the Unions had, at first, no other meeting place than the club-room freely placed at their disposal by the publican, and that their payment for drink was of the nature of rent. Meanwhile the Compositors and Bookbinders were removing their headquarters from public-houses to offices of their own, and the Steam-Engine Makers were allowing branches to hire rooms for meetings so as to avoid temptation. In 1850 the Ironmoulders report that some publicans were refusing to lend rooms for meetings, owing to the growth of Temperance. [344] It was the strength of their organisation in London in 1799, as we have seen, that led to the employers’ petition to the House of Commons, out of which sprang the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800. See also the evidence given by Galloway and other employers before the 1824 Select Committee on Artisans and Machinery; also incidental references in the _Life of Sir William Fairbairn_, 1877, and other works. We have been unable to discover any documents of engineering societies prior to 1822. Sir William Fairbairn, in the preface to his _Mills and Mill-work_, 1861, attributes the supersession of the millwright to the changes consequent on the introduction of the steam-engine. [345] William Newton was born at Congleton in 1822, his father, who had once occupied a superior position, being then a journeyman machinist. The boy went to work in engine shops at the age of fourteen, joined the Hanley Branch of the Journeymen Steam-Engine Makers’ Society in 1842, soon afterwards moving to London (where he worked in the same shop as Henry James, afterwards Lord James of Hereford, then an engineer pupil, and later noted for his knowledge of Trade Unionism), and rose to be foreman. After his dismissal in 1848 for his Trade Union activity he took a public-house at Ratcliffe, and devoted himself largely to the promotion of the amalgamation of the engineering societies. In 1852 he became, for a short period, secretary to a small insurance company. At the General Election of 1852 he became a candidate for the Tower Hamlets. He was opposed by both the great political parties, but the show of hands at the hustings was in his favour. At the poll he was unsuccessful, receiving, however, 1,095 votes. In 1860 he was presented with a testimonial (including a sum of £300) from his A.S.E. fellow-members. In later years he became the proprietor of a prosperous local newspaper and was elected by the Stepney Vestry as its chairman and also as its representative on the Metropolitan Board of Works. He became one of the leading members of that body, on which he served from 1862 to 1876, filling the important office of deputy chairman to the Parliamentary, Fire Brigade, and other influential committees. In 1868 he again contested the Tower Hamlets against both Liberals and Conservatives, receiving 2,890 votes; and in 1875 he unsuccessfully fought a bye-election at Ipswich. He died March 9, 1876, when his