- Samuel Greg (junior)
Samuel Greg (
September 6 ,1804 -May 14 ,1876 ) was an Englishindustrialist andphilanthropist .Born in
Manchester , the son of the elderSamuel Greg , the creator ofQuarry Bank Mill , he was brother toWilliam Rathbone Greg andRobert Hyde Greg . Influenced by the religious beliefs of his mother Hannah, he attended aUnitarian school inNottingham . Further study inBristol , underLant Carpenter , and at theUniversity of Edinburgh was interspersed with experience in the family firm and completed by the, then obligatory,Grand Tour .Already more interested in the consequences of wealth rather than its creation, in 1830 and 1831 he gave lectures on scientific subjects to the workers at "Quarry Bank". On his father's retirement in 1832, he took over management of Lowerhouse Mill in
Bollington ,Cheshire and used it as a basis for further social experimentation.He published his ideas on the model factory village in "Two Letters to Leonard Horner on the Capabilities of the Factory System" (1840) and went on to found a number of educational and social institutions in Bollington. However, in 1847, he introduced new machinery in his mills which was so unpopular that it precipitated a strike.
In consequence, Greg suffered from a
nervous breakdown and retired to his Bollington home, "The Mount". Thereon, he restricted his philanthropy to scientific lectures for the workers ofMacclesfield , becoming president of theSociety for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge .He died in Bollington after a long illness. He had married Mary Priscilla Needham in 1838. She bore him two sons and six daughters.
Bibliography
*Rose, M.B. (1986) "The Gregs of Quarry Bank Mill: The Rise and Decline of the Family Firm, 1750–1914" ISBN 0-521-32382-7
*Stanley, A.P. (ed.) (1877) "A Layman's Legacy in Prose and Verse: Selections from the Papers of Samuel Greg" with a biographical memoir
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