Samuel Harbury

The inspector London’s workshops least wish to see after supper, whose appearance can chill a workshop faster than any sermon.

Inspector Samuel Harbury is of that circle of practical authorities to which London’s industry looks up, though he enters its conversation more grimly than the others, and generally after an accident. His province is the small failure of inspection through which a large embarrassment first comes to light. He is met most often in the wetter workshops of Copperhouse Lane and Stormglass Yard, where damp, charge and strain upon a roof so often decide whether work remains respectable or ends with the Inspector arriving after supper with his questions. The technical world he serves is institutional all the way down, raised upon examination, licensing, caution and record quite as much as upon invention; and in that world he is the examination walking about in a coat.

What makes him feared is range. London’s technical world is classed as sharply as its churches: the celebrated artificer lectures before ministers with polished brass and approved assistants, while three streets away a current-handler answers to damp, debt and the smell of burnt insulation. Harbury tends to know both worlds, which is why his appearance can chill a workshop faster than any sermon. Companies whose work touches the current stations, repair yards and wetter workshops, before or after something has gone wrong, are likely to meet him in just that way: with questions.

In person

The volumes give no face for Samuel Harbury. He is known by office and arrival: the inspector who comes after the accident, as much at home among polished brass as among burnt insulation, and whose appearance at a workshop door can chill it faster than any sermon.