John Sutton Nettlefold (23 September 1792 – 12 April 1866) was a British

industrialist A business magnate, also known as an industrialist or tycoon, is a person who is a powerful entrepreneur and investor who controls, through personal enterprise ownership or a dominant shareholding position, a firm or industry whose goods or ser ...

and

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

Early life and family

Nettlefold was born in London. Nettlefold was a Unitarian; he married a co-religionist, Martha Chamberlain (1794–1866). Hers was a family of

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

manufacturers and politicians: her brother's son,

Joseph Chamberlain Joseph Chamberlain (8 July 1836 – 2 July 1914) was a British statesman who was first a radical Liberal Party (UK), Liberal, then a Liberal Unionist after opposing home rule for Ireland, and eventually was a leading New Imperialism, imperial ...

(1836–1914), was a radical Liberal and a leading imperialist. They lived in

The Grove, Highgate The Grove, Highgate, N6 is a short tree-lined street in north London, running north from Highgate West Hill to Hampstead Lane, known for the notable residents who have lived there over several centuries. Early development The line of The Gro ...

. They had three sons: Edward John Nettlefold (1820–1878),

Joseph Henry Nettlefold Joseph Henry Nettlefold (19 September 1827 – 22 November 1881) was a British industrialist, the Nettlefold in Guest, Keen & Nettlefolds. He was born in London to John Sutton Nettlefold who, in 1854, dispatched him to manage the busines ...

(1827–1881) and Frederick Nettlefold (1833–1913). One of Edward John's sons was named after him, John Sutton Nettlefold, who was a social reformer.

Career

In 1823, he opened a hardware store at 54

High Holborn High Holborn ( ) is a street in Holborn and Farringdon Without, Central London, which forms a part of the A40 route from London to Fishguard. It starts in the west at the eastern end of St Giles High Street and runs past the Kingsway and ...

. This was followed in 1826 by a workshop to make woodscrews based in

Sunbury-on-Thames Sunbury-on-Thames, known locally as Sunbury, is a town on the north bank of the River Thames in the Borough of Spelthorne, Surrey, England, southwest of central London. Historically part of the county of Middlesex, in 1965 Sunbury and other su ...

. The Sunbury factory was powered by a

waterwheel A water wheel is a machine for converting the kinetic energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a large wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with numerous blade ...

and Nettlefold saw the importance of motive power when he took advantage of

steam power A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be transf ...

in a new factory in Baskerville Place, off

Broad Street, Birmingham Broad Street is a major thoroughfare and popular nightspot centre in Central Birmingham, England. Traditionally, Broad Street was considered to be outside Birmingham City Centre, but as the city centre expanded with the removal of the Inner R ...

. He renamed the business Nettlefold and Sons, Ltd., and it expanded rapidly in London and Birmingham.Smith (2004) In 1854, Nettlefold acquired the opportunity to purchase a licence to manufacture to a U.S.

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

for a novel woodscrew. The licence, and the establishment of a new factory, demanded an investment of £ 30,000. Nettlefold sought and obtained the involvement of his brother-in-law as equal partner for an investment of £10,000 and the two established a factory in

Smethwick Smethwick () is an industrial town in the Sandwell district, in the county of the West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. It lies west of Birmingham city centre. Historically it was in Staffordshire and then Worcestershire before bei ...

, leaving its management to their sons, Edward John and

, and Joseph Chamberlain. In later years, the management of the partnership, Nettlefold and Chamberlain, was passed to Joseph and Frederick Nettlefold, and later was absorbed into Guest, Keen & Nettlefolds, a multinational engineering company headquartered in

Redditch Redditch is a town and non-metropolitan district with borough status in Worcestershire, England. It is located south of Birmingham, east of Bromsgrove, north-west of Alcester and north-east of Worcester. In 2021, the town had a population of ...

References

Bibliography

* *Smith, B.D.M (2004)
Nettlefold, Joseph Henry (1827-1881)
, rev., ''

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from History of the British Isles, British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') ...

'', Oxford University Press, accessed 27 July 2005 1792 births 1866 deaths History of Birmingham, West Midlands 19th-century English businesspeople {{UK-business-bio-1790s-stub