| HOLE LOAD OF TROUBLE THE GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT |
| With everything in life, there are stories that crop up from time to time that are hard to decide are actually made up of facts or indeed fiction. The steam preservation scene is much the same with many stories which origins are sometimes hard to trace. One such story involves two well known names in steam engine manufacturing that I was told many years ago. Personally I put it down to stuff of legend, but I recently came across the very same tale in a book written by a gent who I have the upmost respect for, and consequently feel if he was happy to put it to print in his name then perhaps there is more truth to it than rumour.
The author in question is Lyndon Shearman and in his Shire Album book on Portables, he tells of the supposed gentleman�s agreement between John Fowler of Leeds and Brown & May of Devizes. |
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| The story outlines that Fowler despite being a prolific engine builder never really went into the Portable Steam Engine market. The legend is that John Fowler and Brown and May were friends in their younger days and came up with a pact that the company of Fowler would not make Portable Steam Engines , while Brown & May would not make steam ploughing tackle. On paper it seems a strange deal, more so when most engine builders mainstay and output was based around that of the Portable Engine business.
However when you look at it closer, John Fowler was indeed a local man to Devizes in that he was born and bred in Melksham and what Portable production that Fowler did engage in was far removed from that of the norm at the time. Brown & May never did enter the Ploughing market, and Fowlers layout on portables may have been as a direct result of not trying to offend his Wiltshire brethren. Whether fact or fiction, it is a good talking point and one that has as I say reoccurred on differing occasions. The truth of course will always be left in the mists of time, but it�s a good feeling to think that in the heyday of the steam production line, such a gentleman�s agreement may have held. As an interesting footnote to this tale, a regular visitor to this website Bob Allison writes: "Reading your note on your website re Fowler not competing with Brown and May by producing portables . Not only were Fowlers a Melksham Family , but they were also prominent Quakers in the area . Mays were also a Quaker family , tho' I am not sure about those in the Devizes firm , and were involved in Ransomes and many other enterprises . The Quakers tended to raise money from within their own circle and their extended families , and so there might well have been a conflict of interest in Fowler's case . " "Any more than this is pure speculation , but Fowlers did see themselves as specialists , and to compete in the cut-throat portable market would probably have been a foolish distraction for them . I have the impression that those portables which they did supply were as power units in part of a larger order for machinery for mining or pumping or whatever . They arranged the cylinder at the smokebox end , traction engine style ." |
| Text by : Matt S Image : Matt S Collecion Page updated : 03/01/09 - 19:12 |