A NEW METHOD OF MAKING SOAP AND BLEACHING BY MEANS AND USE OF VOLATILE, MINERAL, AND VEGETABLE ALKALIES, EITHER BY JOINING THEM WITH EACH OTHER OR USING THE VOLATILE ALKALIES BY ITSELF, AND OF KILLING VERMINE, AND PRESERVING SEEDS BY THOSE ALKALIES FROM BIRDS, AND VERMINE
Year: 1799

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, JOHN
CROOKS, of Edinburgh, Chymist, send greeting.
WHEREAS I did, by my Petition, humbly represent unto His present most
Excellent Majesty King George the Third, that I had, after much trouble,
labour, and expence, found out and invented "A NEW METHOD OF MAKING
SOAP AND BLEACHING BY MEANS AND USE OF VOLATILE, MINERAL, AND VEGETABLE
ALKALIES, EITHER BY JOINING THEM WITH EACH OTHER OR USING THE VOLATILE
ALKALIES BY ITSELF, AND OF KILLING VERMINE, AND PRESERVING SEEDS BY THOSE
ALKALIES FROM BIRDS, AND VERMINE," and therefore most humbly prayed His
said Majesty that He would be graciously pleased to grant unto me, my execu-
tors, administrators, and assigns, His Majesty's Royal Letters Patent, under
His Great Seal of Great Britain, for the sole use, benefit, and advantage
of my said Inventions within that part of Great Britain called England,
His Dominion of Wales, and Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, for the term
of fourteen years; and His said Majesty, being willing to give encourage-
ment to all arts and inventions which might be for the publick good, was
gratiously pleased to condescend to my request; and therefore by His Majesty's
Royal Leters Patent, bearing date at Westminster, the Twenty-third day of
September last past, of His especial grace, certain knowledge, and mere
motion, for Himself, His heirs, and successors, did give and grant unto me,
the said John Crooks, my executors, administrators, and assigns, His special
licence, full power, sole privilege and authority, that I, the said John Crooks,
"

page_text: my executors, administrators, and assigns, and every of them, by myself and
themselves, or by my or their deputy or deputies, servants or agents, or
such others as I, the said John Crooks, my executors, administrators, or assigns,
should at any time agree with, and no other persons, from time to time and at
all times hereafter during the term of years therein expressed, should and law-
fully might make, use, exercise, and vend my said Invention within that part
of His said Majesty's Kingdom of Great Britain called England, His Dominion
of Wales, and Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, in such manner as to me, the
said John Crooks, my 'exors, admors, and assigns, or any of them, should
in my or their discretion seem meet, and that I, the said John Crooks, my
executors, administrators, and assigns, should and lawfully might have and
enjoy the whole profit, benefit, commodity, and advantage from time to time
coming, growing, accruing, and arising by reason of the said Inventions, for
and during the term of years therein mentioned, to have, hold, exercise, and
enjoy the said license, powers, privileges, and advantages therein-before granted
or mentioned to be granted unto me, the said John Crooks, my executors,
administrators, or assigns, for and during and until the full end and term of
fourteen years from the date of the said Letters Patent next and immediately
ensuing, and fully to be compleat and ended, according to the form of the Statute
in such case made and provided; in which said Letters Patent is contained a
proviso that if I, the said John Crooks, should not particularly describe and as-
certain the nature of my said Inventions, and in what manner the same was to
be performed, by an instrument in writing under my hand and seal, and
cause the same to be inrolled in His said Majesty's High Court of Chancery
within one calendar month next after the date of the said Letters Patent,
then the said Letters Patent, and all liberties and advantages whatsoever
thereby granted, should utterly cease, determine, and become void, anything
therein-before contained to the contrary thereof in anywise notwithstanding,
as in and by the said Letters Patent, reference being thereunto had, may more
fully and at large appear.
NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, I, the said
John Crooks, do hereby describe and ascertain the nature of my said Inven-
tions, and in what manner the same are to be performed, that is to say:-
Number First.I make soap with volatile alkalies, as substitutes for the fixt
alkalies, vegetable or mineral; in doing so I use volatile alkali either in its
unextracted state contained in urine, or in its extracted state, when distilled
from urine or other substances in which there is a volatile alkali, such as soot.
I make a ley from these volatile alkalies and hot unslacked lime. The
proportions are one part of unslacked lime to eight parts of raw urine about

page_text: a week, old in summer, and two, three, or four weeks old in the colder seasons.
The two continue in the cask six or eight hours, and the clear liquor, that
is the ley, is drawn off through a bung hole a few inches from the bottom.
But the ley must be made in a fir. cask or an iron vessell, not, in an oak.cask,
on account of its astringent and blackening qualities. This ley I add to the
common materials used in making soaps, and particularly in making fish soap,
as described in my Specification of my former Patent, and inrolled in. His
Majesty's High Court of Chancery, bearing date the Twelfth day of December,
One thousand. seven hundred and ninety-seven,, in doing of which I use or
do not use the help of vegetable or mineral alkalies, though it is best to add
part of them, and I make the fish soap either with tallow or oil or without
them.. But whereas leys from vegetable or mineral alkalies have hitherto
been always made with water, which weakens their strength, I. make them;
for fish soap, for example, in a great measure from the unextracted volatile
alkali ley, made caustic as above. The proportions are, one part of vegetable
alkali; eight parts of fish, more or less, according to the poor or rich quality
of them; eight parts.of urine made into caustic ley with hot lime, as above;
with sixteen parts of water in making those leys; and to prevent the fishy
smell in fish soap, eight pounds of green spierment. or four pounds of dry
spierment in a net must be added to one hundredweight of the soap when
it is beginning to thicken, that is, a little time before it approaches to the
thickness of treacle, and the whole lee finished off into soap by a slow fire;
or other scents might be applied, such as thyme, bergamot, wormwood, pepper-
mint, or their oils, &c. But if enough of urine could be got, the leys may
be made from it, with very little or no water, by which the soap would be
greatly stronger than any hitherto made, and spierment must be added in
proportion to the additional leys. The proportion in washing with the above
soap is, to mix two thirds water with one third unextracted alkali, not made
into a ley at all, though the proportions may be varied according as a washing
liquor of a stronger or less strong quality is needed. To prevent deception,
the strength of urines may be known. by an hydrometer, which will ascertain
their power; and if their smell be offensive, spierment or other scents may be
added by steeping in the liquor. In making the fish. soap, the leys of the
vegetable alkalies must be thrown in first among the fish, in order to tear
the parts asunder, and dissolve the bones; and when that is obtained, or nearly
obtained, the leys should afterwards. be added. To prevent the votatlle
alkali from evaporating in the soap-boiling vessell, a contrivance for saving
it will be pointed out in Number Three. In case it should be found that the
fish soap, made as directed in the Specification of my former or this Patent,

page_text: should prove of too liquid a nature, from the too loose texture of the fish
or from too much aqueous substance in the boiling vessell,. the remedy is easy, by
boiling from a quarter of an hour to half an hour longer, which will evaporate
the aqueous parts, and make the soap of a proper consistence. To prevent all
possibility of any part of the small bones of the fish remaining undigested in the
liquor (which, however, is almost impossible if the mixtures and boilings be pro-
per), the liquor 'should be filtrated through a sieve, before the soap is thickned,
through which the soapy matter will pass, and the bones remain behind, to be'
either thrown away, or, when mashed, beat, or squeezed into an impalpable
substance, to be thrown into the next boiling, where, if they had not been
dissolved in the first boiling, they will for certain be dissolved in the second.
Lastly, in the very operation of making the fish soap, the oil, isinglass, and
glue, which are contained in the fish, may be obtained without almost any
additional expence. The operation of making soap from fish consists simply
of boiling. The oil, being lightest, swims to the top, and is scummed off,
which nearly pays; the herring commonly' reckoned, to be, one ton of oil from
sixteen tons of herring. The boiling proceeds, and a substance filtrates through
canvas bags and becomes isinglass or glue, which you please. If isinglass
be chosen, the quantity may be about twelve hundredweight, at two hundred
and fifty pounds a ton, and these pay most of the pot ash and other expenses;
what remains in the caldron is the material of the soap and may be con-
verted into soap at pleasure. It may amount to about six tons from the
original sixteen tons of herring, so that, properly speaking, the fish soap is
got for almost nothing. These calculations, however, depend much upon the
strength of the pot ash, and the quantity and strength of the urine made
use of.
Number Second-Upon the same principle of the power of volatile alkali,
I give additional strength to soaps of any kind, black, yellow, white, or fish
already made, when they come to be used, by adding the above caustic un-
extracted volatile alkali leys; or extracted volatile alkali leys made in fir casks
or iron vessells, to the soaps. If extracted volatile alkali be chosen, it must
be made exceeding caustic by the addition of more hot lime in the ley. The
effect will be, to add the new power of the two alkalies respectively to the original
power of the soaps. The operation consists in adding them to the soap a fort-
night before it is to be used. If equal parts are added, the same proportion of
spierment as is mentioned-in-the last number may be added. When the mix-
ture is made, the substances must be stirred about, in a vessel divided by cross
pieces of wood or arms in the inside, turned round by the hand or some piece of
machinery, as long as the parts are separable from each other, and until they

page_text: unite. If an equal part of urine be added to black soap, by which I mean.
soft soap, either made in the common way or from. fish, the colour of the soap.
will become as clear as amber. If two parts of urine be added to one of soap,*
the colour will become white, like white soap; the addition of urine must be:
made a pound to the original pound of soap, repeated as the interval of every
six or eight hours as long as the soap continues to be good. In order to make-
the dissolution easier, the urine may be added when the soap is in a boiling.
state, provided raw urine be used; but if extracted volatile alkali be used, it
must only be when the soap is in a blood-warm state, because otherwise the
extracted volatile alkali would, by the heat, fly off in an open vessell. For the
same reason it is to observed that the soap to which the extracted volatile.
alkali is added can be only used in washing with cold or blood-warm water,'
because it would escape in hot water; whereas soap to which raw urine is.
added washes in cold water or boils in hot water, because the urine: being used.
in its own native state, and not in the artificial state of the extracted volatile.
alkali, the volatile alkali remains in it and cannot escape by evaporation. Care
must also be taken, when the washing begins, to mix the solid and liquid parts.
of the soaps well together, lest the solid parts, having sunk to the bottom,
should have carried the strongest parts of the soap with them. To use soap
in washing in the above condition, raw urine, without the addition of being made
caustic, is mixed with the water, and if scent is required it may be added as'
above.
:
Number Three. I purify green goods from their vegetable oils, whether.
cotton, linen, silk, their yarns or threads, candlewicks, and such articles, with
the above volatile alkalies, but with this difference, that I do not use a grain of.
soap, tallow, oil, or alkali, either vegetable or mineral, and nothing but the..
cheapest of all articles, the raw urine of men and beasts, or soot, converted
into a ley with hot lime: I take one of the common boilers which bleaches or
dyers use, and convert it into an apparatus, in which the powers of boiling, and
of steam; and of distilling, are combined, by the following simple process and
addition to the boiler:-The boiler is covered with a lid of wood, which is:
lined in the inside with a thin plate of lead to prevent corrosion, such as the:
tea boxes from China are made of. From the top of this boiler runs a hori-
zontal long iron pipe, to which are joined at right angles short iron pipes, which
conduct to the reservoirs in which the green goods are to be purified. The-
boiler is filled with 'the leys made from volatile alkali às above. The steam
rushes from the boiler through the long pipe, and from it through the short-
pipes into the purifying receivers, in which the goods are suspended, and
are there purified. On the long pipes, at points corresponding to the short

page_text: pipes, are valves, and on the short pipes themselves are valves, both of them
to regulate the admission of the steam into the long or the short pipes. These
reservoirs are of wood or any other materials lined with the above lead. The
steam will prevent the bottom of the purifier from heating, a circumstance too
common when boiling is used; and the lead will prevent the discolouring of the
goods, a circumstance too common from the over heating of boiling vessels.
A perpendicular pipe is inserted into the top of each purifying vessel, from the
top. of which descends another pipe, which passes through a vessel full of cold
water into a receiver, in which it condenses, and from the bottom of this con-
denser another pipe passes either through the same vessell of cold water: or
through the
open air into the bottom of the boiling vessell in which boiling
water is contained, and into which the condensed volatile alkali falls, and
joins itself, so that there is a continual rotation of purifying the goods, and of
extracting, using, recovering, rectifying, and improving the alkali, and all the
dangers are avoided of the common way of purifying green goods by boiling. A
Drawing is annexed, No. 3. But if soot be used, the process is as follows:
A cask is taken which has a double bottom, the upper one of which is perfo-
rated with small holes, and the under one has at one side of the bottom a bung
hole and plug. The soot is thrown upon the upper false bottom; straw, or
other open substances, such as mattresses, is laid between the two bottoms.
The plug is kept shut. Water is then thrown upon the soot, and the whole
stands drenched for six hours, during which time the liquor passes through the
soot and straw, and is then let off through the bung hole into a fir cask or iron
vessell, in which one pound of hot lime is added to every eight pounds of the
liquor and lastly, this ley is used in purifying green goods in the combined
apparatus, as has been above described. In both cases the volatile alkali may
be kept apart by stopping the passage between the condenser and the boiler,
which will detain it in the condenser, from whence it may, by a lock, be let to
fall into another cask. In which case it may be either applied to the most
important of all objects to a naval nation, videlicet, preserving fish, when in
any season or place there is a superabundance of them, in order to form a
saponaceous matter to be. converted afterwards into soap when needed, as pro-
posed in my former Patent, or be sold to the makers of salmoniac, magnesia,
sellers of hartshorn, or other manufacturers who make use of volatile alkali, or
be added to soaps, making or made, in order to encrease by its power their
power, as has been decided under Numbers 1 and 2, by which a new and vast-
creation of volatile alkali may be obtained for the benefit of human kind. I
said, under Number One, that the extracted volatile alkali might be saved in
making soaps by means of unextracted volatile alkali, which would be ex-

page_text: plained under Number Three. The example in making fish soft soap-follows.
The lid of the boiler in which the fish and leys are boiled must be kept open
in boiling till the particles of the fish are torn 'in pieces by the leys of the pot
ash, and the leys of the volatile alkali are added. But as soon as these last
are added the lid must be shut, in order to prevent the volatile alkali from
escaping, and force it to rise in the ascending pipe of the still part of the
apparatus to descend in the descending one to pass through cold water, to con-
dense itself there, and either to be preserved there apart for separate uses, or
to be let fall from thence into the boiler, to be there used in rotation in making
soap, in the same manner as has been just described for purifying green
goods. In this process, as soon as all the volatile alkali comes over
in the condenser, which it will soon do on account of its volatile nature,
the lid of the boiler may be opened to let the water evaporate in the
common way. But until that happens, a handle of wood in the boiler, with
cross sticks somewhat in the form of a chocolate stick, should be almost
continually turning round, in order to prevent the substances in the boiler
ádhering to the bottom of it, and the whole through which the turning stick
passes should be protected from the entrance of air by a cloth wrapped round
the stick. after which the liquor in the open vessell must be stirred about in
the common way that fish soap is made.
Number Four. I make soap from the bones of the largest land and sea
animals, and from those vegetable substances which contain saponaceous
imatter, such as potatoes, and even flour or rice, though seemingly among
the least unctuous of vegetables. This is done by grinding those articles to a
powder, and then using volatile alkali's with them as above directeil. But all
of them, even soap from bones, in making, I assist with an eighth part of oil.
These soaps have three advantages over even fish soap, though otherwise
the best of all-First, they can be made in such great cities as are distant
from great supplies of fish, but in which supplies of animals' bones, of
vegetables containing saponaceous matter, and of urine may be found, such
as, in and round London and the great inland manufacturing Towns of Britain
and Ireland; secondly, the soaps have no fishy smell, and therefore require
no scent to take it off; and, lastly, from this last circumstance they are fitted
for the use of distilleries by keeping the fermentation down, and by affecting
them with no bad smell; moreover, most of them, such as rice, wash in cold
salt sea water like fish soap, and for the same reason, that there is no tallow
in them. Some of them when long kept, such as soap from 'bones or rice,
will become as hard as hard soap; some of them will lather, but in general they

page_text: will not; a defect of no consequence to soaps, provided they do their business of
bleaching and washing.
Number Five. I introduce gas into the above volatile alkali's as a
substitute for the gas liquors now in use in bleaching, and thereby to supply
bleachers with a new portable gas liquor. This I do in two ways:-I either
introduce gas into the volatile alkali leys above described, or I form vegetable
or mineral or grey salts, or any calcareous substance in a dry state, into a
paste by means of volatile alkali. From that paste make a solution by filtration,
and then throw the gas into that solution. In using this solution in bleaching,
the, volatile alkali may be saved by making use of the circulating apparatus
described in Number Three. The solution from the paste into which the gas
is thrown is composed of strong rectified volatile alkali, mixt with water in the
proportion of about one to twenty.
Number Six-I introduce gas into the hard soaps alone, or into hard soaps,
to which volatile alkali has been added, as described in Number Two, to
obtain a substitute for expensive fine white, soaps (all the tallow and most of
the manufactured part of which come from foreign countries) for finishing off fine
goods in bleaching, or for clearing the fine parts of muslins, silks, and cambrics,
of ladies' dresses in washing, or for various other purposes to which fine white
soaps are applied, and which gas hard soap will at the same time serve the
common purposes of washing. But the soft, or what are called black soaps,
and consequently soft soap from fish, will not bear the introduction of gas to
them, because the acid in them mixing with the alkali in the soap would make
a separation of the oil or fish in the soap. Whether the gas be thrown into
fine white soap or into yellow soap, on account of its cheapness, seems to make
little difference in whitening, because the effect of gas thrown into yellow soap
is astonishing. However, bleachers upon experience will follow their own
fancys, and choose for themselves. (It is an observation common to the
common black yellow fish soaps, and the soaps mentioned in this Number, that
rosin may be added, either in making or in using them after they are made.)
The operation may be in the following among many other ways:-The gas
from the gas vessel may be introduced into an inverted cone like a funnel, with
the small end uppermost and open, which cone will be at the bottom of the
soap receiver. A plate or plates of tin, perforated with holes large enough for
soap in a liquid state to go through them, may be laid across the inside of the
receiver. But there must be no hole in the point immediately above the
mouth of the funnel, least the soaps should fall through it into the cone. The
soap must be melted into a liquid state, with the above leys of the volatile alkali

page_text: added to it in proportions which experience will prove best, and thrown into a
hopper of tin at the top of the receiver, from whence it will descend through
the holes of the tin plates into the circumambient space round the inverted
cone, combine with it, and become gas liquor, to which the quantity of alkali
added to the original soap in which it was melted will add additional powers.
There is no fear of any acid which may be in the gas mounting up among the
soap; the acid will remain and the gas only mount. Or, if people be so bigotted
to prejudice that no soap will please them, except it be in the form of a wedge,
the soap may be shaved into thin slices, which are put in an irregular loose
way so as to let the air pass through their openings into the receiver, they
being laid upon thin plates of tin (which rest upon fixtures in the receiver),
and are open the eighth of an inch round the edge of the receiver for the gàs
to ascend through the opening, which gas is introduced at the bottom of the
receiver, but in this case no inverted cone is necessary; and when the soap has
imbibed as much gas as it can, the parts are beat or otherwise worked together
by the hand or instruments, and formed into any shape of wedges or balls
which the law requires or permits. Or, if too large, a body of the slices
heaped together might prevent the gas from passing through the openings. The
slices might be placed on different plates of tin full of holes at proper distances
from each other, and an equal number of gas vessels be made use of, each to
throw its separate contents into the separate copartments.
Number Seven. I distil tar oil and volatile alkali from any species of
sehystus, and particularly from the sulphurious sehystus in which there is
pyrites, in the known ways in which tar is distilled from coal. I use the
liquor distilled in destroying and expelling garden, field, and house vermine,
and in the preserving of sown seeds and plants from being eat by vermin or
birds, and in smearing sheep and other cattle. But with regard to the
preservation of sown seeds, perhaps it would be more secure (though I have
perceived no difference) not to use the tarry particles of the liquor which fall
into a sediment at the bottom, and which therefore are easily seperable from
the oily and volatile parts which swim at the top, and can be drawn off by a
bung-hole and plug. But although the liquor from sulphurious sehystus is
particularly suited more than liquor from coal for the above purposes, because
it contains. heper sulpher, which has an exceeding strong and disagreeable
taste, strong pungent smell, and strong corrosive quality, yet I add five per
cent. of quick new-burnt lime to the liquor to increase the bad taste and smell
and corrosive quality, and steep them for about two hours. I first scum off
the oil that is upon the top of the liquor, mix it with an equal quantity of very
strong caustic volatile alkali, to render it soluable in the liquor; then throw

page_text: both into the weak alkali, which was below the oil scummed off;, and,,
lastly, mix the whole with the hot lime to be steeped.. In which combined
state I claim a right to the Invention to destroy or expel vermin, and preserve.
seeds and plants.
In order to prevent mistakes in Number Second, it is. to be observed.
that in adding caustic urine to yellow or white. soaps, the soap may be
shaved, the urine added to it from six to six hours, scumming it upon.
a slow fire at each addition, so long as the parts need the help of fire to unite.
them. The boiler may be yettlin, that is, last mettal, having a wooden top.
lined with thin lead, from whence a tin pipe goes into a worm placed in a
worm tub of cold water, from whence it passes into a. condenser, and from
thence may be thrown into the boiler again.
In witness whereof,. I, the said John Crooks, have hereunto set my hand
and seal, this Fourteenth day of. October, One thousand seven hundred
and ninety-nine.

page_text: the vessel which holds the materials for bus and Tipe into the Vessel
which receives the Yellow and white Soap Bthe Cone which prevents
the soap when liquid from fatting amongst the acid produced in
making the Gas Cthe wooden Shelves perforated with holes lined with
thin lead, thro'which holes the soap passes when it is in a liquid
slate by the addition of much caustic urine ley but on which it lies
when intended to be in a hard slate D the Hopper into which the
Soap is put when in a liquid slate, but when all the Liquid Soap
is through the Hopper, the Hopper should be stopped up, otherwise.
the Gas would escape through it.