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.

Caricature published in Vanity Fair in 1885.

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
  1. "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 ...
  2. "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 ...
  3. Duguid, Charles (1901). The story of the Stock Exchange. Its History and Position. Grant Richards. p. 250.
  4. "Thomas ('Tom') Nickalls (Men of the Day. No. 344.) by 'PAT', (F. Goedecker?) chromolithograph, published in Vanity Fair ), 21 November 1885 (NPG D44253".
  5. "Surrey Stag Hounds Hunt 1893-1931: Surrey History Centre G70/64, Narional Record Archievs, NRA 107063".
  6. Watkins, Olga (1937). "The first Skis in the Tyrol". The Field. London (November): 1274–1276.
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