Early Life, Business Career and Marriage
Chamberlain was born in Camberwell in London to a successful shoemaker and manufacturer, also named Joseph (1796–1874), and his wife Caroline Harben, daughter of Henry Harben. He was educated at University College School (then still in Euston) between 1850 and 1852, excelling academically and gaining prizes in French and mathematics.
The elder Chamberlain was not able to provide advanced education for all his children, and at the age of 16 Joseph was apprenticed to the Worshipful Company of Cordwainers and worked for the family business making quality leather shoes. At 18 he joined his uncle's screwmaking business, Nettlefolds (later part of Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds) of Birmingham, in which his father had invested. The company became known as Nettlefold and Chamberlain when Chamberlain became a partner with Joseph Nettlefold. During the business's most prosperous period, it produced approximately two-thirds of all metal screws made in England, and by the time of Chamberlain's retirement from business in 1874 it was exporting to the USA, Europe, India, Japan, Canada and Australia.
Chamberlain married Harriet Kenrick, the daughter of Archibald Kenrick, member of a Unitarian family from Birmingham who originally occupied Wynn Hall in Ruabon, Wrexham, Wales, in July 1861 (they had met the previous year). Their daughter Beatrice was born in May 1862. Harriet, who had had a premonition that she would die in childbirth, became ill two days after the birth of their son Joseph Austen in October 1863, and died three days later. Chamberlain devoted himself to business, while raising Beatrice and Austen with the Kenrick parents-in-law.
In 1868, Chamberlain married for the second time, to Harriet's cousin, Florence Kenrick, daughter of Timothy Kenrick. The couple had four children: Arthur Neville in 1869, Ida in 1870, Hilda in 1871, and Ethel in 1873. On 13 February 1875, Florence gave birth to their fifth child, but she and the child died within a day.
Florence's sister, Louisa, married Joseph's brother, Arthur Chamberlain; their granddaughter was the author Elizabeth Longford and their great-granddaughter is the Labour politician Harriet Harman.
In 1888 Chamberlain married for the third time in Washington, DC. His bride was Mary Crowninshield Endicott, daughter of the US Secretary of War, William Crowninshield Endicott.
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