George Kynoch (businessman)

George Kynoch (22 August 1834 – 28 February 1891) was the founder of IMI plc, one of the United Kingdom's largest engineering businesses.

Career

Born at Peterhead in Aberdeenshire and educated at the local school, George Kynoch first worked as an insurance clerk in Glasgow and then as a bank clerk in Worcester.[1] After working for a while at larger bank branch in Birmingham, in 1856 he decided to join Pursall & Phillips, percussion cap manufacturers, in Birmingham.[1] An explosion in 1859 destroyed the works, killing 19 of the 70 employees.[1][2] As a result the firm moved to on four acres of land at Witton in 1862.[3][1] In 1863, Kynoch took over the business, which was subsequently renamed G. Kynoch and Co.[2][1] The Lion Works, as it became known, quickly secured contracts to supply ammunition to the British and Turkish Governments.[1] In 1884 his interests were bought out and he was simply employed as Managing Director.[4]

In 1886, he became Member of Parliament for Aston Manor and in 1887 he was appointed President of Aston Villa Football Club.[1] These roles distracted him from his business and in 1888 he was forced to resign: he emigrated to South Africa and died in Johannesburg in 1891.[1]

Family

In 1863 he married Helen Birley; they later separated.[1]

gollark: I really should get LDAP working properly.
gollark: I run on entirely Linux, and somehow entirely *Arch* Linux.
gollark: Loud rack servers instead of... also loud tower servers, VMs instead of containers, Windows instead of Linux, bizarrely convoluted nested reverse proxies for some reason, old PHP/ASP applications instead of my shinier Node/Python ones, sort of thing.
gollark: I have a friend who's also into the whole servers-at-home thing, but made basically opposite technical decisions to me.
gollark: VMs do seem to be a major source of RAM wastage.

References
  1. "George Kynoch". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/48741. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. "Pursall and Phillips". Grace's Guide. Retrieved 26 November 2018.
  3. Robert D. Beeman; John B. Allen (2005). Blue Book of Airguns. Blue Book Publications. p. 295. ISBN 1-886768-56-0.
  4. Staffs Home Guard
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Hugh Gilzean-Reid		 Member of Parliament for Aston Manor
1886–1891		 Succeeded by
George Grice-Hutchinson


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