Richard Arkwright junior

Richard Arkwright junior (19 December 1755 – 23 April 1843), the son of Sir Richard Arkwright of Cromford, Derbyshire, was a mills owner, turned banker, investor and financier (creditor) of many successful state and private entreprises of the British Industrial Revolution which his father had helped to catalyse. Among his debtors were Samuel Oldknow of Marple and Mellor, his friend. He was one of ten known British millionaires in 1799. Biography Richard was born in Bolton. His mother, Patience Holt, died when he was only a few months old, and his father, Sir Richard Arkwright, raised him on his own until he was six, then married Margaret Biggens, with whom he had a daughter, Susan and Mary Anne. His father patented the water frame, a roller-spinning machine powered by water. This was the patented prototype and archetype of a revolutionary wave of mass-production machines for cloth manufacture. Recognition followed of the economy of scale of bulk, quality textiles among consumers and cloth dealers across the world, and thus from investors in turn, making the spinning (together with combing, weaving and various other required stages) of a modern cotton industry the heart of British manufacturing. Cotton and several other raw textile goods were mass-imported from the British Empire to be worked by the export-heavy zones such as the Lancashire Mill Towns and later processed by the linen, drapery and garment, usually factory-based, industries. His namesake Richard Arkwright junior followed in his footsteps; by middle age the latter had developed the factory system further. He was an outstanding organiser of labour and machinery processing, ambitious, forceful and persevering.