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John Wigham RichardsonJohn Wigham Richardson was one of the great figures of British industrial life on Tyneside during the late 19th and early 20h century. He was born into a Quaker family in 1837 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on the North East Coast of the UK. In 1860 at the age of just 23 he founded the Neptune Works at Walker on Tyne which was one of the first shipyards to build ships in steel in the World and an engine works. The original steam engine on the site provided electric lighting the neighbourhood. It later merged with Swan Hunter's yard to become Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson in 1903. This Company became the most technically advanced ship building facilities anywhere and built the RMS Mauretania for Cunard which was launched in 1906 and held the Blue Riband as the fastest liner across the Atlantic for 26 years. True to his Quaker beliefs he cared greatly for the workers in his company and was a founder of the Workers Benevolent Trust in the region, a forerunner to the trades union movement. He married Marian Henrietta Thl, the daughter of a prominent German, in 1864 and had seven children. He died in 1908.
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