John Wigham Richardson was one of the great figures of British industrial life, and a leading shipbuilder on Tyneside during the late 19th and early 20h century.

He was born on 7 January 1837 - the son of devout Quakers Edward Richardson and Jane Wigham, and grew up in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on the North East Coast of the UK.

Although the family business was in leather tanning, he devoted his life to shipbuilding, learning his skills initially as a draughtsman for Lloyds Register of Shipping in Liverpool (in 1853) and then as an apprentice to Jonathon Robson, a steam-tug builder in Gateshead (from 1853 to 1856).

In 1860, at the age of just 23, he founded the Neptune Works at Walker on Tyne, with a loan of less than £5,000 from his father. This was one of the world's first shipyards to build ships in steel, and the original steam engine on the site also provided electric lighting to the neighbourhood.

The company later merged with Swan Hunter's yard to become Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson in 1903. This Company became the most technically advanced ship building facilities anywhere and built the RMS Mauretania for Cunard which was launched in 1906 and held the Blue Riband as the fastest liner across the Atlantic for 26 years.

True to his Quaker beliefs, John Wigham Richardson cared greatly for the workers in his company and was a founder of the Workers’ Benevolent Trust in the region, a forerunner to the trades’ union movement. In 1890 he became President of North East Coast Institution of Engineers & Shipbuilders.

In 1864, he married Marianne Henrietta Thöl, the daughter of a prominent Hamburg businessman, Nicolaus Johann Phillip Thöl, founder of J.P. Thöl & Co Merchants of London. They had seven children. He died on 15 April 1908 and is buried at Kensal Green Cemetery, London.