One of the fascinating letters received by Richard Hall was a ten page account of the riots in Birmingham occasioned by the Mob objecting to Joseph Priestley’s support for the French Revolution. The year was 1791, and the local Press had given notice of a Bastille Day Dinner to mark the second anniversary of the Revolution. Priestley wisely declined to attend but the embittered locals were not to be denied, and they went on the rampage anyway, making their way towards the home where the great man lived. The letter describes the Mob’s progress as a succession of buildings were raised to the ground.  Priestley had got wind of the rampage and had high-tailed it, but that didn’t stop the rioters ransacking his house, helping themselves to the contents of  his wine cellar, and then, having been suitably refreshed, they destroyed  his laboratory, his library, his collection of unpublished manuscripts – the lot were consigned to the flames. Poor Joseph and his wife could see the inferno as they sheltered with friends a mile off.

Portrait of Joseph Priestley by Ozias Humphry 

The man was an intellectual giant - one of many thrown up in this remarkable century. At school he had  learnt Latin and Greek, (and, in the holidays, Hebrew!) but when recovering  from tuberculosis at home, taught himself French, German and Italian as well as the more esoteric languages such as Chaldean, Syrian and Arabic. At first he seemed destined for the church – but his unorthodox views (and a bad stutter) probably didn’t endear him to his congregations.

 Joseph Priestley also discovered hydrochloric acid, nitrous oxide (laughing gas), carbon monoxide, and sulphur dioxide. In 1767, the first drinkable man-made carbonated water (soda water) was invented by him.

 He went on to publish a paper called Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed Air (1772), which explained how to make soda water. However, Priestley chose not to exploit the commercial opportunities offered by the invention – this was left to people like Herr Schweppe, as mentioned in an earlier blog.

 Poor Priestley: after the Birmingham riot he and his wife fled to London with ‘nothing more than the clothes we happened to have on’ never to return home. He was ridiculed, burnt in effigy and criticised relentlessly for his political views (probably not helped when the French government made him an honorary Frenchman!). He was shunned by the Royal Society, denounced from the pulpit, and subjected to hate mail. Small wonder that he decided to join his sons in America, sailing there in 1794 intent on promoting the religious and political freedom so denied him on these shores.

 In America he was feted and honoured, and befriended first by John Adams and then by Thomas Jefferson. His benediction at a dinner in his honour hosted by the American Philiosophical Society was truly prophetic:

 ‘Having been obliged to leave a country which has been long distinguished by discoveries in science, I think myself happy by my reception in another which is following its example, and which already affords a prospect of its arriving at equal eminence. ‘

 He died in 1804.

 And one final point which alone should earn Priestley  a place in the Hall of Fame: he discovered the first pencil eraser – noting in his  diary on 15 April 1770 "I have seen a substance excellently adapted to the purpose of wiping from paper the mark of black lead pencil." He called it a rubber. Where would we be without him – no Coke, no dephlogisticated air and no way of correcting mistakes!