Morris's life, and Ellis was one of the poet's executors (J. W. Mackail, Life of W. Morris, 1899, i. 193).
After his retirement from business he gave himself up to a literary life. The first fruits of his labours on Shelley was 'An Alphabetical Table of Contents to Shelley's Poetical Works,' drawn up for the Shelley Society in 1888. He devoted six years to compiling 'A Lexical Concordance to the Poetical Works of P. B. Shelley; an attempt to classify every word found therein according to its signification' (1892, 4to), an excellent piece of work on which his reputation must largely rest. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Morris's Kelmscott Press, and read the proofs of the folio edition of Chaucer's 'Works' (1896), Morris's masterpiece of printing, and edited many other productions of that press, including Cavendish's Life of Wolsey' (1893); Caxton's 'Golden Legend' (1892), which also appeared in the 'Temple Classics' (1899 and 1900). He further edited Guillaume de Lorris's 'Romance of the Rose,' 'englished' (1900, 'Temple Classics'), and 'H. Pengelly's Memoir,' with a preface (1897), and contributed some memoirs to Quaritch's 'Dictionary of English Book Collectors.'
He died at Sidmouth on 26 Feb. 1901, after a short illness, in his seventy-first year. He was a widely read and accomplished man, tall of stature and handsome in appearance, warm-hearted and good-natured, of genial manners, with a wide circle of literary and artistic friends.
His portrait was painted by H. S. Tuke, A.R.A.
He married in 1860 Caroline Augusta Flora, daughter of William Moates of Epsom, and left issue two sons and a daughter, who with his wife survived him.
[Family information; The Tunes, 1 March 1901; Athenæum, 2, 9, and 16 March 1901; Bookseller, 7 March 1901; Note by W. Morris on the Kelmscott Press, with a description by S. C. Cockerell, 1898. See also J. W. Mackail's Life of W. Morris, 1899, 2 vols.; D. G. Rossetti, his family-letters, 1895, 2 vols.; Letters of D. G. Rossetti to W. Allingham, by G. B. Hill, 1897; D. G. Rossetti as designer and writer, notes by W. M. Rossetti, 1889, passim; W. Roberts, The Book-Hunter in London, 1895, p. 245 (portrait).]
ELLIS, JOHN DEVONSHIRE (1824–1906), civil engineer and metallurgist, born at Handsworth on 20 April 1824, was son of Charles Ellis, a Birmingham brass manufacturer. Educated at King Edward VI's School, Birmingham, he obtained a practical knowledge of the manufacture and working of brass in his father's works, in 1848 became a partner in the firm. 1854 he purchased with (Sir) John Brown [q. v. Suppl. I] and William Bragget Atlas engineering works at Sheffield, then a modest establishment covering about three acres and employing about persons. Shortly after the partners took over the works the adoption of armour by the French for warships (1858) led Messrs. Brown and Ellis to produce iron plates by a new and cheaper process of rolling welding them. Four-inch plates made this process were fitted to the Black Prince and Warrior, the earliest ironclads of British navy. For several years Ellis was occupied in devising appliances for the manufacture of thicker and thick plates for guns and projectiles. Steel was tried, but was not found to have the necessary toughness under the impact of shot. After many experiment Ellis perfected a process for uniting a hard steel face with a wrought-iron backing. Such compound armour was used down to about 1893, the Royal Sovereign class of battleships being protected with an 18-inch belt of it on the water-line. Meanwhile, as early as 1871, Ellis had turned his attention to the process of cementation, and in that year he took out a patent relating to it; but it was not until the chilling process devised by Captain T. J. Tresidder, in which the heated surface of a plate was chilled by means of water under pressure, was applied in conjunction with cementation, that satisfactory results were obtained. The first Ellis-Tresidder chilled compound plate was tried with success at Shoeburyness in 1891.
Ellis was largely instrumental in moting the success of the Bessemer system Sir Henry Bessemer [q. v. Suppl. I] established works close to the Atlas works and Ellis, adopting at an early stage the new process, at once put up at the Atlas works the first plant in England outside the inventor's own works. In conjunction with William Eaves he introduced the Ellis-Eaves system of induced draught, and he devised a mill for rolling the ribbed boiler-flues of the Purves and other types, and also in connection with the manufacture of Serve tubes.
The Atlas works soon acquired a world wide reputation for mechanical engineering of all kinds. The concern was formed into a limited liability company in 1864. The
