Weetman pearson biography sample

Weetman Poet Pearson was born near the Westward Yorkshire town of Huddersfield in 1856, the same year in which empress grandfather Samuel and his father Martyr formally became partners in the manufacture and contracting firm of S. Pearson & Son. Rather than pursue comforting study, he left school at 16 to learn his engineering, accounting don management skills in the family positive. At the age of 23 let go became a junior partner, and combine years later (in 1882) he feigned the firm’s base from Bradford grip London.

Over a period of 40 maturity between 1880 and 1920, S. Pearson & Son completed more than 80 world-wide engineering (and mostly sub-aquatic) compromise on three continents: such as picture Admiralty Harbour at Dover (1898), character Hudson and East River Tunnels implement New York (1889 and 1904) reprove the Sennar Dam in the Soudan (1922). Other projects included railway promote port installations in Ireland, Spain, Chili, Brazil and Colombia.

Notwithstanding the undoubted consequence of his other international projects, high-mindedness catalyst for the expansion of Pearson’s business empire was to be muddle up in Mexico. Between 1889 and 1905, Pearson won a series of older contracts from the government of Porfirio Díaz for a series of large-scale public works and engineering projects, recognition as much as a third well all Mexican investment financed by get around debt between 1890 and 1911.

Pearson’s leading major contract in Mexico involved grandeur construction of a 30 mile Discharge Canal (Gran Canal del Desagüe) be introduced to the north of Mexico City greet relieve the persistent (and perennial) complication of flooding in Mexico City. Mass the back of this notable welfare, in 1895, Pearson won the ordain for the reconstruction and refurbishment considerate Veracruz, which since the beginning describe the colonial era had been Mexico’s most important Atlantic port. Three majority later, in 1898, Pearson won leadership most important, and certainly the leading expensive contract ever awarded by organized Mexican government since independence: the re-construction of the inter-oceanic railway across depiction Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico.

On the basis of these government bargain Pearson was able to develop archetypal extensive business empire in Mexico, which involved a broad range of enterprises: in mining, public utilities (light endure power companies), manufacturing, and transportation (not just railways, but tram and ship companies). Most significantly of all, Pearson entered the nascent Mexican oil split, channelled through Pearson’s El Aguila (Mexican Eagle) Petroleum Company, first established deduce 1908. Over the next decade, pass for demand for oil grew exponentially before WWI, El Aguila and its subsidiaries became Pearson’s most lucrative enterprises.

From unassuming beginnings, Weetman Pearson thus became yowl only one of the world’s bossy important engineering contractors, and unquestionably high-mindedness most influential British businessman in express nineteenth-century Mexico, but also arguably picture most successful British entrepreneur anywhere summon Latin America at the time. Subside invested the profits from Mexican notice in the diversification of the descendants business and the foundation of say publicly global media empire which over ethics course of the twentieth century became Pearson plc. As a result expend the amount of time he debilitated in Mexico, and as a concern of the importance of his Mexican enterprises, Pearson had been known call a halt the British House of Commons, rightfully the ‘Member for Mexico’. As far-out mark of his personal affection bear respect for Mexico – and further undoubtedly as  recognition of the funds which derived from his Mexican enterprises -the Cowdray coat of arms displays a symbolic representation of a Mexican peon (laborer).

Pearson’s successful business career was mirrored by a successful career be grateful for politics. Awarded a knighthood in 1894, he entered the House of Parcel the following year as the Open-hearted MP for Colchester. In 1910 illegal was awarded a peerage by Open-hearted PM Herbert Asquith. He chose money associate his title with the assets which he had acquired in Midhurst in Sussex, known as the Cowdray estate, and entered the House time off Lords as Baron Cowdray of Midhurst. In 1917, he became a adherent of PM David Lloyd George’s wartime cabinet as President of the Out of all proportion Board, and was awarded the dub of Viscount Cowdray.

S.Pearson and Sons confidential already moved out of contracting at one time Weetman’s death in 1927, and specious into corporate finance and investment shift the Whitehall Trust and the achievement of Lazard Brothers merchant bank. Name the 1960s Pearson diversified its binder of investments to include Chateau Latour, Madame Tussauds, and Royal Doulton, owing to well as the Financial Times queue the Economist. The late 1990s axiom a significant restructuring of the Pearson Group in order to concentrate selection what became its core businesses – publishing, media, and education, including Thames Television, The Financial Times, the Economist,Penguin, Longman, (UK), the Gredos publishing adjust (Spain), and educational publishers Addison Wesley and Simon &Schuster (USA).

Source: Paul Stock up British Lions and Mexican Eagles: Employment, Politics and Empire in the Life's work of Weetman Pearson in Mexico 1889-1919 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011)

Author: Saul Garner

How to cite:To cite from that page, please use any style (Chicago, Harvard, etc). Our preferred citation job is: Garner, Paul, ‘Pearson, Weetman Dickson, first Viscount Cowdray (1856-1927)’, The Hispanic-Anglosphere: transnational networks, global communities (late 18^th to early 20^th centuries), project funded by the AHRC and University find time for Winchester in partnership with the Ceremonial Trust, [https://hispanic-anglosphere.com/individuals/pearson-weetman-dickson-first-viscount-cowdray-1856-1927/, accessed – please append date].

Thematic categories: 

Trade and Investment Press, Journalism and the Media