William Richard Morris, 1st Viscount Nuffield GBE CH (10 October 1877 - 22 August 1963) was the founder of the Morris Motor Company and a philanthropist.
Morris was born in Worcester, England in 1877. When he was 3 years old his family moved to 16, James Street, Oxford. Upon leaving school at the age of fifteen Morris was apprenticed to a local bicycle seller and repairer. Nine months later, aged 16, he set up a business repairing bicycles from the family home. The business being a success he opened a shop at 48 High Street and began manufacturing as well as repairing bicycles.
In 1901, he began to work with motorcycles, designing the Morris Motor Cycle, and in 1902 acquired a garage in Longwall Street from which he sold, repaired and hired cars. He traded as William R. Morris.
In 1912 he designed a car, the Bull Nosed Morris and began manufacturing at a disused military training college in Cowley, Oxford. The outbreak of World War I saw the nascent car factory given over to the production of munitions but in 1919 car production recommenced rising from 400 cars in that year to 56,000 in 1925. During the period 1919- 1925 Morris built or purchased factories at Abingdon, Birmingham, and Swindon to add to that in Oxford. Morris pioneered the introduction to the United Kingdom of Henry Ford's techniques of mass production.
In 1927, in competition against, amongst others, Herbert Austin, Morris purchased the bankrupt Wolseley Motor Company and the company passed into his personal control. Wolseley were at this stage in fairly advanced development of an overhead camshaft 8hp car, which Morris launched as the first Morris Minor in 1928 (this was also the basis of the original MG Midget, launched in 1929).
In 1938, Nuffield purchased the bankrupt Riley (Coventry) and Autovia companies from the Riley family and quickly sold them to his own Morris Motor Company, with the addition of Wolseley later that year, the combined enterprise became known as the Nuffield Organisation. This merged with Austin Motor Company in 1952 to become the British Motor Corporation. It was later merged with Jaguar to become British Motor Holdings. In 1968, nearly every British automobile manufacturer, including BMH, became British Leyland.
Morris was created a baronet in 1929, created Baron Nuffield in 1934, and made a viscount in 1938. Both titles became extinct upon his death without issue.
Morris had married Elizabeth Anstey on 9 April 1903 - there were no children, and as a result he dispersed a large part of his fortune to charitable causes. Morris founded the Nuffield Foundation in 1943 with an endowment of £10 million in order to advance education and social welfare. Morris also founded Nuffield College, Oxford.
A Chapter from The Autocar's Life Story of W. R. Morris, Britain's Greatest Car Manufacturer.
OF a motor cycle that was produced before its time, of the rise to fame of one of the most romantic personalities of modern times, and of many other interesting things. That is what Mr. H Massac Buist writes about in his life story of W. R. Morris, which is appearing in The Autocar.
At the beginning of the twentieth century Morris was among other things - a racing cyclist, and somewhat naturally he turned his attention to the coming industry - the building of motor cycles. For the machines that he made he designed the Morris wick type carburetter, and, it is recorded, he sold a considerable number of machines of his own building. In 1902 he produced a motor cycle which was much ahead of its time. It had a countershaft chain drive and other features which are in common use to-day, though in appearance it was not very different from other machines of the period.
A Great Organisation.
Morris, according to Mr. Buist's narrative, is a clean-shaven, dark-complexioned, determined-looking man of 51, with black hair mixed with white, and he teems with nervous energy. As everyone knows, he is the head of Britain's biggest car-building organisation, who started with nothing, and who has been reported to have refused an offer of £12,000,000 for his great business.
"The better you become acquainted with this vast manufacturing enterprise " (writes Mr. Buist) "the clearer it becomes that it is essentially a triumph of one man's character, and he not a leisured man, nor a learned, nor a genius, nor an influential man, but - a man of one abiding purpose, of tireless and prompt decision, or unshakable resolution: fearless of defeat, straight dealing even to his own loss, loyal, resourceful, optimistic, quick-tempered, and good-natured. . . . At 15½ he tired of school, and became restless, being eaten up with the desire to get into the engineering trade.
The youngster imagined he had really got into it when, six months later, in 1894, he obtained his first job in a cycle shop in Oxford at 5s. a week wages."
After nine months at his job he asked for a shilling a week rise, but as this was refused he started building pedal cycles on his own account. "As many other youths would like to start business on their own account at about seventeen years of age without any capital" (continues the narrator) " I asked him for his recipe. Apparently there was none. Instead of a standard job, the first bicycle he made was a special machine with a 28in. frame to suit a six-foot-six Oxford clergyman. That machine was being ridden when Morris started car building at Cowley in 1912.
"One can scarcely imagine a better advertisement for a determined, obliging, and honest youth starting to assemble bicycles at the height of the boom than one of the most conspicuous figures of a University town, a very outsize in reverend gentlemen and a famous sportsman of his time, to be seen pedalling one's product daily about the city and its environs, which are peculiarly suitable to cycling.
He was never taught engineering: "it came naturally to him." He once went four days and four nights on end without sleep. It was in 1903, and the suppliers of some raw materials for two motor cycles he was exhibiting at a show failed him. He had to work feverishly for four days and nights getting the machines ready in time - and he did it!
The first instalment of the life story of Morris appeared in The Autocar last week; another will appear in tomorrow's issue.
The Motor Cycle, August 23rd, 1928. Page 309.
Sources: Graces Guide, Martin Shelley, The Motor Cycle.
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