Histories of UK potters and pottery manufacturers
© Michael Perry 2011. Contact
Image courtesy of Lema Publishing Ltd, publishers of ‘Tableware International’ www.tablewareinternational.com
Last updated: 1st August 2011
THE DOULTON FAMILY
Orrok Mills Doulton (and descendents)
See also:
Doulton partnerships and company directors
John Doulton (I) (b. 1794, d. 1873)
John Doulton (I) was born in 1794 in Fulham, Middlesex. He married Jane Duneau, one of three daughters of a Mrs Duneau (a widow from Bridgenorth), in who’s house in Lambeth he lodged. The marriage was in 1817 and the couple had eight children. The eldest, John Doulton II, was born in 1819 and the second son, Henry Doulton (later Sir Henry Doulton), in 1820.
John Doulton (b. 1819, d. 1862)
Henry Doulton (b. 1820, d. 1897)
Frederick Doulton (b. 1826, d. 1872)
Jane Doulton (b. 1826)
Alfred Doulton (b. 1827, d. 1855)
Mary Ann Doulton (b. 1830)
Josiah Doulton (b. 1832)
James Duneau Doulton (b. 1835 d. 1889)
The Doulton family moved to 20 High St, Lambeth in late 1826. There is no mention of Jane Duneau as a member of the household in the 1841 or later census and the date of her death is recorded elsewhere as 9th April 1841, at the age of 46.
1. John Doulton (I) died on 21st May 1873 at Springwell Cottage, Clapham Common, and the executors of his substantial (circa £80,000) estate were his sons Henry Doulton, James Duneau Doulton and Virgoe Buckland, the husband of Mary Ann Doulton.
John Doulton (II) (b. 1819, d. 1862)
John Doulton (II) was born in 1819, the first child of John (I) and Jane Duneau. ‘John Doulton, 21, potter’ is listed as living with his father at Lambeth in the 1841 census, but his marriage to Mary Mathieson must have followed shortly because his first child, John (III) was born in 1845 at Camberwell, Surrey. John and Mary Mathieson Doulton had six children,
John Doulton (III) (b. 1845)
Kenneth Doulton (b.1849)
Mary Doulton (b.1850)
Ronald Duneau Doulton (b. 1852)
Bernard (b.1855)
Jane (b.1855)
Allan (b.1860).
All five of John Doulton’s sons worked within Doulton & Co, John (III) at Lambeth, Kenneth in sales, Bernard as manager of a bath foundry at Paisley and Allan at the Burlem Works. Ronald Duneau Doulton, his third son, was to become a founding Director of Doulton & Co. Ltd on its formation in 1899.
John Doulton (II) died on 23rd February 1862 at the relatively young age of 43.
Henry Lewis Doulton (b. 1853, d. 1930)
Henry Lewis Doulton, Henry Doulton’s only son, was born on 12th February 1853. He married a Jessie Maria White, however, the couple had no children. Lewis Doulton entered the family business in about 1873, and was made a partner in 1881 when Henry Doulton transferred to his son one quarter of his capital (the enormous sum of £52,679).
On the incorporation of the business in 1899 Lewis Doulton assumed the positions of Managing Director and first Chairman of Doulton & Co. Ltd, only ceding the position of Managing Director to his nephew Lewis John Eric Hooper in 1919, and that of Chairman (also to Lewis Hooper) on his retirement in 1925.
Henry Lewis Doulton died on 3rd November 1930.
Lewis John Eric Hooper (b. 1879, d. 1955)
Lewis John Eric Hooper, born on 6th February 1879, was the son of Sarah Lillian Doulton and John Kinnersley Hooper and was to play a major role in the later management of Doulton & Co. Ltd.
He joined the family business in 1902, becoming Managing Director in 1919, and Chairman in 1925 on the retirement of his uncle Henry Lewis Doulton. Hooper remained Chairman for 30 years, dying, still Chairman, on 8th May 1955.
Eric Hooper’s only child, John Doulton Hooper, died in childhood.
Ronald Duneau Doulton (b. 1852, d. 1929)
Ronald Duneau Doulton, the third son of Henry Doulton’s elder brother John II (thus a nephew of Henry Doulton and a cousin of Henry Lewis Doulton) also played an important role in the management of the business. He assumed responsibility for the administration of the Doulton businesses on the death of his uncle James Duneau Doulton in 1889, and became a director of Doulton & Co. Ltd from the date of incorporation of the business in 1899.
Ronald Duneau Doulton married Agnes Margaret Farquhar and the couple had eight children. Of Ronald Doulton’s six sons, three, Orrok Mills, Kenneth and James Doulton worked for the family company during the early years of the 20th Century.
Ronald Doulton died on the 5th September 1929.
Orrok Mills Doulton (b. 1880, d. 1922) (and descendents)
The second son of Ronald Doulton, Orrok Mills Doulton (later Sir Orrok Doulton) worked in the family business before serving as a cavalry officer in the First World War. He died, reputedly of Spanish Influenza, but probably of war wounds, in 1922 shortly after the end of the war.
Orrok Mills Doulton married Catherine May Duke and of five children, the eldest, Peter D. Doulton, worked for some time in the Doulton business. The second son Michael Duke Doulton, an RAF pilot, died on 31st August 1940 when his Hurricane fighter was shot down over the Thames Estuary during the Battle of Britain.
Orrok Sherwood Doulton, the third son (b. 1916, d. 1977) worked in the family business all of his life, becoming a Director of the company in 1935.
Orrok Sherwood Doulton died in 1977.
Sherwood Doulton’s two sons, Michael Doulton and Mark Doulton also worked for the Doulton companies, and Michael Doulton continues (2011) as a ‘Brand Ambassador’ for the Doulton brand under its new owners WWRD Holdings Ltd.
See also:
Doulton partnerships and company directors
© Mike Perry 2011
In assembling the information presented here, the assistance of Daniel Doulton www.doulton.org and Robert Christie Collman is gratefully acknowledged
Henry Doulton (b. 1820, d. 1897)
Henry Doulton was born on 25th July 1820, at Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth, Surrey, the second child of John and Jane Duneau. He was to spend his whole life in, and around, the parish of his birth.
Henry Doulton’s childhood was spent at ‘The Vineyard’, a house with a small factory, one kiln and a large garden at High St, Lambeth, which the family moved into toward the end of 1826. After local schooling at Lambeth, which Henry Doulton was later to describe as ‘wanting in quality’, he was sent at the age of 13, to University College School in Gower St, where he remained for two years.
In 1835 the reputedly scholarly Henry made the unexpected choice to join his brothers John and Frederick at the family pottery and, for the next few years, he learned the pottery trade, beginning with the most basic pottery skills and, from 1844, gradually taking over from his father the role of ‘traveller’ for the business.
He was married to Sarah Kennerby on 16th August 1849 and the family lived initially at High St, Lambeth. Their three children were:
Sarah Lillian Doulton (b. 1852)
Henry Lewis Doulton (b. 1853, d. 1930)
Katherine D. Doulton (b. 1857).
Sarah Doulton was seriously injured in a carriage accident in 1857. She never fully recovered from the accident and died after an extended period of poor health on 16th October 1888.
Henry Doulton’s interests, outside his pottery business, were in the social development of Victorian society and in the arts. In 1849 he was elected permanent chair of the Lambeth Debating Society and in 1851 became a member of The Society of Arts. He received the Society’s prestigious Albert Medal in 1885, the letter of commendation to the Society’s Council recording:
‘the great impulse given by Mr. Henry Doulton to the production of art pottery in this country, by the revival in Lambeth since 1871 of the manufacture of ornamental salt-glazed stoneware, of the kind that has become universally known as ‘Doulton Ware’.
Two years later, in 1887, Henry Doulton was knighted by Queen Victoria as part of the celebrations of the 50th year of her reign.
In about 1860 the Doulton family moved from Lambeth High St to ‘Woodlands’ a large house at Upper Tooting. Later, in the early 1880s, Henry Doulton leased, and then bought, land in the parish of Ewhurst in the county of Surrey. Here, in 1885, he built a house, ‘Woolpit’, with and extensive formal garden. A panel of terracotta by George Tinworth ‘Abraham receiving the Angel’s visit’ was placed above the porch. Here, in the peace of the picturesque countryside, Sir Henry Doulton would spend what time he could.
In May 1896 serious illness overtook Henry Doulton, surgery followed and for the next 18 months he was in declining health and great pain. He died on 17th November 1897 at the age of 78 and was buried with Sarah Doulton in the mausoleum at Norwood Cemetery.
The above account is based in part on the biography of Sir Henry Doulton written by Edmund Gosse and edited by Desmond Eyles:
Eyles, D. (editor) (1970). Sir Henry Doulton. The man of business as the man of imagination. Hutchinson. ISBN 0091035902.