Frank Lotty, superintendent, Peck, Benny & Company (1897)
Advertisement from the Railways of Canada 1870-1. J. M. Trout & E. Trout:
“Established 1838
Canal
Montreal
Iron Nail and Spike Works
Peck, Benny & Co.,
Manufactures of Railroad Spikes, Ship Spikes, and all descriptions of cut nails, pressed clinch and slate nails.
Office 391 St. Paul Street. Works 61 Mill Street”
http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/MCR/article/view/17516/22462
Technical Advance and Stagnation:
The Case of Nail Production in Nineteenth-Century Montreal
Larry McNally
National Archives of Canada
“A byproduct of the reconstruction of the Lachine Canal across the Island of Montreal in the 1840s was the provision of water power for manufacturing purposes at three sites. Two of them, Canal Basin No. 2 and the Saint-Gabriel Locks, were actually within the limits of the City of Montreal. This was enough to attract nail manufacturers back to the city from the fringes of the island. In 1847, Thomas Peck (1808-1874) opened a nail mill on Canal Basin No. 2.
Also probably in 1859, a second rolling mill was constructed at a cost of $30 000 by Thomas Peck, who had been making nails on the basin since 1847. An 1864 description says that a turbine wheel drove an immense 22-ton balance wheel that transmitted power to the rolling mill itself. Another turbine drove 38 nail machines while a third turbine drove two large spike machines.
Alone in the middle was Thomas Peck & Co. (which became Peck Benny & Co. in 1870), which had a rolling mill but was water-powered. When a Royal Commission looked into the leasing of water power on the Lachine Canal in 1887, the company claimed to be the last water-powered rolling mill in North America. Steam power could easily have been produced by putting boilers on top of their heating furnaces as Pillow Hersey had done, but the company only paid $1750 a year for water power. Converting to steam would have meant boilers, additional coal, engineers, firemen and annual repairs. It is possible that a steam-powered rolling mill was added when the company was restructured as the Peck Rolling Mills Ltd in 1903.
Peck Rolling Mills Ltd, took over the assets of Peck Benny & Co. in 1903. Both Stelco and Peck Rolling Mills continued to produce cut and horse nails well into the twentieth century.”
Westmount Overlooked 