William Jacks
William Jacks (c1841-1907) of William Jacks and Co
1907 Obituary [1]
Mr. William Jacks, LL.D., senior partner of William Jacks and Co, metal merchants, of 5, East India Avenue, E.C., died on the 9th inst. at his house, The Gart, Callander, N. B ., after a short illness.
1907 Obituary [2]
WILLIAM JACKS died on August 9, 1907, at his residence, The Gart, Callander, at the age of sixty-six. He was educated at Swinton Village School, and began his business career in a shipyard in Hartlepool, where he laid the foundation of his fortune by saving a cargo of iron sold to a fraudulent Italian.
After spending several years at Hartlepool, he was appointed manager of the Seaham Engine Works, Sunderland. In 1869 he was appointed manager of Robinow and Marjoribanks, of Glasgow, and after a few years he resigned to start a business on his own account under the style of William Jacks & Co.
In 1885 he was elected to Parliament as a Liberal for Leith, and in 1892 he was returned for Stirlingshire; but he lost his seat in 1895, and then retired from political life.
In April 1899 the University of Glasgow conferred upon him the honorary degree of LL.D., "in recognition of his successful cultivation of literature amidst the engrossing occupations of a busy commercial and public life, and the conspicuous evidence he had given that he valued culture as highly as wealth." His works included lives of James Watt, Bismarck, and the German Emperor, a translation of Lessing's "Nathan the Wise," and "Robert Burns in Other Tongues," while his interest in the study of languages was evinced by the bequest he made to the University of Glasgow, to which he left the sum of £20,000, to be employed in the endowment of the William Jacks Chair of Modern Languages.
Mr. Jacks was chairman of several industrial and commercial works. He was a Deputy-Lieutenant of Stirling, a Justice of Peace for the County of Lanark and for the County of the city of Glasgow, Past-President of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, President of the Council of the Commercial College, Glasgow, Past-President of the British Iron Trade Association, and Past-President of the West of Scotland Iron and Steel Institute. He was elected a member of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1884, and was a member of the Reception Committee at the Glasgow meetings in 1885 and in 1901.