10 Facts About Joshua Routledge

Joshua Routledge was an engineer and inventor of the early 19th century during the Industrial Revolution.

Mechanical engineering as a profession was on the rise and the advent of the steam age opened up viable career alternatives for many young Englishmen who, like Joshua Routledge, grew up in an agriculture-based society.

Joshua Routledge's father was a blacksmith by trade, but he seems to have been pious, curious and adventurous by nature.

In 1798 Joshua Routledge was in Leeds, Yorkshire where his occupation is given as "whitesmith" on a marriage certificate recorded at St Peter's Parish Church, Leeds.

In 1816 Joshua Routledge had a prosperous ironmonger business at 26 Deansgate in Bolton.

Sometime before leaving England, in 1824, for Warsaw, Poland, Joshua Routledge undertook another engineering project with Joseph and Thomas Ridgway to extend and rearrange the pioneering Wallsuches Bleach Works in Horwich, Lancashire.

Joshua Routledge was twice married, first in 1798 to Mary King about whom nothing more has been found, except that a daughter Ann came from that union.

Joshua Routledge witnessed the marriage of his sister Elizabeth to Benjamin Hick in April 1811.

Joshua Routledge had two children from that marriage, Mary Ann who died in 1802 aged 2 years and 9 months and Samuel.

Tragically, Joshua Routledge contracted a cancerous tumor while in Poland where he died on 8 February 1829 in a state of near penury, having received little or no payment or support from his employers during his illness.