Theobald Fitzwalter Butler
Theobald Fitzwalter Butler (1845-1914)
1914 Obituary [1]
THEOBALD FITZWALTER BUTLER died on June 16, 1914. He was born in Ireland in 1845. Early in life he was for two years in Victoria, Australia, and on returning home he entered a bank in Ireland. He was afterwards in a mercantile marine office in Liverpool, and went to Barrow in 1870 as manager for Messrs. Ross, Willis and Company.
He obtained his first experience of the iron trade in the boom which commenced in 1871. Afterwards he joined and subsequently became partner in the firm of George Bargate & Co., which was dissolved in 1889.
In 1887 he and Mr. Bargate purchased the Landore blast-furnaces, which they continued to work under the name of the Swansea Hematite Iron Co. until 1889, when the property passed to Messrs. Wright, Butler & Co., Ltd., now Baldwins, Ltd., of Swansea.
Since then he had carried on business on his own account as an iron merchant at Barrow and Workington. He became one of the foremost figures in the North Lancashire and West Cumberland iron trade, and was interested in most of the steel and iron companies.
He also had an interest in the coal syndicate formed for the purpose of endeavouring to find a continuation of the West Cumberland seam which was supposed to underlie Barrow. He was a member of the Verein deutscher Eisenhuttenleute, and was elected a member of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1883.
In 1903, when the Institute visited Barrow, Mr. Butler played an important part in the local arrangements, serving on the Reception Committee and on the Executive, and also acting as leader during the visit which the members paid to Blackpool on that occasion.