John Diston Powles
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John Diston Powles (c. 1787 – 14 September 1867) was an English businessman.


Powles & Co.

Powles was involved in numerous companies, typically as a major shareholder who was also chairman. Powles, Brothers & Co. refers to a London company set up by Powles and two brothers, having dealings with Latin America.


Share promotion and Benjamin Disraeli

In the mid-1820s Powles was heavily involved in the promotion of South American mining companies, and enlisted a young Benjamin Disraeli to write pamphlets promoting these mines, particularly those in
Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...
. Disraeli gained experience and material for his first novel ''Vivian Grey'' (1826), in which Powles and his wife appear as Mr and Mrs Millions. But speculation in shares caused Disraeli to be saddled by debts, and these took decades to pay off.


South American satrap

In 1823
Gran Colombia Gran Colombia (, "Great Colombia"), or Greater Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia (Spanish language, Spanish: ''República de Colombia''), was a state that encompassed much of northern South America and part of southern Central Ameri ...
applied to Powles for colonists. They came, in the form of the Topo Valley settlers, Scottish and Irish, but the colony was unsuccessful. The British government under George Canning decided to recognise the new Latin American nations, created by the rebellion against the
Spanish Empire The Spanish Empire ( es, link=no, Imperio español), also known as the Hispanic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Hispánica) or the Catholic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Católica) was a colonial empire governed by Spain and its prede ...
, at the end of 1824. Shares in South American mines leapt in value. Powles was the most active British merchant in Colombia at this period, operating through local agents. In the area of present-day
Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...
, his commercial dominance was very marked, and persisted for nearly two decades. He weathered the financial storm of the
Panic of 1825 The Panic of 1825 was a stock market crash that started in the Bank of England, arising in part out of speculative investments in Latin America, including an imaginary country: Poyais. The crisis was felt most acutely in Britain, where it led to ...
, and continued with South American mining ventures, and a Gran Colombia loan. The Colombian Mining Association, a company set up by Powles and others, acquired mines in Antioquia State and Mariquita. William Wills went out from the United Kingdom to Bogota for the Association in 1826, and settled in South America. Powles was involved also in the creation of the
St. John d'el Rey Mining Company The Saint John d'El Rey Mining Company was a British mining company that operated in Brazil in the 19th and 20th centuries. The company employed skilled miners from Cornwall and elsewhere in Britain in its gold mines in the state of Minas Gerais, ...
in 1830 and served as its first chairman. An associate and founding director of the company was James Vetch.


Business reputation

During the 1850s, the business methods used by Powles came under intense criticism from the barrister Christopher Richardson. His banker father, of the same name, has been identified tentatively with a director of the Chilean Mining Association with which Powles was involved in the 1820s. Deas, writing in the ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', which calls him a "company promoter and speculator", comments that some of his activities "would now be considered fraudulent", though they were not illegal.


Death

Powles died at
Elstree Elstree is a large village in the Hertsmere borough of Hertfordshire, England. It is about northwest of central London on the former A5 road, that follows the course of Watling Street. In 2011, its population was 5,110. It forms part of t ...
in 1867. He was buried in Elstree churchyard, where two of his sons already lay.


Family

Powles was married three times: #He married in 1808 Louisa Chambers; they had two daughters and a son, and were divorced in 1815. The son John Richard Powles (1813–1897) was a merchant in Colombia. #He married in 1818 Emma Francis Ogle (1789–1828); they had four sons and two daughters. Richard Cowley Powles was a son of this marriage.
Louis Diston Powles Louis Diston Powles (1842–1911) was an English barrister. He is now remembered for his outspoken memoir ''Land of the Pink Pearl'' of his time in the Bahamas as a stipendiary magistrate, during the 1880s. Early life He was born on 11 October 18 ...
(1842–1911), the youngest son of this marriage, was a barrister. The other sons of this marriage were Thomas William (died 1857 aged 31) and George Williams (died 1862 aged 39). #He married in 1841 Anna Catherina Schneider, and they had two sons. One of the daughters, Emma Maria, married in 1837
William Robert Grove Sir William Robert Grove, FRS FRSE (11 July 1811 – 1 August 1896) was a Welsh judge and physical scientist. He anticipated the general theory of the conservation of energy, and was a pioneer of fuel cell technology. He invented the Grove vo ...
. Another daughter, Louisa, married Matthew Plummer, vicar of Heworth, and was mother of Alfred Plummer and
Charles Plummer Charles Plummer, FBA (1851–1927) was an English historian and cleric, best known as the editor of Sir John Fortescue's ''The Governance of England'', and for coining the term "bastard feudalism". He was the fifth son of Matthew Plummer of St ...
.


References

*Eakin, Marshall G. ""Business Imperialism and British Enterprise in Brazil: The St. John d'el Rey Mining Company, Limited, 1830-1960." In ''The Hispanic American Historical Review'', Vol. 66, No. 4. (Nov., 1986), pp. 697–741. *Veliz, Claudio. "Egana, Lambert, and the Chilean Mining Associations of 1825." In ''The Hispanic American Historical Review'', Vol. 55, No. 4. (Nov., 1975), pp. 637–663.


Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Powles, John Diston 1787 births 1867 deaths English businesspeople People from Elstree 19th-century British businesspeople