Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Tangye, Richard
TANGYE, Sir RICHARD (1833–1906), engineer, born at Broad Lane, Illogan, Cornwall, on 24 Nov. 1833, was fifth son in a family of six sons and three daughters of Joseph Tangye, a quaker Cornish miner of Redruth, who afterwards became a small shopkeeper and farmer there, by Anne (d. 1851), daughter of Edward Bullock, a small farmer and engine driver. After attending the British school at Illogan, and helping his father on his farm, he was at the age of eight disabled for manual labour through fracturing his right arm, and spent three years (1844-7) at a school at Redruth kept by William Lamb Bellows, father of John Bellows [q. v. Suppl. II]; thence he went in February 1847 to the Friends' School, Sidcot, Somerset, where he formed a lifelong friendship with William Tallack [q. v. Suppl. II]. He remained there as pupil teacher and assistant until 1851; in that year he visited with his brother James the Great Exhibition in London.
Finding the teaching profession uncongenial, Tangye at the end of 1852, in reply to an advertisement, went to Birmingham and entered the office of Thomas Worsdell, a quaker engineer, as clerk at 50l. a year. His younger brother George soon joined him as junior clerk; they were followed by two other brothers, James and Joseph, mechanical experts who had worked under Brunei for Mr. Brunton, engineer to the West Cornwall railway, and had made a hydraulic press which favourably impressed Brunel.
At Birmingham Tangye soon obtained a complete grasp of the commercial details of the engineering business, and he proved his interest in the welfare of the workmen by obtaining the firm's assent to a half-holiday on Saturdays, a concession to labour which was subsequently adopted in England universally. In 1855, owing to a difference with his employer, Richard left the firm. Soon he and three brothers, including Joseph, who had made himself an expert lathemaker, began to manufacture tools and machinery on their own account, renting a room at 40 Mount Street, Birmingham, for 4s. a week. The brothers prospered, and took a large workshop for 10s. a week, bought an engine and boiler to supply their own motive power, and took one workman into their employ. In 1856 Brunel, mindful of James and Joseph's earlier efforts, commissioned the brother's at Birmingham to supply him with hydraulic lifting jacks to launch the 'Great Eastern' steamship. The successful performance of this commission proved the first step in the firm's prosperity. In 1858 the brothers bought the sole right to manufacture differential pulley blocks, recently invented by Mr. J. A. Weston; but rival claims to the patent rights involved them in 1858 in a long and costly though successful lawsuit. A fifth brother, Edward, joined them that year. The firm now devoted itself solely to the manufacture of machinery and every kind of power machine. The growth of the industry led to their removal in 1859 to new premises in Clement Street, Birmingham; three years later the firm acquired three acres of land at Soho, three miles from Birmingham, and built there the 'Cornwall Works.' Ultimately this factory through Richard's skill, energy, and business acumen absorbed thirty acres of surrounding land and gave employment to 3000 hands. Works in Belgium were established under Edward's management in 1863; a London warehouse was added in 1868, and branches were subsequently formed at Newcastle, Manchester, Glasgow, Sydney, Melbourne, and Johannesburg. One of the engineering successes of the firm was the use of their hydraulic jacks in placing Cleopatra's Needle (weighing over 186 tons) on its present site on the Thames Embankment on 12 Sept. 1878. The firm became a limited liability company, 'Tangyes Limited,' on 1 Jan. 1882.
The brothers were considerate employers. In 1872, in which year the three elder brothers, James, Joseph, and Edward, retired from the business, Richard permanently instituted the Saturday half-holiday which he had pressed on his first employer twenty years earlier, and he averted a strike by granting unasked a nine hours day. In 1876 Tangye instituted at the works a large dining-hall, educational classes, concerts, and lectures, with which his friend, Dr. J. A. Langford [q. v. Suppl. II], was closely associated.
In the religious, municipal, and political life of Birmingham Tangye took an active share. In his early days there he helped Joseph Sturge [q. v.] at the Friends' Sunday schools. A staunch liberal in politics, he supported John Bright in every election at Birmingham but refused many invitations to stand for parliament himself. He was a firm free trader, and remained loyal to Gladstone after the home rule split of 1886, keeping alive the principles of liberalism in the 'Daily Argus,' which he founded in association with Sir Hugh Gilzean Reid in 1891. He was knighted in 1894 on Lord Rosebery's recommendation. A member of the Birmingham town council from 1878 to 1882 and of the Smethwick school board, Tangye and his brothers were generous benefactors to the town. To the municipal art gallery (founded in 1867) the firm in 1880 gave 10,000l. for new buildings (opened by King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, in 1885), as well as for the acquisition of objects of art; later they presented Albert Moore's 'The Dreamers'; Tangye also loaned his fine collection of Wedgwood ware, of which a handbook was published in 1885. The School of Art (founded in 1843), to which the Tangyes in 1881 contributed 12,000l., was rebuilt in 1884.
Tangye cherished literary interests. His admiration for Oliver Cromwell led him from 1875 to collect literature and relics relating to the Protector, and in 1889 he bought the fine Cromwellian collection of J. de Kewer Williams, congregational minister, to which he made many additions. He embodied the results of his study of the period of the protectorate in 'The Two Protectors, Oliver and Richard Cromwell' (1899). A catalogue of his Cromwellian collection of MSS., miniatures, and medals, by W. Downing, was published in 1905. Between 1876 (when Langford was his companion) and 1904 Tangye made eight extended voyages, visiting Australia, America, South Africa (where his firm had business branches), and Egypt. Tangye recounted his experiences in 'Reminiscences of Travel in Australia, America, and Egypt' (1883), and 'Notes on my Fourth Voyage to the Australian Colonies, 1886' (Birmingham, 1886).
On a short record of his early career contributed in 1889 to a series of biographies of self-made men in the 'British Workman' Tangye based his full autobiography 'One and All' (1890), which, reaching its twentieth thousand in 1905, was reissued in a revised form under the title of 'The Rise of a Great Industry.' Tangye also published 'Tales of a Grandfather' (Birmingham, 1897).
Tangye resided at Birmingham till 1894, spending his summers from 1882 at Glendorgal, a house which he had purchased near Newquay. In 1894 he removed to Kingston-on-Thames. He died at Coombe Bank, Kingston Hill, on 14 Oct. 1906, and was buried in Putney Vale cemetery. He married on 24 Jan. 1859 Caroline, daughter of Thomas Jesper, corn merchant, of Birmingham. She survived him with three sons, of whom two, Harold Lincoln and Wilfrid, joined the business, and two married daughters. The son Harold, who was created a baronet in June 1912, is author of 'In New South Africa' (1896) and 'In the Torrid Sudan' (1910).
A portrait in oils, by E. R. Taylor, hangs in the Birmingham School of Art. A bronze memorial plate erected by public subscription, with relief portraits of Richard and George Tangye, is in the Birmingham Art Gallery.
[Stuart J. Reid, Sir Richard Tangye, 1908; Tangye, The Rise of a Great Industry, 1906; The Times, 15 Oct. 1906; Biograph, 1879, ii. 266.]