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The ability to create wrought iron cheaply has been called one of the most significant innovations

in the British Industrial Revolution.

For most of the 18th century, British ironware is largely poor quality.

It's brittle, it breaks easily, it even crumbles.

Dr. Ginny Bullstrode says that by removing impurities from iron,

British industrialists were able to increase the strength of the metal.

And she says that this process became known as the court process

because of the English businessman who popularized it, Henry Cork.

And it gave way to all sorts of innovations in building frames, ships, engine boilers, you name it.

So Britain in the 18th century and the 1700s is more of an untrater than an unproducer.

There's this idea of Britain as the land of iron.

But that's really what comes out of this process, actually.

The process was considered by leaders in the British government to be, quote,

more advantageous to Britain than 13 colonies.

But Ginny's latest research shines a light on how the iron process that once made Britain a

superpower did not originate there. Court stole it from a foundry of enslaved metallurgists in

St. Thomas, Jamaica. A place that Dr. Shirei Warmington says isn't known for this work.

It is one of the parishes that many would see has fallen into, not distributed,

but has not been given the proper acknowledgement that it deserves.

She's a Jamaican expert in development and reparations in post-colonial states.

What has happened with St. Thomas and Ginny mentions it in the paper is that because of its

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