Thomas Vaughan of Middlesbrough was the largest manufacturer of pig iron in the world.
Thomas Vaughan (1836 – 1900) was the only son of John Vaughan (1799 – 1868), a partner in Bolckow Vaughan & Co, iron manufacturers of Middlesbrough, North East England.
Thomas Vaughan worked at Bolckow & Vaughan. His father gifted him half of his shares in the firm, to the value of £200,000. Using these funds, Thomas Vaughan established works at South Bank and Clay Lane, Eston, Middlesbrough.
Thomas Vaughan & Co was the largest manufacturer of pig iron in the world by 1869.
T Vaughan & Co opened two new furnaces in 1869 which could each produce 400 tons of pig iron per week. There were 16 blast furnaces by 1871.
700 blast-furnace workers went on strike in 1871, demanding an increase in pay. All of the strikers were dismissed.
In 1872 the firm had nine furnaces (7.5 of which were in use) at South Bank and six at Clay Lane. The firm had 36 puddling furnaces at Whessoe, Darlington and 30 at Bishop Auckland.
George Neesham, the general manager, was brought in as a junior partner to reflect his long service to the firm.
The loss-making business entered into administration in 1876. The gross liabilities of the firm amounted to over £1 million.
Vaughan was dismissed from his business in 1878. He suffered from ill-health in his later years.
Eight furnaces of the South Bank Iron Works were acquired by Bolckow Vaughan & Co for £125,000 in 1879.
Bolckow Vaughan was the largest manufacturer of pig iron and steel in the world.
Bolckow and Vaughan establish the business
Henry William Ferdinand Bolckow (1806 – 1878) was born in Germany and emigrated to Newcastle upon Tyne. He made a fortune in the corn trade as a partner in C Allhusen & Co.
Portrait of Henry Bolckow (1806 – 1878), c.1860
Bolckow entered into partnership with John Vaughan (1799 – 1868), a Welsh ironmaker, from 1840.The two men established a cast iron works at Middlesbrough, consisting of a foundry, two rolling mills and an engineer’s shop. Bolckow supplied capital of £10,000 and Vaughan provided the technical expertise. Profits were divided equally.
The site offered reasonable shipping costs, allowing for the convenient importation of Scottish pig iron from Fife, and a ready supply of fuel from the Durham coalfield via the Stockton and Darlington railway.
Bolckow Vaughan initially constructed engines, and supplied the engine for the English Rose, the first steamboat built on the Tees in 1843.
Bolckow Vaughan established four blast furnaces at Witton Park near Bishop Auckland in 1846. Iron was produced from ironstone, which was mainly sourced from nearby Weardale.
Bolckow Vaughan used 62,400 tons of ironstone, 104,000 tons of coke and coal and 20,800 tons of limestone in 1846. The Middlesbrough works produced over 400 tons of iron rails each week.
Cleveland ironstone is discovered
John Vaughan, together with mining engineer John Marley (1823 -1891), discovered the main bed of ironstone at Eston in Cleveland in 1850. Blast furnaces were erected at Eston in order to smelt the ironstone deposits and manufacture pig iron from 1851.
Strong growth ensued as a result of this discovery, and the business employed 4,000 people and produced over 120,000 tons of iron in 1855.
Bolckow Vaughan had 17 blast furnaces by 1864. The business was largely responsible for the growth of the town of Middlesbrough, as people relocated to the area in search of work.
Bolckow dedicated the 100-acre Albert Park to the town of Middlesbrough at a cost of over £20,000 in 1864. A staunch Liberal, Bolckow became the first mayor of Middlesbrough in 1853, and served as its Member of Parliament from 1868 until his death in 1878.
Bolckow Vaughan is registered as a limited liability company
Bolckow Vaughan & Co Ltd was registered as a limited liability company with a capital of £2.5 million in 1865. At the time it was the largest company to have been registered. Over 9,000 people were employed, with 2,000 to 3,000 tons of stone mined every day, and 160,000 tons of iron produced per annum.
Portrait of John Vaughan (1799 – 1868), c.1860
Vaughan had been raised as a Wesleyan Methodist, but became an Anglican in his later years. He had a hard-working man with a keen intellect and a natural instinct for management. He died in 1868, and his only son, Thomas Vaughan (1836 – 1900), inherited his fortune.
At one point it was believed that the rise of steel and the declining importance of iron would ruin the prospects of Bolckow Vaughan. Steel could only be produced from iron that was free from phosphorus, and the Cleveland ironstone had a high phosphorus content. Fortunately the company discovered that it could import hematite, and make steel of equal quality and at lower cost than that imported from abroad.
Bolckow Vaughan established a steelworks at Eston, on the outskirts of Middlesbrough, in 1875. It was the first steelworks in the North of England to utilise the Bessemer process.
Edward Windsor Richards (1831 – 1921), former manager of the Ebbw Vale Co Works, was appointed general manager of the firm from 1876.
Edward Windsor Richards (1831 – 1921) c.1894
Bolckow Vaughan produced 300,000 tons of iron a year with 20 blast furnaces in 1877. The company employed a workforce of 12,000 people.
Bolckow Vaughan had twelve collieries and produced one million tons of coal annually by 1878.
At the initiative of Richards the Thomas-Gilchrist process was used from 1878. It allowed steel to be made using the local iron ore, which had previously been unsuitable due to its high phosphorus content. Utilising the new method resulted in lower production costs.
Henry Bolckow served as chairman of the company until his death in 1878. He left an estate valued at nearly £800,000.
Bolckow Vaughan acquired eight furnaces at the Southbank Iron Works in Eston from Thomas Vaughan & Co, which had entered into liquidation, for £125,000 in 1879. The deal transformed the company into the largest manufacturers of pig iron in the world, with 28 blast furnaces, several of which were among the largest in the world. At full capacity the the company could produce over 11,000 tons of pig iron a week. Bolckow Vaughan possessed one sixth of all the furnaces in the North of England.
Bolckow Vaughan was one of the largest iron and steel manufacturing companies in the world by 1881. The business regularly employed 10,000 to 12,000 workers in County Durham and Yorkshire. The Cleveland Works were the largest steelworks in the world, capable of producing 4,000 tons of steel rails every week. Per annum the company manufactured 500,000 tons of pig iron and mined 1.5 million tons of ironstone and two million tons of coal.
Bolckow Vaughan ranked among the largest commercial enterprises in the world, and Teesside was the principal site for British iron production.
Bolckow Vaughan established two steel plate mills at Eston in 1885. The company could produce 1,000 tons of steel plates and 3,000 tons of steel rails per week.
Edward Windsor Richards resigned as general manager in 1888, but returned to Bolckow Vaughan the following year as chairman and managing director.
Bolckow Vaughan was the largest iron and steel company in Britain by 1891. The company had a capital of £4 million and employed 10,000 people.
Bolckow Vaughan had the largest number of blast furnaces in the United Kingdom for pig iron production, and was the largest producer of steel rails in 1898. The company employed 16,000 people.
The Clay Lane Iron Co of Middlesbrough was acquired in 1899. Its six furnaces were dedicated to the production of foundry iron (used to make cast iron).
Bolckow Vaughan was the largest British iron and steel producer in 1915, and employed 18,000 people. The steelworks had a productive capacity of 220,000 tons per annum. The company had 23 blast furnaces on South Bank and a further two in Middlesbrough. There were four ironstone mines in Cleveland, 13 collieries in County Durham and limestone quarries. An average of two million tons of ironstone were mined per annum.
Decline and sale to Dorman Long
Darlington Rolling Mills was acquired from George E Sisterton in 1920.
Redpath Brown & Co, constructional engineers of Glasgow, was acquired in 1923.
Bolckow Vaughan closed five uneconomic coal pits in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, with the loss of 2,500 jobs in 1926.
Bolckow Vaughan entered into serious financial difficulties following the post-war boom. It lost a total of £2 million between 1920 and 1927.
Bolckow Vaughan was acquired by its Middlesbrough rival Dorman Long in 1929. The purchase established Dorman Long as the largest steel, iron and engineering company in the British Empire. The combined business had a capital of over £17 million and employed 32,000 people.
Palmer’s of Jarrow was the largest shipbuilder in the world throughout much of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Jarrow became nicknamed “Palmer’s Town”.
The Palmer brothers establish a shipbuilding works
Charles Mark Palmer (1822 – 1907) was born in South Shields, the son of a merchant and shipowner.
Charles Palmer partnered with John Bowes to establish a coke-making business. John Bowes & Co grew to become one of the largest colliery concerns in the North of England, producing one million tons of coal per annum.
The growth of the railway network meant that coal from the Midlands could be supplied to the large London market at a lower cost than coal from the North. Palmer believed that coal could be shipped to London at a lower cost if steam-powered vessels were used instead of wooden sailing ships.
Together with his brother George Palmer (1814 – 1879), Charles Palmer leased a shipyard at Jarrow on Tyne from 1851. It had previously been used to make wooden frigates for the Royal Navy.
Palmer Brothers launched the John Bowes, the first successful iron-built, steam-powered, screw-propelled, water-ballasted collier, in 1852. The John Bowes became the first steam ship to transport coal from the North of England to London.
The launching of the HMS Queen Mary from Palmer’s shipyard in 1912
Palmer Brothers soon became known for the quality of its ships,and received its first Royal Navy contract in 1856. The HMS Terror was the first rolled-iron, armour-plated ship. The Royal Navy association would remain throughout the history of the company.
Four blast-furnaces were built in 1857, and rolling mills in 1859.
Palmer Brothers was the largest shipbuilder in the world by 1859.
The business employed 3,500 men, consumed 18,000 tons of iron, and produced over 22,000 tons of shipping every year by the early 1860s.
George Palmer retired from business in 1862.
Charles Palmer opened a Mechanic’s Institute for the education of the men of Jarrow in 1864.
Palmers is registered as a company
The business was registered as Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company Ltd in 1865.
The Jarrow works covered nearly 100 acres of land by 1869. Four blast furnaces had a capacity of 60,000 tons of pig iron per annum. Around 5,000 men were employed.
Rolling mills were established from 1874.
Sir Charles Mark Palmer (1822 – 1907) in 1899
Charles Palmer was appointed as a Member of Parliament from 1874. However the business suffered without his presence, and he was forced to return in 1876 to save the company. Various members of management were dismissed.
Palmers broke the record for the largest shipping tonnage (61,113) produced in a single year in 1883. Palmer was largely producing cargo-carrying steamships for the coal and iron industries of the North of England.
A steel works was established from 1885.
Charles Palmer employed over 20,000 people by 1891, and was one of the largest employers of labour in the country.
The shipbuilding works employed 7,600 people in 1893. The majority of the workforce consisted of Irish immigrants.
The works began to make a loss, and Palmer, facing bankruptcy, resigned as head of the company in 1893.
Palmers was the sixth largest shipbuilder in Britain, as measured by tonnage, in 1899. Just under 10,000 men were employed by the company by 1900. Between 1852 and 1900, nearly 1.25 million tons of shipping were produced, more than any other company.
A steel-producing plant, the third of its kind in England, was opened in 1903.
The company employed 7,500 people in 1908, and was amongst the top thirty largest British manufacturing employers. In 1910 the Jarrow works covered nearly three quarters of a mile along the River Tyne, and about 100 acres. The works included five blast furnaces.
Lord Furness, a local industrialist, became chairman of the company from 1910. Furness planned to extend and consolidate the firm. Under his impetus, in 1911 the firm acquired Robert Stephenson & Sons, with a shipyard at Hebburn. The Hebburn site included the largest dry dock on the East coast; the only one capable of accommodating the new dreadnought battleships. Hebburn would take on merchant work, and Jarrow would be largely dedicated to naval contracts.
Following a reluctance of shareholders to contribute further capital to the company, as well as his ailing health, Furness resigned in 1912. The national coal strike of 1912 cost the firm £30,000.
Palmer’s shipyard in the early twentieth century. Courtesy of the Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums.
The San Hilario was launched in 1913. Built for the Eagle Oil Transport Company, it was the largest oil tank steamer afloat.
By 1913 the firm had built 76 battleships at its Jarrow yard.
During the First World War Palmers docked and repaired 347 warships and merchant vessels.
Palmers built its thousandth vessel in 1930.
Palmers enters into receivership
Palmers shipyard entered receivership in 1934. It was taken over by National Shipbuilding Securities Ltd, a government company which acquired redundant yards.
Thomas W Ward Ltd of Sheffield, a dismantling firm, acquired the Jarrow blast furnaces and steel works in 1934. The company acquired the yard in 1935.
Vickers Armstrong Ltd acquired the Hebburn site in 1935, which continued to be operated under its old management.
The poverty that ensued among former Palmers workers led to the Jarrow March of 1936.
How did an illiterate man establish the largest brickworks in Britain?
George Smeed
George Smeed (1811 – 1881) was born in Sittingbourne, Kent. He received little formal education. He worked for a period as a hawker, sleeping underneath roadside bushes at night. Eventually he saved enough money to buy a small public house.
Smeed acquired a plot of land at Sittingbourne and established a brickworks in 1845.
Smeed became one of the largest employers in Kent. He was the largest brickmaker in England by 1871.
Smeed succeeded due to his business acumen, energy and foresight. A John Bull-type figure, he was a colourful man, inclined to use strong language. He was illiterate, and long after he became wealthy he could barely sign his name.
Smeed Dean
Smeed was joined by his son-in-law, George Hambrook Dean (1834 – 1924), to form Smeed Dean & Co in 1875.
Smeed Dean was the largest brick manufacturer in Britain, and produced over 60 million bricks in 1877.
A portrait of George Smeed (1811 – 1881) by Eden Upton Ellis (1878). Image used with permission from Art UK.
Smeed was presented with a portrait, funded by public subscription, in recognition of his charitable works in 1878.
When Smeed died in 1881 he operated the largest brickmaking works in the world. His obituary in the Western Press hailed him as “the making of Sittingbourne”. He left a personal estate valued at £160,000. Dean succeeded him as head of the company.
Smeed Dean employed 1,400 workers by 1902, and paid up to £80,000 a year in wages.
Dean died with an estate valued at £184,929 in 1924. He left bequests to various Baptist organisations, and insisted upon a humble funeral.
Smeed Dean & Co
Following the death of Dean the business was registered as Smeed Dean & Co. The company estimated that three billion Smeed Dean bricks had been used in London alone by 1925. The company was the largest producer of stock bricks in Britain in 1926.
2,000 men at the North East Kent brickworks went on strike regarding pay in 1926.
Smeed Dean was acquired by Dunstable Portland Cement Company in 1927. The Sittingbourne site was modernised at a cost of nearly £100,000.
Dunstable Portland Cement Company was acquired by Red Triangle for £1 million in 1928. It created one of the largest cement and brick manufacturers in Britain, and was the largest supplier of general building materials.
An automated brickmaking plant had been installed at Sittingbourne by 1929. It was capable of manufacturing 20 million London stock bricks per annum, and was the largest of its kind in Europe. In total Smeed Dean produced 60 million bricks a year at Sittingbourne; London stock, red facing and multi-coloured. The company owned 80 barges for brick transportation.
Edward Harris Rabbits established one of the largest shoe factories in the world. His financial backing for Charles Booth helped to establish the Salvation Army.
Edward Harris Rabbits
Edward Harris Rabbits (1818 – 1874) was born in Frome, Somerset, the son of an agricultural labourer.
Edward Rabbits borrowed half a crown and established himself as a shoe maker and retailer in Newington, London. His factory was at the Elephant Buildings, Newington Butts.
Edward Harris Rabbits (1818 – 1874)
Edward Rabbits was a argumentative and characterful man. Originally a Wesleyan Methodist, he tired of the formality of the church and became a Methodist Reformer, and later a dedicated member of the evangelical Methodist New Connexion.
Edward Rabbits employed 90 men and 85 women by 1851. He operated multiple retail branches by 1856.
The E H Rabbits shoe factory was described as one of the largest in the world by 1861. With a height of 68 feet, it was one of the tallest industrial buildings in London. The warehouse constantly employed nearly 400 people. Well-heated and well-lit, it also contained a sixty foot-long lecture hall for the discussion of religion and philanthropy.
Edward Rabbits first met William Booth (1829 – 1912), a penniless yet gifted Methodist preacher, in 1850. He encouraged Booth to continue as a preacher, provided him with financial support, and introduced him to his future wife, Catherine Mumford. Booth went on to establish the Salvation Army in 1865.
Edward Rabbits died in 1874. He had been a keen donor to religious and philanthropic causes throughout his life.
Rabbits & Sons
The business passed to William Rabbits (1827 – 1878), brother to Edward Rabbits, who was also a boot maker with a factory at St Thomas’s Works, Whites Grounds, Bermondsey. The business was renamed Rabbits & Sons.
William Rabbits was a modest and hard-working man. He died with an estate valued at under £70,000 in 1878.
The business was managed by his executors until 1880, when it was taken over in partnership by his sons, William Thomas Rabbits (1847 – 1908) and Charles Joseph Whittuck Rabbits (1854 – 1901). By this time the firm had 18 retail outlets across London.
William Thomas Rabbits left the partnership in 1887, likely due to ill health, and Charles Rabbits became sole proprietor.
Charles Rabbits registered the business as a private limited liability company in 1891. Rabbits & Sons ranked as one of the largest shoe manufacturers in London, rivalled only by Pocock Brothers in scale.
A workforce of 671 was employed in 1893. Charles Rabbits was recognised as a model employer, who supported pension schemes and sickness insurance for his staff.
Charles Rabbits died in 1901, with a gross estate valued at £321,179.
George Oliver was the largest retailer of shoes and boots in the world.
George Oliver establishes a shoe retail business
George Oliver (1836 – 1896) was born in Barrow upon Soar, Leicestershire, to humble circumstances. He was apprenticed to a cordwainer (shoemaker) in his native village.
Oliver opened his first shoe shop in Willenhall, Staffordshire in 1860. He employed three men by 1861. He opened a second shop with his brother Charles Oliver (1845 – 1897) in nearby Neath in 1868. Additional shops soon followed. The business catered towards the low-cost segment of the market.
George Oliver established a shoe factory in Wolverhampton in 1869, but it was sold in order to concentrate on the retail business in 1875. A distribution warehouse was established in Leicester. Oliver employed twelve men in 1881.
By 1889 there were over 100 shops, located in the more densely populated parts of Britain. George Oliver had one of the largest shoe retail businesses in Britain by 1896.
George Oliver had a shrewd mind and a keen business sense. His rugged exterior and brusque manner disguised a kindly personality. A keen Conservative and Freemason, he was a retiring man, renowned in Leicester for his generosity. He died from a sudden haemorrhage or stroke in 1896.
Charles Frederick Oliver takes over the business
George Oliver was succeeded in the management of the business by his brother Charles Oliver. A buoyant man with a genial temperament, he followed his brother by dying of a sudden haemorrhage or stroke in 1897.
Management of the business was taken over by George Oliver’s son, Charles Frederick Oliver (1868 – 1939).
In 1897 George Oliver advertised itself as the largest retailer of boots and shoes in the world, with 140 branches. Between 1915 and 1918 the firm claimed to be the largest footwear retailer in the world.
Charles Frederick Oliver was created a knight in 1933.
George Carter Oliver (1864 – 1935), a director of the firm and a son of George Oliver, died in 1935 with an estate valued at £158,206.
George Oliver was incorporated as a private company in 1936.
The third generation inherits the business
Sir Charles Frederick Oliver died in 1939, with a gross estate valued at £125,047. He was succeeded by his sons, Frederick Ernest Oliver (1900 – 1994) and Claude Danolds Oliver (1904 – 1987) as joint managing directors.
The family sold 36 percent of the company to the banking firm Robert Benson Lonsdale & Co in 1950 in order to pay the death duties of Lady Oliver.
George Oliver went public with a fully-paid share capital of £450,000 in 1954. Frederick Ernest Oliver was chairman. The business sold medium-priced footwear and hosiery for men, women and children. There were 111 branches, including 63 in England, principally in the South and West, and 48 in Wales. There were around 580 employees. Headquarters were at 18 Charles Street, Leicester.
F E Oliver was knighted in 1962 in recognition of his public and political service to Leicester. He was a modest, humble man. He retired from George Oliver in 1973.
George Oliver expands, and is acquired by Shoe Zone
With both firms suffering from the recession, George Oliver acquired Hiltons Footwear, a retail firm, for £9.8 million in 1981. Oliver had 130 branches and Hilton had 189, but only 25 overlapped. Oliver then sold and leased back 14 properties for £7.8 million to an investment group to fund the acquisition.
George Oliver had 1.7 percent of the British shoe retail market in 1986.
Timpson Shoes, with 228 shops, was acquired for £15 million in 1987. This doubled Oliver in size and created the third largest footwear retailing chain in Britain, with around 500 shops. The Timpson shoe shops were mostly located in Lancashire, Scotland, Teesside and Yorkshire, and only overlapped with Oliver in 30 locations. However they were not particularly profitable at the time of takeover.
George Oliver (now renamed the Oliver Group) acquired Frame Express, a London-based picture framing chain with 16 outlets for £1.8 million in 1989.
The Oliver Group employed around 4,000 people by 1989.
No members of the Oliver family worked at the Oliver Group by 1994.
The Oliver Group had become loss-making by 2000 and its estate of stores had been reduced to 258. The business was acquired by Shoe Zone of Leicester for £6.1 million. Oliver, Timpson and Olivers Timpson stores were rebranded under the Shoe Zone format. Loss-making outlets were closed.
As of 2020, the George Oliver name is still used as a Shoe Zone sub-brand.
R & J Dick became the largest boot manufacturer in the world. The business established the first national shoe shop chain in Britain. R & J Dick later became the largest manufacturer of industrial belting.
Robert and James Dick establish the business
Robert Dick (1820 – 1891) and James Dick (1823 – 1902) were the sons of a sailor who had settled in Kilmarnock. The father died young, and the widowed mother relocated to Glasgow, where she opened a grocer’s shop.
Robert Dick was apprenticed to a watchmaker, and James Dick was apprenticed to an upholsterer.
The two men decided to utilise gutta-percha, a gum-based leather substitute, to produce a low-cost watertight-soled shoe. Robert Dick made the moulds and James Dick prepared the material. The partnership of R & J Dick was formed in 1846, with premises at Gallowgate.
R & J Dick employed nine people by 1851. Robert Dick was the engineer, and James Dick managed the business.
R & J Dick enters into mass production
A four-storey factory was acquired at Greenhead, Glasgow in 1859. R & J Dick employed 400 people by 1861.
R & J Dick supplied much of the insulation for underwater telegraph cables during this period.
Retail shops were introduced, and R & J Dick became the first national shoe shop chain in Britain.
R & J Dick operated the largest footwear factory in the world by 1866. 60,000 pairs of boots were manufactured every week.
R & J Dick employed between 1,400 and 1,500 workers by 1867.
R & J Dick employed 943 people in 1881. The business was flagging by the early 1880s: the price of gutta-percha had risen exponentially as demand had increased, and the boots and shoes could no longer be manufactured at a competitive price.
James Dick became fatigued with business, and his health began to suffer. He married one of his employees in 1885, and emigrated to Australia.
Robert Dick invented a mechanical belt using balata gum in 1885. It was immensely strong, and resistant to oxidation, moisture and high temperatures.
R & J Dick employed 1,500 people in 1886.
Following the death of Robert Dick in 1891, James Dick reluctantly returned to manage the business. Before he left Australia, he acquired a one seventh share in the Broken Hill Silver Mine.
James Dick (1823 – 1902)
The balata belting patents expired in 1900, but the firm continued to hold a considerable share of the market.
James Dick died as one of the wealthiest British businessmen of his era in 1902, with an estate valued at £887,651. He was childless, and dedicated his wealth to charities and employees.
John Edward Audsley (1824 – 1920), an employee of 40 years, took over the management of the business.
R & J Dick is converted into a company
R & J Dick was converted into a company with a capital of £650,000 in 1908.
A new American tariff on belting imports led the company to establish a factory at Passaic, New Jersey in 1909. It could match the belting production levels of the Greenhead factory.
R & J Dick balata belting was used across the world by 1911. The product was advertised in languages as diverse as Burmese, Romanian and Hindustani.
In order to secure a supply of balata gum, R & J Dick acquired estates in Venezuela in 1918.
R & J Dick had an authorised capital of £925,000 by 1920.
Following a slump in balata prices, R & J Dick sustained heavy losses at its Venezuelan operation in 1921, and was forced to mortgage its properties in order to maintain sufficient working capital. The company blamed the losses on the “extravagance and laxity” of the Venezuelan manager.
After sustaining continued losses, a shareholder criticised the loss-making New Jersey factory as a “white elephant” in 1923.
Shoe production was discontinued in 1923. Retail shop leases were allowed to expire. The company sold twelve retail shops in Scotland to Greenlees & Son of Glasgow in 1935. The boot manufacturing business was divested in 1935.
R & J Dick employed just 235 people in 1961.
R & J Dick was acquired by the Pollard Ball and Roller Bearing Co for £1.1 million in 1962.
Freeman Hardy & Willis was the largest footwear retailer in the world.
Edward Wood (1839 – 1917) was born in Derby, the son of a railway engine driver. As was typical for the era, his schooling ended at the age of ten.
Wood relocated to Leicester, where he initially worked as an errand boy. He was then apprenticed to a draper and outfitter. He worked as a hatter and hosier by 1861.
A Freeman Hardy & Willis outlet in Porthmadog, Wales in 1987
Wood began manufacturing shoes and boots from 1870, when he joined two relatives by marriage at premises on Marble Street. By the following year he employed seven men and one boy.
Wood succeeded due to a keen business sense and a high standard of integrity.
Freeman Hardy & Willis was incorporated in 1876. Wood appointed as company directors Arthur Hardy, an architect, William Freeman, his factory manager, and a Mr Willis, his salesman.
The first retail outlet was opened at Wandsworth, London, in 1877.
The wholesale business had been divested by 1879.
Freeman Hardy & Willis employed 55 men by 1881.
Freeman Hardy & Willis was the largest footwear retailer in the world by 1900. There were about 300 shops, mostly located in the Midlands and the North of England, by January 1903.
Freeman Hardy & Willis acquired Rabbits & Sons Ltd of Newington Butts, shoe retailers with a large presence in the South of England and London, in 1903.
Edward Wood was knighted in 1906 in recognition of his philanthropy and civic work. A dedicated Baptist, he served as Mayor of Leicester on four occasions.
Edward Wood (1839-1917) in 1898 by Walter William Ouless. Credit: Leicester Town Hall via Art UK
Foreign-made shoes accounted for just one percent of sales in 1910.
Freeman Hardy & Willis was the largest non-grocery retailer in Britain by 1913.
The Kettering Boot & Shoe Co Ltd, a manufacturer, was acquired in 1913.
Freeman Hardy & Willis was massively profitable during the First World War due to army contracts.
Wood died in 1917 with an estate valued at £172,649. His charitable bequests amounted to over £23,000.
Freeman Hardy & Willis operated 428 shops in 1921. There were 500 shops by 1923.
The Leicester business of Leavesley & North Ltd was acquired in 1925.
The Charterhouse Investment Trust, controlled by Sir Arthur Wheeler (1860 – 1943), acquired Freeman Hardy & Willis in the 1920s for over £3.5 million.
Freeman Hardy & Willis was sold to J Sears & Co of Northampton for over £4 million in 1928. Sears was a large shoe manufacturer and retailer, and the merged firm had 796 shops and a combined market value of £9 million.
The Leicester factory was destroyed during the Blitz in 1940.
Charles Clore (1904 – 1979) acquired control of J Sears & Co in 1953 in one of Britain’s first hostile takeovers. Clore immediately removed the existing chairman and managing director of Freeman Hardy & Willis. Later in 1953 he sold much of the freehold FHW estate, and leased the premises back.
From the 1960s until the 1990s Sears held around a quarter of all British shoe sales.
Sears divested its shoe factories in a management buyout in 1988.
By 1990 Freeman Hardy & Willis was aimed at the 15 to 30 market, and located in prime retail sites. However the chain was loss-making.
245 Freeman Hardy & Willis stores were sold to Facia, a private retailer, for £3 million in 1995. 60 stores were retained by Sears, and converted into other shoe retail formats. Facia converted the Freeman Hardy & Willis brand to other retail formats.
Meredith & Drew became the largest biscuit manufacturer in Europe.
William Meredith
William Meredith (1803 – 1868) was born in Bristol. He established a bakery at Shadwell in East London in 1830. William George Drew (1813 – 1867) was employed as his principal assistant. Following a quarrel between the two men, William Drew left the business to establish his own biscuit bakery in 1852.
William Meredith established a steam-powered factory on Commercial Road East, and focused on the public house trade for his biscuits, pound cakes and Banbury cakes. The business traded as Meredith & Son by 1856.
Drew & Sons
William Drew established a steam-powered factory on Shadwell High Street. Like Meredith, he focused on supplying the public house and hotel trade with biscuits. He employed 30 men by 1861.
William Drew died from a heart attack in 1867, and an obituary described him as “a man of remarkable energy and enterprise”, remembered for his charitable interests. Management of the business passed to his wife Barbara Drew, and his only son, Lear James Drew (1840 – 1917).
Drew & Sons produced over 100 different biscuit varieties by 1877.
Meredith & Drew
Frederick Meredith and Lear Drew merged their interests as Meredith & Drew, with a capital of £107,000, in 1891. The merged business was one of the largest biscuit manufacturers in Britain.
Meredith & Drew received its first Royal Warrant, from Queen Victoria, in 1894.
The Meredith & Drew factory at Shadwell was extended in 1896. Production was still concentrated on the manufacture of biscuits for the hospitality industry, particularly public houses and hotels.
Meredith & Drew was one of the best known businesses in the East End of London by 1897. The company had developed a reputation for fair treatment of its customers and workforce. Lear Drew was chairman with H D Rawlings (1836 – 1904) as vice chairman.
The Wright stuff
Meredith & Drew merged with Wright & Son of Shadwell through an exchange of shares in 1905. Thomas Reuben Wright (1868 – 1923) was appointed managing director of the company.
Lear Drew died with an estate valued at £30,986 in 1917. He was remembered as a genial man.
Thomas Reuben Wright died with an estate valued at £73,530 in 1923.
The Shadwell factory employed a workforce of around 1,000 people by 1925.
A factory was acquired at Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire in 1927.
Meredith & Drew launched the Betta Biscuit, a low-cost product, from 1931. Its success allowed the business to grow to become the largest biscuit manufacturer in Europe by 1934.
Meredith & Drew had six factories across England by 1939. The London site, which was also the largest, was destroyed during the Blitz in 1940, and production was permanently relocated to plants at Oldham, Brighouse and High Wycombe. A factory was also acquired at Halifax. Company headquarters were relocated to Ashby-de-la-Zouch.
Schoolchildren help to load Meredith & Drew biscuit tins onto a lorry, to be sent to liberated Europe (1945)
The merger of McVitie & Price and Macfarlane Lang to form United Biscuits in 1948 saw Meredith & Drew lose its position as the largest biscuit manufacturer in Britain.
29 different biscuits were produced in the post-war period, including shortcake, digestive, Marie, Nice, bourbon, custard cream and ginger nut.
Meredith & Drew employed 2,500 people and employed an authorised share capital of £1 million by 1951. Geoffrey Anthony Edward Drew Wright (born 1908), son of T R Wright, was managing director.
A new factory was established at Cinderford, Gloucestershire in 1951. It employed 300 people and focused on cream cracker production.
Four factories were closed in the 1950s and production was centralised at Halifax, Cinderford and Ashby-de-la-Zouch.
The Cinderford factory was closed with the loss of 346 jobs in 1962. Production was transferred to the Halifax and Ashby-de-la-Zouch plants, which were extended and modernised.
Own-label production for Marks & Spencer and a strong presence in the licensed trade saw Meredith & Drew control around five percent of the British potato crisp market by 1963.
Crisps contributed to an increasing share of turnover, and the Ashby-de-la-Zouch facility began to struggle to meet demand. A new crisp factory with a staff of 280 was acquired in Lanarkshire in 1963.
Meredith & Drew was strong in own-label production, savoury biscuits, the catering trade and potato crisps in 1967.
United Biscuits era
Meredith & Drew, with four percent of the British biscuit market, was acquired by United Biscuits for £2 million in 1967.
United Biscuits acquired Kenyon, Son & Craven, the manufacturer of KP nuts, for £3.5 million in 1968. Kenyon, Son & Craven was merged into Meredith & Drew.
Meredith & Drew crisps were rebranded under the stronger KP name. Meredith & Drew advertising was wound down, and rationalisation saw the Meredith & Drew biscuit brand retired in the early 1980s.
The Halifax site was closed with the loss of 990 jobs in 1989, and production was relocated to Ashby-de-la-Zouch.
The Ashby-de-la-Zouch biscuit factory was closed with the loss of 900 jobs in 2004.
United Biscuits continues to employ around 2,000 people in Ashby-de-la-Zouch through its distribution centre and KP Snacks factory.
The Meredith & Drew brand was reintroduced as a premium biscuit brand with a focus on the catering trade from 2018.
Swan Hunter was the largest shipbuilder in the world by the early twentieth century. The yard constructed 1,600 ships, including the RMS Mauretania (1906), HMS Ark Royal and numerous supertankers before its closure in 2006.
Swan Hunter is established
George Burton Hunter (1846 – 1937) partnered with the widow of Charles Sheridan Swan and became managing director of a new shipbuilding firm, C S Swan & Hunter, with a yard at Wallsend, Tyneside from 1879.
The seven acre site provided employment for up to 700 people. The business steadily expanded under boom conditions and able management from Hunter.
Sir George Burton Hunter (1846 – 1937) by Walter Stoneman in 1920. Image used with kind permission of the National Portrait Gallery.
An evangelical Anglican, Hunter was a strong temperance advocate. He was regarded as a fair and just employer.
The name of the firm was changed to Swan Hunter from 1880.
Swan Hunter becomes one of the largest shipbuilders in Britain
Swan Hunter became the leading Tyneside shipbuilder, in terms of tonnage constructed, for the first time in 1893.
Swan Hunter was established as a limited liability company, with Hunter as chairman, in 1895.
The company shipyards (not including the engine works) employed 2,500 men by July 1897. The works covered over 33 acres.
The Swan Hunter yard circa 1900
The neighbouring yard of Schlesinger, Davis & Co was acquired in 1897, and thereafter used to build floating docks.
Swan Hunter was the second largest shipbuilder in Britain in 1898, as measured by tonnage. The following year it was the seventh largest.
Swan Hunter differed from competitors in that it built ships inside large sheds, which allowed work to continue during poor weather conditions.
After winning a valuable contract with Cunard, Swan Hunter merged with Wigham Richardson & Co of Tyneside to create the largest shipbuilder in Britain, with a share capital of £1.5 million, in 1903. The company employed 4,600 people.
Swan Hunter broke the world record for tonnage produced (126,000) in 1906.
Construction of the RMS Mauretania in 1905. Source: Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums
The building of the RMS Mauretania, launched in 1906, brought the company worldwide repute. At 30,000 tons, she was the largest ship in the world until the completion of the RMS Olympic in 1911, and the fastest until the maiden voyage of the Bremen in 1929.
Swan Hunter had the largest aggregate production of any British shipbuilder between 1902 and 1909: 150 vessels of a total of 569,842 tons.
Swan Hunter had the largest output of any shipbuilding business in the world between 1910 and 1913. The company launched 21 ships with a combined tonnage of over 126,000 in 1912. The works on Tyneside covered 78 acres.
Barclay Curle & Co of Glasgow was acquired in 1913. The merged company had a combined annual tonnage of 230,000. The Clydeside works covered 60 acres.
During the First World War the yard built over 100 warships and 230 other vessels.
Swan Hunter employed 10,000 people across a 100 acre site by 1920.
In 1921 George Burton Hunter lamented that American shipyards were twice as efficient as British ones, which were hampered by restrictive trade union practices.
Swan Hunter had the largest output of any British shipbuilding company, with a tonnage of just under 120,000 in 1922.
Swan Hunter employed 10,000 men and boys during regular periods by 1928.
George Burton Hunter retired in 1928, and died in 1937.
Mergers and decline
Swan Hunter merged with fellow Tyneside shipbuilders Vickers, R & W Hawthorne Leslie & Co and John Readhead & Sons in 1968 following a recommendation by the Government’s Geddes Report. It was the largest shipbuilding group in Britain, with one third of shipbuilding and repairing capacity, and 20,000 employees.
Swan Hunter remained profitable, but along with much of the British shipbuilding industry, was nationalised in 1977 to become a subsidiary of British Shipbuilders.
Swan Hunter received two Royal Navy contracts to build aircraft carriers HMS Illustrious and HMS Ark Royal in the mid to late 1970s.
Swan Hunter regained its independence in a £5 million management buyout in 1986. 4,500 people were employed.
Swan Hunter entered into receivership in 1993. It was acquired by a Dutchman, Jaap Kroese (1939 – 2015), for £4 million in 1995.
Swan Hunter ceased to build ships on Tyneside in 2006. The company’s last cranes on the River Tyne were shipped to India in 2009.
