The following are known: 1. ‘Dr. Mitchel 's Strange and Wonderful Discourse concerning the Witches and Warlocks in West Calder.’ 2. ‘The Tinklar's Testament’ (in several parts, including ‘The Tincklar's Reformation Sermon’ and a ‘Speech in commendation of the Scriptures’), 1711. 3. Petitions to Queen Anne (ten in number), 1711, &c. 4. ‘The Advantagious Way of Gaming, or Game to be rich. In a letter to Collonel Charters,’ 1711(?). 5. ‘The Tinklar's Speech to … the laird of Carnwath,’ 1712. 6. ‘The Great Tincklarian Doctor Mitchel his fearful book, to the condemnation of all swearers. Dedicated to the Devil's captains,’ 1712. 7. ‘Speech concerning Lawful and Unlawful Oaths,’ 1712. 8. ‘Proposals for the better reformation of Edinburgh.’ 9. ‘The Tinclarian Doctor Mitchel's description of the Divisions of the Church of Scotland.’ 10. ‘A new and wonderful Way of electing Magistrates.’ 11. ‘A Seasonable Warning to beware of the Lutherians, writen by the Tinclarian Doctor,’ 1713. 12. ‘Great News ! Strange Alteration concerning the Tinckler, who wrote his Testament long before his Death, and no Man knows his Heir.’ 13. ‘The Tinclarian Doctor Mitchel's Letter to the King of France,’ 1713(?). 14. ‘Letter to the Pope.’ 15. ‘The Tinclarian Doctor Mitchel's Letter to Her Majesty Queen Ann’—‘to make me your Majesty's Advocat.’ 16. ‘The Tinclarian Doctor Mitchel's Lamentation, dedicated to James Stewart, one of the Royal Family.’ 17. Letter to George I. 18. ‘Inward and Outward Light to be Sold,’ 1731. 19. ‘Second Day's Journey of the Tinclarian Doctor,’ 1733. 20. ‘Short History to the Commendation of the Royal Archers,’ &c., with ‘One Man's Meat is another Man's Poison’ (in verse), 1734. 21. ‘The Voice of the Tinklarian Doctor's last Trumpet, sounding for the Downfall of Babylon, and his last Arrow shot at her,’ 1737. 22. ‘Prophecy of an Old Prophet concerning Kings, and Judges, and Rulers, and of the Magistrates of Edinburgh, and also of the Downfall of Babylon, which is Locusts, who is King of the Bottomless Pit. Dedicated to all Members of Parliament,’ 1737. 23. ‘Revelation of the Voice of the Fifth Angel's Trumpet,’ 1737. 24. ‘The Tinklarian Doctor's Four Catechisms,’ published separately 1736-7-8. 25. ‘Tinklarian Doctor's Dream concerning those Locusts, who hath come out of the Smoke of the Pit and hath Power to hurt all Nations,’ 1739. A number of these broadsheets are found bound together with the following title: ‘The whole Works of that Eminent Divine and Historian Doctor William Mitchel, Professor of Tincklarianism in the University of the Bow-head; being Essays of Divinity, Humanity, History, and Philosophy; composed at various occasions for his own satisfaction, Reader's Edification, and the World's Illumination.’ In one of his publications of 1713 Mitchel incidentally remarks that he had then issued twenty-one ‘books.’
[Tracts (a) in the Advocates' Library, (b) in the possession of William Cowan, esq., Edinburgh; Chambers's Domestic Annals, iii. 361, and Traditions of Edinburgh, pp. 53-5; Irving's Dict. of Eminent Scotsmen; Maidment's Pasquils, p. 74.]
MITCHELBURN. [See Michelborne.]
MITCHELL. [See also Michell and Mitchel.]
MITCHELL, ALEXANDER (1780–1868), civil engineer, born in Dublin on 13 April 1780, was son of William Mitchell, inspector-general of barracks in Ireland. At school he showed a marked taste for mathematics. In 1802 his eyesight, always defective in consequence of an attack of small-pox, almost totally failed him. He soon carried on, in Belfast, the joint business of brickmaking and building, from which he retired in 1832, having previously invented several machines employed in those trades. In 1842 he became known as the inventor and patentee of the Mitchell screw-pile and mooring, a simple yet effective means of constructing durable lighthouses in deep water, on mudbanks and shifting sands, of fixing beacons, and of mooring ships. For this invention he was chosen an associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and in 1848 was elected a member, receiving the Telford silver medal for a paper on his own invention. His system was generally approved of by engineers of eminence (Proc. of Inst. of Civ. Eng. ii. 150, vii. 108). He established himself at Belfast, and at 17 Great George Street, Westminster, as ‘Mitchell's Screw-Pile and Mooring Company.’ At the expiration of his patent in 1847 the privy council, in consideration of its merit, granted a renewal for fourteen years.
Mitchell's screw-pile was first used for the foundation of the Maplin Sand Lighthouse at the mouth of the Thames in 1838 (ib. vii. 146). In 1839 he designed and constructed, with the aid of his son, the Fleetwood-on-Wyre Lighthouse, Morecambe Bay. In the summer of 1844 a screw-pile lighthouse, serving also as a pilot station, was successfully placed by him in Belfast Lough, Carrickfergus Bay; but his attempt to construct a lighthouse on the Kish Bank, between Dublin Bay and Waterford, proved a failure. He also constructed, in the summer of 1847,
