GREAT BENEFACTOR

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 126, 9 March 1935, Page 2

GREAT BENEFACTOR

LORD NUFFIELD'S LIFE. GIFTS EXCEED £750,000. Benefactions of more than £7£0,000 to hospitals and charities have been made by Lord Nufirtlu. His munificence to the sick and suffering dates back to the years when as Mr W. R. Morris he became a great figure in the British motor industry. As holder of the whole of the £2,000,000 of ordinary share capital in Morris Motors, Limited, Lord Nuffield pledged himself to take no dividend until a £2,000,000 reserve had been built up. When this was accomplished in 1930 he gave to charities his first dividend, free of tax and equivalent to £200,000. His benefactions to medical institutions by 1931 had exceeded £500,000. They included £102,000 to St. Thomas' Hospital, London, £52,000 for the new Birmingham Hospital Centre, £47,000 to rebuild the Wingfield Orthapaedic Hospital, near Oxford, and £25,000 for cancer research. He also gave £BO,OOO for the Radcliffe Infirmary Observatory site and buildings tor £IOO,OOO for the benefit of the Kadcliffe Infirmary and the Medical School Of Oxford University, thus establishing the Oxford University Institute of Medical llesearch. Career of Hard Work. An unusual gift was the creation of an endowment fund of £IO,OOO for assisting parents of Borstal inmates to visit their sons. A year ago, shortly after his elevation to the peerage, Lord Nufield gave £45,000 for the erection of accommodation for paying patients at Guy's Hlospital, London. He was born in 1877 at Worcester, the son of Oxfordshire parents, and was educated at village school at Cowley. He w r ent to no college or university, but he had the advantage of* a sound home training in life's essentials. At 17 he started in the cycle trade in Oxford. He served a few months as an apprentice, and then commenced to make bicycles. From Cycles to Cars. Later he rented an old printing works in Oxford, and, with a staff of five assistants, built machines of /his own. He rode machines of his own manufacture in cycle races; he was an amateur track rider until 1900, and on the wall of his office it Cowley is a glass case containin' some twenty medals. About 1902 he made his first motorcycles, and also studied cars brought to him for repairs. In 1910 he had formulated his ideas, gained his experience, and amassed a little capital. By degrees his staff of assistants had increased to 100. Then did he begin to design the Morris-Oxford car. In 1912 he bought a factory at Cowley, and next year the car Avas "put into production." By August, 1914, he had produced 1500. Soon after the declaration of war he handed ever his factory to the Government for the production of war material, and his ambition to build up a big business in light cars was temporarily held in check. To combat the submarine, blockade he turned out 50,000 mine-sinkers—great half-ton steel boxes of complicated clockwork — at the rate of 1700 a week, working at a nominal salary as manager. Rebuilding a Business. When the' war ended all the machinery was worn out and he had to replace it. Twelve months—the hardest of his life—elapsed before he could start again. From 1920 onward demand and production advanced by leaps and .bounds, in spite of the trade slump, which he met by a cut of £IOO in the price of each car. In 1925 the output was just under 50,000 cars. Next year Morris Motors, Limited, was floated as a "public /Company, with a capital of £5,000,000, and early in 1927 Lord Nuffield bought for £730,000 Wolseley Motors, Limited, then in liquidation, and the same year he toured South America, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India.

On New Zealand Roads. While in New Zealand he drove one of his own cars from Auckland to Rotorua, New Plymouth and Wellington, and also for 2000 miles in Australia, travelling at high speeds over the roughest roads in order to see how the car would stand such treatment. After his return he designed a new car specially to suit colonial conditions, although the first car had stood the hard usage excellently. To-day Lord Nuffield in the chairman of eight related motor manufacturing and trading companies, with factories at Oxford, Birmingham, Coventry and elsewhere, and employing many thoussands of hands and producing many more thousands of cars every year. Created a baronet in 1929, Lord Nufield was raised to the peerage a year ago. His title is taken simply from the name of his home, Nuffield Place, near Henleyi-on-Thames. He married in 1904 and has no children. There is no heir. Man of No Hobbies. Lord Nuffield has never claimed to be anything but a single "track" man. Making motor-cars is his work and his life; he has no hobbies. "I am a great believer in outdoor sport and exercise for other people," he said in 1926. "I get little time myself. I begin work at eight and do not leave until halfpast seven, and until two years ago I had never taken more than a fortnight's holiday in any year. But then, I don't care for holidays. "Pure money-making does not interest me, and never did," he said on another occasion. "The man who makes money his only object is missing the boat all the time. If I had allowed the state of the bank balance, or even the fact of an overdraft, to deviate me From what I saw as the sure path of advancement, I might have been still struggling to regain that path. By the way, I never had a penny left to me, nor have I had a penny given me—and for that I thank goodness."