[BITList] Life in the balance

[John Feltham]

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Avery,  Thomas  (1813-1894), scale manufacturer and local politician,  
was born in 1813, the second son of William Avery (1789-1843), scale  
maker, and his wife, Elizabeth, nee Balden. Thomas and his elder  
brother, William Henry Avery (1812-1874), were born into a long- 
established dynasty of Birmingham scale makers; they had six siblings,  
one brother and five sisters. The Avery business had its origins in an  
eighteenth-century combination of several makers of steelyards,  
devices for weighing heavy goods in towns like Birmingham where  
manufacture and trade flourished. Among these precursors was James  
Ford (d. 1761), whose business was taken over by a fellow craftsman,  
William Bridgins Barton; he in turn handed over in 1782 to Thomas  
Beach (1745-1824), whose sister married a John Avery. Thereafter other  
marriages bonded the families, many of whose members were employed as  
steelyard and scale makers, mostly in the expanding Birmingham area.  
With increasing industrialization, and the arrival of government  
regulations concerning the provision of accurate means of weighing  
many varieties of goods, this formerly humble craft developed into one  
which required new standards of accuracy and innovation.

About 1799 Thomas Beach handed the business over to Joseph Balden (d.  
1813), who was married to Beach's niece Mary Avery. Balden died  
intestate, leaving two young sons. The elder son, failing to keep the  
business going, conveyed his estate to his cousin and brother-in-law,  
William Avery, then a mercer and draper, who in 1811 had married  
Elizabeth Balden. When William Avery inherited in 1841 he was  
described as a scale-beam maker. He immediately began to stimulate the  
business, and with his brother Thomas (d. 1824) traded under the name  
of W. and T. Avery, late T. Beach. By the time of his death in 1843,  
William Avery's two sons were already in the business. William Henry  
had married Ann Beach while Thomas married Mary Anne Beilby  
(1812-1893) in 1842; the couple had no children. Thomas was an active  
traveller throughout Britain for Averys, which by the time of the 1851  
census employed 150 men and numerous boys at its premises in the  
Digbeth and Moat Lane area of the city. Avery, who was by then living  
at 142 Highgate, Birmingham, gained a reputation throughout the local  
trades for his industry and trustworthiness. During a period when  
local government was suffering from bad management, he was one of  
several leading citizens who came in with a mission to return it to  
efficiency. He entered Birmingham council for St Martin's ward, which  
contained the Avery factories, and in 1864 retired from business  
before withdrawing his capital and leaving his brother as sole  
proprietor two years later. Under the efficient management of William  
Henry Avery and his successors, W. and T. Avery continued to prosper  
throughout the twentieth century, until taken over by GEC in 1993 and  
thereafter by the US firm Weigh-Tronix, who since 2000 have traded as  
Avery Weigh-Tronix.

Avery's main interests now turned to the betterment of his  
increasingly populous home town, his own aims being supported by  
Joseph Chamberlain, leader of the council's Liberal faction. In 1868  
he became mayor of Birmingham, being elected alderman in 1868, and was  
again mayor in 1881. After a serious early misjudgement, when he  
fought to keep the ancient cattle market in the centre of Birmingham,  
Avery was largely responsible for two significant public benefactions:  
the acquisition in 1874 of a private waterworks, the development of  
which under town ownership brought potable water to the townsfolk, and  
the greater achievement of the provision of a sewage works. In 1877,  
after a battle against the landowners concerned, a drainage board  
incorporating Birmingham and surrounding authorities was able to build  
a sewage farm which discharged purified water into the previously  
polluted River Tame.

Beyond the council chamber, Avery was a magistrate for the city and  
the counties of Warwick and Worcester and sat as governor, trustee, or  
treasurer at the Birmingham and Midland Institute, Mason College, and  
Spring Hill College, which trained men for the dissenting ministry,  
and for other local hospitals and institutions. In politics he was a  
conservative, leaning towards the liberal; he always voted for John  
Bright as Birmingham MP, and supported the old Liberal policies on the  
council. By conviction Avery and his wife were lifelong  
Congregationalists, attending the well-known Carr's Lane Church,  
although he was never a member of the church. The onset of  
arteriosclerosis obliged Avery to resign his aldermanship on 4 October  
1892. He was immediately presented with the freedom of the city,  
having to sign the freedom roll in his house, in the presence of  
Birmingham's mayor and civic officials. His wife died towards the end  
of 1893; Avery died at his home, Beech Lawn, Church Road, Edgbaston,  
on 17 February 1894 and was buried on 21 February at the old cemetery,  
Key Hill. His extensive property in Birmingham went to his nephews,  
and he made generous bequests to local colleges, hospitals, and  
institutions.

Anita McConnell

Sources  L. H. Broadbent, The Avery business, 1730-1918 (1949) +  
Birmingham Daily Post (19 Feb 1894) + The Engineer, 77 (1894), 153 +  
The Times (19 Feb 1894); (23 March 1894) + J. T. Bunce and C. A.  
Vince, History of the corporation of Birmingham, 2-3 (1885-1902) + d.  
cert.
Likenesses  H. T. Munns, oils, Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery [see  
illus.] · Dart, cartoon, repro. in Broadbent, Avery business, 26 ·  
photograph, repro. in Broadbent, Avery business, 26
Wealth at death  £230,723 14s. 1d.: probate, 19 March 1894, CGPLA Eng.  
& Wales