Index to Volume Seven - The People - Dock Family Trees - Glossary . . .

Palings - Pointed wooden sticks used for making a fence - which is sometimes referred too as a picket fence.

Patent Fuel - Fuel in the form of briquettes or blocks made by compressing and shaping crushed coal, with added binder if necessary. (origin - Mid 19th century). [400]

Phosphate Stone - Phosphate is a salt or ester of phosphoric acid. [400] Presumably it was shipped in the form of stone? I welcome corrections.

Piassava - A stout fibre obtained from the leaf stalks of a number of South American and African palm trees. [400]

Pitwood - Timber used for frames, props, etc., in a mine. Origin - Early 18th century ; earliest use found in Ralph Thoresby (1658–1725), antiquary and topographer. [400] In 1900, 4,468 tons of pitwood was imported at Penarth Dock. [019]

Pyrites - A shiny yellow mineral consisting of iron disulphide and typically occurring as intersecting cubic crystals. [400]

Quicksilver - The liquid metal mercury. [400]

Alum - A colourless astringent compound which is a hydrated double sulphate of aluminium and potassium, used in solution in dyeing and tanning. [400]

Alum Cake - Impure aluminium sulphate, manufactured from china clay. [400]

Ammoniacal Liquor (gas water) - Of or containing ammonia.- ‘ammoniacal liquor from the coke ovens’ [400]

Water Gas - A fuel gas consisting mainly of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, made by passing steam over incandescent coke. [400]

Arsenic - The chemical element of atomic number 33, a brittle steel-grey semimetal. [400] It was used as a wood preservative and when mixed with copper it provided a green dye used for wallpaper and curtain colourant. So many Victorians went to take the sea air at Penarth for health reasons and quickly felt better. It wasn't so much the Penarth ozone but their escape from the poisonous environment of their fashionable Victorian homes. Oh, and Charles Darwin took some to treat his eczema while at university which may explain ill-health throughout his later life. Ratty didn't take too kindly to it either!