Josiah Mason

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Sir Josiah Mason (February 23, 1795 - June 16, 1881) was an English pen-manufacturer.

Josiah Mason

Mason was born in Mill Street, Kidderminster, the son of a carpet-weaver. He began life as a street hawker of cakes, fruits and vegetables. After trying his hand in his native town at shoemaking, baking, carpentering, blacksmithing, house-painting and carpet-weaving, he moved in 1816 to Birmingham. Here he found employment in the gilt-toy trade. In 1824 he set up on his own account as a manufacturer of split-rings by machinery, to which he subsequently added the making of steel pens. Owing to the circumstance of his pens being supplied through James Perry, the London stationer whose name they bore, he was less well known than Joseph Gillott and other makers, although he was really the largest producer in England. In 1874 the business was converted into a limited liability company. Besides his steel-pen trade Mason carried on for many years the business of electro-plating, copper-smelting, and india-rubber ring making, in conjunction with George Elkington.

Mason was almost entirely self-educated, having taught himself to write when a shoemaker's apprentice, and in later life he felt his deficiencies keenly. It was this which led him in 1860 to establish his great orphanage at Erdington, near Birmingham. Upon it he expended about £300,000, and for this munificent endowment he was knighted in 1872. He had previously given a dispensary to his native town and an almshouse to Erdington. In 1880 Mason College, since incorporated in the University of Birmingham, was opened, the total value of the endowment being about £250,000.

In commemoration of him, his bust stands at the centre of the roundabout at the junction of Chester Road & Orphanage Road in Erdington. This bronze bust, erected in 1951, was cast by William Bloye from a marble statue by Francis. G. Williamson in 1885, which stood opposite Mason Science College in Edmund Street.