ployed for two
years as a gig boy on one of the winding engines at the Govan colliery.
His parents now considered him of fit age to be apprenticed to some
special trade, and as Beaumont had much of his father's tastes for
mechanical pursuits, it was determined to put him apprentice to a
working engineer. His elder brother John was then acting as engineman
at Oakbank near Glasgow, and Beaumont was apprenticed under him to
learn the trade. John was a person of a studious and serious turn of
mind, and had been strongly attracted to follow the example of the
brothers Haldane, who were then exciting great interest by their
preaching throughout the North; but his father set his face against his
son's "preaching at the back o' dikes," as he called it; and so John
quietly settled down to his work. The engine which the two brothers
managed was a very small one, and the master and apprentice served for
engineman and fireman. Here the youth worked for three years,
employing his leisure hours in the evenings in remedying the defects of
his early education, and endeavouring to acquire a knowledge of English
grammar, drawing, and mathematics.

On the expiry of his apprenticeship, Beaumont continued for a time to
work under his brother as journeyman at a guinea a week; after which,
in 1814, he entered the employment of William Taylor, coal-master at
Irvine, and he was appointed engine-wright of the colliery at a salary
of from 70L. to 80L. a year. One of the improvements which he
introduced in the working of the colliery, while he held that office,
was the laying down of an edge railway of cast-iron, in lengths of
three feet, from the pit to the harbour of Irvine, a distance of three
miles. At the age of 23 he married his first wife, Barbara
Montgomerie, an Irvine lass, with a "tocher" of 250L. This little
provision was all the more serviceable to him, as his master, Taylor,
becoming unfortunate in business, he was suddenly thrown out of
employment, and the little fortune enabled the newly-married pair to
hold their heads above water till better days came round. They took a
humble tenement, consisting of a room and a kitchen, in the Cowcaddens,
Glasgow, where their first child was born.

About this time a gas-work, the first in Glasgow, was projected, and
the company having been formed, the directors advertised for a
superintendent and foreman, to whom they offered a "liberal salary."
Though Beaumont had never seen gaslight