Who
was He?
Motor Car Manufacturer and Scientific Philanthropist.
Date and Place
of Birth:
10th October 1877, Worcester. Christened William
Richard Morris.
Family Background: Son
of Frederick Morris who became a clerk in Oxford
after several speculative journeys to the wild
west of the United States of America in attempts
to make his fortune and Emily Ann Petter, a farmer's
daughter. Nuffield was the eldest of seven children.
Education: Church
School, Cowley, Oxfordshire which he left at the
age of fourteen.
Chronology:
1880: Family moved
to Oxford.
1892: Left School
1893: Worked at 16
James Street, Oxford as a repairer of bicycles
in the shed at the bottom of his father's garden
with the starting capital of £4.
1912: Designed his
first car, the bull nosed Morris, at his car repair
garage at Longwall Street, Oxford. Large scale
production of this car moved to a disused military
training college in Hollow Way, Cowley, Oxfordshire.
1913: Introduction
of the first Morris Oxford car.
He became known as "The English Henry
Ford".
1914: The Cowley
factory was turned over to the making of munitions
for the war effort during the First World War.
1925: The annual
output of motor cars from Cowley was now 56,000.
1926: Bought Huntercombe
Golf Course to indulge his favourite sport.
1928: Had a bad reaction
to anaesthetics when he had an operation to remove
his appendix and always stored the appendix in
a jar in a cupboard on the first floor of his
house.
1933: Bought the
house Nuffield Place, near Wallingford, as it
was near the golf course.
1934: Made a Baron.
1937: Endowed Nuffield
College, Oxford. Set up a Professorship of Anaesthesia
at Oxford University as he had always wanted to
become a doctor and remembered his traumatic operation
of 1928.
1938: Made a Viscount
and took the name of Nuffield after the Oxfordshire
village he was living in.
1943: The Nuffield
foundation was begun with a gift of £10 million
in shares from the Morris Motors company. He was
to give over £30 million to charity during his
life, mainly to medical and scientific causes.
Marriage: 1904
to Elizabeth Anstey.
Places of Interest:
OXFORDSHIRE:
Nuffield Place, Henley-on-Thames
Date and Place
of Death:
22nd
August 1963, Nuffield Place, Henley-on-Thames.
Age at Death:
86.
Site of Grave:
Holy Trinity Church, Nuffield, Oxfordshire, England.
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