Walker & Booth
A cast steel factory in Masbrough, Rotherham, founded by Samuel Walker (1715–1782) and John Booth in 1748.
Walker & Booth produced blister steel in reverberatory furnaces.
Documents from no later than 1796 mention the production of cast steel employing the crucible casting process.
This business was operated separately from the ironworks of the Walker brothers (see Walker Family), though the two companies were closely intermeshed through cross ownership. In 1793, for instance, Joshua Walker & Co. owned three quarters of the shares of Walker & Booth, while William Booth owned the remaining quarter. The Walkers’ ironworks were about eight times the size of the steel company.
The two men, Samuel Walker (1779–1851) and Thomas Booth, are attested as business partners in 1820. It was presumably this Thomas Booth whom Johann Conrad Fischer met on his travels in 1814.
The Walkers ran into financial difficulties in the 1820s, and steel production was abandoned in 1829.
See location: Walker & Booth Steelworks.
Traveljournal 1814
Traveljournal 1846
- Fischer, Johann Conrad: Tagebücher. Bearbeitet von Karl Schib. Schaffhausen 1951.
- Henderson, W. O.: J. C. Fischers Reisen durch die Industriegebiete Englands 1814–1851. In: Tradition - Zeitschrift für Firmengeschichte und Unternehmensbiographie 1964, S. 124.
- Munford, Anthony Peter: Iron & Steel Town: An Industrial History of Rotherham. Gloucestershire 2003, S. 159 (Internet Archive, Stand 28.9.2022).