Sir Arthur Munro Sutherland: The Legend of Newcastle. Dieser Artikel ist nicht verfügbar.Sir Arthur Munro Sutherland: The Legend of Newcastle

Sir Arthur Munro Sutherland, sometime Lord Mayor of Newcastle upon Tyne, gifted Thurso House, his town house in Jesmond, to the city as its Mansion House. In his time, within a one mile radius of Thurso House were four leading shipping company owners, two national trade union leaders, the head of the world’s largest rope manufacturer, the Royal Grammar School and a large Methodist chapel attended by a nest of businessmen and philanthropists. This was not the then industrial ‘Powerhouse of the North’, but it was certainly a cog within that Powerhouse.Sutherland’s grandfather was a victim of the Highland Clearances and abandoned Thurso in Caithness and sailed to Newcastle as a passenger on one of the first ships carrying Caithness flagstones to major cities in the north. He was a bootmaker and progressed from living in a hotel making boots for the workers on the quayside to owning a bespoke ship in the centre of town.Sutherland’s father was the master of many trades not least the importing of flour from the USA’s Mid-West which caused no little uproar from British flour millers. He had national and international trade interests and was Sheriff of Newcastle.Arthur Sutherland set up a little shipping company (with his father’s money) which was so successful that throughout his lifetime it funded his shipping business interests in Newcastle and London, his ownership of Dunstanburgh Castle and of Aston Martin which he saved from bankruptcy in the 1930s. His mother was the daughter of a Primitive Methodist “Ranter” preacher from Gateshead and she had a controlling influence on him in terms of ensuring he retained a conciliatory attitude towards potentially explosive situations with the trade union leaders of his day in the coal trade and shipbuilding. High risk and controversy could be close to hand such as his influencing the Swedish Sea Defence Minister to cooperate in getting 90 British merchantmen out of the Baltic in 1916 which could have jeopardised Sweden’s neutrality. He instructed a former Attorney General to clear his name when he was falsely accused of insider trading over a naval contract during the Second World War.For the first time information is given on his trade and political links with London. His Free Trade Wharf was one of the largest on the Thames and he held significant honours from within the City of London well before his skills were rewarded in Newcastle.This is not just the story of one man but of changing eras in industry, the Great Depression (which he brought to a close in the North East with an unprecedented investment in the shipping industry), the power of trade unions and matters of faith which were taken seriously by leaders on both sides of the political divide. Nevertheless, this remains a definitive analysis of a man whose business acumen led to a little remembered philanthropic legacy in Newcastle not least in its Medical and Dental Schools. Most Geordies are aware of him in terms of the Newcastle Mansion House but that is but a small aspect of his former legendary status in the city.