John Corbett (industrialist)

John Corbett ("bapt." June 29, 1817 - April 22, 1901) was a Victorian English industrialist and philanthropist, particularly associated with salt mining in Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire.

Family background

Born in Brierley Hill 1817 his father, Joseph Corbett, ran a successful canal transport business there. John joined the family business but by 1850 canals were facing increasing competition from the new and expanding railways.

Foresight

John Corbett sold his share of the family canal business and, in 1853, purchased disused salt workings in Stoke Prior from the British Alkali Company. Corbett brought all the innovations of the industrial revolution to mechanise and commercialise the business, soon making his salt workings the largest in Europe and built a great fortune.

Philanthropy

However he didn't simply utilise this fortune just for his own ends, preferring to reinvest profits into the business processes, innovation and also into improving his workforce's working conditions and even raising wages. His workers were so well paid, for the time, that many could boast that their wives didn't need to work at all.

Marriage

In 1855 he met his future wife Anna O'Meara in Paris. She lived in Paris with her Irish father and French mother. He married her within a year of meeting her. They were to have six children together. Rumor has it that one of the children was not John's.

She missed her elegant Parisian lifestyle and the French upbringing she had enjoyed so Corbett had a French style chateau built to assuage her homesickness, completed in 1875 for the staggering cost, at the time, of £247,000. Chateau Impney still stands today, as a well known hotel, an eyecatching landmark just outside Droitwich Spa.

Despite this lavish and romantic gesture they separated after nearly thirty years of marriage.

Retirement

In 1888, he sold the massive salt business to the Salt Union Ltd for GBP £660,000 (equivalent to £52,710,604.00 today as of 2007). [ [http://www.measuringworth.com/index.html Measuring Worth - Home ] at www.measuringworth.com] He spent much of the proceeds in philanthropic work in and around Droitwich Spa, buying St. Andrew's House and turning it into the Raven Hotel .

Notes

External links

* [http://www.miac.org.uk/johncorbett.htm Local history page with some photographs]
*" [http://archive.thisisworcestershire.co.uk/2001/05/16/325958.html This is Worcestershire] "
* [http://website.lineone.net/~corbett_group/First/People/salt.htm The Corbett Study Group]