page_title: Benjamin Hick
hierarchical_section_title: Benjamin Hick
caption_attribution_description: English: Photograph of a portrait of Benjamin Hick, engineer
context_page_description: Benjamin Hick was an English civil and mechanical engineer, art collector and patron; his improvements to the steam engine and invention of scientific tools were held in high esteem by the engineering profession, some of Hick's improvements became public property without claiming the patent rights he was entitled to.
  He was born at Huddersfield, and christened in the Independent, dissenter's chapel at Highfield, his parents moving shortly afterwards to Leeds where he was educated. Henry Venn was vicar of Huddersfield parish until 1771.
  Hick's aptitude for mechanics and passion for drawing led to an apprentiship in 1804 as a draughtsman with Fenton, Murray and Wood at the Round Foundry in Holbeck. The company made steam engines, textile and other machinery; here he was entrusted with the installation of several large steam engines and offered a partnership when his apprenticeship expired. The offer was declined and Hick moved instead to Bolton in 1810 to work for Smalley, Thwaites and Company as manager of Rothwell's Union Foundry on Blackhorse Street.
context_section_description: Benjamin Hick (1 August 1790 – 9 September 1842) was an English civil and mechanical engineer, art collector and patron; his improvements to the steam engine and invention of scientific tools were held in high esteem by the engineering profession, some of Hick's improvements became public property without claiming the patent rights he was entitled to.
  He was born at Huddersfield, and christened in the Independent, dissenter's chapel at Highfield, his parents moving shortly afterwards to Leeds where he was educated. Henry Venn was vicar of Huddersfield parish until 1771.
  Hick's aptitude for mechanics and passion for drawing led to an apprentiship in 1804 (age 14) as a draughtsman with Fenton, Murray and Wood at the Round Foundry in Holbeck. The company made steam engines, textile and other machinery; here he was entrusted with the installation of several large steam engines and offered a partnership when his apprenticeship expired. The offer was declined and Hick moved instead to Bolton in 1810 to work for Smalley, Thwaites and Company as manager of Rothwell's Union Foundry on Blackhorse Street.
  His brother John Hick also trained as an engineer, in 1808 John left Fenton, Murray & Wood to take up the position of "book-keeper and traveller" for John Sturges and Co. at the Bowling Iron Works near Bradford.
  In July 1820 Hick joined other leading industrialists Isaac Dobson, Thomas Hardcastle and Peter Rothwell together with engineer Joshua Routledge to form the Bolton Gaslight and Coke Company, providing gas for public buildings, street lamps and industrial lighting. With the inevitable fire risk of naked flame, the Great Bolton Trustees and a number of mill owners bought horse-drawn fire engines; Hick became a Trustee of Great Bolton during the early 1820s, he was an Anglican and prominent member of Bolton's Pitt Club, formed 1809 as a "political organisation composed of the admirers of William Pitt", that helped Hick move amongst the middle class social elite of the time.
  The Dobsons (Isaac and Benjamin), Hick, Rothwell, John Kennedy and others were members of a "prosecution" club (formed 1801), meeting at the Black Horse pub in Bolton, that in 1824 secured an annuity for the inventor and fellow member Samuel Crompton, who also frequented the Inn. Hick joined the Institution of Civil Engineers in the same year, proposed by Joshua Field, Joseph Farey and James Jones. Also with Rothwell and the Dobsons, Hick was a prominent member of the Black Horse Club, that met "to discuss not only business matters but the most interesting topics affecting that period".
  Together with many other leading figures from the Bolton area, including those from the Black Horse Club, Hick was a promoter and with Peter Rothwell an original shareholder of the Bolton and Leigh Railway that opened 1 August 1828 with the naming of the locomotive Lancashire Witch by Mrs Hulton, wife of the vilified William Hulton JP, High Sheriff of Lancashire and collier. Robert Stephenson was driver of the engine he designed and built with chief engineer George Stephenson, who was a passenger with the other guests. Following the occasion that gathered crowds of 40–50 thousand people, in October 1828, Hick and Rothwell received Robert Peel, then home secretary, as a guest at their foundry.
  In 1837 Hick was, among other local figures including Thomas Ridgway (1778–1839), Edward Bolling, John Hargreaves elder (1780–1860) and Jr, a member of the Provisional Committee of the Bolton and Preston Railway. By 1841 Hick was Deputy chairman and a Director with chairman John Hargreaves; the two families (Hick and Hargreaves) were linked by marriage in 1836. Chief engineer was John Urpeth Rastrick and resident engineer Alexander James Adie, son of Alexander Adie inventor of the sympiesometer. The line opened 22 June 1843 after Hick's death, following some problems in its construction, and merged with the North Union Railway Company 10 May 1844. Hick's executorial trustee, solicitor and banker Thomas Lever Rushton (1810–1883), by then a director of the railway, was part of the negoti
caption: c.1840[1] by George Patten ARA (1801–1865)
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