Frank James

Nationality:
English; British

(fl 1970-2010), Family historian

Frank James is descended from John Hancock. He is the collector and historian of the family archives and between 1970 and 2010 amassed a significant quantity of material about the family. This culminated in him co-authoring a book with John Loadman, 'The Hancocks of Marlborough. Rubber, Art, and the Industrial Revolution: A Family of Inventive Genius' (2010, OUP).

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The Hancocks represent a prominent family spanning art and science throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thomas Hancock (1786-1865) is seen as the founder of the British rubber industry, discovering the means by which to make rubber a useable material using his patented masticator. The masticator worked rubber scraps into a shredded mass of rubber which could then be formed into blocks or rolled into sheets. Thomas also invented the process of vulcanizing rubber and his work led him to enter into a partnership with Thomas Macintosh in which he helped develop and produce mackintoshes. The Hancock company ran until the 1930s, led by Thomas’s nephew and assistant, James Lyne Hancock, and then a great nephew John Hancock Nunn. Thomas' brothers were also remarkable in their range of pursuits. John Hancock (1788-1835) started his own rubber business specialising in medical use and hoses. William Hancock (1789-1848) was a master cabinetmaker and also developed the Hancock company’s production of perfect binding for books. Walter Hancock (1799-1852) designed, built and ran the first commercial steam-powered road carriages in London. Charles Hancock (1800-1877) was an artist known for his paintings of animals who was also instrumental in the application of gutta percha for coating telegraph cables. The collection includes business and personal papers; a number of printed materials and research notes on the Hancocks conducted by Frank James, a descendant of John Hancock who co-authored The Hancocks of Marlborough: Rubber, Art, and the Industrial Revolution: A Family of Inventive Genius (OUP, 2010). There are a number of items held by the SMG Library which are related to this collection: - 'The Hancocks of Marlborough: rubber, art and the industrial revolution: a family of inventive genius' by John Loadman and Frank James (OUP; 2010), which was based on many of the notes made by Frank James and which can be found in HANC/5 - 'Noble obsession: Charles Goodyear, Thomas Hancock, and the race to unlock the greatest industrial secret of the nineteenth century' by Charles Slack (Hyperion; 2002) - 'Personal narrative of the origin and progress of the caoutchouc or india-rubber manufacture in England' by Thomas Hancock (Longman, Brown, Green, Longsmans & Roberts; 1857), a first edition of which addressed by Thomas Hancock to James Lyne Hancock can be seen in the file HANC/4/1

Hancock Family Collection
Handwritten list of patents and inventions by the Hancock family 1813-1847. Includes name of patent owner; patent number; month and date patent was issued and details about process or item patented

Handwritten list of patents and inventions by Hancock
Information related to the Hancock family and the rubber industry

Information related to the Hancock family and the rubber industry
Frank James' research notes on Charles Hancock, 1800-1877

Frank James' research notes on Charles Hancock
Printed materials relating to the Hancock family and the rubber industry, including: - Personal Narrative of the Origin and Progress of the Caoutchouc India-rubber Manfacture in England by Thomas Hancock, with an appendix specifying the 14 patents held by Thomas Hancock and a dedication to J L Hancock dated 1857 - A centenary edition of the above, reprinted by order of the Directors of James Lyne Hancock Limited, 1920 - A5 printed copy of The Life and Work of Thomas Hancock: A lecture given to The Institution of the Rubber Industry by Mr B D Porritt on 3 March 1924, with a 2015 editor's note - Typed copy of 'The Life and Work of Thomas Hancock' by B D Porritt & H Rogers - Photocopy of 'The History of the Rubber Industry' by Philip Schidrowtiz and T R Dawson (Institution of the Rubber Industry; 1952) - 'The Early History of the Rubber Industry' by B D Porritt - Photocopy of 'The rise of The British Rubber Industry During the Nineteenth Century' by William Woodruff (Liverpool University Press;1958) - Copy of 'The Age of indian Rubber - A Comic Song'

Printed materials related to the Hancock family and the rubber industry
Miscellaneous unlabelled photographs, predominantly of family members

Photographs of Hancock family and acquaintances
Frank James' research notes on Thomas Hancock, 1786-1865. Includes: - Pamphlet entitled 'The Substance of a Discourse Occasioned by the Death of the Late Thomas Hancock Esquire', delivered by William Benson at Langham Chapel, Marylebone on 2 April 1865 - Information about commemorative plaques in London and Marlborough - Correspondence between Frank James and the Science Museum in 2005 regarding early rubber mouldings held by the museum

Frank James' research notes on Thomas Hancock
Documents relating to the production of rubber and the rubber industry. Includes: - statistics and graphs - correspondence with individuals including Mr Porritt of the Research Association of British Rubber Manufacturers - James Lyne Hancock trade price list 1867 - Chas. Macintosh & Co. Trade Price List and Classification 1879

Documents related to the production of rubber and the rubber industry
Printed copy of the Scientific Adjudication in the Court of Common Pleas, Hancock v. Somervell and Another, regarding Patent 9952

Hancock v. Somervell and Another
Copy of the Patents, Designs, and Trade Marks Act, 1883. Has Walter Hancock's signature and date in top right hand corner

Patents, Designs, and Trade Marks Act, 1883
Frank James' research notes on James Hancock, ? 1753 - 1821, cabinetmaker. Includes: - Reproduction of portrait of Betty Hancock, his wife

Frank James' research notes on James Hancock

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