Lancashire Lantern
Lancashire Lantern: Lancashire Pioneers
Part of the Lancashire Lantern network, the Pioneers gives details of people who were famous local people in science, technology and innovation. These pioneers were either born in Lancashire or their endeavours made a significant contribution to the development of the County.
John Mercer - The breadth of his work
Mercer continued to work at Oakenshaw for the rest of his working life.
He was made partner in 1825, in which role he remained until 1848.
He was a great innovator, not only creating colours and colour mixes that were the height of fashion, but also devising new processes of dyeing and other related matters.
He also was interested in medicine and developed an 'iron' medicine.
The local soap works at Enfield asked for his help, and he developed a method of bleaching palm oil.
He developed red ink. He was always ready and willing to give considerable thought to technical problems.
He gained tremendous support from other chemists in the area, and was soon befriended by the young Lyon Playfair when he came to work at Thomson's Primrose Works in Clitheroe.
It was Playfair who encouraged him to agree to be elected as one of the original Fellows of the Chemical Society in 1842.
The image shows his membership of the Philosophical Society (Click to enlarge). (Courtesy of the Lancashire Record Office)
He also later encouraged him to be a juror for the Great Exhibition of 1851, and to become a member of the Royal Society, the Philosophical Society and lecturing for the British Association for the Advancement of Science, continuing their friendship in a series of letters long after Playfair left Clitheroe.
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