John Mawson
(1816-1867)
26 June 1862

Volume 8, page 115, sitting number 10,079.

John Mawson was a chemist and druggist in Newcastle. In partnership with his erstwhile assistant Joseph Swan he developed Mawson's Collodion, which became the collodion of choice for nineteenth-century photographers. Glass-plate negatives had to be coated with the sticky liquid as a support for the light-sensitive silver salts on which photography relied. Hence Mawson made a great deal of money, which was just as well since his first attempts at business had failed and he had enormous debts to pay off.

He did so well that he was eventually elected Sheriff of Newcastle. In this capacity, in 1867, he was responsible for the disposal of several barrels of nitro-glycerine that a local mine was storing in the cellar of a pub in the town centre. He and seven other men took the barrels out to a quarry and were attempting to pour it away when it exploded, littering the surrounding area with body parts. Mawson himself survived the initial blast but succumbed to his injuries soon afterwards.