George - The Manager
Thomas Livesey had died, very suddenly, in 1871. In October he had been advised to see a
special consultant, Dr. Gull. Sadly he
never got so far as speaking to the doctor because upon entering the surgery
‘he gave two gasps and died’.[1] He had left South Met “the most prosperous in
the country - he was without an enemy”.[2]
... “he left the Company
with a reconstructed works, a 10 per cent. dividend (which had been maintained
for over ten years), a low selling price of gas — 3s. 2d. per 1,000 cubic feet—
a loyal staff, and the reputation of being the best-managed gasworks in the
Metropolis”. [3]
He was buried in Nunhead Cemetery.
George was his Assistant
and as such was given temporary charge of the cashbook and ledger by the Board while
they thought about a replacement for his father. It might be wondered that they
did not appoint him as Manager and Company Secretary immediately. On the contrary they took their time and
looked at a number of applicants and even interviewed one of them.[4]
It
was a couple of weeks before they actually appointed George to succeed his
father. An Extraordinary General Meeting
was then held to elect hum as Company Secretary and this was duly held in
November. Although he was elected to the post there was nevertheless a protest
from some shareholders on the amount he was bang paid. - £900 a year as engineer
and £100 a year as Company Secretary.
However once he was elected – things were never the same again.
George Livesey immediately
faced many challenges and the pace at which he moved is simply astonishing. When he was appointed he had been closely
involved in negotiations with Phoenix Gas Company on an amalgamation project.[5] Issues around the status and future of the
privately owned London Gas Companies was to continue and was something in which
he was to play a leading role.
There were however no
doubt also other issues on his mind.
The South Met. Board
As Company Secretary George
Livesey was subject to the decision of his Board of Directors. Who were
they? In many cases they were sons,
following fathers and uncles. South Met
in the mid-19th century was thus sustained by the money and interest
of a small number of influential families.
Throughout most of the
1870s, while he was first Engineer and Secretary of South Met. The Chair of the
Board was Thomas Bridges Simpson and who had been in that position since
1859. Simpson had been a hardware
merchant based in the Borough [6]and
certainly was involved with the areas and with other the businessman with
similar interests in a number of companies with a public role. He was for a
while Master of the Leathersellers’ Company [7]which
implies links with the large Bermondsey leather trades - [8]although
it does not necessarily fit well with his role as hardware merchant. He was also a Common Councilman for the City
of London and as such was closely involved in a campaign for a monument to
Wellington at Hyde Park. Clearly he was
a wealthy man with wide interests than would be ascribed to the owner of a
small hardware business and he is known to have had many property
dealings. He had been one of the
original promoters of South Met in 1834 and it was later said that it was
through his influence they gained their profitable district. He then became
vice chair of the reconstituted company and took over as chairman when his father
resigned in 1859. He remained Chairman until 1879 when he retired at the age of
92. His son Frederick was company
auditor.[9]
Simpson was undoubtedly proud of his work with South Met saying ‘I got you a
district that was the making of you’ [10]
but that he would in the end oppose any challenge on changes to his
achievements.
The major shareholder
in the company was Richard Foster and he seems to have had a major influence on
George’s work and political direction within the company. Foster was a younger generation of the Foster
banking family who had been active in South Met since 1836. It is most likely that it was their money
which financed the re-constituted company.
Richard had joined the family firm in the early 1820s and had been given
a present of five shares in South Met on his 21st birthday. By the 1870s he was a rich man who had lately
moved from Stainforth House on Clapton Common[11]
to Home wood in Chislehurst. [12]
Idealistic and deeply religious he been affected by the movement for reform in
the Church of England. He had been
instrumental in the movement for a church in West Hackney and then St Matthias
in Stoke Newington[13]
where he had met and worked with a Dr. Robert Brett.[14]
He financed a number of other churches including St Saviour in Markhouse Road
in Walthamstow, [15] St
Barnabas also in Walthamstow[16]
and Saint Bartholomew, Bermondsey which stood at the back of the gasworks site
in Barkworth Road.[17]
These churches are all enormously
dramatic buildings devoted to high Anglo Catholicism and the ritualist movement
- they must have cost a large amount of money.
St.Matthais, for instance, was designed by Butterfield and employed as
its director of music William Monk, also the editor of Hymns Ancient and Modern. Foster also gave money to those who he saw as
trying to solve the problems of industrial society[18]
and is easy to see how his ideas were implemented at South Met by George
Livesey. This perhaps calls into
question whose ideas they were originally and how original George was in the
scheme he presented as his life’s work.
Another board member
who worked closely with Livesey and an eventual chair was Thomas Bridges
Heathorn. He again had succeeded his
father Joseph Lidwell Heathorn who had been a ship-owner with a business based
at Abchurch Lane in the City. Thomas
Heathorn died in 1911 still on the South Met board at the age of ninety. Both
father and son were presented by South Met sources is old salts who had sailed
their own ships. The elder Heathorn was certainly in the shipping business and
in 1841 had sold South Met a second-hand barge. [19]
Thomas Bridges Heathorn was in fact a Captain in the Royal Artillery who had
trained as an engineer and attended the East India College in Addiscombe. He had a distinguished service career and later
served on various commissions and committees[20].
He also invented and wrote a book about a submarine.
In the end the Board
were responsible for George Livesey’s management and during the next few years
their ideas did not always accord with his.
[5] This was part of
continuing negotiations following a Select Committee of 1867 and submission of
subsequent Parliamentary Bills. This
process continued as will be seen below. See Garton.
[8][8] The monument is now at Aldershot. See http://research.hgt.org.uk/item/wellington-monument-setting/
[14] Robert Brett. See Wikipedia
[15] Now another lively community church http://www.saintsaviourswalthamstow.co.uk/
[16] Another lively
community pub which has a Foster Hall as well as a pop-up pub http://www.saintbarnabaswalthamstow.co.uk/
[17] St.Bartholomew has
been demolished and replaced by housing, but its Vicarage remains in Barkworth
Road
[18] Foster. Richard Foster Biography by his son
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