Matthew Boulton

Matthew Boulton was inventive and enterprising

Matthew Boulton was born on 3 September 1728 in Birmingham. His father owned a manufactory for high-value metal ornaments and so Matthew came into contact with entrepreneurship and arts and crafts from an early age. He had a good school education and made full use of the family library. It was a time of technological awakening, and in the shadow of the emerging industrial revolution, Boulton achieved a considerable level of self-taught knowledge without having completed a degree. His main interest was metallurgy; he optimised the production processes of his father’s company, which he officially joined at the age 17, and on his 21st birthday, was made equal partner by his father. Boulton was able to build up the business significantly with his wife’s fortune, and after her death he simply married her sister and invested her inheritance share also. Boulton’s father died the same year as his wife and so from then on, Matthew Boulton alone determined the fate of the company. 

Success with the Soho Manufactory and Boulton & Watt

Matthew Boulton joined forces with the entrepreneur and engineer John Fothergill to set up Soho Manufactory, one of the world’s first modern factories, which on the one hand used newly developed technologies for mass production, but on the other also provided exemplary working conditions: Boulton had apartments built for his workers, ensured that the working environment was friendly and airy, and provided social security. The company’s success was marred only by the inefficiency of the machines used, which were dependent on the weather and water flow. The Scottish engineer James Watt solved the problem with the invention of the steam engine, the construction of which was financed by Boulton. To manufacture and sell the powerful engines, they jointly founded the famous company Boulton & Watt and through clever lobbying in the British parliament, Matthew Boulton also succeeded in extending the patent for Watt’s invention by 17 years. 

Philanthropic working conditions in the spirit of Rousseau

Matthew Boulton reacted to the increasing unprofitability of his copper mines with characteristic resourcefulness and converted them into a private mint which received its first major order from the East India Company for 100 tons of copper coins before it was even completed. Boulton delivered quickly and reliably, as always, and had thus opened up a further successful field of business: He now earned money with money. His constant thirst for knowledge led him to the so-called Lunar Society, which his friend, the physician and naturalist Erasmus Darwin, had founded in 1765 to promote the exchange of knowledge amongst the country’s brightest minds. The meetings only took place during a full moon, so that the participants could find their way home by natural light in an age without street lighting. The members, who jokingly called themselves ‘moonstruck’ Lunatics, appreciated the ideas of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which led Matthew Boulton to create humane working conditions and to renounce child labour. 

Matthew Boulton died in Birmingham on 18 August 1809.