A Cornish Entrepreneur

Sir Richard Tangye 1833-1906: A Cornish Entrepreneur in Victorian Birmingham, Stephen Roberts, Birmingham Biographies, 2015, 65p, £4-99. ISBN 9781512207910.

For those interested in the industrial and commercial history of Birmingham, Eric Hopkins’ Birmingham: the First Manufacturing Town in the World 1760-1840 [1989] has been our essential starting point. In contrast what Stephen Roberts offers us is a different perspective on the economic development of Birmingham, albeit from a slightly later period.

Richard Tangye, although deeply involved in engineering by his personal and family interests, was primarily an entrepreneur. It was through such people that Birmingham was able to prosper, and its people to achieve employment, in the later 19^th Century.  One of the early achievements of his business was to provide the hydraulic jacks for the launch of Brunel’s ‘Great Eastern’ in 1858 and the increased level of trade which followed enabled the Tangye Brothers to construct their extensive Cornwall Works factory in Smethwick, re-enforcing their pride in their Cornish origins as they prospered in Birmingham.

Tangye did participate in the Liberal politics of late 19^th Century Birmingham, serving as a councillor in the Rotton Row ward between 1878 and 1882 but his civic memory is to be seen in his philanthropy to his adopted home. Along with many other smaller charitable contributions within Birmingham, in 1880 he announced that, if the Council was to build an Art Gallery, he would donate £5000 towards the purchase of exhibits. Further he indicated that, if his donation was to be matched by subscriptions from elsewhere, he would double his gift. The Council moved very quickly to respond and by 1885 the Art Gallery was opened, to huge popular acclaim. He was also the initiator of the move to provide the School of Art in Margaret Street, to which he donated £10,000. His knighthood in 1894 was for his services to the arts; and this was fully deserved because he was instrumental in making the arts much more accessible to the people of Birmingham.