Perhaps the most interesting of all the Fourdrinier family was the Henry
Fourdrinier, the eldest brother to the mother of Francis Newman. He was
born in 1766 at Burston Hall, Staffordshire, and lived until 1854. His
father was a paper-maker, and both he and his brother Sealey (born 1747,
and married Harriett, daughter of James Pownall, of Wilmslow) gave up
their time almost entirely to the invention of paper machinery. This
invention was finished in 18O7, [Footnote: _Dict. Nat. Biog._ Vol. XX.]
and then misfortune fell upon them: the misfortune that so often descends
like the "black bat night" upon those who have spent all their money,
thought, and labour on the effort to launch their self-designed ship upon
the uncertain sea of trade.

The Fourdrinier brothers had spent L60,000 upon this venture, and the
immediate result of the finished invention was bankruptcy to the
unfortunate inventors. Then, in 1814, the Emperor Alexander of Russia
promised to pay them L700 per annum during the space of ten years if he
could use two of their paper-making machines. Of this sum they saw not a
penny.

In 1840, Parliament voted the sum of L7000 to the Fourdriniers as a tardy
recognition of the great service they had rendered their adopted country
by their invention. The descendant of these gifted men showed no special
taste for invention along the lines taken by his ancestors, it is true;
but his brilliant intellect, no doubt, owed many of its qualities to their
inventive force and power. Where they made paper and spent their whole
energies in inventing machines for making it quicker, Francis Newman wrote
on it--used it as a medium for spreading far and wide his own splendid
aims and purposes for the betterment of existing social conditions. Before
all things, Newman was a Social Reformer. There was no possible doubt