Alfred Simpson (ironmaster)

Alfred Simpson (1805 – 23 September 1891) was an English iron worker who emigrated to South Australia and founded A. Simpson & Son, a major manufacturing business.

History

Alfred Simpson was born on 29 August 1805 at 139 Leadenhall Street, London, a son of John Simpson and his wife Anne, née Salter, daughter of a Boston sea-captain. The second youngest of their twelve children, he was at 15 apprenticed to Amos Burkitt as a tinplate worker, and in his spare time learned all he could of science and engineering. At the end of his indentures he was admitted to the Worshipful Company of Tinplate Workers and in May 1829 became a Freeman of the City of London.

There being little work for an ironworker at the time, he joined his brother Tom in the tailoring firm of Paine & Simpson as a traveller. Silk hats had just become fashionable, and Alfred was sent to Paris to learn as much as he could about their fabrication. He made some improvements, took out a patent, and soon their company was one of the six largest hat makers in London, employing some 200 men.

The prosperity of Simpson's business was checked by a fire (the factory at Southwark was not insured) and it took seven years of hard work before he was sufficiently affluent to marry.

This was the period of the great railway boom, and in the depression following its collapse the demand for silk hats evaporated. Alfred suffered rheumatism, which was exacerbated by England's cold winters, and he decided to emigrate to South Australia where, it was said, the sun always shone and a bright energetic man could make a fortune.