Cecil Wedgwood

Major Cecil Wedgwood DSO (28 March 1863-3 July 1916) was a British soldier and partner in the Wedgwood pottery firm. He was the first Mayor of Stoke-on-Trent.[1][2]

Wedgwood was the only son of Godfrey Wedgwood and his first wife Mary Jane Jackson Hawkshaw, (daughter of the great civil engineer Sir John Hawkshaw, and the poet Ann Hawkshaw) who died shortly after he was born. He was the great-great-grandson of the potter Josiah Wedgwood.

Wedgwood became a partner in the 1884 with his uncle Laurence Wedgwood and later his cousin Francis Hamilton Wedgwood. He married Lucie Gibson in 1888, and they had two daughters, one of whom married a brother of the Wedgwood pottery designer Daisy Makeig-Jones;

Wedgwood was commissioned Lieutenant in the 4th (Militia) Battalion, North Staffordshire Regiment in 1883. He served in the Boer War, where he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in 1902. He was First Mayor of the Federated County Borough of Stoke-on-Trent in 1910 and 1911.

On the outbreak of World War I in 1914 he raised the 7[3]th Battalion, North Staffordshire Regiment. He was killed at the La Boiselle during the Battle of the Somme in July 1916. His body was found and identified by James Leather, a 21 year old bandsman and stretcher bearer. He is buried at the Bapaume Post Military Cemetery in Albert, Somme.

He was succeeded as Chairman and Managing Director of Wedgwood by his cousin Francis Hamilton Wedgwood.

References

  1. ↑ A sociological history of the city of Stoke-on-Trent - Page 224 Ernest James Dalzell Warrillow - 1960 "So at forty-eight years of age, Major Cecil Wedgwood became the first Mayor of Stoke-on-Trent. Born at Hem Heath, Trentham, he was the son of Mr. Godfrey Wedgwood, but due to the early death of his mother, spent much of his early life at ..."
  2. ↑ ‘WEDGWOOD, Major Cecil’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2007 accessed 24 May 2013
  3. ↑ Wedgewood made peace medal stating 7th battalion.

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