Richard Morgan (1862–1919), the father of Dorothy Margaret Morgan and father-in-law of Charles Archibald Vlieland, earned the soubriquet of ‘soul of the company’ after serving as Company Secretary for 27 years in what was by his death in June 1919 one of the most important industrial concerns in the UK.
Cory Brothers began very small: the Devon-born Richard Cory (I) (1799–1882) owned a small coaster vessel which traded between Ireland, Bristol and Cardiff (remember the early career of our Hollanders and Vlielands). In 1838, he opened a ships’ chandlers’ shop in Cardiff selling the hemp, sailcloth, resin and tools needed by seagoing captains. By 1844, when his sons John (1828–1910) and Richard (II) (1830–1914) joined the business, they were ship-owners and coal exporters. Richard Cory and Sons became Cory Brothers and Co. after Richard (I) retired in 1859; when they bought the Pentre colliery in the Rhondda Valley in Wales a few years later they became mine owners. On 9 April 1888, ten years after Richard Morgan first began to work as a junior accounts clerk, they registered as a limited liability company, the largest private coal-wagon owner in the UK, with mines at Gelli, Tyn y bedw and Tydraw. By the late 1890s they had depots and agencies in Aden, Colombo, Rio de Janiero, Bombay and Saigon handling the coal they stockpiled along all the major shipping routes. In 1898, the Cardiff head office moved to ‘Corys Building’ (Grade II listed but now derelict) on the corner of Bute Street and James Street, a grand structure demonstrating the company’s eminence in a town known as ‘the Chicago of Wales’. With its location at the foot of coal- and iron-bearing valleys, a canal built in 1794 to take output to the coast for export and extensive ‘Bute docks’, developed in the 1830s by John, the second Marquis of Bute, who far-sightedly and at significant financial risk saw the town’s potential, Cardiff in its ‘brash glory’ was regarded as an economic and industrial miracle. In 1907, the first-ever £1 million deal was struck on the trading floor of the Coal and Shipping Exchange, built in 1888 in the lavish Renaissance Revival style by Edwin Seward (also derelict until 2017, when it was reinvented as a luxury hotel), where 10,000 people were employed. At the peak of their prosperity in 1913, Corys was exporting 13 million tonnes of coal a year.
As Company Secretary from 1892, when he was only 30, Richard Morgan would have been intimately involved in all aspects of the company’s management. Some saw the office as being only a minor clerical position, but in a family company like Corys, and especially after the 1862 Companies Act that deregulated company formation but required the annual filing of much more detailed paperwork, Richard would have been the accountant responsible for the day-to-day running of the company, binding it to any contracts it wished to enter, overseeing staff appointments and directors’ meetings, and becoming the ‘loyal servant of the Board’. He would have liaised frequently with the Bute agent at the docks over coal consignments shipped out and empty vessels returning, and all the necessary cargo/insurance documentation. We know he formed a close professional bond with Clifford Cory (1859–1941), John Cory’s son, who by the 1890s was known as ‘the rising young coal king of South Wales whose market is the world’ and was clearly happy to promote Richard’s position. At Richard’s funeral in June 1919, Clifford was described as ‘having been closely associated in business’ with his late employee, and several Board Members, including the General Manager, Richard Griffin, were part of the ‘large and influential attendance’.
In 1885, aged only 23 but clearly secure in his employment prospects, Richard married Annie (Ann) Chamberlain Monfries, and had two daughters, Dorothy Margaret (1886–1942, Archie Vlieland’s first wife) and Margery Mary (1890–1970).
This marriage opens up a whole new area of our blog. Ann’s mother, born Charlotte Chamberlain in 1824 in Broadclyst, a village outside Exeter (who we shall call Charlotte to distinguish her from her daughter, Charlotte Laura Monfries, Ann’s eldest sister) was married first to William Ernest Hall from a family, like the Peels, in Indian government service, and secondly to James Lawrie Monfries (1818–71). At the time of James’ sudden death aged 53, he was manager of the Bute quarry at Pwill-y-pant, but originally had been in Government service in India and Guernsey, where Ann and her seven siblings were born. Charlotte Laura married Ernest Hall in 1880 and his marriage makes him Richard Morgan’s brother-in-law, in which capacity he returned from Simla to be at Richard’s funeral. There is clearly a complex web of Hall, Monfries and Vlieland connections yet to be discovered!
Thanks are due to Graces Guide and Cynon Culture for information on the Cory family and business; and to the Western Mail of 13 January 1871 for the life and death of James Lawrie Monfries. And to Barbara writer of this piece. !
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