James Keir

James Keir (20 September 1735 – 11 October 1820) was a Scottish chemist, geologist, industrialist, and inventor, and an important member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham.[5][8] He is best remembered as a chemist and industrialist, but he was also an author, translator, geologist, metallurgist, and military captain.[7] His long career effectively covered the period of the scientific revolution out of which modern chemistry evolved.[14]

Early Life and Education

James Keir was born in Stirlingshire, Scotland on 29 September 1735 and was the last of eighteen children born to John Keir (1686-1743) and Magdaline Lind (1691-1775).[7] Both the Keir and Lind families had considerable wealth and were influential in Edinburgh politics.[7] John served in various capacities on the Town Council before he died in 1743 and Magdaline sold the family estates of Muirton and Queenshaugh to care for her large family, including James who was just eight years old.[7]

James attended the Royal High School, Edinburgh, and studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh where he met and formed a lasting friendship with Erasmus Darwin.[5] Whilst studying medicine and chemistry at the University of Edinburgh he met Erasmus Darwin. The two would enjoy a life-long friendship.[3]

Military Career

At the age of 22, Keir joined the army and was commissioned into the 61st Regiment (now the Gloucestershire Regiment). During the seven years' war he was stationed with his regiment in the West Indies.[5] He became lieutenant on, 31 March 1759, captain-lieutenant on 16 May 1766, and captain on 23 June of the same year.[5]

Following the end of active campaigning in the Seven Years' War, Keir grew disillusioned with military life due to the prevailing disinterest among his fellow officers in his chemical experiments and scholarly pursuits. In spring 1768, he resigned his captain's commission in the 61st Regiment of Foot to dedicate himself fully to scientific study.[8] He found, however, one congenial friend in Alexander Blair, afterwards a captain in the 69th regiment of foot.[27]

Scientific Achievements and Publications

Glass and Geological Research

In 1772, with others, Keir leased a long-established glassworks at Amblecote near Stourbridge, which he managed. Partners included Samuel Skey (who manufactured vitriol near Bewdley) and John Taylor (a leading Birmingham manufacturer).[5] While there, Keir continued his chemical experiments, particularly into the properties of alkalis.[5]

Keir owned and/or managed a series of manufacturing firms (even running Boulton & Watt's steam engine factory for a period), but it was early on, in 1776, while managing a glass factory, that he made his most important scientific discovery. He found that if the molten glass were cooled very slowly, it did not become glass at all, but assumed a crystalline structure, like fine-grained basalt.[1] Keir, in a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1776, argued that his experiments indicated that basalt is an igneous rock, cooled directly from a molten state.[1] He even suggested that places with extensive basalt formations, such as the Giant's Causeway in Ireland, or Fingal's Cave in Scotland, were formed by volcanoes long since vanished.[1]

Chemical Research and Publications

Early in the same year Keir completed his translation of Macquer's Dictionnaire de Chymie, with additions and notes, published at London in two quarto volumes.[5] In 1777 he issued a Treatise on the Different kinds of Elastic Fluids or Gases (new edition, 1779).[5]

When Joseph Priestley came to Birmingham in 1780, he found an able assistant in Keir, who had discovered the distinction between carbon dioxide gas and atmospheric air. Keir worked closely with Priestley to investigate the properties of gases.[5]

Keir published the first part of his "Dictionary of Chemistry" in 1789. He discontinued it upon becoming convinced of the weakness of his theory of phlogiston.[5] Keir was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on 8 December 1785.[3]

Industrial Ventures

Soho Manufactory

Taking up an offer from Matthew Boulton he moved to Winson Green to be closer to the Soho Manufactory where he became involved in its manufacturing and marketing practices.[3] Keir gave up his glass business in 1778 and became sole manager of the Soho Engineering Works during the absence of Boulton and Watt, but he declined their offer of a partnership.[6]

At some point during their collaboration at Soho, Boulton and Keir developed a gold-coloured metallic alloy consisting of copper, zinc and iron (Eldorado). Keir took out a sole patent for this in 1779.[3] Through the work of architects like Robert Adam and John Soan, this material was incorporated into many buildings thoughout the kingdom. Some of the Eldorado window glazing bars at Soho House still remain today.[3]

Tipton Chemical Works

In 1780 Keir, in conjunction with Alexander Blair (then retired from the army), established a chemical works at Tipton, near Dudley, for the manufacture of alkali from the sulfates of potash and soda, to which he afterwards added a soap manufactory.[5] The manufactory was located along the Birmingham Canal at the former site of Bloomsmithy Mill, in an area later referred to as Black Country due to the heavy pollution from the concentration of factories and coal mines in the region. The location was advantageous due to the close proximity of inexpensive fuel sources and the convenience of the canal.[24]

Tipton Chemical Works quickly became Keir's greatest accomplishment, producing an estimated 1 million pounds of soap a year, a scale of operations in the late 18th century exceeded only by the Soho Company.[24] In 1794 Keir and Blair purchased Tividale Colliery. The coalmine provided fuel for the chemical works and geological specimens for Keir to study.[3]

Lunar Society of Birmingham

From the time he settled in the West Midlands Keir was connected with the Lunar Society of Birmingham.[3] In 1767, James Keir visited Darwin and decided to move to Birmingham to join the group.[12] Keir himself played a significant part in that revolution, as writer, experimenter, and industrialist—and, by no means least, as a frequent 'chairman' at meetings of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, which he helped to hold together by his tact and force of character.[14]

The Lunar Society of Birmingham was an informal club of natural philosophers, industrialists, and intellectuals that met regularly between 1765 and 1813 in Birmingham, England. The society gained its name from its practice of meeting monthly on the Monday nearest to the full moon, as the extra moonlight made nighttime travel safer on unlit roads.[15] The Lunar Society was an exclusive club that never had more than fourteen core members, each noted for their special area of expertise including the greatest engineers, scientists and thinkers of the day.[15]

Fourteen individuals have been identified as having verifiably attended Lunar Society meetings regularly over a long period during its most productive eras: these are Matthew Boulton, Erasmus Darwin, Thomas Day, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Samuel Galton, Jr., Robert Augustus Johnson, James Keir, Joseph Priestley, William Small, Jonathan Stokes, James Watt, Josiah Wedgwood, John Whitehurst and William Withering.[17]

An extensive intellectual and scientific network supported Keir's chemical industry. Fruitful correspondence and frequent meetings wove together the skills of the Lunar Society of Birmingham and its peripheral members, fomenting scientific, industrial and legal dialogues that definitively shaped the birth and growth of Keir's alkali and soap-making pursuits at Tipton.[21]

Personal Life

Keir married Susanna Harvey, daughter of a Birmingham button manufacturer, in 1770. The couple had two children: a son named Francis, who died in infancy, and a daughter, Amelia, born in 1780.[8] Amelia married John Lewis Moilliet, a Geneva-born merchant and banker in Birmingham, in 1801.[8] Susanna died suddenly on 20 November 1802 at age 55 and was buried at West Bromwich parish church; Keir thereafter wore her wedding ring on a chain around his neck until his own death.[8]

Keir ultimately settled at Hill Top, West Bromwich, Staffordshire, and devoted himself to chemistry and geology.[5] On 19 December 1807, while Keir was staying with Blair at Hilton Park, his house at West Bromwich was burnt, though most of his books and papers were saved.[5]

Literary and Biographical Work

He suggested improvements to the second part of Erasmus Darwin's Botanic Garden. After the death of Thomas Day, at his widow's request he composed a biography of his fellow member of the Lunar Society.[6] Keir was also active in the political sphere and sympathized with the French and American revolutions. In 1790, he published An Essay on the Martial Character of Nations and in 1803 wrote Reflexions on the Invasion of Great-Britain by the French Armies.[24]

Legacy and Death

Keir remained involved with Tipton Chemical Works up until 1811, at which time he relinquished control to Blair. Unbeknownst to Keir, Blair had apparently embezzled thousands of pounds from Tipton Chemical Works over the years to pay off his gambling debts, nearly destroying the company in the process.[24]

Following Keir's death on 11 October 1820 at age 85, he was buried in All Saints Churchyard, West Bromwich, where his grave serves as the primary physical memorial, though he explicitly requested no monument be erected over it—a wish respected by his family.[8] In 1859, Moilliet compiled and privately circulated Sketch of the Life of James Keir, Esq., F.R.S., with a Selection from His Correspondence, framing it as a domestic tribute to preserve his character and contributions for descendants; this included tributes like Sir Humphry Davy's description of Keir as "both an amiable and a great man." The work highlighted his humility and scientific pursuits, serving as an informal biographical memorial amid limited public commemorations.[8]

Although there are frequent references to Keir in books and articles dealing with the period, he remains relatively unknown, partly because he was overshadowed by men like Priestley and Watt, partly because he adhered too long to the phlogiston theory, and perhaps also because of his own modesty.[14]