Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hedley, William
HEDLEY, WILLIAM (1779–1843), inventor, was born at Newburn, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, on 13 July 1779. He was educated at a school at Wylam, and when not yet twenty-two years of age was appointed viewer at Walbottle colliery in Northumberland. He afterwards held the same position at the Wylam colliery, taking charge, in addition, of the Blagill lead mine at Alston in Cumberland. The difficulty and expense of the mode of conveying coal from the pits to the river Tyne drew his attention to the necessity of improving the means of transit, and it was to his ingenuity that the locomotive engine of Trevithick, Blenkinsop, and Chapman first became practically, or at all events extensively, useful. Hedley first saw clearly that a locomotive engine and wagons needed none of the old rack rails and toothed wheels to secure sufficient friction to induce motion; his patent for the smooth wheel and rail system bore date 13 March 1813. Soon afterwards the smooth rails were laid down at Wylam.
Hedley was a designer and maker of locomotive engines, and discovered, though he did not perfectly develope, the principle of the blast-pipe, a method of producing a greater draught by returning the exhaust steam into the chimney. This was certainly introduced into engines of his which were at work as early as 1814.
Hedley had been a shipowner since 1808. In 1822, during a strike of the keelmen, he promptly placed one of his engines upon a barge, and, working it with paddles, towed the keels to the coal-shoots without the men's assistance. Steamboats had been invented earlier [see Hull, Jonathan], but they were little used, and the action was characteristic of Hedley's energy and resource.
In 1824 he took the Crow Tees colliery, near Durham, and later that at Callerton, near Wylam. In 1828 he removed to Shield Row, where he rented for some time the South Moor colliery. While at Callerton he introduced an improved system of pumping the water out of collieries, which, though adversely criticised at the time, was soon in general use in the north of England.
Hedley died at Burnhopeside Hall, near Lanchester, Durham, on 9 Jan. 1843, and was buried at Newburn. Four of his sons survived him: Oswald Dodd Hedley (d. 1882); Thomas Hedley (d. 1877), who left much money to endow the Northumberland bishopric; William Hedley; and George Hedley.
The inventions connected with the steam engine are all matters of dispute. Hedley's discoveries were not widely known at the time, and, owing to the desire of popular writers to simplify the story and to add to its picturesqueness by consolidating what should be a widely distributed credit, he has not until recently received due recognition.
[Archer's William Hedley, 3rd ed.; O. D. Hedley's Who invented the Locomotive Engine? Galloway's The Steam Engine and its Inventors, pp. 212, 218, 220; Smiles's Lives of the Engineers, iii. 91, 497, 498, 499, 500.]