Mr Priestley, name of Joseph

Had a wife called Mary

A cat called Lizzie, and a cage

With a pretty yellow canary

They lived in Leeeds, next door to

A place where beer was made

The smell came through the window

And down the canary laid…..

Lizzie miaowed to Mr Joe

Who took the cage outside

In good fresh air the little bird

Quickly was revived


I wonder what can have made

Our little bird so poorly

It must be something from the brew

It’s worth investigating, surely?


And so he borrowed Lizzie’s bowl

When she had drunk her milk

Filled it with water and tied it up

With a ribbon made of silk


And then he hung the bowl above

A vat of brewing ale

Anything that was rising up would

Be caught in his makeshift pail


But when he put the water down

Lizzie quickly lapped iit all up quickly

Now that is strange, said Mr Joe

She’s not a wee bit sickly.


The water must be safe to drink

It hasn’t harmed our Lizzie

I’ll do that again and try myself

–          He found the water fizzy


It tastes just like the medicines

That people drink in spas

Those people pay good money

To take the fizz home in stone jars


So Joseph, along with Lizzie cat

Went to the Royal Society

A place in London where scientists

Were amazed at their discovery

And Joseph moved to Hackney

And then to Philadelphia

He continued to experiment

But didn’t get much wealthier


But his fame, and that of Lizzie

Is that everybody thinks

Joseph Priestley truly was

The father of soft drinks

Author’s Note: “Everybody thinks” is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but Priestley was described thus by Johann Jacob Schweppe, founder of Schweppes soft drinks – it was he, and his company, that grew wealthy from Priestley’s discovery. Priestley discovered the effect of carbon dioxide on water by experimenting with gas from the next door brewery, as I have described, but the addition of the cat and cage-bird is pure invention.

Priestley had an amazing life. He wrote extensive histories of electricity and optics, discovered the gas we now call oxygen and worked with scientists such as Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier All this in addition to his main work as a non-conformist minister. His religious work took him to Leeds, Birmingham and London, but his views were extremely radical for the time (his chapel in Birmingham was burned down by a mob) and he eventually emigrated to America, where he died, aged 70, surrounded by his experimental apparatus.