[Illustration: NEWCOMEN’S HOUSE, DARTMOUTH.
[38] Newcomen’s house occupies the centre of the above engraving--the house with the peaked gable-end supported by timbers.
The Newcomen family have long since become extinct in Dartmouth. They are said to have left the place long ago, and gone northward; but we have been unable to trace them. The Newcomens appear to have occupied a respectable position in Dartmouth down to about the middle of the last century. Their burying-place was in the north-side chapel of the fine old parish church of the town, where several tablets are erected to their memory. Amongst others, there is one to William Newcomin, Attorney-at-Law, who died the 24th of August, 1745, aged 57, supposed to have been a brother, and another of the same name, who died in 1787, aged 65, supposed to have been a son of the ironmonger.
Thomas Newcomen was a man of strong religious feelings, and from an early period of his life occupied his leisure in voluntary religious teaching. He belonged to the sect of Baptists; and the place was standing until recently in which he regularly preached. When he afterwards went into distant parts of the country on engine business, he continued to devote his Sundays to the same work. How he first came to study the subject of steam is not known. Mr. Holdsworth says a story was current in Dartmouth in his younger days, and generally believed, that Newcomen conceived the idea of the motive power to be obtained from steam by watching the tea-kettle, the lid of which would frequently rise and fall when boiling; and, reasoning upon this fact, he contrived, by filling a cylinder with steam, to raise the piston, and by immediately injecting some cold water, to create a vacuum, which allowed the weight of the atmosphere to press the piston down, and so give motion to a pump by means of a beam and rods.[39]
[39] Pamphlet on ‘Dartmouth: the advantages of its Harbour as a Station for Foreign Mail Packets, and a Short Notice of its Ancient and Present Condition.’ By A. H. Holdsworth. London, 1841.
It is probable that Newcomen was well aware of the experiments of Savery on steam while the latter was living at Modbury, about fifteen miles distant. It will be remembered that Savery was greatly hampered in his earlier contrivances by the want of skilled workmen; and as Newcomen had the reputation of being one of the cleverest blacksmiths in the county, it is supposed that he was employed to make some of the more intricate parts of Savery’s engine. At all events, he could scarcely fail to hear from the men of his trade in the neighbourhood, what his speculative neighbour at Modbury was trying to compass in the invention of an engine for the purpose of raising water by fire. He was certainly occupied in studying the subject about the same time as Savery; and Switzer says he was well informed that “Mr. Newcomen was as early in his invention as Mr. Savery was in his, only the latter being nearer the Court, had obtained the patent before the other knew it; on which account Mr. Newcomen was glad to come in as a partner to it.”[40]