Early Life
John Penn was born in 1805 in Greenwich, the son of engineer and millwright John Penn (born in Taunton, Somerset, 1770; died 6 June 1843). The senior John Penn had in 1799 started an agricultural engineering business on the site at the junction of Blackheath and Lewisham Roads (close to modern-day Deptford Bridge). It grew in two decades to be one of the major engineering works in the London area. The focus of the firm was mainly in agriculture and more specifically mills for corn and flour. Although John Penn senior lived in Lewisham he stood as a reformist candidate for Greenwich in the December 1832 parliamentary election.
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