| Description | Lancashire Cotton Corporation: The Bank of England had supported the establishment of the Lancashire Cotton Corporation in 1929 as part of its policy of rationalisation. The corporation had absorbed 96 companies owning one quarter of the country's cotton spindles between 1929 and 1932. However, further schemes by the corporation's Frank Platt for the merger of five million spindles owned by 44 companies did not receive Bank backing, and from 1932 Platt was heavily involved in trying to save the ailing concern. This was achieved at a cost of closing half the corporation's mills between 1932 and 1937.
United Steel Companies: a steel making, engineering, coal mining and coal by-product group based in South Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. The company was registered in 1918. It became defunct in 1967. The iron and steel works on nationalisation became part of British Steel Corporation and the mining interests passed to the National Coal Board. The coal by-products plants came under the ownership of a subsidiary, The United Coke and Chemical Company.
Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Co Ltd was a major manufacturing company founded in 1847. Headquartered in Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne, Armstrong Whitworth engaged in the construction of armaments, ships, locomotives, automobiles, and aircraft.
William Beardmore and Co: William Beardmore and Co was a Scottish engineering and shipbuilding company based in Glasgow and the surrounding Clydeside area. It was active between about 1890 and 1930 and at its peak employed about 40,000 people. It was founded and owned by William Beardmore, later Lord Invernairn. The company was prominently involved in shipbuilding, aviation and the manufacture of road vehicles. Beardmore's various companies became unprofitable in the post World War One slump, resulting in the company facing bankruptcy. Finanical aid initially came from Vickers Limited, which took a 60% stake in Beardmores before pulling out in the late 1920s. Beardmore himself was removed from executive control of his company by the Bank of England. The crisis in the British shipbuilding industry resulted in the formation of a company with the purpose of taking control of and eliminating loss-making shipyards to reduce capacity and competition: National Shipbuilders Security Ltd. The latter bought Beardmore's Dalmuir yard in 1930 and the yard was closed and its facilities dismantled, although various maritime engineering works persisted until 1936. Beardmore's various other businesses were wound down over the next few years until his retirement and death in 1936. The remnants of the company persisted under Sir James Lithgow of the shipbuilding company Lithgows Limited. The final remnants of the company were wound up in 1975.
British (Guest, Keen, Baldwins) Iron & Steel Company Limited: Baldwins Limited, which had acquired the Port Talbot works of the Port Talbot Iron & Steel Co Ltd in 1906, merged in 1930 with the heavy steel side of Guest Keen & Nettlefolds to create the British (Guest, Keen, Baldwins) Iron & Steel Company Limited.
Dorman Long, based in Middlesbrough, was a major steel producer. The company was founded by Arthur Dorman and Albert de Lande Long as an iron works in 1875. In the 1920s Dorman Long took over the concerns of Bell Brothers and Bolckow and Vaughan and diversified into the construction of bridges. In 1967 Dorman Long became part of British Steel.
Stewarts & Lloyds was a steel tube manufacturer, with its headquarters at Corby, Northamptonshire. The company was created in 1903 by the amalgamation of two of the largest iron and steel makers in Britain, A & J Stewart & Menzies Ltd, Coatbridge, North Lanarkshire, and Lloyd & Lloyd Ltd, Birmingham. The company moved to Corby in 1932, enabling them to make use of the local iron ore to feed their blast furnaces and Bessemer steel converters. Stewarts & Lloyds was formally dissolved in 1997.
Files described as 'General' were so labelled at their creation and are of too broad a nature to admit of more specific and succinct description.
File SMT3/28 within this series is available to view online via the Australian Joint Copying Project, National Library of Australia: https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-761671767/findingaid
URLS for the individual file is provided at item level. |