Tube Making

Crown Tube Works

The birth of one of Wednesbury’s most famous industries took place in 1811 when John Russell, gun barrel maker, and landlord of the Turk’s Head Inn began to make wrought iron tubes.

At the time there was a shortage of good quality tubing for use in steam engines, and more importantly for distribution of the gas supply, thanks to William Murdoch’s invention of gas lighting in 1792.

John Russell began to produce tapered tubes which pushed together, but were very difficult to make. As a result, John and his elder brother James developed a hand-forged wrought iron socket for joining parallel tubes together. Aaron Manby of Moxley decided to manufacture the new invention, and offered James employment at his new works.

In 1816 John decided to set up a tube works on the corner of Wellcroft Street, Church Hill, in partnership with James, who ran the business.

John Russell's Old Patent Tube Works at Wednesbury.

In 1823 James left and founded Crown Tube Works at the High Bullen, after securing a patent for butt welded tube. John subsequently founded John Russell & Company. After his death in 1853 much of the manufacturing moved to the new and larger Alma Tube Works in Walsall, but the company also continued to use the old Wellcroft Street works.

Tubes were originally formed from an iron strip, or skelp as it was known, which was heated in small sections, a few inches at a time, in a conventional blacksmith’s fire. Each section was hammered into shape, each side of the seam being overlapped and hammered to form a weld.

The whole process took a long time as many heatings and hammerings were required to form each length of tube. The process was expensive, and labour intensive. Many tube forgers were employed in the works, and the tubes were produced in lengths of around 4 feet.

As a result of the primitive manufacturing techniques then in use, the industry couldn’t keep up with the growing demand for tubes, and so something had to be done to both increase the supply and reduce the manufacturing costs.

An advert from 1918.

Cornelius Whitehouse.

During the process the tube was butt welded so that the edges of the seam were joined without an overlap. The process produced an accurately shaped tube with smooth inside and outside surfaces. Whitehouse had no need for his invention, and on Elwell’s suggestion he took it to James Russell who agreed to help him take out a patent for the process.

An advert from 1896.

Unfortunately success came at a price. Other manufacturers, still using the old methods, greatly resented the company, also the tube workers who had lost their jobs because of the introduction of the new process, were very angry. Cornelius Whitehouse was even fired-on by hostile demonstrators and as a consequence always kept a loaded gun by his bedside. Russell built a high brick wall around the works, topped with iron spikes, to keep out the hostile crowd and prevent anyone stealing the secrets of his process. F. W. Hackwood mentions that some of the would-be spies even rented a row of houses that were adjacent to the works, in the hope of observing the process.

Russell had to spend large sums of money towards legal proceedings to protect his patent from infringement. In 1838 he obtained a 6 year extension for the patent on the understanding that he would pay Whitehouse £500 annually during that time.

Crown Works became one of the town’s most important employers and the extension of the patent was celebrated in the town. By James Russell’s death in 1849 the works employed around 200 men who were producing well over 4 million feet of tubing a year.

After his death the works were run by his son John James Russell and by 1865 were producing over 5,300,000 feet of tubing a year. John added a foundry to the works to make tube fittings and built a mechanic’s institute for the workers, complete with a library, classrooms and lecture hall.

In 1866 John found himself in financial difficulties through no fault of his own. The company’s London agent had been embezzling large sums of money, which resulted in the business being transferred to a limited company; James Russell & Sons Limited. John became chairman and most of the shares were purchased by the company’s employees.

An advert from 1905.

An advert from 1873.

By 1889 nearly 1,100 people were employed at the works, and before the turn of the century the company opened a galvanizing plant at Darlaston.

The 1880s saw the introduction of steel making in Wednesbury using the Siemens open hearth furnace, and as a result Crown Tube Works began to produce seamless steel tubing, but their main products were still made from wrought iron, which continued to be popular because it didn’t corrode when used for water or gas.

By the turn of the century the Crown Tube Works began to suffer from lack of investment, which would eventually lead to its downfall.

Striker's wives and children queuing for bread.

It started on 9th May when 200 workers from Crown Works demanded higher wages. Large numbers of strikers gathered in the Market Place

The strike eventually ended after the employers agreed on a minimum wage of 22 shillings a week for unskilled labourers.

They also agreed to allow their workers to join trades unions.

Strikers gathering in the Market Place for handouts of free food.

The works still relied heavily on man power. During World War One the wages bill amounted to 27% of their sales. A proposal to modernise the works and install the latest machinery led to a disagreement between the directors, which got completely out of hand. Things were so bad that the business could not continue to operate, and as a result 87% of the capital was acquired by John Russell & Company who set about the task of sorting things out.

The new owners found that the factory was “a rabbit warren of small shops impossible to supervise”. Many of the antiquated machines were only suitable for scrap, the men were obstructive and the foremen had no control over them.  They were very critical of the management, who had no accurate means of stocktaking or analysis of sales, and hardly ever visited their depots.

Crown Tube Works was bombed in World War One during a Zeppelin raid. On 31st January, 1916, nine German Zeppelin airships left their bases to carry out bombing raids over England. The target was Liverpool, but two of them got lost and ended-up over Wednesbury. One of them, L21, captained by 45 years old Max Dietrich dropped bombs on Tipton, Bradley, Wednesbury and Walsall before returning home. As it neared Wednesbury, the airship flew across the relatively dark area of Lea Brook, heading for the brightly lit town centre. As it travelled towards the High Bullen, bombs were dropped around King Street and on the Crown Tube Works, setting the huge factory alight.

Sadly one of the bombs destroyed the house at number 13 King Street and badly damaged number 14 next door, killing four members of the Smith family. They were Joseph Horton Smith, aged 37, Nellie Smith, aged 13, Thomas Smith, aged 11, and Ina Smith, aged 7, whose body had been blown onto the roof of the tube factory.

An advert from 1922.

The decision was taken to close and demolish Crown Works and temporarily transfer the business to their Walsall factory and the old Wellcroft Street works at Wednesbury. They also opened a new tube works at Runcorn and built a new Crown Tube Works at Hill Top, near the railway and the Tame Valley Canal. Unfortunately both ventures were unsuccessful and the company sold out to Stewarts and Lloyds in 1929.

In 1928 Stewarts and Lloyds also acquired another tube works in Wednesbury, the Prothero Steel Tube Company Limited, founded in 1926. They manufactured hot rolled and cold drawn weldless tubes. Just before the outbreak of war in 1939 the Crown Works were equipped with shell making equipment to produce shell forgings as part of the war effort.

One remnant of the old Crown Tube Works at the High Bullen remained until 1989, that was George Croft's Bright Drawn Steels.

Globe Tube Works

In 1849 Cornelius Whitehouse founded the Globe Tube Works at Holloway Bank, the first joint stock limited company in the town. Unfortunately he was no businessman and the company failed in the 1875-1886 depression, the only tube works to do so. He died in poverty in 1883. The works reopened in 1882 after being acquired by John Spencer. The factory remained in business until 1935 when John Spencer Limited was taken over and closed by Stewarts and Lloyds.

Other Early Tube Works

In the 1850s and 1860s a number of ex-Crown Works employees set themselves up in business making hand-forged tube fittings. Such enterprises required little start-up capital and mainly relied on the skill of the workers. One of them, John Knowles, who founded Walsall Street Works in 1850 went on to become the main producer of tube fittings. Others tube manufacturers were Job Edwards’ Junction Works founded in 1863, and Eagle Works founded in 1880. The business was eventually taken over by Wellington Tube Works.

James McDougall founded the highly successful Hope Patent Tube Works in 1869 which became the first factory in the area to produce weldless tubes. Sales of the tubes were extremely high thanks to their many and diverse uses including bicycle frames and bedsteads. In 1913 McDougall purchased the Imperial Tube Works from Isaac Griffiths & Sons Limited.

An advert from 1922.

The text above and the advert below were taken from the 1918 Wednesbury Official Handbook.

By World War One Wednesbury had lost its dominant position in the industry. The largest manufacturer at the time, Stewarts and Lloyds, of Halesowen easily exceeded Wednesbury's total annual production.

Wednesbury's older factories were suffering from a general lack of much needed investment. Much of the machinery was old-fashioned and by 1906 the wages bill amounted to 84% of the total production cost.

The town continued to concentrate on iron tubes and by the 1930s many of the factories had closed.

In 1924 Griffiths & Billingsley Limited, of Alma Street was purchased and closed by the British Tube Association. In 1935 it was the turn of Edward Smith Limited, who were purchased and closed by the Wellington Tube Works.

Other companies survived for much longer. John Knowles Limited of Walsall Street was purchased by Tipper Brothers. It was still going in the 1960s as were Thomas Pritchard & Company, and Foster Brothers.

In 1937 a new company, founded by Percy Newman appeared, and built a large up-to-date factory. This was Newman Tubes Limited in Holyhead Road who began to produce cold drawn weldless steel tubes.

In 1947 a new automatic mill was installed for the production of electrically welded tubes.

The business became Newman-Monmore Tubes of Western Way, one of Wednesbury's main tube producers.

An advert from 1949.