Welsh Journals

John Waddingham made his career and fortune in Leeds. Although it is not clear how he started, there was a firm of James and William Waddingham, Merchants and Manufacturers, Hunslet Lane, Leeds in 1822. It seems likely that John Waddingham joined this firm and that it had been established by an earlier generation. A firm Waddingham & Co. was to be found in Wade Lane by 1830. On 2 November 1837 John Waddingham married Margaret, daughter of James Wilkinson, of Bradford. They had three children: John born in 1838, Thomas James in 1840 and Margaret Ann in 1843. In 1841 John and Margaret, with their two elder children and five female servants, were living in Burley Wood, a pleasant Georgian house rented from Thomas Stansfeld. 10 In the 1842 Trade Directory John Waddingham & Co., cloth and stuff merchants, had their premises in Cookridge Street, while James Waddingham, merchant, had a house in St. Albans Street. In the same year a firm of Cloth and Stuff Merchants, Waddingham and Morgan, were at 16, Wade Lane, the same address as Waddingham & Co. as late as 1837. In the absence of documentation, the relationship of these various companies is difficult to determine. After John Waddingham retired in 1846 the absence of Waddingham entries in the 1847 Directory suggests that they were under his control. There is a family tradition that John Waddingham greatly increased his fortune by promoting railway companies. This is lent credence by Thomas Stansfeld's main motive in writing, which was to obtain a position in a railway concern for the young son of the late incumbent of Alderney 'if you could make room for him'. John Waddingham had, by 1884, when he listed assets to be placed in various trusts, major invest- ments in railway shares, including £ 39,750 in the London and North Western Railway Company.11 His investment in foreign railways was also substantial, including shares in the East India Railway Company and the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. There is no record of the size of John Waddingham's fortune when he decided to retire from business and leave Leeds in 1846. However, at the time of his death in 1890-apart from owning the Hafod and Guiting estates-he left a personal fortune of £ 253,000. His total estate must have been in the order of £ 400,000 or f, 16, 000, 000 at present day values. Even this understates his wealth for he had, before his death, made a marriage settlement of unknown amount on his daughter Margaret and it seems probable that he had also made settlements on his two sons when they married.