ed an enemy for himself.

The three years between 1856 and 1859, when Bessemer opened his own
steel works in Sheffield, were occupied in tracing the causes of his
initial difficulties. There was continued controversy in the technical
press. Bessemer (unless he used a _nom-de-plume_) took no part in it
and remained silent until he made another public appearance before the
Institution of Civil Engineers in London (May 1859). By this time
Bessemer's process was accepted as a practical one, and the claims of
Robert Mushet to share in his achievement was becoming clamorous.

Robert Mushet

Robert (Forester) Mushet (1811-1891), born in the Forest of Dean,
Gloucestershire, of a Scots father (David, 1772-1847) himself a noted
contributor to the metallurgy of iron and steel, is, like the American
William Kelly, considered by many to have been a victim of Bessemer's
astuteness--or villainy. Because of Robert Mushet's preference for the
quiet of Coleford, many important facts about his career are lacking;
but even if his physical life was that of a recluse, his frequent and
verbose contributions to the correspondence columns of the technical
press made him well-known to the iron trade. It is from these letters
that he must be judged.

In view of his propensity to intervene pontifically in every discussion
concerning the manufacture of iron and steel, it is somewhat surprising
that he refrained from comment on Bessemer's British Association
address of August 1856 for more than fourteen months. The debate was
opened over the signature of his brother David who shared the family
facility with the pen.[22] Recognizing Bessemer's invention as a
"congruous appendage to [the] now highly developed powers of the blast
furnace" which he describes as "too convenient, too powerful and too
capable of further development to be superseded by any retrograde
process," David Mushet greeted Bessemer's discovery as "one of the
greatest operations ever devised in metallurgy."[23] A month later,
however, David Mushet had so modified his opinion of Bessemer as to
come to the conclusion that the latter "must indeed be classed with the
most unfortunate inventors." He gave as his reason for this turnabout
his discovery that Joseph Martien had demonstrated his process of
"purifying" metal successfully and had indeed been granted a
provisional patent a month before Bessemer. The sharp practice of
Martien's patent lawyer, Mushet claimed, had deprived him