Tom Nickalls
Tom Nickalls (1827–1899) was a stockjobber on the stock exchange and one of the founding members of London Rowing Club. He was known as the "king of the American railroad market" [1][2] after making his fortune in American railway shares.
![](../I/m/Tom_Nickalls_Vanity_Fair_1885-11-21.jpg)
Biography
He was born in 1827, the son of Patteson Nickalls (1798–1869) and Arabella née Chalk (1799–1893) and brother of Patteson Nickalls and he married Emily Quihampton. As a boy he was sent to America to work for an uncle who had a livery stables in Chicago, where he gained a first hand knowledge of the surrounding terrain and an understanding of which routes would be of strategic importance for developing railways - information which proved invaluable when he returned to England work as a jobber on the London Stock Exchange. Another soubriquet was "The Erie King"[3], following his successful speculation in shares of the Erie Railroad during the Erie War.
A keen sportsman and for many years a Master of the Surrey Stag Hounds, [4], [5] Tom Nickalls had a hunting lodge in Norway. In 1893 he sent four pairs of Norwegian skis [6] as a present to his daughter Florence and son in law William Adolf Baillie Grohman who lived in the Austrian Tyrol - one of the earliest recorded uses of skis in Austria.
He died in 1899.[1]
References
- "Tom Nickalls Dies in England". New York Times. May 12, 1899. Retrieved 2011-03-24.
Tom Nickalls, father of the famous scullers, Guy and Vivian Nickalls, died to-day at Pattison Court, at the age of seventy-two. When a boy Mr. Nickalls ...
- "Tom Nickalls Dead". Daily Mail and Empire. May 12, 1899. Retrieved 2011-03-24.
Nickalls, father of the famous scullers, Guy and Vivian Nickalls, died to-day at court, Redhill, at the age of 72 years. When a boy, Mr. Nickalls ...
- Duguid, Charles (1901). The story of the Stock Exchange. Its History and Position. Grant Richards. p. 250.
- "Thomas ('Tom') Nickalls (Men of the Day. No. 344.) by 'PAT', (F. Goedecker?) chromolithograph, published in Vanity Fair ), 21 November 1885 (NPG D44253".
- "Surrey Stag Hounds Hunt 1893-1931: Surrey History Centre G70/64, Narional Record Archievs, NRA 107063".
- Watkins, Olga (1937). "The first Skis in the Tyrol". The Field. London (November): 1274–1276.