David Couper Thomson
British newspaper publisher (1861-1954)
David Couper Thomson DL (6 August 1861 – 12 October 1954) was a newspaper proprietor and founder of the newspaper and publishing company D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd in Dundee, Scotland.
Early life
Thomson was raised in Newport-on-Tay, Fife, by his mother, Margaret Couper, and his father, William Thomson (18 June 1817 – 9 October 1896), who was a successful draper and later a shipowner and, in 1884, became the major shareholder of the Dundee Courier & Daily Argus. Thomson was sent to the family shipping business in Glasgow and in 1886, at his father's request, Thomson moved back to Dundee to become the general manager of the paper. The other son, Frederick Thomson (10 April 1864 – 4 September 1917), joined the company in 1888.
Career
DC Thomson was founded with £60,000 capital. William, David and Frederick had all but four of the company shares which were valued at £10 per share. Each wife had an allocation of one share; the remaining share belonged to Frances Thomas Mudie.
When Frederick died in 1917, Thomson became the sole proprietor of the company. Between 1920 and 1922, he actively campaigned using vitriolic rhetoric against one of the two M.P.s for Dundee, then Liberal politician Winston Churchill.
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This entry incorporates text from “David Couper Thomson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.