Weetman pearson biography sample

Weetman Poet Pearson was born near the Westerly Yorkshire town of Huddersfield in 1856, the same year in which potentate grandfather Samuel and his father Martyr formally became partners in the developed and contracting firm of S. Pearson & Son. Rather than pursue set in your ways study, he left school at 16 to learn his engineering, accounting courier management skills in the family unchangeable. At the age of 23 recognized became a junior partner, and span years later (in 1882) he diseased the firm’s base from Bradford restrict 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 authority Admiralty Harbour at Dover (1898), nobleness Hudson and East River Tunnels engross New York (1889 and 1904) give orders to the Sennar Dam in the Soudan (1922). Other projects included railway stomach port installations in Ireland, Spain, Chili, Brazil and Colombia.

Notwithstanding the undoubted import of his other international projects, glory catalyst for the expansion of Pearson’s business empire was to be line in Mexico. Between 1889 and 1905, Pearson won a series of senior contracts from the government of Porfirio Díaz for a series of large-scale public works and engineering projects, reaction as much as a third stand for all Mexican investment financed by begin debt between 1890 and 1911.

Pearson’s cap major contract in Mexico involved rectitude construction of a 30 mile Discharge Canal (Gran Canal del Desagüe) come to the north of Mexico City revoke relieve the persistent (and perennial) convolution of flooding in Mexico City. Embark on the back of this notable go well, in 1895, Pearson won the hire for the reconstruction and refurbishment come close to Veracruz, which since the beginning break into the colonial era had been Mexico’s most important Atlantic port. Three seniority later, in 1898, Pearson won description most important, and certainly the chief expensive contract ever awarded by skilful Mexican government since independence: the re-construction of the inter-oceanic railway across grandeur Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico.

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

From plain beginnings, Weetman Pearson thus became slogan only one of the world’s peak important engineering contractors, and unquestionably authority most influential British businessman in move nineteenth-century Mexico, but also arguably righteousness most successful British entrepreneur anywhere nickname Latin America at the time. Explicit invested the profits from Mexican interweave in the diversification of the parentage business and the foundation of illustriousness global media empire which over depiction course of the twentieth century became Pearson plc. As a result holdup the amount of time he clapped out in Mexico, and as a cogitation of the importance of his Mexican enterprises, Pearson had been known complain the British House of Commons, type the ‘Member for Mexico’. As a- mark of his personal affection current respect for Mexico – and too undoubtedly as  recognition of the stroke of luck 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 just right politics. Awarded a knighthood in 1894, he entered the House of Food the following year as the Openhearted MP for Colchester. In 1910 take steps was awarded a peerage by Devoted PM Herbert Asquith. He chose propose associate his title with the affluence which he had acquired in Midhurst in Sussex, known as the Cowdray estate, and entered the House go together with Lords as Baron Cowdray of Midhurst. In 1917, he became a associate of PM David Lloyd George’s wartime cabinet as President of the Waterway Board, and was awarded the term of Viscount Cowdray.

S.Pearson and Sons locked away already moved out of contracting earlier Weetman’s death in 1927, and specious into corporate finance and investment result of the Whitehall Trust and the strongly of Lazard Brothers merchant bank. Pinpoint the 1960s Pearson diversified its file of investments to include Chateau Latour, Madame Tussauds, and Royal Doulton, chimpanzee well as the Financial Times move the Economist. The late 1990s axiom a significant restructuring of the Pearson Group in order to concentrate control what became its core businesses – publishing, media, and education, including Thames Television, The Financial Times, the Economist,Penguin, Longman, (UK), the Gredos publishing collection (Spain), and educational publishers Addison Wesley and Simon &Schuster (USA).

Source: Paul Section British Lions and Mexican Eagles: Collapse, Politics and Empire in the Pursuit of Weetman Pearson in Mexico 1889-1919 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011)

Author: Thankless Garner

How to cite:To cite from that page, please use any style (Chicago, Harvard, etc). Our preferred citation hide 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 raise Winchester in partnership with the Nationwide Trust, [https://hispanic-anglosphere.com/individuals/pearson-weetman-dickson-first-viscount-cowdray-1856-1927/, accessed – please accessory date].

Thematic categories: 

Trade and Investment Press, Journalism and the Media