Hancock Family Collection

Introduced to Britain in 1843, gutta percha is the gum of a tree native to the Malay Peninsula and Malaysia. Gutta percha is thermoplastic, softening at elevated temperatures and returning to its solid form as it cools. This made it easy to mould gutta percha into many decorative and functional objects, either by pressing the heated material into cold moulds, or by extrusion.

The Gutta Percha Company was established in 1845 by Henry Bewley in partnership with Samuel Gurney at High Street, Stratford, London. For the first twenty years, management was in the hands of Samuel Statham. The company started making decorative items such as tea trays, commemorative plaques and animal figures and industrial products included machinery belts, acid-tank linings, and tube.

By 1850 the company had moved from Stratford to 18 Wharf Road, City Road, London, where it remained for nearly a century. During the 1850s Bewley produced insulated core, supplying it for both the 1850 and 1851 cross-Channel cables for Submarine Telegraph Co. From then on insulated core became the main product of the company.

On the 7th April 1864 the Gutta Percha Co. merged with the telegraphic interests of Glass, Elliot and Co to form the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Co (Telcon), the contractor for the 1865 and 1866 Atlantic cables.

(1800-1877), Painter & Inventor

Charles Hancock was the eighth son of James Hancock, a cabinetmaker from Marlborough. Little is known about his early life, though he was a talented artist. By the time he was 19, his portrait of his father hung in the Royal Academy. In about 1820 he moved to Norwich, where he studied under James Stark. He became known for his paintings of animals an horses in particular; for a number of years he was commissioned to paint Derby winners and he exhibited at the Royal Academy with a total of 25 pictures.

By 1845 he came to an agreement with Henry Bewley, Christopher Nickels and Charles Keene to create a pool account from the proceeds of working several patents that they owned separatelyrelating to resin goods in india-rubber and gutta-percha. He began a three year contract with the Gutta Percha Company. By 1850 Charles and his brother Walter established the West Ham Gutta Percha Company as a competitor to the Gutta Percha Company with which Charles had previously been engaged and established a manufactory in Stratford, which moved to more extensive premises in London the following year.

For the last 30 years of Charles' life he suffered from heart attacks. He died on 30 July 1877 at Blackheath.

(1788-1835), Inventor

John Hancock was the third son of James Hancock, a cabinetmaker from Marlborough. Little is known about his early life, but by 1817 he was working in partnership with his elder brother Thomas as part of Hancock and Company p coach makers. In 1833 he moved to Cornwall to work with Humphrey Davy, where he tried to perfect a safety fuse for tin miners.

He died of consumption in Cornwall at the age of 47, leaving nine children behind. They returned to London, where they were taken in, educated and provided for by John's brother Thomas.

(1786-1865), Inventor

Thomas Hancock was the second son of James Hancock, a timber merchant and cabinet-maker at Marlborough, Wiltshire, where he was born on the 8 May 1786. He was educated at a private school in Marlborough, before moving to London. By 1815 he was in parthership with his younger brother John as a coach builder.

By 1819 he had become interested in the uses of rubber. His experiments to dissolve and manipulate solid rubber began in 1819 and his first patent, of 1820, covered the application of rubber to various articles of dress, to make them more elastic. He eventually made use of thin strips of Pará rubber and produced numerous articles including braces, waistbands and straps at his new factory in Goswell Road. Observing that two freshly cut surfaces of rubber readily adhered by simple pressure, he was led to the invention of the ‘masticator’, as it was afterwards called, in which a roller set with teeth chewed up pieces of rubber and worked them into a plastic and homogeneous mass. The rubber that emerged from the masticator was then pressed into blocks, or rolled into sheets. The masticating process was never patented, but remained a secret in the factory until about 1832, when it was divulged by a workman. Experiments showed that masticated rubber was much more easily acted upon by solvents than ordinary rubber, and this discovery brought Hancock into communication with Macintosh, the well-known manufacturer of waterproof garments, who carried on business in Manchester. In February 1826 Hancock obtained a licence from Macintosh for the use of the patent to produce double-layer fabrics sealed with rubber. Hancock's masticated rubber was better able to dissolve as a strong solution than that of Macintosh, and in 1830 they agreed that Hancock would supply Macintosh with his masticated rubber. Eventually Hancock became a partner in the firm of Charles Macintosh & Co., though he still carried on his own business in London.

Thomas' brother John died of consumption in 1835, leaving nine children. They returned to London and were taken in, educated and provided for by Thomas, who remained unmarried and childless his whole life.

Rubber articles still possessed serious defects due to the material itself; they became sticky, and at low temperatures lost their elasticity. In 1842 specimens of ‘cured’ rubber, prepared in America by Charles Goodyear according to a secret process, were exhibited in England. Hancock investigated the matter, suspected that sulphur was involved, and filed a provisional patent on 21 November 1843. His experiments were successful: he discovered that when rubber was immersed in molten sulphur a change took place, yielding ‘vulcanized’ rubber, which was capable of resisting extremes of heat and cold, and was very durable. He was thus able to submit his specification during the six months allowed by the Patent Office. Goodyear had not applied for a British patent. Hancock also discovered inadvertently that if the vulcanizing process was continued, and a higher temperature employed, a hard substance, known as vulcanite or ebonite, was produced. This material was found to be impervious to chemicals and to be electrically insulating, which made it of considerable value to industry.

Hancock took out sixteen patents in all relating to rubber between 1820 and 1847. He displayed remarkable ingenuity in suggesting uses for what was practically a new material, and the specifications of his patents cover the entire field of rubber manufactures, though many of his ideas were not carried out at the time. In 1857 he published 'Personal Narrative of the Origin and Progress of the Caoutchouc or Indiarubber Manufacture in England’.

He retired between 1842 and 1845, handing over his business interests to his nephew James Lyne Hancock, and the factory continued in production until 1939, having been taken over by the British Tyre and Rubber Company Ltd. He died of heart and kidney disease on 26 March 1865, at Marlborough Cottage, Green Lanes, Stoke Newington, where he had lived for fifty years.

(1799-1852), Engineer

Walter Hancock was born in Marlborough, Wiltshire, the sixth son of John Hancock, a timber merchant and cabinet-maker. He served an apprenticeship as a watchmaker and jeweller in London. In 1824 he invented a steam engine in which the ordinary cylinder and piston were replaced by two flexible bags, consisting of several layers of canvas bonded with a rubber solution, and alternately filled with steam. Between 1824 and 1836 he constructed a number of steam road vehicles at his Stratford works in East London, as follows:

- 1829: a steam carriage which could carry eight passengers and travelled regularly between Fulham and Brompton at a speed of twelve miles per hour
- 1829: a ten-seater bus known as the Infant, which in 1831 began a regular service between Stratford and London. The Infant vehicle was later made famous by its revenue-earning journeys from London to Brighton, which were a British first, and also demonstrated its usability by successfully ascending a frozen slope of 5 degrees where horse-drawn coaches were struggling
- 1833: the steam omnibus known as the Enterprise began a regular service between London Wall and Paddington via Islington. It was the first regular steam carriage service, and was the first mechanically propelled vehicle specially designed for omnibus work to be operated. The engine worked on a crank and iron chains applied the power to the back wheels.
- 1836: introduced the 22-seat 'Automaton', a 22-seater powered by a two-cylinder engine . It proceeded to run over 700 journeys between London and Paddington, London and Islington, and Moorgate and Stratford, carrying over 12,000 passengers in total and regularly travelling at speeds in excess of 20 mph.

By 1840 however the development of steam-powered road vehicles had lost impetus and the heavy road tolls imposed by the Turnpike Acts had turned inventors away from steam. Hancock turned his attentions elsewhere, notably gutta percha. In 1842 he proposed a submarine cable from England to France which consisted of seven wires covered with gutta percha, and despite being declared bankrupt in 1847, had by 1848 taken out a patent with his brother Charles for coating electric cables with gutta percha. By 1849 he and Charles had taken over a factory in West Ham as a gutta percha manufactory.

Walter Hancock died in 1852 after an attack of gout at his home in West Ham Lane. His gutta percha business was continued by his brother Charles.

(1789-1848), Cabinetmaker

William Hancock was born the fourth son of James Hancock, a cabinetmaker from Marlborough. Few firm details are known about his life. He established a cabinet-making and upholestery business in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk from 1815. His cabinet-making work is known to include an elm cabinet of 'superior beauty' that was presented to King George IV in 1825 and which remains in one of the private state apartments in Buckingham Palace. He was however declared bankrupt on 2 June 1821. He allegedly made the first set of inflatable rubber cushions for the Houses of Parliament between 1834 and 1840. He also developed the Hancock company’s production of perfect binding for books which was patented in 1836.

William Hancock died on the 20 June 1848 in Milton, Gravesend.

James Lyne Hancock Limited were manufacturers of Vulcanized India Rubber goods, at 266 Goswell Road, London, EC. The company was established by Thomas Hancock in 1821. Between 1842-5 1842/5 the company was re-established when Thomas Hancock's part of the business was split from Charles Macintosh and Co and sold to his nephew, James Lyne Hancock, whilst Thomas remained a director of Charles Macintosh and Co.

In the 1870s, JLH made his first round rubber-tyre for the Ariel bicycle of Haynes and Jefferis; this used soft spongy rubber on the underside and toughened rubber on the tread, an idea which has been copied in the tyre trade ever since, even with pneumatic tyres.

The factory continued in production until 1939, having been taken over by the British Tyre and Rubber Co Ltd.