deck beams for ships and sheet metal for shovels, during 1865 Bolton Iron & Steel cast the largest anvil block made in England, weighing 210 tons. By 1869 the company was making open hearth steel and manufacturing steam hammers to the design of Francis Webb. Hick's nephew became a shareholder following incorporation on 9 June 1876. About 1861 society painter Francis Grant produced portraits of John Hick and his wife Margaret, both works eventually hung together in the family home at Mytton Hall. Hick was an associate of Bolton engineer, artist and photographer Reuben Mitchell (1812–1895), and pursued his own interest in photography, he was also a supporter of the artists Copley Fielding, William Powell Frith, Patrick Nasmyth, Samuel Prout, Edward Matthew Ward and others; the engineer and artist James Nasmyth described John Hick as an "excellent friend". Hick wrote a history of Timothy Hackworth's locomotive Sans Pareil and presented the restored engine to the Patent Office Museum (now the Science Museum) in 1864, he also photographed William M. Gowland for Bennett Woodcroft. Gowland was driver of Hackworth's Royal George and driver of Sans Pareil at the Rainhill Trials. Sans Pareil was previously owned by Hick's brother-in-law and eventual business partner John Hargreaves Jr (1800–1874) who had the engine fully repaired and running on the Bolton and Leigh Railway in 1837. Sans Pareil is now housed at the National Railway Museum's Shildon Locomotion Museum annexe. In 1867, Hick first published a paper, reprinted from The Engineer, 1 June 1866, Experiments on the Friction of the Leather Collars in Hydraulic Presses, that expanded on the work of Dr William Rankine, describing an important series of experiments carried out using a joint invention of Hick and Robert Lüthy (1840–1883), a Swiss engineer employed by Hick, and inventor of a hydraulic cotton packing press. Hick's father was the inventor of the self tightening collar, used universally in hydraulic presses. Parliament On 17 November 1868 Hick was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolton. After election and to avoid a conflict of interest, he immediately resigned his position within Hick, Hargreaves and Co., the firm were already in possession of government contracts, and withdrew from the Bolton Iron and Steel Company. During this period he stayed in St James's, Piccadilly, his wife and daughters remaining at 'Hill Top', Belmont an extensive late 18th century manor house rented from a local family. Hill Top