Weetman Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray

The Right Honourable The Viscount Cowdray GCVO PC
President of the Air Board
In office 3 January 1917 – 26 November 1917
Monarch	George V
Prime Minister	David Lloyd George
Preceded by	The Earl Curzon of Kedleston
Succeeded by	The Lord Rothermere
Personal details
Born	Weetman Dickinson Pearson 15 July 1856 Shelley, Kirkburton, West Yorkshire, England
Died	1 May 1927(1927-05-01) (aged 70) Dunecht House, Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Political party	Liberal
Spouse	Annie Cass
Children	Harold Pearson, 2nd Viscount Cowdray Bernard Clive Pearson Francis Geoffrey Pearson Gertrude Denman, Baroness Denman
Occupation	engineer, building contractor, politician
Known for	engineering projects, oil companies, MP Colchester, philanthropy

Cowdray Park, West Sussex, seat of 1st Viscount Cowdray. Purchased by him in 1909, house built in the 1870s by Charles Perceval, 7th Earl of Egmont

Dunecht House, Aberdeen, Scotland, a residence of 1st Viscount Cowdray and place of his death. Leased by him in 1907, purchased 1912. Built 19th century and extended 1912-20 by Pearson

Weetman Dickinson Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray, GCVO, PC (15 July 1856 – 1 May 1927), known as Sir Weetman Pearson, Bt between 1894 and 1910, and as Lord Cowdray between 1910 and 1917, was an English engineer, oil industrialist, benefactor and Liberal politician. He was the owner of the Pearson conglomerate.

Background

Pearson was born on 15 July 1856 at Shelley, Kirkburton, West Yorkshire, the son of George Pearson (died 1899), owner of the manufacturing and contracting firm S. Pearson & Son, by his wife, Sarah Dickinson, a daughter of Weetman Dickinson, of High Hoyland, South Yorkshire.

Contracting

The family construction business S. Pearson & Son was founded in 1844 by his grandfather Samuel Pearson (1814–1884). Pearson took control of S. Pearson & Son in 1880 and moved the headquarters to London in 1884, expanding it from a Yorkshire contractor into a global civil-engineering firm. Through the 1880s he built capability and cash flow on municipal and dock works in Britain and Canada, including the Sheffield main sewer, Halifax dock works and Empress Dock at Southampton; by the early 1890s the firm ranked among the largest contractors in the world.

In London, the firm won the Blackwall Tunnel for the London County Council. The tender was accepted in late 1891, work began in 1892 and the Prince of Wales opened the tunnel on 22 May 1897. Under LCC Engineer Alexander Binnie the design used a Greathead-type shield, compressed air working and cast iron segment linings; at more than 6,000 ft (1,800 m) in length and 27 ft (8.2 m) external diameter it was then the largest subaqueous road tunnel attempted in Britain. Key site management was shared with long-serving company engineers, including Charles Body, who later headed major Mexican works.

In 1900, S. Pearson & Son took over construction of the Great Northern and City Railway in London, designed to carry Great Northern Railway main line stock between Finsbury Park and Moorgate; the line opened on 14 February 1904. The company operated independently in its early years and was later acquired by the Metropolitan Railway on 1 September 1913.

Blackwall’s record helped Pearson secure the East River tunnels for the Pennsylvania Railroad in New York. Alfred Noble, chief engineer for the East River Division, wrote that S. Pearson & Son “was the only bidder having such an experience and record in work in any way similar to the East River tunnels” and had “built the Blackwall tunnel within the estimates of cost”. The railroad signed on 7 July 1904 with S. Pearson & Son, Incorporated, a New York corporation formed to enter and carry out the contract. Noble’s paper details mixed ground under high cover, shield driving in soft strata with cast-iron linings, extensive compressed-air working, and marine supply chains leasing multiple piers to feed materials and barge spoil to disposal yards.

Pearson also secured Dover Harbour’s Admiralty Harbour in 1898, constructing massive breakwaters and sea walls designed by Coode, Son and Matthews to enclose about 610 acres (250 ha) as a refuge for the Royal Navy. Sections of the enclosing wall rose some 90 ft (27 m) from seabed to parapet and were founded and set under water; contemporary accounts praised the execution. Company tender files, time-extension and arbitration papers survive in the firm’s archive.

Mexico became the company’s largest theatre before the First World War. Pearson’s engineers completed the Gran Canal del Desagüe for Mexico City, rebuilt the Tehuantepec National Railway and constructed modern deep-water ports at Coatzacoalcos and Salina Cruz, inaugurated in 1907. Scholars note that the Isthmus works provided dredging plant, pipelines, storage practice and port access that later underpinned Pearson’s integrated oil strategy on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The Tehuantepec National Railway has since been redeveloped the Interoceanic Corridor of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The Mexican governments revived this trans-isthmian route in 2019 under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to connect the ports of Coatzacoalcos on the Gulf of Mexico and Salina Cruz on the Pacific Ocean, modernising the 309 km railway.

In 1922, S Pearson and Sons was one of six British firms invited to tender to complete Sudan's Sennar Dam and the connecting canal system. Pearson won the contract to complete the dam by July 1925. Oswald Longstaff Prowde was resident engineer and John Watson Gibson was site agent. Work began in December 1922 and the dam was finished in May 1925.

Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company

In 1901, during one journey to Mexico, Pearson missed a rail connection in Laredo, Texas, where the town was “wild with the oil craze” after the discovery at Spindletop. That night he investigated reports of natural oil seepages in Mexico and decided to acquire oil prospects that could fuel the Tehuantepec line.

Pearson invested ahead of production in refining and transport from 1905, including Mexico’s first refinery at Minatitlán in 1906. Early test drilling brought little success. In June 1908 a large strike burned for weeks and destroyed the field. Pearson later reflected: “I entered lightly into the enterprise, not realising its many problems... Now I know that it would have been wise to surround myself with proved oil men.”

Drilling moved north between Veracruz and Tampico, and on 27 December 1910, the Potrero del Llano No. 4 well flowed at about 100,000 barrels per day; over its life it yielded more than 100 million barrels. By 1914 the Pearson group held concessions over roughly 1.5 million acres, operated about 175 miles of pipeline, maintained storage for 7 million barrels and, with a new plant at Tampico, ran two major refineries. In the same year Mexican Eagle accounted for about 60 percent of national output.

Pearson consolidated the oil interests as the Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company in 1909 to take over lands, wells, refineries, pipelines and tank farms; he added the Eagle Oil Transport Company in 1912 to manage ocean tankers and the Anglo-Mexican Petroleum Company in 1912 to market outside Mexico. The Mexican Revolution from 1910 disrupted politics but output grew. Pearson declined approaches from the Texas Company in 1911, Royal Dutch Shell in 1912–1913 and Standard Oil of New Jersey in 1913 and 1916; the British government later restricted transfers in 1917 for wartime reasons.

On 2 April 1919 Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and the Shell Transport and Trading Company acquired control of Mexican Eagle for about US$75 million, assuming management while Pearson retained a minority interest. Mexican Eagle remained prominent until 18 March 1938, when President Lázaro Cárdenas nationalised foreign oil assets to form Pemex.

Diversification into finance, media and industry (1907–1927)

In 1907, Pearson established Whitehall Securities Corporation Ltd for his non-contracting activities. After the sale of Mexican Eagle in 1919 he used Whitehall as the core of a wider reorganisation of the group’s finance and utilities. Between 1919 and 1922 he “restructured his various businesses, transforming his organization into a great Investment Trust controlling and directing numerous enterprises at home and abroad.” In 1919, the group created Whitehall Trust Ltd. as a finance and issuing house under Sir Robert Kindersley; Whitehall Securities, formed in 1907, was designated holding company for Pearson’s major Mexican utility interests; and in 1922 a specialised subsidiary, Whitehall Electric Investments Ltd., was organised for electric-utility stakes in Mexico and a new Chilean business. Whitehall Trust also acted as trustee for issues where the Pearson/Cowdray group held no direct equity, widening its financial reach.

In parallel, the group formed Whitehall Petroleum Corporation Ltd. in 1919 to manage residual oil interests and search for new prospects after the Mexican Eagle sale.

In City finance, Pearson secured a strategic position at Lazard Brothers. In 1920, S. Pearson & Son purchased 40 per cent of Lazard Brothers & Co. from the French partners, taking English ownership of the London accepting house to 53 per cent and aligning the bank with Pearson’s issuing activity in the early 1920s. A later Bank of England–supervised rescue in 1931 increased the family’s holding to 80 per cent, an episode that post-dated Pearson’s death and was carried through by his successors.

Pearson also expanded into newspapers. He first invested in The Westminster Gazette in 1908 as part of a Liberal syndicate led by Alfred Mond and Sir John Brunner, before assuming full control after the war and relaunching the paper as a national morning title on 5 November 1921. Around it he consolidated a group of provincial titles that became the nucleus of Westminster Press, laying groundwork for the organisation’s later media focus.

In heavy industry, he partnered with Dorman Long in 1922 to form Pearson & Dorman Long Ltd. for the new Kent coalfield. The venture aimed at a vertically integrated coal, iron and steel base in east Kent, but early progress was constrained by labour and geological difficulties. Snowdown Colliery closed in 1922 following a strike and receivership, then was modernised after Pearson & Dorman Long’s purchase in 1924; shaft sinking at Betteshanger began in 1924, and housing for miners and families was provided at Aylesham through a public-utility society.

By the end of Pearson’s life the group had been reshaped around investment and publishing alongside residual engineering interests. The contracting arm was closed in the late 1920s, not sold as a going concern, marking a pivot toward finance and media under his successors. In the 1930s, under Bernard Clive Pearson, Whitehall Securities broadened its remit into civil aviation and helped consolidate airline operations.

Political career

Pearson was created a Baronet, of Paddockhurst, in the Parish of Worth, in the County of Sussex, and of Airlie Gardens, in the Parish of St Mary Abbots, Kensington, in the County of London, in 1894. He was first elected Liberal Member of Parliament for Colchester at a by-election in February 1895. He held the seat at the 1895 general election and retained it until 1910 when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Cowdray, of Midhurst in the County of Sussex. His time is connected with a number of developments, most notably the opening of Colchester Castle to the public. Under his leadership during World War I, the munitions factory HM Factory, Gretna and the tank assembly at Chateauroux were built.

In January 1917, he was sworn of the Privy Council and made Viscount Cowdray, of Cowdray in the County of Sussex. That same month, David Lloyd George requested that he become President of the Air Board. Cowdray agreed, provided that he receive no salary. Lord Cowdray worked diligently to improve the output of aircraft and produced a threefold increase in the number of aircraft under his tenure. Yet he was criticized after German bombing produced over 600 casualties on 13 June, and resigned the following November.

Following the war, he was active in Liberal politics and in philanthropic activities. He endowed a professorship in the Spanish department at the University of Leeds, and contributed to University College London, the League of Nations Union, the Royal Air Force Club and Memorial Fund, and to many public projects.

Marriage and children

Arms of the 1st Viscount Cowdray, facade of Dunecht House

Lord Cowdray married Annie Cass, a daughter of Sir John Cass (1832–1898), of Bradford in Yorkshire, merchant and landowner, Justice of the Peace and Chairman of the Bradford Conservative Association, whose inscribed gravestone survives in Undercliffe Cemetery, Bradford. By his wife he had four children:

• Weetman Harold Miller Pearson, 2nd Viscount Cowdray
• Hon. Bernard Clive Pearson (12 August 1887 – 22 July 1965), who played an important role in the development of British airlines in the 1930s and was Chairman of S. Pearson and Sons until 1954. He married Hon. Alicia Mary Dorothea Knatchbull-Hugessen, daughter of Edward Knatchbull-Hugessen, 1st Baron Brabourne on 14 October 1915. They had three daughters.
• Hon. Francis Geoffrey Pearson (23 August 1891 – 6 September 1914), who on 6 August 1909 married Ethel Elizabeth Lewis, daughter of John J. Lewis, of Hove, Sussex. In August 1914, at the start of World War I, he joined the Motor Transport Division of the British Expeditionary Force as a motorcycle courier, with the rank of Staff Sergeant. Early in September as the Allied Armies were rolled back toward the River Marne during the German drive on Paris, he was captured near the town of Varreddes, and died on 6 September 1914 at age 23. He was buried at the Montreuil-aux-Lions British Cemetery. Reports surfaced later that he had been treated with unconscionable brutality by his captors, which directly caused his death. Great indignation was raised by these reports, one of many that were flooding out of Northern France at the time. The incident was referenced by Arthur Conan Doyle in his 1914 book "The German War" (Chapter VI, 'A Policy of Murder'), who called him "the gallant motor-cyclist, Pearson".
• Gertrude Mary Pearson (Gertrude Mary, Baroness Denman, GBE), who married Thomas Denman, 3rd Baron Denman, Governor-General of Australia.

Death

Lord Cowdray died in his sleep at Dunecht House, Aberdeenshire on 1 May 1927, aged 70, leaving a fortune of £4m, but instead of following primogeniture it was evenly divided into 10 parts. He was succeeded by his eldest son Weetman Harold Miller Pearson, 2nd Viscount Cowdray.

Arms

Coat of arms of Weetman Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray

Crest In front of a Demi Gryphon Gules holding between its claws a Millstone proper thereon Mill-Rind Sable a Sun in Splendour Escutcheon Per fess indented Gules and Or in chief two Suns in Splendour and in base a Demi-Gryphon couped all counterchanged Supporters Dexter: a Diver holding in his exterior hand his Helmet all proper; Sinister: a Mexican peon also proper Motto Do It With Thy Might

Further reading

• Garner, Paul. British Lions and Mexican Eagles: Business, Politics, and Empire in the Career of Weetman Pearson in Mexico, 1889-1919. Stanford: Stanford University Press 2011.
• Middlemas, Keith. The Master Builders: Thomas Brassey, Sir John Aird, Lord Cowdray, Sir John Norton-Griffiths. London: Hutchinson, 1964.
• Spender, John A. Weetman Pearson: First Viscount Cowdray. London: Cassell, 1930.
• Young, Desmond. Member for Mexico: Biography of Weetman Pearson, First Viscount Cowdray. London: Cassell, 1966.

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Viscount Cowdray
• Weetman Dickinson Pearson at Grace's Guide to British Industrial History
• Weetman Dickinson Pearson at the National Portrait Gallery
• Weetman Pearson in Mexico and the Emergence of a British Oil Major, 1901-1919