Richard Potter, Beatrice Webb’s Father and Corporate Capitalist

Book excerpt: Existing studies of the Potter family tend to see Richard Potter through the lens of his most famous daughter, the socialist Beatrice Webb, or through Beatrice and her eight siblings, all girls. In this book, their father, whose business activities sustained the family’s upper-middle-class lifestyle and social position, is the subject of study in his own right. He was a new kind of businessman, a corporate capitalist, who operated on an international stage. This book looks inside the principal companies in which Potter was the chairman (the Great Western and Canadian Grand Trunk railways and the Gloucester Wagon Company) to assess his business acumen and his relationships with other leading business figures including Daniel Gooch, Edward Watkin and William Price. It also examines in detail Potter’s relationships with his wife and daughters, describing how he drew them into some of his key business decisions, and how he recognised the individuality of his daughters, encouraging them to read and think outside conventional boundaries, and to engage with famous intellectuals, most notably Herbert Spencer his life-long friend, who were part of the family circle, so shaping their lives as distinctive and strong adults. Beatrice had no doubt that he played a key part in shaping her professional life.