Thomas W. Dyott

Background

Thomas W. Dyott was born in 1771 in England. He was of Scotch-English parentage.

Career

He had been a druggist’s apprentice and clerk in London. Renting a small room and basement in Philadelphia, he commenced polishing boots in the day time, and making liquid shoe-blacking at night and was soon selling all of the blacking that he could produce.

Saving his earnings, he opened a drug-store and prospered. He used quantities of glass containers of various sizes and shapes for his drugs and medicines and eventually became an agent for several Pennsylvania and New Jersey glass houses making bottles, window-glass, chemical and “philosophical” apparatus, which he retailed at his drug-store.

In 1833 Dyott purchased the Kensington Glass Works, established in 1771 by Robert Towars and James Leacock, buying it from the sons of James Rowland, and also took over an adjacent plant near Gunner’s Run, the two properties covering between 300 and 400 acres along the Delaware River. He expanded the factories and was soon making five grades of glass in five separate furnaces.

Nearly 450 hands, including 100 apprentices, were employed at the glass works. There were fifty different factory buildings on the premises, besides wharves, docks and farm buildings. Dyott improved the grade of bottle- glass, undersold importations, employed expert mold designers and chippers, and impressed more of his containers with his name, or that of the factory, than any other American glass manufacturer.

Many sizes and shapes of bottles were manufactured, the fame of the Kensington output resting, from the glass collector’s standpoint, on the fanciful and historical flasks decorated with ships, locomotives, trees, flags, various agricultural and symbolical devices, or with the likenesses of celebrities, including Dyott himself. At this period of his life, success went to the head of “Dr. ” Dyott (he had appropriated the title “M. D. ” as was a custom of patent-medicine men of that era).

He adopted an extravagant manner of living and a fantastic form of dress, and considered himself quite a personage. A unique community life was established at the glass works, which was called “Dyottville” and “Temperanceville, ” and no liquor was allowed upon the premises, although his patent nostrums contained a large percentage of alcohol. The man aimed at combining “mental and moral with manual labor. ”

A twelve-month operating schedule was inaugurated for the first time in the United States, and Dyottville became largely self-supporting, with artisans and farmers, a medical department containing a sick-room, a library, a singing-school, concerts, games, and recreational sports.

Life was regulated with precision—a rising bell at daylight, stated hours for baths, crackers and biscuits served during working intermission, supper followed by an hour of leisure, night-school, and prayers. Discipline, although strict, was nevertheless kindly, and the moral tone of the community high. The versatile Dyott published The Democratic Herald for a time and issued a monthly advertising sheet. He was the author of a treatise called An Exposition of the System of Moral and Mental Labor Established at the Glass Factory of Dyottville (1833), and he opened “The Manual Labor Bank, ” an unchartercd institution, maintained entirely upon his personal credit.

His philanthropic ideas, however, were his undoing. In 1836 the Schuylkill Bank became financially involved and closed its doors; Dyott could then obtain no specie with which to pay his notes, and after his personal resources became completely exhausted, he failed, and the works were closed. He was indicted for fraudulent insolvency, found guilty, and sentenced to the Eastern State Penitentiary in 1837, but was pardoned before the expiration of his term. After release from prison, he went back to his drug-store, and again acquired considerable wealth. His death occurred in his ninetieth year.

Achievements

• As his medicines required many bottles, in 1833 he purchased the Kensington (Pennsylvania) Glass Works, where he employed 400 workers. Here he found an outlet for his Utopian ambitions. The Kensington output consisted of whiskey flasks, patent-medicine and pickle bottles, snuff jars, demijohns, and carboys in “bottle colours, ” ranging from clear and aquamarine to dark olive, amber, and sage green. The popular and widely imitated George Washington, Jenny Lind, and Louis Kossuth bottles originated there.

Works

• book

  • An exposition of the system of moral and mental labor: Established at the glass factory of Dyottville, in the county of Philadelphia : embracing a ... the internal regulations of the place

Personality

The man aimed at combining “mental and moral with manual labor. ”