Sir John Laing (1879 - 1978) |
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- the man who made a fortune and gave it away |
| (All photographs in this section are used with kind permission of John Laing plc and Laing Charitable Trust, unless otherwise stated.) | |
John Laing loved being outdoors, especially on the Lakeland Fells. But on this day in September 1909, when he was 30, he was not in the mood for walking. He sat alone on a grassy slope overlooking the Irish Sea with his head in his hands, in despair. Ever since he became head of the family building firm, he had wanted to start building things like power stations and reservoirs instead of just building houses. But everything had gone wrong with the job they were now doing and the family firm might become bankrupt. |
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Photo by Galen R Frysinger www.galen-frysinger.org |
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| Apart from the shame of failure, John knew that his parents were relying on him to keep them in their old age, and that the men who worked for him would lose their jobs. | |
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