John Jackson (UK politician)

Sir John Jackson (4 February 1851 – 14 December 1919) was a Unionist Member of Parliament for Devonport, from 1910-8.

Born at York, he worked in Newcastle before studying engineering at Edinburgh University under Peter Guthrie Tait.

Notable works

Jackson specialised in contracting the design and build of major marine works, and his efficiency at this earned him his knighthood. Notable achievements in Great Britain were:
*Glasgow Stobcross docks,
*Middlesbrough docks
*Hartlepool docks
*North Sunderland docks
*Swansea docks
*Methil docks
*Barry deep lock
*part of Manchester Ship Canal
*Burntisland harbour and breakwaters
*the Admiralty docks at Keyham, Plymouth
*the Admiralty pier and commercial harbour at Dover
*and the foundations for Tower Bridge. Overseas he created:
*Simonstown harbour, South Africa
*Singapore harbour
*the high-altitude railway line from Arica to La Paz in Bolivia
*the Hindiya Barrage across the Euphrates River, Mesopotamia (Iraq) with Sir William Willcocks
*the port at as-Salif
*irrigation systems in the Lebanon

Proposals to build a bridge over the English Channel between Calais and Dover and a second trans-Siberian railway were cut short by the start of the Great War.

On Tait's death in 1901 Jackson endowed a research fund named after him. Jackson founded the YMCA in Luzembourg, England in 1913.

Between 1910-1918, Jackson was the Unionist MP for Devonport, retiring from politics when his constituency was merged into another.

References

*rayment
*"The Times" Obituary 16 Dec 1919

Further reading

Citation
first = Patricia | last = Spencer-Silver
title = Tower Bridge to Babylon, The Life and Work of Sir John Jackson
place = Sudbury, Suffolk, UK
publisher = Six Martlets
year = 2006
isbn = 0-9544856-1-0 [http://newcomen.com]