James Watt & Co. Correspondence

Outgoing Correspondence

Letter Book (Copying Machines).
This is the first James Watt & Co. letter book – Boulton, Watt and Keir went into partnership in March 1780. The first letters describe Watt’s continuing experiments with paper. The book contains some letters signed by the partners, and some administrative letters written by John Buchanan and John Roberts or simply signed ‘Jas. Watt & Co.’. Some form of James Watt & Co. letter books were presumably continued after this one, but it is impossible to say how many came inbetween this one and the next two books.
The book was re-bound by the Library. Its index is missing, and it has been erroneously titled as a ‘Boulton & Watt Office Letter Book’ on the spine.

Letter Books.
These letter books contain ‘administrative’ letters concerning the sale and delivery of presses, customers’ accounts, and so on. The letters were written by William D. Brown until his death in 1819, then William Burdon, and occasionally Zaccheus Walker. The series appears to have been discontinued, as the final third of the second book is unused.
Both books are indexed. The second book has been re-bound by the Library, and has been erroneously titled as a Foundry Letter Book on the spine.

Incoming Correspondence.
Only one small file of incoming correspondence survives. The letters in the file are miscellaneous in nature, and may have been removed from the steam engine general correspondence files (3/370-3/423). The correspondents include the London copying machine agent James Woodmason, and ‘significant’ customers such as the Duke of Richmond, Thomas Wedgwood and Fermin de Tastet & Co. Presumably there was once a large volume of routine copying machine incoming letters which have not survived.

The Correspondence is arranged as follows:
Outgoing Correspondence (letter books)
Incoming Correspondence (file of letters)

More detailed information on each series is given in the Description field, while reference numbers and covering dates of the actual records, and a list of the old reference numbers will be found in the pdf of the full series list attached. Item level lists are available in the searchroom of Birmingham Archives and Heritage.

There are no restrictions on access to or use of the James Watt & Co. Correspondence. However fragile items or those in a poor state of repair may not be served at the discretion of the Duty Archivist.

The records listed here are the surviving items of correspondence of James Watt & Co., the copying machine manufacturing business based at Soho Manufactory. James Watt & Co.?s correspondence was dealt with by the partners and clerks at Soho Manufactory, and the books were kept alongside those of the steam engine business, indeed the two sets of records were not consistently kept apart, so it is hard to tell just how extensive the copying machine business? records originally were.

Copying press correspondence was intially kept separately, as was pointed out to their agent James Woodmason on 12 August 1780: ?Please to address your letters & open your acct. in name of Jas. Watt & Co. as a quite different business is carried on under the firm of Boulton & Watt.?(See the Letter Book MS 3147/19/1). However outgoing letters concerning the copying machine business were pasted into the steam engine business letter books, (For example see letters of 10 Dec. 1795 and 10 May 1796 in the Clerks? Letter Book MS 3147/3/191 and 24 and 29 Mar 1800 in the engine firm?s Letter Book MS 3147/3/95) and many letters mentioning copy machine business were placed with the bundles of general steam engine business incoming correspondence. Distinct copy press letter books were kept from September 1813 to July 1826, when much of the administration was being carried out by William D. Brown, but this practice seems to have been discontinued under William Burdon. It also seems likely that bundles of separate copying machine business incoming letters were kept.For more information on the people and businesses mentioned in this Introduction, see The Guide to Persons & Firms in the Archives Searchroom.