THE name of John James Cam is not one that floats immediately to the top when you give Worcester’s history pool a stir. It’s certainly not as buoyant as those of Mr Lea and Mr Perrins, a musical fellow called Edward Elgar or even possibly John Wall, who founded Worcester Royal Porcelain.

And yet in his own way JJC was arguably more talented than any of them. He was seriously influential on life in Worcester during the Victorian era with interests stretching across engineering, industry and science.

His inventions went all the way from carburettors and radiators for the new fangled automobiles to innovations in sewage treatment and electric lighting. Indeed large crowds used to gather near his home in New Street to marvel at Worcester’s first electric street lamps, which he set up outside.

As well as being a prolific inventor, Cam was also a keen photographer and now the full scope of his remarkable life has been told in a book by his great-granddaughter Elizabeth A Hill. Called “John James Cam, the man behind the camera”, it contains more than 180 images of life and times in Victorian Worcester, the majority of which have never been seen before.

The foreword was written by my former colleague Mike Grundy, the local legend who has done more than almost anyone to ensure the history of the Faithful City survives. So when he says: “John James Cam was clearly a leading influential figure in the life of Worcester in Victorian times”, you’d better believe it.

Mike adds: “Cam had a hugely significant and beneficial impact as an inventive, progressive and innovative mechanical and electrical engineer.”

John James was born in The Shambles, Worcester in 1850, the same year his father John set up a manufacturing and engineering business at the property, which became known as the Excelsior Works. This grew in success and within 20 years the family moved to live in the handsome South Villa, across the river in Packington Road, St John’s.

John James joined the firm, inheriting his father’s enthusiasms, skills and drive, and by the time John snr died in 1897, his son had the experience to set up his own company.

Leaving his younger brother William in charge at the Excelsior Works, he built a new factory in Charles Street, described in a 1903 document as “one of the most modern and advanced of its type”. It was here, with natural daylight flooding into evey nook and cranny, that John James Cam began to improve everyone’s day to day life.

He constructed his own magnificent and elegant automobiles and motorcycles and also built the earliest steam, petrol and motor-driven boats to ply the River Severn. He produced machinery for the Worcester gloving industry, invented the back boiler and developed sewage treatment and electric lighting. Cam also invented the first hydraulic blowers to power major organs such as those then in Worcester Cathedral and the Public Hall.

He was a powerhouse of ideas across a wide range of engineering and electrical fields and the Blue Plaque on his old factory building in Charles Street barely does justice to JJC when it describes him as an “ingenious English inventor”, because he was rather more than that.

His great granddaughter has built her book around an inherited collection of photographic glass plate negatives and family photographs and a fascinating one it is.

John James Cam died on Christmas Day 1919 at the age of 69. His son John Leah, who was invalided during the First World War, inherited the business and to keep it going formed a partnership with engineer Robert Mackinnon. But this didn’t last long and soon the Cam name, which had impacted so much on late Victorian Worcester, was to disappear, leaving only his faded prints to carry the Cam story through the mists of time.

*Elizabeth A Hill will be at a book signing of John James Cam, the man behind the camera (price £18) at the Tourist Information Centre in Worcester Guildhall on Saturday, May 27 between 11am and 1pm.