Mather & Platt
Engineers
Mather & Platt were engineers and machine makers based at the Salford Iron Works, Lancashire. They began as millwrights to the local textile trade, and expanded into the production of cloth-printing equipment and pumps used for cotton-bleaching boilers. In the 1880s, their fireproofing division was licensed to make sprinklers for use in cotton mills and their electrical department manufactured Edison-Hopkinson dynamos. 1 They also specialised in building 'machinery for bleaching, printing ... and finishing cotton and linen', effluent treatment and town water-supply plant. 2
William Morton was 'sole proprietor' of Mather & Platt from 1871, and was elected an MP in 1889. 3 As Chairman, he formed a limited company in 1899 to unite his own firm with Dowson, Taylor, agents for 'the Grinnell sprinkler, for the automatic extinction of fires'. 4 Mather & Platt were represented by a Glasgow agent from the early 1880s, and opened their own dedicated Glasgow office after 1900. 5
Among their Scottish projects were the supply of plant to the Strathclyde Calico Printing Works in Dalmarnock, Glasgow; water purification for Blanefield bleachworks, Stirlingshire; switchboards for Edinburgh Council's electricity station in McDonald Road (1899); and dynamos for the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College. 6 Glasgow company Mirrlees, Watson & Yaryan acquired Mather & Platt's manufacturing rights to certain American inventions 'in connection with evaporation and distillation' in 1889. 7 The company's pump division continued in India into the 21st century. 8
Notes:
1: Scotsman, 20 April 1886, p. 1; Glasgow Herald, 5 May 1887, p. 4; Marcel Boschi and D. Drew-Smythe, The History of Mather & Platt (U.K.), Ltd, compiled 2001–10, www.zipworld.com.au/~lnbdds/Boschi [accessed 29 June 2012].
2: The Times, 23 January 1899, p. 15A.
3: Scotsman, 25 March 1889, p. 7; The Times, 25 March 1889, p. 6B.
4: The Times, 23 January 1899, p. 15A.
5: Glasgow Post Office directories, 1880–1904.
6: Scotsman, 15 June 1887, p. 12; 11 November 1898, p. 1; 18 January 1899, p. 8; Glasgow Herald, 22 December 1887, p. 3.
7: Scotsman, 13 January 1889, p. 8.
8: Marcel Boschi and D. Drew-Smythe, The History of Mather & Platt (U.K.), Ltd, compiled 2001–10, http://www.zipworld.com.au/~lnbdds/Boschi [accessed 29 June 2012].
