Richard Peacock

Richard Peacock (born April 9, 1820 in Swaledale , † March 3, 1889 in Manchester ) was an English engineer and member of parliament and one of the founders of the locomotive manufacturer Beyer-Peacock .

Life

Richard Peacock went to school at Leeds Grammar School in Leeds , but left when he was 14 to do an apprenticeship with Fenton, Murray and Jackson in Leeds.

job

At the young age of eighteen, Peacock was locomotive operations manager for the Leeds and Selby Railway . When the line was taken over by the York and North Midland Railway in 1840 , he worked under Daniel Gooch in Swindon but allegedly fled Gooch's wrath. In 1841 he became locomotive operator for the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway , which later became the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway . In this role he was in charge of the Gorton Locomotive Works for that railroad, although he left the company shortly before it was completed in 1848.

In 1847, Peacock was with Charles Beyer at a meeting in Lickey Incline, which is generally regarded as the birth of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers . George Stephenson was elected first president and Charles Beyer was elected vice president. Peacock became a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1849 .

In 1853 he founded the celebrated Beyer-Peacock locomotive factory with Charles Beyer . Peacock originally met Beyer on the acquisition of locomotives from Sharp, Roberts and Company .

Politics and religion

Since the parliamentary elections from 1885 until his death in 1889 Peacock was a member of the Liberal Party Member of Parliament (MP) for Gorton ( Lancashire ). Peacock was a Unitarian , and one of his services to the Gorton ward was building Brookfield Church; a place for church services to this day, whose bells were named after his children. Emily Faithfull , a Victorian writer and suffragette, dedicated her book "Three Visits To America" ​​in 1882 to her "friend Richard Peacock Esq of Gorton Hall". During his time in Parliament, Peacock advocated the Home Rule, reform of the House of Lords , the segregation and disenfranchisement of the Church and the establishment of local self-government.

family

Peacock was the son of Ralph Peacock, a mining inspector from Swaledale and his wife Dorothy Robinson. He was married twice, first to Hannah Crowther, and then to Francis Littlewood. When he died, his eldest son Colonel Ralph Peacock VD (1838-1928) of the Manchester Voluntary Artillery was his successor in the Gorton foundry. His eldest daughter Jane Peacoc (1855-1928) married William Taylor Birchenough JP, a silk manufacturer who was the older brother of Sir Henry Birchenough . Peacock's grandson Richard Peacock Birchenough married Dorothy Grace Godsal, daughter of Philip Thomas Godsal , the inventor of the Godsal anti-tank weapon. Peacock's youngest daughter Eugenie married George P. Dawson, who succeeded Colonel Peacock in 1902 as managing director of the new Beyer, Peacock and Company Limited. Colonel Ralph Peacock died with no offspring as did Richard Peacock's only other surviving son, Frederick William Peacock (1858-1924).

He died in Manchester and is buried in the cemetery of the Brookfield Unitarian Church on Hyde Road in Gorton, which he built and which also houses the remains of his father Ralph Peacock and their son Joseph Peacock, who died earlier.

swell

1. ↑ Beyer Peacock Locomotives to the World RL Hills and D. Patrick, p. 10
2. ^ Lloyd, Backtrack , 2004, 18 710

literature

• Beyer Peacock Quarterly Review, July 1927
• Who's Who of British Parliament Volume 2 1886–1918
• Ahrons, LE The British Steam Railway Locomotive 1825-1925 (1927)
• Obituary - The Engineer , March 8, 1889