comme M. Woulfe me l’avoit indique il y a environ trois ans.
Church, Proc. Roy. Soc, 1908, lxxxi, 462.
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Partington, J.R. (1962). Priestley. In: A History of Chemistry. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00309-9_7
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