Grace's Guide To British Industrial History

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Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 165,056 pages of information and 246,459 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.

Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 147,919 pages of information and 233,587 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.

William Ford Smith

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William Ford Smith (1830-1904)

1830 Born in Bath, son of William Ford Smith, cashier.

1857 An engineer, when he married Harriott Elizabeth Dunstan in Manchester[1]

1863 William Ford Smith, Smith and Coventry, Gresley Iron Works, Ordsal lane, Salford.[2]

1871 William Ford Smith 40, engineer, employing 95 hands, lived in Broughton, Salford, with Harriett E Smith 37, Harriett L Smith 12, Amy F Smith 11, Blanche B Smith 7, Edith A Smith 5, Ernest D Smith 2[3]

1901 William Ford Smith 70, machine tool maker, employer, and Harriett E Smith 63, lived in Didsbury, also in the household Amy F Richards 41, their daughter, and George T Richards 18, their grandson, an engineer's apprentice[4]


1904 Obituary [5]

WILLIAM FORD SMITH, the founder and chairman of Smith and Coventry Ltd., of Salford, died in October, 1904, at his residence in Manchester, in his seventy-fourth year.

Born at Bath, on February 1, 1830, the son of an engineer who conducted the works now carried on under the style of Siddeley & Co., he received his training as an engineer at the Collegiate Institution of Liverpool. After his collegiate course he spent a year at the locomotive and marine engineering works of Bury, Curtis & Kennedy, of Liverpool, proceeding thence to take up a position of responsibility at his father's works.

When nineteen years of age he joined the staff of the Shrewsbury & Chester Railway workshops, continuing there for over two years, when he became attached to the firm of Sharp, Roberts & Co., which then, as through subsequent variations of title, was one of the foremost locomotive-building concerns in the country.

In the early fifties he began business for himself, first at the Bonding Warehouse, Chapel Street, Salford, and a year later was joined by Mr. Arthur Coventry. The works of the company at Ordsal Lane, Salford, were designed and constructed under the supervision of Mr. Ford Smith in 1859. He was a member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

He was elected a member of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1877.


1904 Obituary [6]



1904 Obituary [7]



See Also

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Sources of Information