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 belongs to the practical pantheon of London’s metropolitan industry, though he enters its talk more grimly than the rest, usually after an accident. His province is the little inspection failures by which large embarrassments first become visible, and he is most often met in the wetter workshops of Copperhouse Lane and Stormglass Yard, where damp, charge and roof strain are often the difference between respectable work and the Inspector arriving with questions after supper. In a technical world that is institutional all the way down, built on examination, licensing, caution and record as much as on invention, he is the examination in person.

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.