Born: 5 November 1770, United Kingdom
Died: 24 August 1852
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Sarah Beach, Sarah Coote
The following is republished with permission from Women Engineers’ History and was written by Nina C. Baker.
In 1811 Sarah Guppy patented a method for making safe abutments for suspension bridges.
In 2006 the Clifton and Hotwells Improvement Society arranged for a plaque to be unveiled at her former home, 7 Richmond Hill, by her descendant Nicholas Guppy.
In 2006 I was invited, by the Townswomens Guild to speak at their AGM about Sarah Guppy and her involvement in bridge building as part of their celebrations of the Brunel Bicentenary. It is my feeling that she got her idea for suspension bridges from the tales of the rope bridges of South America, probably told round the dinner table by the many ships captains who attended at the Guppy’s house.
in 2016 the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is to include her for the first time, as reported in the Bristol Post.
Sarah was born in Birmingham in 1770 and married Bristol merchant Samuel Guppy. Intelligent and beautiful, Sarah soon became a leading light of the Bristol and Clifton social scene. The couple had 6 children and were close friends of Brunel. Sarah’s son Thomas was a major investor in the Great Western and Great Britain ships and the Great Western Railway and remained close to Isambard all his life. In 1811 Sarah patented the first of her inventions, a method of making safe piling for bridges – several years before Telford’s Menai and Brunel’s Clifton bridges. Granted patent no. 3405 for “A new mode of construction and erecting bridges and railroads without arches or sterlings, whereby the danger of their being washed away by floods is avoided. I do fix or drive a row of piles, with suitable framing to connect them together, and behind these I do fix, or drive, and connect, other piles or rows of piles and suitable framing, or otherwise, upon the banks of the said river or place.”
This was seven years before Thomas Telford started work on the suspension bridge over the Menai strait. It is not reported whether Guppy’s invention was ever put into practice, and she was not credited with any of this in histories of engineering and bridge building. But she did not stop there.
In 1831 Sarah patented a metal-framed four poster curtained bed with drawers beneath which converted into steps. An “exercise bar” ran across the top of the bed and the whole device was surmounted with a decorated top. Finally, at the age of 74 Sarah filed her last patent – “improvements in caulking ships, boats and other vessels”.
In 1837 the widowed Sarah, now 67, married Richard Eyre-Coote, 28 years her junior. Under her new name, Sarah Coote, she applied for a patent in 1844 for caulking (weatherproofing) ships.
A year later she went to the other extreme and patented a device for a tea or coffee urn which would cook eggs in the steam as well as having a small dish to keep toast warm. Sarah was also an accomplished model maker and it is claimed that she made models for Brunel.
For a while they lived at Arnos Court, Brislington, but Richard ran through his rich wife’s money at a rapid rate, spending on horses and neglecting her.
Sarah moved into 7 Richmond Hill in 1842. She bought the land opposite the house for the benefit of Clifton residents and it still remains green space. Sarah died at Richmond Hill in 1852 and is buried in St Andrew’s churchyard, Clifton. By her death her fortune had dwindled to £500. The following year Richard dropped dead walking up Park Street, leaving just £200.