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Henry Davis Pochin (1824-1895)
Industrial Chemist. He was the
son of a
yeoman farmer of
Leicestershire who served an
apprenticeship to
James Woolley (1811-1858), a
manufacturing chemist in
Manchester, and in course of
time became his
partner. Woolley died in
1858 and Pochin kept a
manuscript diary of the illness,
treatment and death of his
partner. This diary is preserved
in the
Wellcome Trust Library. On
Woolley’s death Pochin became the
sole proprietor.
Pochin is noted for two
important inventions. Firstly, he
developed a process for the
clarification of
rosin, a brown substance used
to make soap, by passing steam
through it so that after
distillation it came out
white, thus enabling the
production of white soap. He sold
the rights to this process to
raise money to exploit his second
invention, which was a process
using
ammonium sulfate and
alumina as a low cost
alternative to
alumstone in the production of
alum cake used in the
manufacture of paper.
The process required
china clay, and Pochin bought
several china clay mines in
Cornwall for this purpose. In
time H. D. Pochin & Co. became one
of the three largest British
producers of china clay until they
merged in
1932 with English China Clay
and Lovering to form English China
Clay Lovering Pochin & Co. Ltd (ECLP).
Later just known as E.C.C.
Between
1863 and
1867,
Alderman Pochin led a
consortium of Manchester
business men in the formation of a
number of companies in the iron,
steel and coal industries. The
first of these, the Staveley Coal
and Iron Company Limited was also
the first to be formed by David
Chadwick (1821 – 1885) a
Manchester accountant whose
accounting methods in relation to
capitallisation and depreciation
have attracted interest even 100
years or more later.
Pochin was elected to
Parliament in
1868 as one of two
MP’s for
Stafford. He also held public
office at times as a
Deputy Lieutenant and as
Justice of the Peace.
Henry Pochin was a director of
The Tredegar Iron and Coal
Company, that sunk two shafts
(North and South) at Pochin
Colliery,
Tredegar, in 1876 to a depth
of 340 yards; the first coal was
brought to the surface in
1881. The mine was actually
named after Pochin’s daughter
Laura who later married Charles
McLaren, the Tredegar Company
Chairman and first
Baron Aberconway.
Between
1871 and
1876 Henry Pochin had a
residence in
Llandudno, North Wales at
Haulfre, on the south facing
landward side of the
Great Orme where he was able
to pursue his passion for
gardening in an extensive and
steeply terraced garden that since
1929 has been under the care
of the local authority and is
freely open to the public.
In
1874 Pochin bought the Bodnant
estate at Tal-y-Cafn in the Conwy
Valley comprising 25 farms with
the Bodnant House and over 80
acres of garden where he lived in
active retirement. At Bodnant,
Pochin realised the superb
qualities of the Dell through
which the estate river ran and
after first strengthening the
banks to deter erosion he set
about planting with great American
and Oriental conifers. In
1949
Bodnant Garden was given to
the
National Trust.
References
- Wellcome Trust Library -
James Woolley (1811-1858),
manufacturing chemist,
Manchester: diary of Woolley's
illness, treatment and dath,
written by his partner Henry
Davis Pochin (1824-1895). 1858.
(MS.5949).
- The Garden at Bodnant
Jarrold Publishing Norwich and
Bodnant Garden, 2001.
- British cost accounting
development: Continuity and
change - The Accounting
Historians Journal, Dec 1995
etc.
