Frederick Richard Simms

1863 Frederick Richard Simms, (1863–1944), mechanical engineer and businessman, was born on 12 August 1863 in Hamburg (where his grandfather had established a business), the son of Frederick Louis Simms and his wife, Antonia, née Herman.

Simms was educated in Germany and London and also attended the Polytechnisches Verein in Berlin after serving his apprenticeship with the AG für Automatischen Verkauf in Hamburg and Berlin.

1889 A key event was his meeting with Gottlieb Daimler when Simms was superintending the erection of an aerial cableway of his own design at the Bremen Exhibition.

1890 Simms negotiated British patent rights for Daimler engines and founded Simms and Co, who introduced Daimler engines into the United Kingdom, applying them to launches, rather than road vehicles.

1893 This work was carried out by the Daimler Motor Syndicate, which Simms founded in 1893.

1895 He sold to the financier H. J. Lawson. This proved to be Lawson's most significant acquisition and led to the foundation of the British motor industry, in the shape of the Daimler works at Coventry Motor Mills.

1895 He worked with David Salomons to arrange the first Motor Show (Stanley Show) in 1895.

In 1895 he accompanied Evelyn Ellis in a journey in the first car imported in to England.

In 1900 Simms became a vehicle manufacturer, with the establishment of the Simms Manufacturing Co. This produced cars and commercial vehicles in small quantities at the Welbeck Works, Kilburn, from 1904 to 1907–8, as well as engines for other manufacturers.

1902 The problem of trade shows, exacerbated by cycle manufacturers' attempts to include cars in their shows, was met by Simms's foundation in 1902 of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), which elected him as its first president.

Simms was interested in the military application of the motor vehicle, mounting a Maxim machine gun and an armoured shield on a De Dion quadricycle as the Simms Motor Scout and designing a heavier Motor War Car.

1907 The Simms Magneto Co was established in 1907, after he had obtained UK manufacturing rights from Bosch, but the small production runs could not compete with the foreign product and the company closed early in 1913.

In 1913 Simms started another business, Simms Motor Units initially as a sales and repair organization for motor components, especially dynamos and magnetos. Manufacture was initially undertaken by others on behalf of the firm, an important source in the First World War being the Simms Magneto Co, of New Jersey, established by Simms in 1910. The English workforce, however, grew from twelve in 1913 to more than 300 by early 1919 and a subsidiary, the Standard Insulator Co, was established in 1915.

To build on his wartime success, Simms established Simms Motor Units in extensive premises in East Finchley. The virtual destruction by fire of the Kilburn works in 1920 and the slump of 1920–21 in the engineering industry brought about the cessation of manufacture until 1926.

Simms was twice married. His first wife was Austrian, but nothing else is known about her; there were two daughters of his second marriage, in 1910, to Mabel Louise, daughter of Joseph Worsley, a cotton merchant.

Simms's wife predeceased him, and his own death occurred on 22 April 1944 at Dunbarty, Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire. He was cremated at Streatham Vale, London, and his ashes were placed in the Annunciation churchyard beside those of his wife.

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