ksmiths, Wolverhampton 134, and Bilston 8; while nearly
a century later, in 1855, the numbers were Willenhall 340, Wolverhampton
110, and Bilston 2, which shows that the trade grew in Willenhall at the
expense of the adjoining places. Yet lockmaking was carried on in
Bilston as early as 1590, when the Perrys, the Kempsons, and the
Tomkyses, all leading families, were engaged in the trade. In 1796 Isaac
Mason, inventor of the "fly press" for making various parts of a lock,
migrated from Bilston to Willenhall.

The Willenhall specimen of a miniature lock is thus mentioned in a diary
of the Rev. T. Unett, "June 13, 1776, James Lees, of Willenhall, aged 63
years and upwards, showed me a padlock with its key, made by himself,
that was not the weight of a silver twopence. He at the same time shewed
me a lock that was not the weight of a silver penny; he was then making
the key to it, all of iron. He said he would be bound to make a dozen
locks, with their keys, that should not exceed the weight of a sixpence."

Before the rise of factories into which workmen might be collected, and
their labour more healthily regulated, Willenhall lock-making was always
conducted in small domiciliary workshops. Had any one at the close of
the eighteenth century peeped in at the grimy little windows of one of
these low-roofed workshops, and made himself acquainted with the extreme
dirtiness of the calling, he would scarcely have ventured to regard it as
one befitting the dainty hands of the highest personage of the most
fastidious of nations. Yet that unfortunate monarch, Louis XVI., prided
himself not on his statesmanship, but upon his skill as a practical
locksmith, and his intimacy with all the intricacies of the craft. He
had fitted up in his palace at the Tuileries a forge with hearth and
anvil, bellows and bench, from which it was his delight to turn out with
his own hands all kinds of work in the shape of "spring, double bolt, or
catch lock."

He smokes his forge, he bares his sinewy arm,
And bravely pounds the sounding anvil warm.

Locks of every variety of principle and quality are produced in
Willenhall; the chief kinds being the cabinet lock, the best qualities of
which range from 10s. to 3 pounds each, while the commoner ones are sold
at from 10s. to 3s. the dozen; the rim lock for doors having two or three
bolts, and opening with knob and key; the stock or fine plate lock,
imbedded in a wooden case to stand the w