Charles Macintosh & Co
Charles Macintosh, chemist and textile businessman, discovered and patented a method of using waste products from the gas industry together with latex to waterproof cloth. At first he may have started manufacturing this waterproof material at his father’s Glasgow dye works, or perhaps at his own premises on Hill Street in the city. In 1824 Macintosh persuaded the influential cotton manufacturers and textile merchants J and Hugh Hornby Birley to build a factory next to their Cambridge Street mill in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, to produce waterproof products.
Macintosh’s waterproofs were not initially popular with polite society, as they had an unpleasant smell. Demand from the armed services, stagecoach travellers and others sustained the business, but it took time to become profitable. Meanwhile another chemist, Thomas Hancock, had improved upon the waterproofing process and patented his own method. From 1825 he and Macintosh slowly began to cooperate, improving their products, until Hancock became a partner in Macintosh’s business in 1831. At this point Hancock and Macintosh merged their businesses. Charles Macintosh and Co acquired a speciality rubber products business belonging to Hancock’s brother in 1833. By 1836 the company was sufficiently successful that the word ‘mackintosh’ was being used to describe any raincoat.
A major fire caused significant damage to the factory in 1838, which was reported in the press at the time.
Charles Macintosh died in 1843. In the same year Hancock discovered the process of rubber vulcanisation (at the same time as Charles Goodyear made the discovery in the United States). Vulcanisation enabled the company to create a range of vulcanized rubberized fabric products as well solid rubber goods. By the time of the 1851 Great Exhibition, the business won an award and was highly successful.
In 1889 Charles Macintosh & Co became a private limited company.
The company prospered during the First World War, due to the demand for waterproof and rubber materials for the war effort. In 1918 they acquired a larger factory in Brook Street.
In 1925 Dunlop Ltd acquired Charles Macintosh & Co, in order to expand their business in general rubber products. In 1940 part of the mill complex was destroyed in bombing raids, but Dunlop Ltd continued to manufacture rubber goods in the surviving buildings until 2000. The company carried on as a subsidiary of Dunlop until at least the 1960s.