A lot better than plonking them in front of the TV or a games console. Lucky girl with a grandma like that.
From To Hull and Back... please log in to view this image John Ellerman rose from a modest life in Hull to amass a fortune so vast it crowned him Britain’s wealthiest. When his father died, the nine-year-old boy was left with a burning ambition. Forty-one years later he died the richest man in Britain. Yet almost nobody outside the shipping world ever learned his name. Sir John Ellerman never gave an interview. He quietly bought control of most of Fleet Street simply to keep his own name off the front pages. This is the story of the original invisible tycoon. The Accountant Who Saw Empires in Ruin Ellerman began as a teenage accountant with an uncanny instinct: he could smell weakness in a balance sheet from across the room. Where others saw sinking ships and red ink, he saw opportunity. In 1892, aged just thirty, he bought a bankrupt steamship line, revived it, and sold it to J.P. Morgan for a fortune. Then he did it again. And again. Stock-market panic? He arrived with cash. Boer War? He supplied the ships and collected a baronetcy he never used. First World War? While U-boats shredded merchant fleets, Ellerman bought wreckage cheap, rebuilt it, and in 1916 swallowed the legendary Wilson Line of Hull — once the largest privately owned fleet on earth. Master of the Empire’s Arteries By the 1920s, Ellerman Lines carried one in ten British emigrants to new lives abroad. His vessels hauled cotton, coal, grain, and people — the lifeblood of the Empire. He owned breweries, newspapers, coal mines, and half the front pages that refused to print his picture. He lived in a Mayfair mansion but dined alone. He lived with the mother of his children for fourteen years before marrying her. He bought silence the way other men bought yachts. A Family at War, A Legacy in Shadows When Ellerman died in 1933, his funeral erupted into chaos — his children fought so violently that furniture flew across the room. His daughter, the poet Bryher, fled to Paris and bankrolled James Joyce. His son retreated to Cape Town, studied rodents, and gave millions away anonymously. Ellerman left no memoirs, no statues, no hunger for fame. He proved that a boy from Hull’s Anlaby Road could own the oceans — and still walk through his hometown unrecognised. Sir John Ellerman. The man who bought silence — and kept it.
SEVERE WEATHER WARNING The AA have warned that everyone travelling in icy conditions should take a shovel, blankets/sleeping bag, extra clothing including scarf, hat and gloves, 24-hour supply of food and drink, de-icer, rock salt, torch, spare battery, petrol can, first aid kit and jump leads. I looked a right **** on the no.47 going to town.
