Life
Born to a Welsh-speaking family at Tyn-y-Coed, a small farm near Newborough, Anglesey, at the age of fourteen Jones was apprenticed to a draper in Caernarfon and afterwards moved to Pwllheli, then to Bangor and eventually, when he was nineteen, to London. In 1872 he entered the firm of Dickins, Smith & Stevens in Regent Street. There he was successively promoted to buyer, manager, director, chairman of the board and finally to partner, when the name of the store was changed to Dickins & Jones.
He was also involved in the management of other businesses and was prominent in movements for the promotion of workers' welfare, as well as supporting profit-sharing schemes for his employees. He was Treasurer of the Welsh National Museum and a member of the Council of the North Wales University College at Bangor, of which he was a generous benefactor, becoming Vice-President of the College Council in 1909. The University of Wales awarded him an honorary doctorate.
Jones maintained lifelong links with his native county, where he had a home, Bron Menai, Dwyran. He was made High Sheriff of Anglesey for 1905, and in 1910 a Deputy Lieutenant of Anglesey and a Baronet, for his services to education and the community.
As well as his house in Wales, Jones had a country house at Elstree, in Hertfordshire called Maes yr Hâv.
In 1911 he married secondly Marie, the younger daughter of Charles Read, and with her had two sons. He died at his London home in 1917, the result of an accident. He was succeeded in the baronetcy by his elder son, also called John Prichard-Jones, then aged four.
Read more about this topic: John Prichard-Jones
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“All the lies and evasions by which man has nourished himself—civilization, in a word—are the fruits of the creative artist. It is the creative nature of man which has refused to let him lapse back into that unconscious unity with life which charactizes the animal world from which he made his escape.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
““You are old, Father William,” the young man cried,
“And life must be hastening away;
You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death:
Now tell me the reason, I pray.”
“I am cheerful, young man,” Father William replied;
“Let the cause thy attention engage;
In the days of my youth I remembered my God,
And He hath not forgotten my age.””
—Robert Southey (1774–1843)
“I have three phobias which, could I mute them, would make my life as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water: I hate to go to bed, I hate to get up, and I hate to be alone.”
—Tallulah Bankhead (1903–1968)