Peter Fairbairn

Sir Peter Fairbairn (1799–1861) was a Scottish engineer, inventor, and mayor of Leeds, West Yorkshire. Early life Peter Fairbairn was the youngest brother of Sir William Fairbairn, born at Kelso in Roxburghshire in September 1799. He had little education, and his father obtained a situation for him in 1811 in the Percy Main colliery at Newcastle-on-Tyne. For three years Peter continued at Percy Main, until, at the age of fourteen, he was apprenticed to a millwright and engineer in Newcastle. He walked every day from Percy Main to Newcastle. During his apprenticeship he made the acquaintance of Henry Houldsworth of Glasgow, a mechanic and constructor of cotton machinery, under whom he was placed as foreman, ultimately being appointed traveller to the firm. In 1821 he left Houldsworth to take a situation on the continent. In France he stayed a year, acquiring technical knowledge; and after a period in the Manchester establishment of his brother William accepted a partnership with his former employer, Houldsworth. Business career In 1828 he left Glasgow and began business in Leeds as a machine maker. He had no capital; but Leeds was then in the first flush of its manufacturing prosperity.