Henry Royce
Sir Frederick Henry Royce, 1st Baronet was an English engineer famous for his designs of car and aeroplane engines that had a reputation for reliability and longevity. He and his two business associates Charles Rolls and Claude Johnson together founded the Rolls-Royce Limited company in 1904.
Rolls-Royce Limited initially focused on large, 40–50 horsepower motor cars, the Silver Ghost and its successors. Royce produced his first aero engine shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, and aircraft engines became Rolls-Royce's principal product.
Royce's health broke down in 1911, and he was persuaded to leave his factory in the Midlands at Derby and, taking a team of designers, move to the south of England spending winters in the south of France. He died at his home in Sussex in the spring of 1933.
Early life
Royce was born in Alwalton, Huntingdonshire, near Peterborough on 27 March 1863 to Mary and James Royce. He had four older siblings, Emily, Fanny Elizabeth, Mary Anne and James Allen. On both sides Royce was descended from generations of farmers and millers. His father James started as a farmer before upon in 1852, his marriage to Mary, the daughter of a farmer, he acquired the lease of a flour mill at Castor in Northamptonshire. James was unable to make a success of the mill at Castor and moved to nearby Alwalton where he took up the lease of a flour mill, which he leased from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. In 1863 financial circumstances forced James to mortgage his lease to the London Flour Company. In 1867 the business failed and due to their reduced circumstances the decision was made to board the three girls in Alwalton while Mary worked as an housekeeper with various families in the area. Meanwhile James took the two boys with him to London where he found work in a flour mill in Southwark operated by the London Flour Company. At some stage James had contracted Hodgkin’s disease, and he died in 1872 at the age of 41 in a public poorhouse in Greenwich. Royce was later to describe his father as unsteady but clever, someone lacking the determination to apply himself single-mindedly to a task. Royce was nine years old at the time of his father's death and his formal education to date had consisted of one year at the Croydon British School.For a while he stayed with an elderly couple who were family friends in London, but when one died he was forced to move on. He later reminisced that “My food for the day was often two thick slices of bread soaked in milk.” On one occasion he found it warmer to sleep with a dog in its dog kennel. As his mother was able to only provide him with very limited financial help, Royce at the age of 10 got a job selling newspapers for W. H. Smith, firstly at Clapham Junction and later at Bishopsgate Station. He was able to earn sufficient money to allow him to also attend school over the next two years. In 1876 at the age of 13 he obtained a job at the Post Office delivering telegrams. He was paid a half penny for each delivery.
He would occasionally visit his great-aunt Catherine on his mother’s side, who lived in Fletton near Peterborough. Feeling that he deserved a better future she was able in 1878 despite her own limited financial circumstances to obtain Royce an apprenticeship with the Great Northern Railway company at its works in Peterborough in return for paying them £20 a year. Moving to Peterborough Royce boarded with the Yarrow family, who had a son who was already an apprentice at the works. To pay for his day to day living expenses Royce continued to deliver newspapers. To make up for his lack of formal education, he also took evening classes in English and mathematics. In November 1880 Royce had to give up his apprenticeship after his great-aunt’s money ran out. Due to a depression affecting at the British economy at the time Royce couldn’t find a local job so he walked from Peterborough to Leeds where he stayed with his sister Fanny Elizabeth and her husband. Royce’s mother was also a member of the household. Within two weeks Royce had found employment at toolmakers Greenwood and Batley in Leeds where he was paid 11 shillings for a 54 hour week. Outside work he studied various technical subjects, including electrics.
Before a year had passed he returned to London where he was able to obtain a position at the Electric Lighting and Power Generating Company in Southwark as a tester, despite having no practical experience in the electric field. The role doubled his wages to 22 shillings a week, though he continued to work long hours and to neglect his diet. The company changed its name to the Maxim-Weston Company after it expanded into manufacturing lamps designed by Hiram Maxim and Edward Weston. In his spare time Royce began attending evening classes at the City and Guilds Institute for the Advancement of Technical Education. Among his tutors was the highly respected physicist and electrical engineer William Edward Ayrton.
In 1882 at the age of 19 Royce was promoted to chief engineer of his employer’s subsidiary the Lancashire Maxim-Weston Electric Company in Liverpool. The under-capitalised company was involved in lighting streets and theatres. Despite winning a major contract with the Liverpool City Council the company was forced into liquidation on 24 March 1884. In May 1884 the Maxim-Weston Company purchased the assets of its subsidiary, with the aim of obtaining further contracts with the Liverpool City Council, who had expressed confidence with both Royce and the company’s work to date. Until these could be obtained Royce would be unpaid if he stayed with the new company. Royce decided instead to start his own business.
Starts F. H. Royce and Company
Despite not being that familiar with the city, the 21-year-old Royce, with his savings of £20, decided to start his own business in Manchester. It has been speculated that he chose Manchester because of lower costs than Liverpool or London. In 1884 that he established F. H. Royce and Company, operating from a workshop in Blake Street, Hulme, manufacturing small electrical and mechanical items. Within the first six months a friend called Ernest Alexander Claremont had entered into partnership with Royce, contributing £50 that he appears to have borrowed from his father. Royce normally did the design and manufacture of their products with his partner responsible for sales, payments and deliveries as well as assisting in the workshop. Their partnership was to continue until Claremont's death. By 1895 they were employing a salesman, W. Sergeant. Having little money, the partners lived in a shared room above the workshop, living on sandwiches and sausages.After starting out with small items they moved into sub-contacting manufacture of lighting components, such as filaments, holders and lamps, though to make ends meet they would undertake any engineering work, including repairing sewing machines. The business’s first successful product was an electric bell for domestic use. While things were tight during their first three years as they invested any profits back into the business they were still able progressively to employ a workman, Thomas Weston Seale to assist in the manufacturing while six young women were taken on to assemble the bells and light filaments. In 1887 Tom Jones joined the firm as a workman to assist in the manufacturing of other products. By 1889 there were nine employees.
As their business situation improved and they expanded into undertaking complete installations of electrical plant the partners were able by 1888 to move out of their accommodation above the workshop to board with Elizabeth and John Pollard at 24 Talbot Street in the Moss Side district. In that same year they expanded into adjacent larger premises accessed from 1A Cooke Street off Stretford Road in Hulme.
During this period Royce worked from a desk in the workshop, while Claremont had an office which he shared with the business’s office staff. By the end of 1888 Claremont, who was engaged to be married had moved into his own house, while Royce in 1889 was in his own house at 45 Barton Street in Moss Side. This allowed his mother to move in with him and he hired a servant girl, Patricia Brady to assist in the running of the house. Following his marriage Royce and his wife moved into a semi-detached house called “Easthourne” at 2 Holland Park Road. Prior to this he had moved his mother into her own accommodation at 21 Warwick Road in Chorlton-cum-Hardy where up until her death in 1904 he visited her most days on his way home from work. Following their marriages both Claremont’s wife and her sister who married Royce together invested £1,500 in their husband’s business and later increased their shareholding.
A significant uptake in the use of electricity from 1889 onwards led to an increase in the company’s turnover and profitably. The company was registered on 4 June 1891 as F. H. Royce and Co, to take over the business of electrical and mechanical engineers of the firm of the same name.
The continued increase in the company’s fortunes lead Royce and Claremont to consider an expansion of the company in preparation for which in March 1894 they had a valuation performed which calculated it had assets worth £2,721 18s 4d. This inventory included the 53 machine tools or various typeshoused in their rented factory premises.
That same year they converted the business into a private limited company called F. H. Royce and Company Ltd, with the newly hired accountant John De Looze as company secretary. De Looze took over much of the administration from Claremont and Royce and was to stay until he retired from Rolls-Royce in 1943. At this time the company described itself as "Electrical and mechanical engineers and manufacturers of dynamos, motors and kindred articles." Royce was its managing director and Claremont was its chairman. Both had 5,349 shares with Claremont’s friend James Whitehead purchasing a large number of shares to provide more capital and became a director. Claremont’s wife purchased 1,131 shares and Royce’s wife 1,101. De Looze purchased one share, as did Claremont’s brother Albert. The company by now had 100 employees.
The company continued to grow though the rest of the 1890s, undertaking complete electrical installations of factories and large private houses. In 1894 they started making dynamos designed by Royce and by 1895 were producing electric cranes which required expanding into more space at Cooke Street and later the acquisition of more space in a three-storey building. As well as their highly regarded cranes, the company was manufacturing arc lamps, dynamos, electric motors and switchgear. Following the opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894 they sold nine of their cranes for use on the canal as well as a major contract to supply and install the arc-lighting system for the Port of Manchester and the adjacent Trafford Park.
On 24 July 1897 Royce was awarded his first patent, which was for a bayonet-cap lamp socket. By October of that same year the company had £6,000 of orders on their books, which by March 1898 had increased to £9,000 and by February 1890 to £20,000.
By the late 1890s they needed more capital to complete their work associated with the Manchester Ship Canal, while at the same time the dramatic increase in work due to this project meant that the existing factory was proving inadequate. A new factory was expected to cost £20,000, so a prospectus was issued with the aim of increasing the company’s capital to £30,000.