IMPROVEMENTS IN FACTURE OR PRODUCTION OF MANURE
Year: 1856

page_text: LETTERS PATENT to James Alexander Manning, of the Inner Temple,
London, Esquire, for the Invention of "IMPROVEMENTS IN
FACTURE OR PRODUCTION OF MANURE."
Sealed the 2nd January 1857, and dated the 5th July 1856.
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by the said James Alexander Manning
at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on
the 5th July 1856.
I, JAMES ALEXANDER MANNING, of the Inner Temple, London, Esquire, do
hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN THE
MANUFACTURE OR PRODUCTION OF MANURE," to be as follows, that is to say:-
This Invention relates to the manufacture or production of an artificial
manure or fertilising agent for general agricultural purposes from waste
matters of towns and other localities, combined with other ingredients herein-
after generally specified. The basis of this manure is the waste matters of
slaughter-houses, urine, "cow-wash," human excrements, the waste of manu-
factories, offals of all kinds, the heads, tails, and entrails of fish, and general
waste fishy matter, dead animals, and all the animal and vegetable waste of
towns which is unmixed with the mass of sewerage matter carried away by the
common arterial ducts of towns. Such matters, when collected into a mass,
are deposited in a pit or receiver, and then treated, either before or after
admixture with the other ingredients with sulpuric acid. To this mass there,
is added a proportion of sea weed, also sulphate of magnesia and common
salt.. The bones, sea weed, and other refractory matters are effectually dis-

page_text: solved or reduced by the action of the sulphuric acid, and the entire mass
become more or less homogenous. The sea weed may be reduced by the
acidulous treatment, either alone or when commingled with the other matters,
and when the dissolved product is to be dried, carbonised sea weed may be
added, with or without waste animal charcoal, for the purpose of drying and
facilitating the process of manufacture. Manure made according to this
Invention is of a highly fertilising character, and it may be sold for use either
as made or mixed with the sewarge matters prepared according to Mr. Manning's
previous processes for the treatment of sewerage.
SPECIFICATION in pursuance of the conditions of the Letters Patent, filed
by the said James Alexander Manning in the Great Seal Patent Office
on the 5th January. 1857...
-
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, JAMES
ALEXANDER MANNING, of the Inner Temple, London, Esquire, send greeting.
WHEREAS Hér most Excellent Majesty Queen Victoria, by Her Letters
Patent, bearing date the Fifth day of July, in the year of our Lord
One thousand eight hundred and fifty-six, in the twentieth year of Her
reign, did, for Herself,. Her heirs and successors, give and grant unto me,
the said James: Alexander Manning, Her special license that I, the said
James Alexander Manning, my executors, administrators, and assigns, or
such others as-I, the said James Alexander Manning, my. executors, admi-
nistrators, or assigns, should at any time agree with, and no others, from
time to time and at all times thereafter during the term therein expressed;
should and lawfully might. make, use, exercise, and vend, within the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Channel Islands, and Isle of
Mau, an Invention for. "IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OR PRODUCTION OF
MANURE," upon the condition (amongst others) that I, the said James Alex-
ander Manning, by an instrument in writing under my hand and seal, should
particularly describe and ascertain the nature of the said Invention, and. in
what manner the same was to be performed, and cause the same to be filed in
the Great Seal Patent Office within six calendar months next and immediately
after the date of the said Letters Patent.
t
NOW KNOW. YE, that I, the said James Alexander Manning, do hereby
declare the nature of my said Invention, and in what manner the same is to
be performed, to be particularly described and ascertained in and by the
following statement :-

page_text: My said Invention relates to the manufacture or production of an artificial
manure or fertilizing agent for general agricultural purposes from the waste
matters of towns and other localities, combined with other ingredients herein-
after specified. And in practically carrying out my said Invention, I make use
of various waste matters and other ingredients, which, for the convenience of
specific description, I shall divide into the following classes:-
The first class. consists of blood, bones, offal, hoofs, horns, and skins of
animals slaughtered in public or private slaughter-houses; meat condemned
as unfit for human food; cattle, horses, asses, pigs, slaughtered at knacker's
yards or other places, or which have died by disease or accident; other dead
animals, such as dogs, cats, rats, and other vermin; broken victuals and bones
from prisons, union workhouses, hotels, eating-houses, and private establish
ments; the fatty matters and refuse meat from poultry markets, butchers,
shops, hair, wool, old articles of horn, horn dust, old leather, articles such as
boots and shoes, and skinny matters of every kind.
".. The second class comprehends fish of every kind, fresh or stale, from
markets, private fishmongers, or. fish-curers, more particularly the offal of
fish, such as the heads, tails, bones, and guts or entrails, and such as is
obtainable at the great fish-curing establishments of the United Kingdom, and
also, the cake or refuse of whale and seal blubber after the oil has been
expressed therefrom.
"
In the third class are the refuse of vegetable markets and all the waste or
refuse of vegetables or leguminous matters used as food; damaged, diseased, or
decayed vegetables and fruits; damaged flour, and marine plants, particularly
that known by botanists as the fucus nodosus.
In the fourth class are marine plants, tanners' spent bark, sawdust, leaves,
berries, old matting, old sacks and tarpaulins, rushes, woollen and linen rags,
and waste cotton, hemp, flax, and paper.
:
In the fifth class are focal matters from privies and cesspools, which have.
no connection with the drains or sewers of towns, and all animal excrements..
In the sixth class are cow-wash, stale urine, also the diluted or undiluted
urinė from public urinals, railway stations, and factories, and gas liquor, or the
liquor from the gas purifier, as well as all other liquids containing an
ammonian solution.
And, finally,, the seventh class consists of certain manufacturers' waste
matters, such as the refuse animal charcoal from. sugar refineries, and from
the prussiate of potash factories; the chips or cuttings of skin from glue
factories, and the chippings, dust, and shavings of horn and whalebone, used
lime from gas purifiers, the scum from sugar boilers, and the waste water from

page_text: public lavatories or washing-houses, as also the factories in which oily or
soponaceous matters are employed.
In treating the matters mentioned under these said seven classes for the
'manufacture or production of manure according to my Invention, the animal
and vegetable substances alluded to may not always be subjected to the action
of fire, sometimes all, and particularly some of them, are subjected to the
process of dissolving or reduction by sulphuric acid alone; but I reserve to
myself the right of treating them by acid alone, as well as by the action of
fire in the first instance, and afterwards by acid.
All the animal substances are subjected to the action of fire in closed retorts
of the ordinary form, but which, when constructed for any of the matters
except blood, are formed with a concavity in their bottom surfaces, for the
collection of fatty matters which are drawn off by pipes into a vessel placed
for their reception. Each retort is fitted with a tube on the top, to allow the
nitrogenous or ammoniacal vapours to ascend and pass into a vat or vessel
charged with sulphuric acid. In these vats or vessels the nitrogenous or
ammoniacal vapours are fixed and solidified, and converted by the action of
the acid into minute crystals of sulphate of ammonia. After this, the dried
blood from the blood retorts, and the partially carbonized animal matters,
together with bone ash, are placed in dissolving pits, which may be con-
veniently constructed of brickwork and cement, either in the ground or upon
the factory floor, there to be dissolved by means of sulphuric acid. To the
masses undergoing solution in this way are added the matters mentioned in
the second, third, and fifth classes.
The matters mentioned in the sixth class are subjected to distillation in
large iron stills, and the nitrogenous or ammoniacal vapours pass, by means of
a pipe connected with the still pipe, into the bottom of a sulphuric acid
receiver or chamber lined with lead, and of a convenient form, being by
preference deep and narrow. The sulphuric acid becomes charged with
minute crystals of sulphate of ammonia, and it is acid, so charged, which is
by preference used in the dissolving pits herein-before referred to.
In order to set free all the nitrogenous or ammoniacal vapors held in
solution in the urine and other matters mentioned in the sixth class, a suf-
ficient quantity of cream of lime is injected, by a force pump or other suitable
means, into each "still as soon as the contents are in a state of ebullition.
Great economy of time and labor results from this simple expedient, all. the
nitrogenous or ammoniacal vapours being forced into the sulphuric acid at one
operation, it being unnecessary to repeat the boiling, as has hitherto been
practised in sulphate of ammonia factories.

page_text: The matter in the dissolving pits becomes reduced to a gelatinous semi-fluid
mass, and in order to bring it to a proper consistency, and render it fit for the
drying stove, it has added to it the matters mentioned in the fourth and seventh
classes, those of the fourth class being previously prepared in the following
manner: A quantity of the fucus nodosus, or other marine plant, or of any
of the matters mentioned in the fourth class, are placed in a furnace of the
kind known as a black-ash furnace," and consisting of a large arched oven
communicating with the fire, the flames and gases from which run along one
side, so as to throw their heat into the oven. After the materials have been
subjected to the action of the heat for about an hour, the whole mass is well
stirred with a long iron rod or stirrer, and the oven door is then closed again,
and in about another hour the whole is raked out in the form of a finely
pulverized charcoal. By this means the sea weed is prevented from " "fluxing,"
as in the making of kelp, which would, involve the necessity of grinding to
obtain the powder.
The charcoal obtained in this way, together with the matters mentioned in
the seventh class, are added to the masses in the dissolving pits, and the whole
is well stirred with iron rakes, to bring it to a uniform thickness, and to cause
the absorption of any excess of acid over and above that absorbed in the
dissolving process. After remaining quiet a sufficient time, two or three hours;
more or less, the whole is thrown out with the spade upon a drying stove,
covered with fire-brick or fire-clay, so as to evaporate the moisture; and when
it is sufficiently dry it is passed through sieves or riddled, and then packed into
bags for the farmers' use.
It should be stated that to the masses undergoing reduction or solution, as
herein-before described, the added a quantity of fish-curers' refuse salt, a
quantity of sulphate of magnesia, a quantity of supersulphate of potash, or
the mineral substances, such as nitrate of soda, according to the nature of the
soil and the requirements of the crop to be grown thereon.
The matters mentioned in the fourth class, except the chips or cuttings
from glue factories, (which are put into the retorts with the other animal
matters) and the sugar-boilers' scum (which is thrown into the acid or dissolving
pits), together with the sediment or residue from the urine still after the
nitrogenous or ammoniacal vapors are discharged and converted into crystals of
sulphate of ammonia in the acid vats, and the remaining liquor run off may be
carbonized in the black-ash furnace, and may be afterwards employed with
advantage by the manufacturer by mixing it with manures. The gas purifiers'
refuse lime may be mixed with the carbonized vegetable matters and siftings,
or refuse of the manure factory, to form an inferior manure.
+

page_text: In making five tons of manure, I prefer to use the following quantities of
each of the ingredients, namely, 12 cwt. of bone ash and animal matter,
12.cwt. dried blood; 12 cwt. of fish offal, 5 cwt. of vegetable matter, 5 cwt
human and animal, excrements; 5 cwt. dissolved sea weed, 10 cwt. sulphuric
acid; 5 cwt..sulphate of magnesia, 2 cwt. refuse salt, 2 cwt. supersulphate
of potash, 3 cwt. sulphuric acid charged with crystals of ammonia, and 23 cwt.
animal charcoal, carbonized sea weed, and other matters; in all 100 cwt. or
5 tons.
:
It must be observed, however, that I do not confine myself to these pro-
portions, but give them as an example of what I find in practise to produce a
good manure. Nor is it necessary to use in each case all, the matters herein-
before.mentioned, as if only some of them are obtainable, the desired quality
of manure will be obtainable by suitably proportioning the various ingredients
as may be found desirable in practise.
Having now described and particularly ascertained the nature of the said
Invention, and the manner in which the same is or may be used or carried
into. effect, I would observe, in conclusion, that I do not confine or restrict
myself to the precise details or arrangements which I have had occasion
to describe or refer to, as many variations may be made therefrom without
deviating from the principles or main features of my said Invention; but what
I consider to be. novel and original, and therefore claim as the, Invention
secured to, nie by the herein-before in part, recited Letters Patent, is, the
manufacture, or production of manure, or a fertilizing agent, for general
agricultural purposes, from the waste of towns and other localities, combined
with other ingredients, as herein-before, described.
In witness, whereof, I, the said James.Alexander Manning, have hereunto
set my hand and seal; the First day of January, Oue thousand eight
hundred and fifty-seven.
JAMES ALEX. MANNING. (L.S.)