AN IMPROVEMENT IN PRESERVING OR CURING OF RAW HIDES AND SKINS BY THE APPLICATION OF CERTAIN MATERIALS HITHERTO UNUSED FOR THAT PURPOSE
Year: 1819

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, CHARLES
TANNER, of Plymouth, in the County of Devon, Tanner, send greeting.
WHEREAS His most Excellent Majesty King George the Third did, by
His Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland, bearing date at Westminster, the Fourth day of January,
in the fifty-ninth year of His reign, give and grant unto me, the said Charles
Tanner, my exors, aduiors, and assigns, His especial licence, full power, sole
privilege and authority, that I, the said Charles Tanner, my exors, admors,
and assigns, during the term of years therein mentioned, should and lawfully
might make, use, exercise, and vend, within England, Wales, and the Town
of Berwick-upon-Tweed, my Invention of "AN IMPROVEMENT IN PRESERVING OR
CURING OF RAW HIDES AND SKINS BY THE APPLICATION OF CERTAIN MATERIALS
HITHERTO UNUSED FOR THAT PURPOSE;" in which said Letters Patent there is
contained a proviso, that if I, the said Charles Tanner, shall not particularly
describe and ascertain the nature of my said Invention, and in what manner
the same is to be performed, by an instrument under my hand and seal;
and cause the same to be inrolled in His Majesty's High Court of Chan-
cery within two calendar months next and immediately after the date of
the said. Letters Patent, that then the said Letters Patent, and all liberties
and advantages whatsoever thereby granted, shall utterly cease, determine,
and become void, as in and by the same, relation being thereunto had, will
more fully and at large appear.

page_text: KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, I, the said Charles
Tanner, do hereby declare that my said improvements in preserving or curing
of raw hides and skins by the application of certain materials hitherto unused
for that purpose are herein truly described, and are effected in the following
manner:-
(The materials of which I make use being well known, and already applied
in various manufacturing processes, it is only the application of them to the
purposes above recited that I claim under these Letters Patent). The mate-
rials are the following:-First, soap-makers spent or salt lees, or the same
more or less concentrated by boiling down or otherwise; or the above-
mentioned spent or salt lees reduced by evaporation to a solid substance;
or the above-mentioned spent or salt lees reduced by evaporation and fusion
to the substance commonly known by the name of black ashes; or the said
black ashes refined, and thus converted into the substance commonly known
by the name of English ashes. Secondly, the spent or waste ashes from soap-
makers barilla vats. Thirdly, kelp.
My method of applying the aforesaid materials is either in the moist way or
in the dry way.
In the moist way, I take a quantity of the spent or salt lees, to which I add
a sufficient quantity of any or all of the above-mentioned materials in sub-
stance, or a lee or lees drawn from them in the usual way. In the liquid or
pickle thus prepared I immerse the hide or skin for the space of ten hours; I
then take it out of the pickle and fold it up with the flesh side outwards; in
this state it will resist putrefaction from one month to twelve months, according
to the strength of the pickle which has been made use of. The spent or salt
lees and the other materials aforesaid differ so much in different samples, both
with regard to the quantity and quality of the ingredients of which they are
composed, that it is not possible to give any certain rules for composing the
pickle that shall be universally applicable.
In the dry way, I take kelp or black ash, or any other of the aforesaid
materials produced from evaporating the spent or salt lee, or a mixture of all
or any of the aforesaid materials, and having reduced them by grinding or
otherwise to pieces about the size of peas, I take a hide or skin, and having
spread it out with the flesh side upwards, I sift on it a sufficient quantity of
the aforesaid materials, the proportion varying according to their quality and
the season of the year, and the length of time that the hide is intended to be
preserved; I then cover it with another hide or skin, having, like the former, its
flesh side upwards, and treat this second precisely in the same way as the first;
proceeding in this manner, I form a pile of twenty hides or skins, more or less,

page_text: and allow them to remain in this state for six hours, after which I tie them up
separately, or in pairs, with all the composition that remains adhering to
them.
Although the above method of preserving hides and skins in the dry way is
effectual, yet I have found by experience that it is advantageous to mix with
the other materials, previously to their being used, about one-fourteenth part
of fresh burnt charcoal, of wood, or of bone ground to a powder. The use of
the charcoal is toofold: in the first place, it tends to preserve the hides by its
own antiseptic quality; and in the second place, by giving to the materials or
composition a certain degree of sponginess or porosity, it enables them to
absorp the slime and other moisture which may exude from the hide or skin,
and thus contributes still farther to prevent putrefaction. Of this composition
I find that eight pounds is sufficient to cure an average size hide; but if it is
intended that the hide shall be kept for many months, I increase the quantity
of the composition to between ten and eleven pounds weight.
In witness whereof, I, the said Charles Tanner, have hereunto set my
hand and seal, this Twenty-seventh day of February, in the year of
our Lord One thousand eight hundred and nineteen.