John Jackson (UK politician)

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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.

[edit] 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 the 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.

[edit] References

• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Page
• The Times Obituary 16 Dec 1919