The Scotch Iron Manufacture - Dr. Roebuck David Mushet.
"Were public benefactors to be allowed to pass away, like hewers of wood and drawers of water, without commemoration, genius and enterprise would be deprived of their most coveted distinction."--Sir Henry Englefield.


The account given of Dr. Roebuck in a Cyclopedia of Biography, recently published in Glasgow, runs as follows: -- "Roebuck, John, a physician and experimental chemist, born at Sheffield, 1718; died, after ruining himself by his projects, 1794. Such is the short shrift which the man receives who fails. Had Dr. Roebuck wholly succeeded in his projects, he would probably have been esteemed as among the greatest of Scotland's benefactors. Yet his life was not altogether a failure, as we think will sufficiently appear from the following brief account of his labours: --

At the beginning of last century, John Roebuck's father carried on the manufacture of cutlery at Sheffield,* [footnote... Dr. Roebuck's grandson, John Arthur Roebuck, by a singular coincidence, at present represents Sheffield in the British Parliament. ...] in the course of which he realized a competency. He intended his son to follow his own business, but the youth was irresistibly attracted to scientific pursuits, in which his father liberally encouraged him; and he was placed first under the care of Dr. Doddridge, at Northampton, and afterwards at the University of Edinburgh, where he applied himself to the study of medicine, and especially of chemistry, which was then attracting considerable attention at the principal seats of learning in Scotland. While residing at Edinburgh young Roebuck contracted many intimate friendships with men who afterwards became eminent in literature, such as Hume and Robertson the historians, and the circumstance is supposed to have contributed not a little to his partiality in favour of Scotland, and his afterwards selecting it as the field for his industrial operations.