John was the seventh child of Joseph V and Mary Sturge, born at Elberton in 1799. After a Quaker schooling he was apprenticed at John Bell’s laboratory on Oxford Street in London in 1814. A collection of his letters sent between 1813 and 1820 were copied by Charles Dickinson Sturge and contain references to his feelings on leaving home and family, impressions of London life and the gossip of the day.

He began business on his own account, manufacturing Verdigris and Solution of Tin for the use of dyers, in a yard at Severnside as he was unable to get a suitable site near Bewdley. In about 1823 he moved to Birmingham and bought land between the canal and Wheeleys Road from Johnson, the glass manufacturer, for £500. His brother Edmund joined him after completing his schooling. In 1831 John leased land across the road on which the J & E Sturge works were later built and the manufacture of citrates, tartrates, bicarbonate of potash and precipitated chalk added to their portfolio. In 1833 he became a director of the London & Birmingham Railway.

With his brother Joseph, John participated in the great Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 and both were depicted by the artist Benjamin Robert Haydon in the massive picture displayed in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. This picture, once dismissed by a commentator as “a wagon-load of Quaker heads,” can be viewed on-line at www.npg.org.uk and select “search the collection.”

Caption: John Sturge after a sketch by Haydon

John was described as a fine, tall man, but was rather apt to take offence. He was said to be the most literary member of the family in his generation and wrote three pamphlets, one on Sunday travelling and two on slave and free labour. Before his marriage, John lodged in Birmingham, either with his brother Joseph, at Southfields, or at 16 Frederick Road, sharing this with the editor of the Reformer newspaper. He bought two or three houses when he expected to marry. He had made an offer to Sarah Lloyd (afterwards Fox) which was broken off by her father, Samuel Lloyd to the great regret of her mother Rachel. He was also refused by a daughter of Thomas Lloyd. However, in 1837 he married Lydia Wilkins and they lived at Church Road, “in the first house on the right-hand side after crossing the canal, going from Five Ways,” although that union was to be short lived.

John died at Cheltenham in December 1840. As a birthright Quaker he had not been baptised but, whilst no longer a member of the Society of Friends, the rector of Cheltenham, the Rev. Close, refused burial in consecrated ground. This resulted in his being buried at Powick, where he was a stranger and the priest did not ask any questions. This photograph of the grave, taken in 1899, shows it in a state of disrepair and the actual site can no longer be identified.

Caption: Mr Sturge’s Chemical Works 1844.

Following the death of John, Edmund invited Arthur Albright to join him and their partnership commenced on 1st January 1842. Eight months earlier Edmund had married Arthur’s sister, Lydia Albright and, with the usual tangle of Quaker inter-marriage, after that everyone appears to be related to each other in some complicated way. The full history of that business and of Albright and Wilson is well-recorded elsewhere but the family received a welcome reminder of the association at the time of the Second Sturge Pilgrimage in 1980, when a telegram message from the company was received at Frenchay Meeting House. Since then both the telegram service and J & E Sturge have ceased business.

Caption: The telegram.