Henry Royce

Sir Henry Royce Bt OBE
Born	Frederick Henry Royce (1863-03-27)27 March 1863 Alwalton, Huntingdonshire, England
Died	22 April 1933(1933-04-22) (aged 70) West Wittering, Sussex, England
Known for	Co-founder of Rolls-Royce
Spouse	Minnie Grace Punt ​ ​ (m. 1893⁠–⁠1912)​
Engineering career
Projects	Rolls-Royce

Sir Frederick Henry Royce, 1st Baronet (27 March 1863 – 22 April 1933) was an English engineer famous for his designs of car and aeroplane engines with a reputation for reliability and longevity. With Charles Rolls (1877–1910) and Claude Johnson (1864–1926), he founded Rolls-Royce.

Rolls-Royce initially focused on large 40–50 horsepower motor cars, the Silver Ghost and its successors. Royce produced his first aero engine shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, and aircraft engines became Rolls-Royce's principal product.

Royce's health broke down in 1911, and he was persuaded to leave his factory in the Midlands at Derby and, taking a team of designers, move to the south of England spending winters in the south of France. He died at his home in Sussex in the spring of 1933.

Early life

Royce was born in Alwalton, Huntingdonshire, near Peterborough on 27 March 1863 to Mary (née King) and James Royce. He had four older siblings, Emily (born in 1853), Fanny Elizabeth (born in 1854), Mary Anne (born in 1856) and James Allen (born in 1857). On both sides Royce was descended from generations of farmers and millers. His father James started as a farmer before upon in 1852, his marriage to Mary, the daughter of a farmer, he acquired the lease of a flour mill at Castor in Northamptonshire. James was unable to make a success of the mill at Castor and moved to nearby Alwalton where he took up the lease of a flour mill, which he leased from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. In 1863 financial circumstances forced James to mortgage his lease to the London Flour Company. In 1867 the business failed and due to their reduced circumstances the decision was made to board the three girls in Alwalton while Mary worked as an housekeeper with various families in the area. Meanwhile James took the two boys with him to London where he found work in a flour mill in Southwark operated by the London Flour Company. At some stage James had contracted Hodgkin’s disease, and he died in 1872 at the age of 41 in a public poorhouse in Greenwich. Royce was later to describe his father as unsteady but clever, someone lacking the determination to apply himself single-mindedly to a task. Royce was nine years old at the time of his father's death and his formal education to date had consisted of one year at the Croydon British School.

For a while he stayed with an elderly couple who were family friends in London, but when one died he was forced to move on. He later reminisced that “My food for the day was often two thick slices of bread soaked in milk.” On one occasion he found it warmer to sleep with a dog in its dog kennel. As his mother was able to only provide him with very limited financial help, Royce at the age of 10 got a job selling newspapers for W. H. Smith, firstly at Clapham Junction and later at Bishopsgate Station. He was able to earn sufficient money to allow him to also attend school over the next two years. In 1876 at the age of 13 he obtained a job at the Post Office delivering telegrams. He was paid a half penny for each delivery.

He would occasionally visit his great-aunt Catherine on his mother’s side, who lived in Fletton near Peterborough. Feeling that he deserved a better future she was able in 1878 despite her own limited financial circumstances to obtain Royce an apprenticeship with the Great Northern Railway company at its works in Peterborough in return for paying them £20 a year. Moving to Peterborough Royce boarded with the Yarrow family, who had a son who was already an apprentice at the works. To pay for his day to day living expenses Royce continued to deliver newspapers. To make up for his lack of formal education, he also took evening classes in English and mathematics. In November 1980 Royce had to give up his apprenticeship after his great-aunt’s money ran out. Due to a depression affecting at the British economy at the time Royce couldn’t find a local job so he walked from Peterborough to Leeds where he stayed with his sister Fanny Elizabeth and her husband. Royce’s mother was also a member of the household. Within two weeks Royce had found employment at toolmakers Greenwood and Batley in Leeds where he was paid 11 shillings for a 54 hour week. Outside work he studied various technical subjects, including electrics.

Before a year had passed he returned to London where he was able to obtain a position at the Electric Lighting and Power Generating Company in Southwark as a tester, despite having no practical experience in the electric field. The role doubled his wages to 22 shillings a week, though he continued to work long hours and to neglect his diet. The company changed its name to the Maxim-Weston Company after it expanded into manufacturing lamps designed by Hiram Maxim and Edward Weston. In his spare time Royce began attending evening classes at the City and Guilds Institute for the Advancement of Technical Education. Among his tutors was the highly respected physicist and electrical engineer William Edward Ayrton. In 1882 at the age of 19 Royce was promoted to chief engineer of his employer’s subsidiary the Lancashire Maxim-Weston Electric Company in Liverpool. The under-capitalised company was involved in lighting streets and theatres. Despite winning a major contract with the Liverpool City Council the company was forced into liquidation on 24 March 1884. In May 1884 the Maxim-Weston Company purchased the assets of its subsidiary, with the aim of obtaining further contracts with the Liverpool City Council, who had expressed confidence with both Royce and the company’s work to date. Until these could be obtained Royce would be unpaid if he stayed with the new company. Royce decided instead to start his own business.

Starts F. H. Royce and Company

Despite not being that familiar with the city the 21 year old Royce with his savings of £20 decided to start his own business in Manchester. It has been speculated that her choose it a due to it lower costs than Liverpool or London. As a result, it was in 1884 that he established F. H. Royce and Company which operated from a workshop in Blake Street, Hulme, manufacturing small electrical and mechanical items. Within the first six months a friend called Ernest Alexander Claremont (1863 – 4 April 1922) had entered into partnership with Royce, contributing £50 that he appears to have borrowed from his father. Royce normally did the design and manufacture of their products with his partner responsible for sales, payments and deliveries as well as assisting in the workshop. Their partnership was to continue until Claremont’s death. By 1895 they were employing a salesman, W. Sergeant. Having little money, the partners lived in a shared room above the workshop, living on sandwiches and sausages.

After starting out with small items they moved into sub-contacting manufacture of lighting components, such as filaments, holders and lamps, though to make ends meet they would undertake any engineering work, including repairing sewing machines. The business’s first successful product was an electric bell for domestic use. While things were tight during their first three years as they invested any profits back into the business they were still able progressively to employ a workman, Thomas Weston Seale to assist in the manufacturing while six young women were taken on to assemble the bells and light filaments. In 1887 Tom Jones joined the firm as a workman to assist in the manufacturing of other products. By 1889 there were nine employees.

As their business situation improved and they expanded into undertaking complete installations of electrical plant the partners were able by 1888 to move out of their accommodation above the workshop to board with Elizabeth and John Pollard at 24 Talbot Street in the Moss Side district. In that same year they expanded into adjacent larger premises accessed from 1A Cooke Street off Stretford Road in Hulme.

During this period Royce worked from a desk in the workshop, while Claremont had an office which he shared with the business’s office staff. By the end of 1888 Claremont, who was engaged to be married had moved into his own house, while Royce in 1889 was in his own house at 45 Barton Street in Moss Side. This allowed his mother to move in with him and he hired a servant girl, Patricia Brady to assist in the running of the house. Following his marriage Royce and his wife moved into a semi-detached house called “Easthourne” at 2 Holland Park Road. Prior to this he had moved his mother into her own accommodation at 21 Warwick Road in Chorlton-cum-Hardy where up until her death in 1904 he visited her most days on his way home from work. Following their marriages both Claremont’s wife and her sister who married Royce together invested £1,500 in their husband’s business and later increased their shareholding.

A significant uptake in the use of electricity from 1889 onwards lead to an increase in the company’s turnover and profitably. The company was registered on 4 June 1891 as F. H. Royce and Co, to take over the business of electrical and mechanical engineers of the firm of the same name. The continued increase in the company’s fortunes lead Royce and Claremont to consider an expansion of the company in preparation for which in March 1894 they had a valuation preformed which calculated it had assets worth £2,721 18s 4d. This inventory included the 53 machine tools or various typeshoused in their rented factory premises.

That same year they converted the business into a private limited company called F. H. Royce and Company Ltd, with the newly hired accountant John De Looze as company secretary. De Looze took over much of the administration from Claremont and Royce and was to stay until he retired from Rolls-Royce in 1943. At this time the company described itself as "Electrical and mechanical engineers and manufacturers of dynamos, motors and kindred articles." Royce was its managing director and Claremont was its chairman. Both had 5,349 shares with Claremont’s friend James Whitehead purchasing a large number of shares to provide more capital and became a director. Claremont’s wife purchased 1,131 shares and Royce’s wife 1,101. De Looze purchased one share, as did Claremont’s brother Albert. The company by now had 100 employees.

The company continued to grow though the rest of the 1890s, undertaking complete electrical installations of factories and large private houses. In 1894 they started making dynamos designed by Royce and by 1895 were producing electric cranes which required expanding into more space at Cooke Street and later the acquisition of more space in a three-storey building. As well as their highly regarded cranes, the company was manufacturing arc lamps, dynamos, electric motors and switchgear. Following the opening of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894 they sold nine of their cranes for use on the canal as well as a major contract to supply and install the arc-lighting system for the Port of Manchester and the adjacent Trafford Park.

On 24 July 1897 Royce was awarded his first patent, which was for a bayonet-cap lamp socket. By October of that same year the company had £6,000 of orders on their books, which by March 1898 had increased to £9,000 and by February 1890 to £20,000. By the late 1890s they needed more capital to complete their work associated with the Manchester Ship Canal, while at the same time the dramatic increase in work due to this project meant that the existing factory was proving inadequate. A new factory was expected to cost £20,000, so a prospectus was issued with the aim of increasing the company’s capital to £30,000.

Royce Ltd

The successful public share flotation allowed F. H. Royce & Company to be put into voluntary liquidation, then reconstructed and re-registered with enlarged capital as Royce Ltd on 17 October 1899. Royce was managing director with Claremont as chairman. At this point the company had assets of £20,664 a tenfold increase since 1894

At the time it described itself as manufacturers of arc lamps, dynamos, meters, electrically driven cranes and hoists. Now that it has sufficient funds the company on 8 June 1901 purchased 1,200 acres (490 ha) of land beside the Manchester Ship Canal in the Trafford Park industrial park. Royce oversaw the design of the new factory, which the company moved into in 1901, though as late as 1903 they were still also using the premises at Cooke Street. The factory was directly opposite the factory of cable maker W. T. Glover whose products Royce Ltd had been using in their work associated with the Manchester Ship Canal. In 1899 its owner Henry Edmunds (1853–1927) became a director of Royce Ltd and Claremont a director of W . T. Glover following an exchange of shares between the two companies. This lead to Henry Royce and Henry Edmunds became business associates and close friends.

His increasing wealth in the latter half of the 1890s led Royce in 1898 to commission architect Paul Ogden (1856-1940) to design for him and Minnie a four-bedroom house with two bathrooms on Legh Road in the town of Knutsford, 14 miles (23 km) south-west of Manchester. Named “Brae Cottage”, it was one of the first houses to have electricity in the area, which was sourced from a generator in a small building in the garden. Besides music (in particular Gilbert and Sullivan), Royce’s favourite form of relaxation was gardening, but as he worked long hours he installed floodlights of his own design to allow him to do his gardening in the evening. The house was sold in 1907, when Royce moved to Derby.

In 1902, the company supplied electric motors for Pritchetts and Gold, a London-based battery-maker that had diversified into building electric cars.

Unfortunately, Royce’s plans for ongoing commercial growth were by curtailed by a recession after the Second Boer War in the European electrical industry. The resulting contraction in their home market caused German manufacturers to sharply lower the prices of their products on the United Kingdom market. Simultaneously there was increased competition from companies such as General Electric Company (GEC), [[British Thomson-Houston] which was majority owned by General Electric of America, and the entry of the American Westinghouse (via its subsidiary British Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co) into the United Kingdom market also impacted on Royce Ltd’s profitability. For instance, the price of electrical motors had fallen by over 50% by 1905. In response the company attempted to remain competitive by lowering its costs, while maintaining Royce’s personal belief in quality. The financial stress in combination with Royce’s prediction for working long hours began to show. As his friend was vital to the success of the company Claremont on medical advice attempted to get Royce out to enjoy the fresh air. To assist in this, on the doctor’s suggestion Claremont purchased a De Dion quadricycle to make it easier for Royce to commute between his home and the factory. Despite this in 1902 Royce had a nervous collapse. In response the other directors and his wife insisted on Royce accompanying her on a sea voyage to South Africa to visit her relatives. After ten weeks of no contact with the company a refreshed Royce returned to the United Kingdom in late 1902.

With the establishment of Rolls-Royce in 1906 Henry Royce’s involvement in Royce Ltd began to diminish and he soon had little active involvement in the company. When the car business was moved to Derby in 1907 Royce Ltd remained in Trafford Park, continuing to manufacture electrically driven cranes, hoists, capstans and winches. Claremont continued as its chairman until his death, upon which he was succeeded by his brother Albert Claremont.

Although a respected crane-making business, whose products had a reputation for reliability and longevity and were exported around the world, it had become unprofitable in the 1920's and was kept afloat by Royce's other business interests. It was acquired by rival crane maker Herbert Morris Ltd in November 1932. They moved the factory to Loughborough and continued manufacturing Royce branded cranes, still to Royce designs, until 16 November 1964. A number of Royce cranes are still in use, including one at Rolls-Royce’s factory at Nightingale Road in Derby.

In 2002 the now Morris Material Handling Ltd revived the Royce name to enter the American crane market.

Partnership with Rolls

Main article: Rolls-Royce Limited

Stock certificate of the Royce Limited for 25 Preference Shares of £1 each, issued 7 April 1910, signed in original by Ernest Alexander Claremont as President. The company was incorporated on 4 June 1894 by Sir Frederick Henry Royce under the name of F. H. Royce and Co, Limited. On 17 October 1899 the company was reorganised as Royce, Limited.

Engine and gearbox of Royce's second car, now in MOSI, Manchester

Following the decline in trade in the early 1900s, Royce began considering the motor car as a potential new product for the Royce company. With his fascination for all things mechanical he became increasingly focused on motor cars and bought first, in 1901, a small De Dion and in 1902 or 1903 a 1901 model two cylinder Decauville. This did not meet his high standards and so he first improved it and then decided to manufacture a car of his own which he did in a corner of the workshop in 1904.

Two more cars were made. Of the three, which were called Royce and had two cylinder engines, one was given to Ernest Claremont and the other sold to one of the other directors, Henry Edmunds. Edmunds was a friend of Charles Rolls who had a car showroom in London selling imported models and showed him his car and arranged the historic meeting between Rolls and Royce at the newly opened Midland Hotel, Manchester, on 4 May 1904. In spite of his preference for three or four cylinder cars, Rolls was impressed with the two-cylinder Royce 10 and in a subsequent agreement of 23 December 1904 agreed to take all the cars Royce could make. These would be of two, three, four and six cylinders and would be badged as Rolls-Royce.

The first Rolls-Royce car, the Rolls-Royce 10 hp, was unveiled at the Paris Salon in December 1904. In 1906 Rolls and Royce formalised their partnership by creating Rolls-Royce Limited, with Royce appointed chief engineer and works director on a salary of £1,250 per annum plus 4% of the profits in excess of £10,000. Royce thus provided the technical expertise to complement Rolls' financial backing and business acumen. By 1907 the company was winning awards for the engineering reliability of its cars.

The Rolls-Royce Eagle was the first aircraft engine to be developed by Rolls-Royce Limited. It was introduced in 1915 to meet British military requirements during the First World War and proved to be one of only two aero engines made by the Allies that was neither a production nor a technical failure.

Royce & Company remained in business as a separate company making cranes until 1932 when it was bought by Herbert Morris of Loughborough. The last Royce-designed crane was built in 1964.

The partnership ended when Rolls died in 1910 in a crash of his Wright Flyer aircraft.

Development of Rolls-Royce

Royce had always worked hard and was renowned for never eating proper meals which resulted in him being taken ill, first in 1902 and again in 1911. Ill health had forced his move away from Derby in 1912. In the same year, he had a major operation in London and was given only a few months to live by the doctors. In spite of this he returned to work but was prevented from visiting the factory, which had moved to larger premises, fitted out to detailed plans by Royce, in Derby in 1908. He insisted on checking all new designs and engineers and draughtsmen had to take the drawings to be personally checked by him, a daunting prospect with his well-known perfectionism. He had a villa built at Le Canadel in the south of France and a further home at Crowborough, East Sussex. In 1917, Royce moved to the village of West Wittering, West Sussex.

In October 1928, he began design of the "R" engine while walking with some of his leading engineers on the beach at West Wittering, sketching ideas in the sand. Less than a year later, the "R” engine, designed in his studio in the village, set a new world air speed record of 357.7 miles per hour and won the Schneider Trophy of 1929. When the Ramsay MacDonald government decided not to finance the next attempt in 1931, Lucy, Lady Houston, felt that Britain must not be left out of this contest and sent a telegram to the Prime Minister stating that she would guarantee £100,000, if necessary, towards the cost leading the Government to reverse their previous decision. The result was that Royce found that the "R" could be made to produce more power and the Supermarine S.6B seaplane won the Trophy at 340.08 mph (547.31 km/h) on 13 September 1931. Later that month on 29 September, the same aircraft with an improved engine flew at 407.5 mph (655.8 km/h), becoming the first craft to fly at over 400 mph (640 km/h) and breaking the world's speed record.

Bentley and Merlin

Statue of Sir Henry Royce, standing outside the company's HQ at Moor Lane, Derby

In 1931, Rolls-Royce Ltd. bought out their rival firm of W. O. Bentley. A "20/25" engine was put into a chassis and a Bentley radiator fitted. An open four-seater body completed the picture. The engine was "hotted-up" and the car was taken down to West Wittering to get Royce's approval. They were somewhat apprehensive of what he would say, but he gave it his blessing. He told them that such a fast car should have a means by which the driver could adjust the stiffness of the suspension whilst they were driving, to suit the road conditions

A few years later the Royce conceived driver adjustable dampers evolved into a ground breaking "ride control" system which automatically adjusted the stiffness of the dampers to match the speed of the car - softer at low speed for better comfort and increasingly stiffer as the car went faster to provide better stability and response. In addition to this automatic control, the driver was still provided with a steering wheel mounted adjustment to tune the range of damping stiffness to suit their preference.

Following the success of the "R” engine, it was clear that they had an engine that would be of use to the Royal Air Force. As no Government assistance was forthcoming at first, in the national interest they went ahead with development of what was called the "PV-12" engine (standing for Private Venture, 12-cylinder). The idea was to produce an engine of about the same performance as the "R”, albeit with a much longer life. Rolls-Royce launched the PV-12 in October 1933 and the engine completed its first test in 1934, the year after Royce died. The PV-12 became the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine.

Death

By late 1921 Royce’s health began to deteriorate and he had to spend increasing periods in bed. He died on 22 April 1933.

He died at his house Elmstead in West Wittering on 22 April 1933. The night before he died he sat up in bed and drew a sketch on the back of an envelope which he gave to his nurse Ethel Aubin telling her to see that the "boys" in the factory got it safely. He died before it reached Derby. This was the adjustable shock-absorber.

Personal life

Royce's blue plaque in Quarndon, Derbyshire

Royce was notorious for working long hours and poor eating habits. To ensure he ingest something company secretary John De Looze had boys regularly take him glasses of milk, with instructions not to return until they had seen Royce drink it.

Though his business partner Claremont’s engagement and marriage on 19 January 1889 to Edith Punt (19 January 1864 – 18 June 1954), Royce was introduced to her sister Minnie Grace Punt (1867 – 13 April 1936), a former governess. They subsequently married on 16 March 1893 at the Church of St Andrew in Willesden, Middlesex, England, when Royce was 29 years old. The death of the sister’s father, Alfred a licensed victualler left them both financially secure. Both sisters disliked emotional and physical intimacy, and had a fear of becoming pregnant. Royce and his wife separated in 1917.

Following his serious illness in 1911 his nurse Ethel T. "Auby" Audin (1885-1967) took increasing control of Royce’s private life. Her concern for his wellbeing and professional skills allowed Royce to live for a further 22 years from when she entered his life. In his will Royce stated “my nurse for over 20 years , and who has done so much to prolong my life”, and left her his house Elmstead, its lands and furniture, as well as two-fifths of his remaining estate in trust. He also left his wife two-fifths of his estate in trust.

As per Royce’s request there were no mourners or flowers at his funeral and only two were allowed at his cremation, George Henry Richards Tildesley who was a partners in his solicitors, Claremont Haynes and Albert Claremont. He left custody of his ashes to Audin. His cremated remains were initially buried under his statue at the Rolls-Royce works in Derby, but in 1937 his urn was removed to the parish church of Alwalton, his birthplace.

In 1935 Audin married Tildesley, though the couple had separated by 1937.

Honours

Royce, who lived by the motto "Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble", was appointed OBE in 1918, and was created a baronet, of Seaton in the County of Rutland, in 1930 for his services to British Aviation. As he had no children and the baronetcy became extinct on his death.

Memorials

In 1962, a memorial window dedicated to his memory was unveiled in Westminster Abbey. The window is one of a series designed by Ninian Comper dedicated to the memory of eminent engineers. He is also commemorated in Royce Hall, student accommodation at Loughborough University, and until 2011 at one of Peterborough's Queensgate shopping centre car parks. The Sir Henry Royce Suite, a business suite, is named after him at the Peterborough Marriott Hotel in the Alwalton business park.

Headquatered in Manchester, the Henry Royce Institute, which is the United Kingdom’s national institute for advanced materials research and innovation is named after him.

Cultural depictions

Michael Jayston portrayed Royce in the 1972–1973 BBC Television miniseries The Edwardians.

Bibliography

• Bird, Anthony; Hallows, Ian (1984). The Rolls-Royce Motor Car and the Bentley since 1931 (5 ed.). New York: St. Martin’s Press. ISBN 0-312-68957-8. (1st edition 1964)
• Clarke, Tom C. (1995). Ernest Claremont: A Manchester life with Rolls-Royce and W.T. Glover & Co. Manchester: Hulme Press. ISBN 0-9526391-0-6.
• Pemberton, Max (1936). The Life of Sir Henry Royce: Bart., M.I.E.E., M.I.M.E: With some chapters from the stories of the late Charles S. Rolls and Claude Johnson (Hardcover). London: Selwyn & Blount.
• Pugh, Peter (2001). The Magic of a Name – The Rolls-Royce Story: The First 40 Years. Icon Books. ISBN 1-84046-151-9.</ref>
• Reese, Peter (2022). Sir Henry Royce: Establishing Rolls-Royce, from Motor Cars to Aero Engines (Softcover). Cheltenham, Gloucestershire: The History Press. ISBN 978-0-7509-9900-7.
• Rowland, John (1969). The Rolls-Royce Men: The Story of C.S. Rolls and Henry Royce. New York: Roy Publishers.

External links

• The Sir Henry Royce Foundation, Australia
• Video of grave of Sir Henry Royce on YouTube (RT 11:16) Part 1 (of 3) of a video containing a visit to Royce's grave
• "Sir Henry Royce, Bart." a 1956 Flight article