Neil Mathieson (born 1823, died 14 September 1906) was a Scottish
chemist and businessman.
He was born in
Campbeltown
Campbeltown (; gd, Ceann Loch Chille Chiarain or ) is a town and former royal burgh in Argyll and Bute, Scotland. It lies by Campbeltown Loch on the Kintyre peninsula. Campbeltown became an important centre for Scotch whisky, and a busy fishing ...
,
Argyll and Bute, Scotland and came to work for
John & Thomas Johnson, soap and
alkali
In chemistry, an alkali (; from ar, القلوي, al-qaly, lit=ashes of the saltwort) is a basic, ionic salt of an alkali metal or an alkaline earth metal. An alkali can also be defined as a base that dissolves in water. A solution of a ...
makers in
Runcorn,
Cheshire
Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county t ...
, where he became works manager. Around 1860 he joined two other Johnson's workers,
Duncan McKechnie and
Charles Wigg, in setting up the Old Quay Works in Runcorn to make soap and to extract
copper by the Henderson wet process.
In 1865, when John & Thomas Johnson became registered under the Companies Act as the Runcorn Soap and Alkali Company, Mathieson invested in the company, buying 175 shares. He left the Old Quay Works to set up his own business, Matheison and Company in
Widnes,
Lancashire in 1870. His partners were Frederick Herbert Gossage, son of
William Gossage, and Thomas Sutton Timmis, both of whom had been associated with
Gossage's soap business. Matheison and Company became one of the most important companies in Widnes. Its main business was producing alkali by the
Leblanc process
The Leblanc process (pronounced leh-blaank) was an early industrial process for making ''soda ash'' (sodium carbonate) used throughout the 19th century, named after its inventor, Nicolas Leblanc. It involved two stages: making sodium sulfate from ...
and they also produced
glycerine from soap waste from Gossage's. Later Mathieson's third son, Thomas Train Mathieson, became a partner in the business.
Neil's eldest son, Douglas Dugald (1861–86), an assistant manager at the works, was killed after being struck by a falling
derrick. In 1892 Mathieson obtained a charter in
Saltville, Virginia to open an alkali plant, buying out the Holston Salt and Plaster Company. His son Thomas Train Mathieson went to USA to supervise this business, the Mathieson Alkali Company, which was later to develop into the Mathieson Chemical Corporation.
References
Citations
Sources
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1823 births
1906 deaths
British chemists
People from Campbeltown
People from Widnes
19th-century British businesspeople
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