Charles Foote Gower

Charles Gower
Born
Charles Foote Gower

1807
Died1867
OccupationSoap manufacturer
Mayor of Ipswich
In office
1853–1854

Charles Foote Gower (1807–28 January 1867) was an English soap manufacturer based in Ipswich.[1] He was a significant businessman in that town.

Family life

Charles was the son of Richard Hall Gower,[2] the son of Foote Gower, and Elizabeth Emptage, the daughter of George Emptage. The family moved to Nova Scotia House, Ipswich in 1817.

He and his wife Sarah had three children: Charles Foote Gower (1838), John Nathaniel Gower (1839) Mary Rebecca Gower (1840).[3]

Business activity

Gower was in partnership with Charles Colchester as soapmakers until this was dissolved in 1845.[4]

Then in 1846 he became a major investor in the railways with an invested capital of £40,462.[5]

In 1847 he published The Scientific Phenomena of Domestic Life, Familiarly Explained. In this book he aimed to encourage the "young reader" to "arrange his enquiries and mode of thinking that he may the more readily be enabled to explain for himself the cause of any fresh fact which excites and interests his enquiring mind."[6]: 147 

He was elected to the Ipswich Council in 1851 and then became Mayor of Ipswich 1853–1854.[7]

References

  1. ^ "Gower, John Nathaniel". suffolkartists.co.uk. Suffolk Artists. Retrieved 12 March 2020.
  2. ^ "Catalogue: D/DU 456/2". www.essexarchivesonline.co.uk. Essex Archives Online. Retrieved 12 March 2020.
  3. ^ "Charles Foote Gower - born in 1808 in Cheshunt Hertfordshire Saint Mary Stoke - 1851 England & Wales Census". www.rootspoint.com. Roots point. Retrieved 30 August 2021.
  4. ^ "Dissolution of Partnerships" (PDF). No. 20453, March 1845. Government of the United Kingdom. London Gazette. 1845.
  5. ^ Accounts and Papers of the House of Commons (Vol. 38 ed.). London: Great Britain Parliament House of Commons. 1846. p. 118.
  6. ^ Gower, Charles Foote (1847). The Scientific Phenomena of Domestic Life. Second Edition. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans.
  7. ^ van Loon, Borin. "Ipswich Historic Lettering: Nova Scotia". www.ipswich-lettering.co.uk. Borin van Loon.