Who was William Morris, Lord Nuffield?
Motor Car Manufacturer and Scientific Philanthropist.
Date and Place of Birth:
10th October 1877, Worcester. Christened William
Richard Morris.
Family Background:
Son of Frederick Morris who became a clerk in
Oxford after several speculative journeys to the wild west of the
United States of America in attempts to make his fortune and Emily
Ann Petter, a farmer's daughter. Nuffield was the eldest of seven
children.
Education:
Church School, Cowley, Oxfordshire which he left
at the age of fourteen.
Chronology/Biography of Lord Nuffield:
1880: Family moved
to Oxford.
1892: Left School
1893: Worked at
16 James Street, Oxford as a repairer of bicycles in the shed at
the bottom of his father's garden with the starting capital of £4.
1912: Designed his
first car, the bull nosed Morris, at his car repair garage at Longwall
Street, Oxford. Large scale production of this car moved to a disused
military training college in Hollow Way, Cowley, Oxfordshire.
1913: Introduction
of the first Morris Oxford car. He
became known as "The English Henry Ford".
1914: The Cowley
factory was turned over to the making of munitions for the war effort
during the First World War.
1925: The annual
output of motor cars from Cowley was now 56,000.
1926: Bought Huntercombe
Golf Course to indulge his favourite sport.
1928: Had a bad
reaction to anaesthetics when he had an operation to remove his
appendix and always stored the appendix in a jar in a cupboard on
the first floor of his house.
1933: Bought the
house Nuffield Place, near Wallingford, as it was near the golf
course.
1934: Made a Baron.
1937: Endowed Nuffield
College, Oxford. Set up a Professorship of Anaesthesia at Oxford
University as he had always wanted to become a doctor and remembered
his traumatic operation of 1928.
1938: Made a Viscount
and took the name of Nuffield after the Oxfordshire village he was
living in.
1943: The Nuffield
foundation was begun with a gift of £10 million in shares
from the Morris Motors company. He was to give over £30 million
to charity during his life, mainly to medical and scientific causes.
Marriage:
1904 to Elizabeth Anstey.
Places of Interest:
OXFORDSHIRE:
Nuffield Place, Henley-on-Thames
Date and Place of Death:
22nd August 1963, Nuffield Place, Henley-on-Thames.
Age at Death:
86.
Site of Grave:
Holy Trinity Church, Nuffield, Oxfordshire, England.
