It is no little thing to say of Derby that the town in which the silk manufacture of England first took its rise--for here the first silk-mill ever built in this kingdom was erected by John Lombe; in which the cotton trade made its first gigantic stride--for here Arkwright and Strutt completed their invention for spinning, and within a few miles erected the first cotton-mill in England; in which the hosiery trade was first brought to perfection--for here Strutt invented his famed “Derby Ribbed Stocking Machine,” and carried on his manufacture of those articles; and in which many other branches of manufacture have also had their rise--should likewise have been one of the few places, and one of the _first_, in which the manufacture of porcelain was matured, and in which the biscuit was first invented. But so it is, and it is no little for Derby to be proud of, that these branches of industry, which are among the most important in the kingdom, should have had their birth, and in their infancy been carefully nurtured, within its boundaries. The stories of Lombe and his silk, Arkwright and Strutt and their cotton, and Jedediah Strutt and his stockings, have been often told, and will bear telling again and again; but that of Duesbury and his china has never been fully told, and it was only by the most laborious research that I was enabled, in 1862, to tell it, and to show to what an extent the manufacture, under the care of three generations of one family, was carried. That information I now, after many years of patient research, considerably amplify. Alas! that so important, so beautiful a branch of Art should ever have been allowed to decay in the town by which it has so long been fostered. One of the earliest printed notices of the Derby China Works occurs in a scarce old book, “A Short Tour in the Midland Counties of England performed in the summer of 1772, together with an account of a similar excursion undertaken September, 1774.” It is as follows:-- “The manufacture of porcelain employs, in all, near a hundred men and boys; several of the painters earn a guinea and a half per week. Mr. Duesbury (who has also bought the manufactory at Chelsea) is every day bringing the art nearer to that perfection at which it has arrived in other countries. Derby porcelain is at present by no means contemptible: figures and other ornaments are among their most capital articles. Here is also a pottery, and I was showed an imitation of the Queen’s ware, but it does not come up to the original, the produce of Staffordshire.” In the “Poll Book” of 1775, when Christopher Heath was Mayor of Derby, the following names occur:--