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.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Chamberlain
Famous quotes containing the words early, business, career and/or marriage:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Most of us have felt barriers between ourselves and our fathers and had thought that going it alone was part of what it meant to be a man. We tried to get close to our children when we became fathers, and yet the business of practicing masculinity kept getting in the way. We men have begun to talk about that.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“I seemed intent on making it as difficult for myself as possible to pursue my “male” career goal. I not only procrastinated endlessly, submitting my medical school application at the very last minute, but continued to crave a conventional female role even as I moved ahead with my “male” pursuits.”
—Margaret S. Mahler (1897–1985)
“But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse”
—William Blake (1757–1827)