Weetman Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray

Pearson was born on 15 July 1856 at Shelley, Kirkburton, West Yorkshire, the son of George Pearson (died 1899), owner of the manufacturing and contracting firm S. Pearson & Son, by his wife, Sarah Dickinson, a daughter of Weetman Dickinson, of High Hoyland, South Yorkshire.^[3]

The family construction business S. Pearson & Son was founded in 1844 by his grandfather Samuel Pearson (1814–1884). Weetman Pearson took over the company in 1880 and later moved the headquarters from Yorkshire to London. An early proponent of globalization, S. Pearson & Son built the Admiralty Harbour at Dover, docks in Halifax, tunnels, railways and harbours around the world, and the Sennar Dam in Sudan.^{[citation needed]}

In 1900, the company took over the construction of the Great Northern and City Railway in London and after completion in 1904 ran it for four years.^[4] In 1907 he established an investment company, Whitehall Securities Corporation Ltd which, under the direction of his son Clive Pearson, played an important role in the development of British airlines in the 1930s.^[5]

Today Pearson Plc is mainly engaged in the business of publishing.

In 1889, Porfirio Diaz, the President of Mexico, invited Pearson to his country to build a railroad—the Tehuantepec Railway—from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. On one of Pearson's trips to Mexico, he missed a rail connection in Laredo, Texas, and was obliged to spend the night in the town which he described as "wild with the oil craze" from the recent discovery of oil at Spindletop. After doing some quick research that night about oil seepages in Mexico, Pearson began acquiring prospective oil lands in Laredo, thinking he could use discovered oil to fuel the Tehuantepec Railway he was building.^[6]

In 1902, after sulphur was found in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Pearson used a Texas drilling crew to drill Potrerillos, a rise of ground close to his railway. Well No. 4 confirmed the location of a salt dome at a depth of 709 feet. This was a good sign, since oil was found at Spindletop in 1901, alongside the edge of a salt dome. Well No 8 became Mexico's first commercial oil well. Pearson then brought in Anthony Lucas to help spot 20 drilling locations, developing areas at Jáltipan, Capacan, Tecuanapa, and Soledad. In 1908, Eagle built Mexico's first oil refinery, located at Minatitlán. In 1910, Potrero del Llano No. 4, came in as a real gusher. In 1921, Pearson added Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company (Cia. Mexicana de Petroleo el Aguila, S.A.) to the Shell-Royal Dutch merger.^[7]

In 1911, President Diaz was overthrown and the Mexican Revolution began. The associated violence and turmoil had a negative effect on foreign investors in Mexico's oil industry. In October 1918 Pearson sold a substantial portion of Mexican Eagle stock to Calouste Gulbenkian, on behalf of Royal Dutch Shell, which took over its management.^[6]

Pearson was created a Baronet, of Paddockhurst, in the Parish of Worth, in the County of Sussex, and of Airlie Gardens, in the Parish of St Mary Abbots, Kensington, in the County of London, in 1894.^[8] He was first elected Liberal Member of Parliament for Colchester at a by-election in February 1895.^[9] He held the seat at the 1895 general election and retained it until 1910^[10] when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Cowdray, of Midhurst in the County of Sussex.^[11] His time is connected with a number of developments, most notably the opening of Colchester Castle to the public. Under his leadership during World War I, the munitions factory HM Factory, Gretna and the tank assembly at Chateauroux were built.

In January 1917, he was sworn of the Privy Council^[12] and made Viscount Cowdray, of Cowdray in the County of Sussex.^[13] That same month, David Lloyd George requested that he become President of the Air Board. Cowdray agreed, provided that he receive no salary. Lord Cowdray worked diligently to improve the output of aircraft and produced a threefold increase in the number of aircraft under his tenure. Yet he was criticized after German bombing produced over 600 casualties on 13 June, and resigned the following November.

Following the war, he was active in Liberal politics and in philanthropic activities. He endowed a professorship in the Spanish department at the University of Leeds, and contributed to University College London, the League of Nations Union, the Royal Air Force Club and Memorial Fund, and to many public projects.

 

Lord Cowdray married Annie Cass, a daughter of Sir John Cass (1832–1898), of Bradford in Yorkshire, merchant and landowner, Justice of the Peace and Chairman of the Bradford Conservative Association, whose inscribed gravestone survives in Undercliffe Cemetery, Bradford.^[14] By his wife he had four children:

• Weetman Harold Miller Pearson, 2nd Viscount Cowdray
• Hon. Bernard Clive Pearson (12 August 1887 – 22 July 1965), who on 14 October 1915 married Hon. Alicia Mary Dorothea Knatchbull-Hugessen, daughter of Edward Knatchbull-Hugessen, 1st Baron Brabourne. They had three daughters.
• Hon. Francis Geoffrey Pearson (23 August 1891 – 6 September 1914), who on 6 August 1909 married Ethel Elizabeth Lewis, daughter of John J. Lewis, of Hove, Sussex. In August 1914, at the start of World War I, he joined the Motor Transport Division of the British Expeditionary Force as a motorcycle courier, with the rank of Staff Sergeant. Early in September as the Allied Armies were rolled back toward the River Marne during the German drive on Paris, he was captured near the town of Varreddes, and died on 6 September 1914 at age 23. He was buried at the Montreuil-aux-Lions British Cemetery.^[15] Reports surfaced later that he had been treated with unconscionable brutality by his captors, which directly caused his death. Great indignation was raised by these reports, one of many that were flooding out of Northern France at the time. The incident was referenced by Arthur Conan Doyle in his 1914 book "The German War" (Chapter VI, 'A Policy of Murder'), who called him "the gallant motor-cyclist, Pearson".^{[citation needed]}
• Gertrude Mary Pearson (Gertrude Mary, Baroness Denman, GBE), who married Thomas Denman, 3rd Baron Denman, Governor-General of Australia.

The poet, broadcaster and socialite Nadja Malacrida was his niece.

Lord Cowdray died in his sleep at Dunecht House, Aberdeenshire on 1 May 1927, aged 70, leaving a fortune of £4m, but instead of following primogeniture it was evenly divided into 10 parts.^[16] He was succeeded by his eldest son Weetman Harold Miller Pearson, 2nd Viscount Cowdray.

• Garner, Paul. British Lions and Mexican Eagles: Business, Politics, and Empire in the Career of Weetman Pearson in Mexico, 1889-1919. Stanford: Stanford University Press 2011.
• Middlemas, Keith. The Master Builders: Thomas Brassey, Sir John Aird, Lord Cowdray, Sir John Norton-Griffiths. London: Hutchinson, 1964.
• Spender, John A. Weetman Pearson: First Viscount Cowdray. London: Cassell, 1930.
• Young, Desmond. Member for Mexico: Biography of Weetman Pearson, First Viscount Cowdray. London: Cassell, 1966.

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Weetman Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray.

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Viscount Cowdray
• Weetman Dickinson Pearson at Grace's Guide to British Industrial History
• Weetman Dickinson Pearson at the National Portrait Gallery
• Weetman Pearson in Mexico and the Emergence of a British Oil Major, 1901-1919