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Life of Thomas Fletcher


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Craig Sherwood (he/him/his)
Collections Officer
Culture Warrington Charitable Trust

We believe this to be a gas-powered coffee roaster, one of the inventions of Thomas Fletcher of Warrington (1840-1903). Thomas Fletcher was educated at Manchester Grammar School and initially trained as a doctor before turning to study dentistry under Henry Planck, dean of the dental school at the University of Manchester. It was there that Thomas started his experiments in the use of gas in all sorts of furnaces and soon went into  business with his former tutor. Thomas quit dentistry in the 1870s and by 1876s he was living in Museum Street, Warrington - ironically more or less next door to this museum!

T. Fletcher started by manufacturing dental apparatus and furnaces but by the early 1880s his factory in Thynne street, Warrington was manufacturing all kinds of gas appliances. His firm employed 10 men, 2 boys and a girl. Given the markings on the roaster we would therefore estimate that it was manufactured at the Thynne Street factory sometime between 1881 and 1892. Presumably the user would turn the coffee beans using the crank handle as they were roasted by the gas flame but I've certainly not seen one like that before!

In 1892 Fletcher amalgamated his business with that of the Manchester iron founding firm W. and A.C. Russell to form Fletcher, Russell and Company. By the time of Thomas' death in 1903 Fletcher, Russell and Company had a huge factory, the Palatine Works, at Wilderspool Causeway in Warrington which employed nearly 900 people. There they manufactured all types of gas fires, gas cookers, gas water heaters and laboratory equipment. The company was later amalgamated into Radiation Limited, and then later New World gas cookers which was still in operation in Warrington until around 2001.

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