1885-1886: Jeremiah Head

Jeremiah Head (1835-1899)

17th President of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers

Head was born in Ipswich, England in 1835.

He was apprenticed in 1852 at the works of Robert Stephenson and Co, Newcastle-on-Tyne. He served in the pattern-making, fitting and erection shops and the drawing office. He was engaged in designing and erecting two compound mill engines, which were fitted for the first time with a true parabolic governor.

He worked for a short time at Kitson & Co, Airedale Foundry, Leeds, then became manager of the Steam Plough Works of John Fowler and Co in Leeds, where he invented a means of signalling by lamps to facilitate steam-ploughing at night.

In 1868, together with Theodore Fox he founded the firm of Fox, Head and Co, and erected the Newport Rolling Mills, Middlesbrough, for the manufacture of iron plates. They employed 600 men. He introduced a plan of profit-sharing with his workmen, that was so successful that no labour disputes arose, even in a period of wider disturbances. He sought to improve the conditions of his workmen in other ways too, and it was largely due to his actions that Middlesbrough was the first town in England to apply for the establishment of a school board after the passing of the Education Act of 1870. He also founded the Cleveland Institution of Engineers in 1864.

In 1885, Fox, Head and Co was dissolved, and Head began to work as a consulting engineer in Cleveland. In 1888 he laid out the Bowesfield Iron Works at Stockton-on-Tees, and in 1891 the New British Iron Works at Corngreaves near Birmingham. He moved his practice to Westminster in 1894.

He died in 1899.

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