Thomas W. Howie
Scottish businessman (1856–1927)
Thomas Wyllie Howie, JP (8 April 1856 – 18 July 1927) was a Scottish captain of industry.
Background
Howie was born in Riccarton, Ayrshire, on 8 April 1856, to Robert and Bethia (Wyllie) Howie, into a wealthy industrial family who had been active in the Covenanting movement. He was born at the family home, Newhouse, an estate house nearby the fireclay mine which the family owned. There he was brought up alongside his cousin, who would become the mining magnate John Howie. The house is now a residential care home. Howie's father, Robert, died at the Crichton Institution in Dumfries, a private lunatic hospital, when Thomas was 27.
Career
He and his wife settled in Falkirk where he became a partner in Campbell & Co Fireclay Works and coal mine, Roughcastle. He later became owner of the business. Previous to settling in Falkirk the Howie family lived in Hurlford, where they owned the renowned Hurlford Fireclay Works (until it was bought by Armitage Shanks), which produced pottery, bricks, chimneys, garden ornaments and enamelled sanitary ware (lavatories, baths, urinals etc.) The family owned much of the town, including Marchmont Place, Salisbury Place, Collier Row, Office Row, Chapel Cottages, Skerrington Row and Howie's Square. They also owned small mining villages, including Hemphill.
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This entry incorporates text from “Thomas W. Howie” 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.