ROMANCE IN BUSINESS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21396, 20 October 1934, Page 3 (Supplement)

ROMANCE IN BUSINESS

LATE LORD DEVONPORT ONCE A TEA TRAVELLER The first chairman of the Port of London Authority and Food Controller during the war, Lord Devonport recently died at his home at Dunkeld, Perthshire, four days after his 78th birthday.

Lord Devonport's career was one of the romances of modern business. As Hudson Ewbanke Kearley he began with scarcely a shilling to his name, and became one of the best-known figures in the business world. Once a tea traveller, Mr. Kearley went into partnership without success. Then he met another young man named Tonge, from Oxford. Tonge put up £4OOO for another business. That, too, failed. They started again, and built up the huge wholesale provision business of Kearley and Tonge. In 1927 the International Tea Company bought a controlling interest in Kearley and Tonge, and the purchase price was approximately £4,000,000. From 1892 to 1910 Lord Devonport was Liberal M.P. for Devonport, being Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade from 1905 to 1909. When the Port of London Authority was established in 1909 he became chairman, holding this position until 1925. Schemes for the extension of the existing docks, for the deepening and widening of navigable channels, and for the provision of new accommodation at a cost of approximately £14,000,000 were prepared and adopted by the authority while Lord Devonport was chairman. In each of the 16 years he was chairman he paid back his salary of £7OOO.

Lord Devonport was Food Controller during the war, and acted as chairman of the Royal Commission on sugar supply. During the war, also, he collected £200,000 for the Greenwich Hospital for Seaman. In 1888 Lord Devonport married Selina, daughter of Mr. Edward Chester, of Blisworth, Northampton. He leaves two sons and a daughter. The heir to the title is the Hon. Gerald Chester Kearley, who was born in 1890.