The son of one of the founders of the St Rollox chemical works in Glasgow, Tennant entered the family business and soon became manager. On his father Charles's death in 1838, Tennant moved into the house built by his father at 195 West George Street and stayed until his own death on 17 April 1878.
He became a partner in chemical works at Jarrow and Newcastle, and owned extensive West Indian sugar estates. His father had patented a process for using chloride of lime instead of chloride of potash for bleaching cloth, and this powder was manufactured in large quantities at St Rollox. The calculated saving to the country from this invention from 1799 to 1846 was £423,667,014 2s 1d.
Under Tennant, St Rollox became the greatest chemical works in the land. It also had the highest chimney in the world.
IN the latter half of last century there lived near Ochiltree a remarkable man with a remarkable family. This was John Tennant, factor on Lady Glencairn's estate of Ochiltree, and tenant of the farm of Glenconner. The Tennants came originally from the parish of Alloway, and in the quiet little kirkyard on the brae above the Doon their tombstones may still be seen. It was, no doubt, while he was at Alloway that old Glenconner became the close friend of the father of Robert Burns - so close a friend that he was one of the witnesses to the poet's baptism; and when William Burness died one of the horses that, walking tandem, bore the bier from Lochlea to Alloway, was from Glenconner.
All through the poet's short, stormy life "guid auld Glen" was his warm friend, and many and many of Burns's poems were preed at Glenconner before being given to the public. The "Letter to James Tennant of Glenconner," which was written to John Tennant's eldest son James (Burns's "auld comrade dear and brither sinner"), contains the following hearty lines:-
"My heart-warm love to guid auld Glen,
The ace and wale of honest men,
When bending down wi' auld gray hairs,
Beneath the load of years and cares,
May He who made him still support him,
An' views beyond the grave comfort him;
His worthy family far and near,
God bless them a' wi' grace and gear."
After sending greeting to various members of the family, Burns writes that "Charlie" must not be forgotten, as "I'm tauld he offers very fairly." This offer was more than borne out, for Charlie was no other than Charles Tennant of St. Rollox, one of the founders of the great chemical trade of Glasgow. In early life he migrated from Ayrshire to Darnley, near Barrhead, where he commenced business as a bleacher. He married Margaret, daughter of William Wilson, factor to Lord Glasgow at Hawkhead; and his eldest son, who, after the good old Scotch fashion, bore the grandfather's name John, was born in September, 1796. John Tennant received his education at Glasgow High School and University, and when a mere lad entered his father's business at St. Rollox, of which he soon became manager. For long he resided in a house at the works, and it may be mentioned that it was at a dinner there in 1825, at which Major Monteath, Mr. C. D. Donald, Mr. A. S. Dalglish, and some others were present, that the idea of the Western Club was first mooted. On Charles Tennant's death in 1838, Mr. Tennant removed to the house 195 West George Street built by his father, which he occupied till his death on 17th April, 1878. A good practical chemist, as the manager of such works behoved to be, he soon showed the stuff that was in him, for under his management they grew and grew until they became the biggest chemical works in the kingdom. To the end of his life he took an intense pride and interest in St. Rollox; with him its welfare was more than a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence - it was a matter of honour and almost of affection.
Later in life he was concerned in many other important commercial undertakings. He was a partner in great chemical works at Jarrow and Newcastle; he was an extensive owner of West Indian sugar estates, and was one of the promoters of the Tharsis Copper Company and of the Steel Company of Scotland. In all of these he has been succeeded by his son, Sir Charles Tennant, Bart., M.P. for Peeblesshire.
The management of such a concern as St. Rollox would have been enough for most men. Mr. Tennant, however, while working St. Rollox hard, and taking care never to allow his sport to interfere with his business, was in early life a keen sportsman. He was one of the hardest riders and most constant supporters of the Renfrewshire Hunt, of which the late Lord Glasgow, then Lord Kelburne, was master. When he was long past seventy his compact, close-knit figure, sitting his well-bred horse in an unmistakably workmanlike manner, was well known to all those who took their walks abroad round Glasgow. Of late years he did not meddle much with politics, but through all the dark years before '32, when the Whig cause was frowned on by the great and shunned by the small, and it needed both pluck and principle to be true and steadfast, John Tennant stood firm for reform and liberty. He might have been member for Glasgow had he chosen, but his way never lay much in speaking or public display, and he let others reap what he had sown. The nature of the man was too strenuous to let him be always bland and smooth; but though his manner at times was brusque and his language forcible, he had the kindest of hearts and a hand open as the day. His public charity was large, but the kindnesses that he did and the help he gave in secret to the needy far exceeded it. In the early days of volunteering he took a keen interest in the movement, and to the end of his life was honorary colonel of the Fourth Regiment of Lanarkshire Volunteers, or, as it used to be called, the First Northern.
In one respect Mr. Tennant stood alone in Glasgow. His house in West George Street came to be looked on as the natural and proper place to entertain all distinguished strangers, especially if they belonged to the Whig party; and under the reign of his son the fame of the house for hospitality has in no way waned. For another reason, too, John Tennant deserves to be remembered with honour - he was almost the last of our great merchants who were first and foremost Glasgow men. He refused to follow the custom, now become too common, of looking on Glasgow simply as a disagreeable place where money is to be made, being in it as little as possible, and giving all the good that is in one to other places far away. His interests and pleasures were alike centred in Glasgow; his most intimate friends were here; he lived among us all his life, and at last died here in the house that his father had built. Honourable, energetic, hard-headed, and generous, with a hatred of all that was mean or shabby, he was a fine type of the men who have made Glasgow what it is.
About the end of the last century, Charles Tennant effected a complete revolution in the bleaching trade. At that time wherever near Glasgow a clear burn gave the needful water and the little haugh by its side the drying and bleaching ground, a bleachwork was pretty sure to be put up. The cotton trade of Glasgow was advancing by leaps and bounds, and there was plenty of business for the small bleachworks, with their little knots of cottages, in the Stirlingshire, Renfrewshire, and Dumbartonshire glens. The process was a slow one, occupying about twelve weeks, but business was more leisurely in those days, and they got on comfortably enough.
It was in the year 1797 that Charles Tennant, who was then still a bleacher at Darnley, patented a process for using calcareous earth instead of alkaline substances for neutralizing the chlorine used in bleaching. In other words, he used chloride of lime instead of chloride of potash for bleaching cloth. This preparation, which was a liquid, was a great improvement on what had gone before, but in 1799 Mr. Tennant took out a patent for the famous bleaching powder which completely changed the industry. To make this bleaching powder works were started at St. Rollox, at the Townhead of Glasgow, by Mr. Tennant, in partnership with Mr. Charles Macintosh, F.R.S., of Dunchattan, one of the most scientific manufacturers that ever was in Glasgow; Mr. James Knox, of Hurlet; Dr. William Couper (father of the late William Couper, writer, and Dr. John Couper); and Mr. Alexander Dunlop, under the firm of Tennant Knox & Co. Some idea of the importance of this invention may be gathered from the fact that so early as the year 1799 it was calculated that the annual saving on the linen bleached in Ireland alone amounted to £166,800 per annum. Large as this sum may appear, Mr. George Macintosh, in his biography of his father Charles Macintosh, gravely estimates the saving to the country from this one invention in the period from 1799 to 1846 at £423,667,014 2s. 1d. The 2s. 1d. show that the calculation must have been made at least with care. In December, 1802, Mr. Tennant brought an action for infringement in the Court of King's Bench, in which, owing to a technicality of the patent law at the time, he was non-suited, and the patent was thereby thrown open. No way discouraged, he went on and prospered, and under him and his son the St. Rollox Works became the greatest in the kingdom. To this was soon added the distinction of having for many years the highest chimney in the world, built to carry off noxious fumes from the works. The manufacture of sulphuric acid and soda was added to the making of bleaching powder, and now St. Rollox can produce almost any chemical known in trade. It was Charles Tennant and Charles Macintosh who gave the first impetus to the chemical industry, one of the greatest and most lucrative trades Glasgow has ever possessed, a trade for which she is known all over the world. Some years ago a Glasgow man met in the Schweizerhof at Lucerne an American from St. Louis. No sooner did the latter discover that his victim came from Glasgow than his next question was, "Air you in chemicals?"
Many Glasgow men must have wondered who Rollox was, and why he was made a saint. The truth is that St. Rollox is a corruption of St. Roque or Roch. This holy man, son of a great lord in Languedoc, was born about the end of the thirteenth century. Succeeding to his father when twenty years of age he gave up the life of a seigneur for that of a pilgrim and wandered into Italy, where by the sign of the cross he cured those dying of the plague. He returned to France and died in 1327. Though never regularly canonized, St. Roch is, or was, held in high honour in France and Italy. His fete, the 16th of August, has been recognized by the Roman Catholic Church, and he is the patron of those who are attacked by the plague. There was a church dedicated to this St. Roch in the moor of Glasgow, which lay to the north of the High Church; probably the church was on the site of the present St. Rollox Works. The sixth prebend of the Collegiate Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Anne, or Our Lady College of Glasgow, erected and endowed in 1549, was called after this St. Roch; and the prebendary, besides certain payments from houses within the burgh, had assigned to him the lands belonging to this church. From an instrument of sasine in 1512 in favour of Magister David Murhede and Dominus Alexander Robert, perpetual chaplains of the Church of St. Roch, it appears that there was a cemetery attached to it, which may have been originally for the burial of those who died of the plague.
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