JOHN BROWN,
    Endcliffe Hall
        SHEFFIELD.                                Chairman

John Devonshire Ellis was an outstanding personality in the steel industry of his day. His connection with John Brown dates from the early history of the firm. John Brown was in the habit of visiting Birmingham for the purpose of selling his steel to various industries already established in that city. There was a notable firm run by the Ellis family who were brass founders, and Brown, on some of his visits, had noticed the exceptional ability of one of the sons of the proprietor, by name John Devonshire. On one occasion John Brown asked Ellis's father whether he would allow his son to come to Sheffield and join him in his business. The father, well aware of the ability of John Devonshire, endeavoured to palm off one of the other brothers with whom he would more willingly have parted. However, John Brown was not to be persuaded and eventually John Devonshire Ellis left Birmingham at a very early age and lived for the remainder of his long life in Sheffield and exclusively with the firm of John Brown & Company. He was a man of great energy and high technical attainments, one of his outstanding inventions being the 'compound' armour plate which consisted of a rolled iron back with a steel face. Competition between the gun and the armour plate, which was very active for many years, led the armour plate makers, as projectiles improved in quality, to find some form of plate which would break them up on impact, the old soft iron being useless for this purpose. Ellis's plate was very successful for a time, and he was able to regain the supremacy for the plate makers in this long­drawn-out competition. He and Bragge were Brown's two partners when the concern was a private one, and after the departure of John Brown from his old concern, the circum­stances of which will be subsequently described, John Devonshire Ellis became chairman of the company and remained in that position for over forty years. He had two sons, Charles and William, who both joined the company and in due course became managing directors. Both were eventually knighted and both had many years service with the company, their future careers being mentioned in the sequence of events hereafter to be described.

William Bragge was a man of varied attainments-he was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquarians as well as being a distinguished engineer. He was born in Birmingham in May 1822, and early in life studied engineering in that city, applying himself particularly to mechanics and mathematics. As quite a young man he began railway surveying and was sent out to Brazil as a representative of Bellhouse & Co., of Manchester, there carrying out the lighting of Rio de Janeiro with gas, and surveying the first railway in that country. He was held in such esteem in Brazil that many years later he was visited at his house in Sheffield by the Emperor of Brazil, Don Pedro. Coming to Sheffield, Bragge became one of the partners of John Brown and John Devonshire Ellis, and it was this partnership which was subsequently sold to the company when it was incorporated in 1864. He was elected Master Cutler of Sheffield in 1870. Throughout his residence in Sheffield he evinced the greatest interest in Sheffield art schools, libraries and museums. He returned to his native city in 1876. His antiquarian tastes were catered for by his great wealth, but many of his almost priceless treasures were destroyed in the great fire at the Birmingham Free Library in 1879. He died on June 6th, 1882, aged 61 years. During his association with John Brown he travelled extensively abroad on behalf of the firm and was instrumental in securing many important contracts.

It has so far been impossible to find particulars of the qualifications of Mr. Ashbury or Mr. Benzon, which led to their being appointed original directors, but John Cheetham, M.P., was a Manchester industrialist. He was a member of a well-known family, which for more than a century had been largely concerned in the cotton manufacturing industry of Stalybridge; his father, Mr. J. Cheetham, was for many years a prominent figure in the public and political life of Manchester and the County Palatine as M.P. for South Lancashire 1852-59, and for Salford 1865-68, and as an active member of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce and President (1858-68) of the Cotton Supply Association. 

Henry Davis Pochin was undoubtedly the outstanding figure of the new board. He was born at Woodstone, Leicestershire, in 1824, son of William Pochin. He showed an early aptitude for chemistry and studied at the Pharmaceutical Society in London. Subsequently he began business in Manchester as a manufacturing chemist, and soon afterwards discovered a means of completely decomposing china clay by sulphuric acid. That process he patented in 1855, and shortly afterwards introduced the material into commerce by the term 'Aluminas Cake.' This became of universal application in paper-making. He also made another notable invention in connection with the purification of resin, and appears very nearly to have anticipated -the present invention of plastics. His distilled resin remained undecomposed and free from colour, and it became the foundation of almost all toilet soaps.

The business of .H. D. Pochin & Company began to earn substantial profits from about 1864, and was very profitable from 1871 to 1878.

As the profits of his own business increased and funds were available for investment, Henry Pochin, with some friends of his in Manchester, started to purchase successively certain coal and iron businesses then in private hands, forming them into public companies, in which' he and his friends took between them the bulk of the capital. He became a director of all these companies, and was deputy chairman of many of them.

The concerns were:

(a) The business of John Brown & Company, purchased in 1864.
(b) Palmers Shipbuilding & Iron Company, which was purchased from Sir Charles Mark Palmer, who remained as chairman until a call on the partly paid shares in bad times was more than' he could meet, which caused his retirement. This company continued with varying for­tunes and was finally wound up.
(c) The Sheepbridge Coal & Iron Company, in which, first, Maurice Deacon, and then Henry Jackson, were leading figures. Mr. Pochin's son-in-law, Charles McLaren, joined the board of this company, of which he later became chairman.
(d) The Tredegar Iron & Coal Company, on whose board John Wyllie, and afterwards his son Colonel James Wyllie, were prominent members. Charles McLaren later became chairman of this company.
(e) Bolckow Vaughan & Company, the ironmakers of Middlesbrough, of which Sir Karl Bolckow remained chairman for many years.  It eventually amalgamated with Dorman Long & Company.
(f) The Staveley Coal & Iron Company, with which Charles Markham, senior, was originally connected. Later Charles Markham, junior, became chairman.

In addition to his participation in the above businesses, Henry Pochin took leases of coal property from Earl Fitz­william and others at Cortonwood and started the Corton­wood Colliery Company, for many years a most profitable concern, paying a dividend of 2½ per cent per month. There was, however, a substantial liability on the shares which were originally of £10 with only £2 paid. Henry Po chin also purchased granite-bearing property at Croft in Leicestershire and opened a quarry on it, primarily to produce granite paving sets, for which there was a very large demand before wood' paving was introduced. He also started a works at Croft for the manufacture of artificial stone. The quarry was operated by a private company styled 'The Croft Granite Brick & Concrete Company.'

Henry Pochin, through his friendship with Sir Edward Watkin, chairman of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincoln­shire Railway (afterwards the Great Central) and of the Metropolitan Railway, was a member of the board of both these companies, and was a substantial shareholder in the latter. All these interests have remained in his family to the present day, and they have nearly all been highly prosperous.

Henry Pochin never became chairman of John Brown & Company, preferring to leave the individuals in charge of these various works to manage them, but took a very active part in the financial side of the various businesses with which he was connected.

His son-in-law, Sir Charles McLaren (or Mr. Charles McLaren as he then was), succeeded him on the board, afterwards becoming the first Baron Aberconway, and he, in turn, was succeeded by his son, now the present chairman, Lord Aberconway. The family continuity has continued by the appointment of Henry Pochin's great-grandson, The Hon. Charles McLaren, as a director, who takes an active part in the management of the concern.

Charles Patrick Stewart was one of the partners of the well­known engineering and locomotive firm of Sharp Stewart & Company. The firm with which Stewart was so long con­nected dates back to 1822, and during the first period of its history (1822-43) was associated with the well-known Richard Roberts under the style of Sharp Roberts & Company. Mr. Roberts invented the self-acting mule, used in textile processes, the manufacture of which by the firm led to the wilful destruction of the works by fire in 1825 by textile workers, who believed that this invention would destroy employment in the textile industry~ Subsequently, the manufacture of locomotives was begun, and the concern was divided between the old machinists business and loco­motive building. The name of the firm was altered to Sharp Stewart & Company, and in 1864 was turned into a limited company with Stewart as chairman.

There appears to be little doubt that Henry Pochin asked Stewart to join the board of John Brown & Company in order to have a direct connection with a locomotive building firm which would form an automatic outlet for the railway tyres, axles, springs, etc., manufactured at the Atlas Works in Sheffield. Curiously enough, Sharp Stewart's premises were known as the Atlas Works in Manchester.

Benjamin Whitworth, M.P., was born in Manchester in 1816. His father moved to America in 1820, but then returned with his family to Manchester, and subsequently took up his permanent residence in Droylesden. He started with a capital of £50, but became, with his younger brother, a successful importer of cotton, and the firm speedily became an eminent one. He resided for most of his business life at Fleetwood, and it occurred to him that he might possibly import cotton from America to Fleetwood in his own ship. This traffic continued until the American Civil War. Whit­worth found that the charges on cotton coming into Fleetwood did not exceed one-sixth of those enforced at Liverpool. He eventually owned a large cotton factory, holding 1,000 looms, at Droylesden. Like Henry Pochin, he turned his attention to iron and coal trades, and had substantial holdings either as a shareholder or director in Bolckow Vaughan & Company, John Brown & Company Limited, Staveley Coal & Iron Company, and a large number of similar undertakings.

Shortly after the formation of John Brown & Company there was a serious commercial crisis involving the failure of Overend Gurney & Company, and other large financial firms, so that the company began to find itself in difficult circumstances. The naval estimates were cut down and armour plate orders fell off to a very large extent. Previous to the transfer of the business to the company, the armour plate trade amounted to one-half of the production of the concern and at least one-half of the profits. The directors decided to turn their attention to the forging industry to a greater extent than previously, and erected some large hammers, but the capital expenditure entered into by John Brown seriously alarmed the other directors, and led to very strained relations.

At the adjourned Third Annual General Meeting in 1867, in the absence through illness of John Brown, it was proposed that Mr. Po chin should take the chair. The extensions neces­sary to make the most profitable use, of the Bessemer con­vertors were now nearly completed, and the chairman stated that the board of directors had resolved 'That in future the cost of the extensions of the works shall in no case in anyone year exceed the amount deducted in the previous year for depreciation'; the profits of the year only amounted to £23,000.

The next year, 1867-68, Sir John Brown again occupied the chair, and the profit this year amounted to £30,000, enabling a dividend of 6 per cent to be paid, which absorbed £32,000.

The following year Sir John Brown was again absent, and it was proposed by Mr. Pochin that John Cheetham, M.P., should take the chair. The chairman regretted the absence of Sir John Brown on the advice of his medical attendant.

Sir John Brown remained chairman of the directors until 1871, when at the Annual General Meeting, Mr. John D. Ellis, as acting chairman, in moving the adoption of the report, expressed his regret that in consequence of differences which had arisen at the board, Sir John Brown had parted with all his shares except his preference shares, and there was a question whether or not he was qualified as a director.

It would have been gathered from the previous description of the character of Sir John Brown that he was a great individualist, and during the time when he was the sole proprietor of the business the question of capital expenditure was, of course, entirely in his own hands. When the concern was turned into a limited liability company he did not take kindly to the idea that the affairs of the company were in the hands not only of himself but of his colleagues on the board. He went ahead with extensions at a rate which seriously alarmed the more financially-minded members of the, board and, in fact, actually incurred very heavy commitments which had not previously been sanctioned.

These differences were apparently found incapable of solution, and from that date onwards Sir John Brown's name does not appear in any account of the proceedings; in fact, not only did he sever his connection with his old concern, but he started a new firm in Sheffield under the title of Brown, Bailey & Dixon, with the intention of entering into competition with his old company.

One of the chief public benefactions of Sir John Brown is the handsome church of All Saints standing upon the hillside looking down upon the Don Valley in which his works were situated. The rapid development of the district drew atten­tion to the dearth of religious accommodation, and one of the first to recognise the necessities of the case was the proprietor of the Atlas Works. He found 20,000 people without the means of attending a place of worship. The Church Extension Society was formed about this time and Brown at once offered to subscribe £5,000, but finding this likely to result in the construction of an edifice inadequate and unsatisfactory he decided to erect a church entirely at his own cost. The offer was accepted and the corner stone was laid on the 19th May, 1866, by the Archbishop of York. From then to the present time this church has ministered uninterruptedly to the spiritual welfare of the population, and is still affectionately known as John Brown's Church.

To complete the account of Sir John Brown's career, it may be mentioned that he twice held the office of Master Cutler, and during the term of that office the present Cutlers' Hall was finished. He was knighted in 1867, and in 1871, when the Sheffield School Board was constituted, he was the first chairman. Unfortunately his later ventures in business were not very successful, and he eventually died almost in poverty. It was indeed a tragedy that a man of such enter­prise and ability, and one who had taken a very large part in building up the heavy steel industry of Sheffield, should finish his active career in such sad circumstances. It was his very strength of character and determination which, in later years, when his judgment was not as sound as it had been, caused the unhappy diminution in his fortunes and closed a life of usefulness under such a shadow.


Ships & Steel - The Story of John Brown's by Sir Alan Grant, Michael Joseph, 1950 

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