Joseph Swan

Early life

Joseph Wilson Swan was born in 1828 at Pallion Hall in Pallion, in the Parish of Bishopwearmouth, Sunderland, County Durham. His parents were John Swan and Isabella Cameron.

Swan was apprenticed for six years to a Sunderland firm of pharmacists/druggists, Hudson and Osbaldiston. However, it is not known whether Swan completed his six-year apprenticeship, as both partners subsequently died. He was said to have had an enquiring mind, even as a child. He augmented his education with a fascination for his surroundings, the industry of the area, and reading at Sunderland Library. He attended lectures at the Sunderland Atheneum.

Swan subsequently joined Mawson's, a firm of manufacturing chemists in Newcastle upon Tyne, started in the year of Swan's birth by John Mawson (9 September 1819 – 17 December 1867), the husband of his sister, Elizabeth Swan (22 November 1822 – 2 August 1905). In 1846, Swan was offered a partnership at Mawson's. This company subsequently existed as Mawson, Swan, and Morgan until 1973 (the store closed in 1986), formerly located on Grey Street in Newcastle upon Tyne, near Grey's Monument. The premises, now occupied by fashion retailer END., can be identified by a line of Victorian-style electric street lamps in front of the store on Grey Street.

Swan lived at Underhill, Low Fell, Gateshead, a large house on Kells Lane North, where he conducted most of his experiments in the large conservatory. The house was later converted into Beaconsfield School, a private fee-paying grant-aided co-educational grammar school. Students there could still find examples of Swan's original electrical fittings.

Family

Swan married firstly Frances "Fanny" White, third daughter of William White, of Liverpool, at Camberwell Chapel, London, on 31 July 1862. They had three surviving children: Cameron, Mary Edmonds, and Joseph Henry. Frances died on 9 January 1868 and he married secondly Hannah White, the younger sister of Frances, at Neuchâtel, Switzerland, on 3 October 1871. They had five children: Hilda, Frances Isobel, Kenneth Rayden, Percival, and Dorothy. Sir Kenneth Rayden Swan was a QC and an acknowledged authority on patent law.

Frances Isobel Swan was a sculptor and artist, active between 1895 and 1903. Frances Isobel was also the mother of Christopher Collan Morcom, a friend of Alan Turing at Sherborne School. Like his grandfather, Christopher was exceptionally gifted in the sciences (particularly astronomy), though he was also a notable prankster, photographer, and student athlete. After Christopher's premature death in 1930, Frances Isobel and Turing began exchanging letters. Turing became a close family friend of the Morcom family, visiting the Clock House in 1932.