George Kynoch (businessman)
British politician and entrepreneur (1834-1891)
George Kynoch (22 August 1834 – 28 February 1891) was the founder of IMI plc, one of the United Kingdom's largest engineering businesses.
Biography
George Kynoch was born at Peterhead in Aberdeenshire and educated at the local school. He first worked as an insurance clerk in Glasgow and then as a bank clerk in Worcester.
After working for a while at larger bank branch in Birmingham, in 1856 the Scottish entrepreneur decided to join Pursall & Phillips, percussion cap manufacturers, in Birmingham. An explosion in 1859 destroyed the works, killing 19 of the 70 employees. As a result, the firm moved to a site on four acres of land at Witton in 1862, on a site adjacent to the London and North Western Railway's Grand Junction line. In 1863, Kynoch took over the business, which was subsequently renamed G. Kynoch and Co. A further series of explosions in the 1860s and in 1870 led to dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries.
In 1863, Kynoch took over the business, which was subsequently renamed G. Kynoch and Co. The Lion Works, as it became known, quickly secured contracts to supply ammunition to the British and Turkish Governments.
“George Kynoch (businessman)” enters the record as british politician and entrepreneur (1834-1891). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what George, Kynoch and businessman can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5541440. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1834, 1891, 1856 and 1859.
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This entry incorporates text from “George Kynoch (businessman)” 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.