Raised in Thornliebank, Crum attended the University of Glasgow before spending two years at Clitheroe in Lancashire. Here he became first a pupil of, then assistant to, the scientific pioneer James Thomson. He spent two years overseas, including time in Turkey and Asia Minor, and on his return took over the family firm, concentrating on dyeing and calico printing.
In 1823, Crum published a paper in the "Annals of Philosophy", and this established his scientific reputation. Between 1830 and 1861 he regularly reported on his research to the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, and served as president of that group. He assisted Anderson's University and the Mechanics' Institute of Glasgow and in 1844 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
After an active and healthy life, including 50 years of marriage, Crum's health failed in the winter of 1867 and he died in May of that year.
THE biography of private citizens whose career, however useful, has not been in the direction of what we call "public life," while it is valued by friends and contemporaries, is often too uneventful to excite general interest in a later generation.
Like the silent ripening influences of a long day in quiet summer, such lives affect the happiness and well-being of those who come under their influence, but leave behind a less striking record than the tempest and the deluge, whose traces, if not beneficent, are often picturesque. If personal narratives such as this volume contains, do not greatly strike the imagination, they may perhaps at least help the understanding; and it is well that something should be known and remembered, among those at any rate who are richer for the harvest they have sown, of men to whose thought and labour much of the boasted social and industrial progress of our time, and with it, of this great city, is certainly due.
The increasing interest in the moral and social improvement and in the higher education of the people of this country which is a striking characteristic of our time, did not originate with the present generation, but is rather the development of the aspirations and efforts of the best men who have gone before. To the impetus given to popular instruction by our Birkbecks and Broughams we owe the spread of knowledge and the progress of intelligence during this century among the artisans of our own country, and it may fairly be added, of their flight beyond sea to other lands, where the characteristic qualities of our race have been so remarkably reproduced and quickened.
In Scotland we cannot point to any one who during the earlier part of the century, when technical knowledge may be said to have been in its infancy, exercised a greater influence in popularizing science than the subject of the present sketch; and a monument to the men who have mainly contributed to make Glasgow what it is would be incomplete if Mr. Crum's name were not found there.
It may be scarcely within the knowledge of many younger readers that at the end of the last century the central seat of the principal mercantile houses in Glasgow was in St. Andrew's Square, whose handsome parish church and surrounding buildings are among the few relics of the past which have as yet been spared by the modern improver. At the north-east corner of that Square stands the house in which the firm of Alexander & James Crum long carried on the business of merchants and manufacturers, and in the adjoining residence Walter Crum was born in the year 1796.
His father, Mr. Alexander Crum of Thornliebank, was the senior partner of that firm - a man of great benevolence and good sense, who died, in 1808, comparatively young, and before his sons had attained to manhood. His mother was the eldest daughter of Mr. Walter Ewing Maclae of Cathkin, and one of a well-known family whose members were all more or less noted for strength of character. Her brothers, Mr. Ewing Maclae of Cathkin, and Mr. James Ewing of Strathleven, M.P. for Glasgow, both West India proprietors, were remarkable - one for his cultivated mind and gentle nature, the other not less for his scholarship than for his singular energy, clear judgment, and philanthropy.
Mrs. Crum's brothers dying without issue, the property of Cathkin passed to her in the person of her grandson, Alexander Crum Maclae, who now represents that family. From his mother Mr. Crum inherited certain strong family characteristics, and to her careful training and example he was indebted for the habits of application and principles of rectitude which formed the groundwork and guide of his life.
After he had completed what was in those days a liberal education, at a private school and the University of Glasgow, Mr. Crum spent two years at Clitheroe in Lancashire - where he became the attached pupil and assistant of a man of singular culture and attainments, Mr. James Thomson, F.R.S., well known as one of the pioneers of scientific industry in England, and the friend and contemporary of the first Sir Robert Peel. On leaving Clitheroe, circumstances connected with his late father's business with the Levant made it necessary that it should have the personal attention of some one specially interested, and with that object Mr. Crum proceeded to Smyrna. He was accompanied as far as Sicily and Malta by his younger brother (Mr. Crum-Ewing, M.P. for Paisley, now Lord-Lieutenant of Dumbartonshire), and there being in those days no regular means of making such a voyage, the greater part of it was performed in a ship of war. It is not without interest to relate that on reaching Leghorn, soon after Napoleon's escape from Elba, these two boys were welcomed and entertained by their contemporary and townsman, Mr. John Graham of Skelmorlie, to whose residence in Italy in early life is probably due that love of art and taste as a collector, by which Glasgow and the West of Scotland have so largely profited.
During two years' residence abroad Mr. Crum acquired valuable experience of the world, travelling in Asia Minor and Turkey, mixing in varied society, and becoming familiar with European languages in a way which facilitated his intercourse in after life with the leading scientific men of France and Germany.
Mr. Crum's residence in Lancashire and intercourse with Mr. Thomson had given in impetus to his natural taste for science, and had developed an interest in its practical application for which the business of dyeing and calico printing at Thornliebank, on the management of which he soon afterwards entered, afforded ample scope. He may be said to have done more than any other manufacturer of his time to elevate a trade, which had hitherto been practised empirically, into something of a science, based upon exact principles, and though mainly on subjects connected with his own business, Mr. Crum's investigations had a scientific interest and value beyond that which belonged to their mere practical application. His first paper on "Indigo," published in 1823 in the "Annals of Philosophy," established his reputation as a man of science. At that time accurate organic analysis involved much greater difficulty and the exercise of higher ingenuity and thought than, with Liebig's methods, is now required. The paper received much notice and commendation at the time, and its perfect accuracy was afterwards fully confirmed.
Throughout the rest of a busy life Mr. Crum continued his researches in science, and between 1830 and 1861 he regularly gave accounts of them to the Philosophical Society of Glasgow, of which for many years he was the popular and respected President. His papers were translated into French and German, and were printed in the scientific journals of both countries. Among them we find treatises on a variety of subjects, such as the "Primitive Colours," the rationale of the "Dyeing of Cotton Fibre," the "Stalactites of Derbyshire," the "Origin and Nature of the Potato Disease," the "Supposed Influence of the Moon upon the Weather," the "Nature of Gun-cotton," and many others.
At an early period of its existence Mr. Crum assisted in making the Mechanics' Institute of Glasgow the valuable agency which it has proved in popularizing science, and during nearly forty years he devoted much time and thought to the improvement of Anderson's University - a college of science which, besides its reputation as a school of medicine, did more in its day to bring physics and chemistry within the reach of the artizan and the general public than perhaps any other teaching institution in the country.
About the year 1844 Baron Liebig's valuable exposition of the relation of chemistry to agriculture began to attract attention, and in visits to this country as Mr. Crum's guest, Liebig naturally enlisted his interest in disseminating the principles of this new application of science. As a member of the Highland Society, Mr. Crum was instrumental in inducing its Directors to recognize the importance of Liebig's theories, and by establishing a department of chemistry to bring them to the test of experience and thus to develop their utility.
The study and cultivation of science generally, and of chemistry in particular, has wonderfully developed among us of late years, but those who were interested in its progress during the earlier part of the century looked much to France and Germany for intercourse with scientific leaders, and Mr. Crum enjoyed the friendship of such men as Humboldt, and Liebig, and Dumas, not less than that of Thomas Thomson, and Faraday, and Graham. In 1844 he had the honour of being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
Much, however, as his mind was occupied with such subjects, his interest and sympathies were not confined to one channel. Mr. Crum could be as keenly active in the affairs of his own neighbourhood or the public concerns of his country as he was in any question of exact science, and he took the same pains to arrive at just conclusions in the one as he was accustomed to do in the other. Of personal credit in connection with such matters he thought little or not at all, contributing rather to the result he desired by gaining for others positions for which he thought them fitted, and of which they should have all the honour. He was singularly free from self-assertion or self-seeking. He would take infinite pains to find the best man for any office which was to be filled by his influence, and cared little that others should know what his part in the work had been.
In the politics as well as in the local government of the county of Renfrew, Mr. Crum took an active and intelligent interest. While he was a strong and consistent supporter of Liberal opinions, acting with the old Whig party of Glasgow, and openly professing his opinions when they were neither so commonly held nor so popular as now, he was so careful in his respect for the convictions of others, that he never lost a friend through political differences.
In any estimate of such a life as Mr. Crum's, it is not however what can be related of it that will account for the effects it produced or the impression it left behind, but rather the strength and individuality of character which influenced powerfully those around him - the love of truth, keen sense of justice, loyalty to principle, singleness of mind, and untiring energy. These, with accurate knowledge, strong good sense and active benevolence, deep affections and tenderness of nature (although he did not always allow himself to betray them), were what made Mr. Crum a force and influence in his time, and by which his memory helps to give a reality to what is highest and best.
During a long and active life Mr. Crum never suffered from illness until the winter of 1867, when his health began to give way, and in May of that year he died at Thornliebank at the age of seventy.
In 1826 he married the youngest daughter of Mr. William Graham. She died in 1876. His eldest daughter, who died in 1870, was the wife of Sir William Thomson, F.R.S. His eldest son was, on the death of Colonel Mure in 1880, elected, without opposition, to represent the County of Renfrew in Parliament.
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