Charles Henry Hoskins was an Australian industrialist, who was significant in the development of the iron and steel industry in Australia.
55 Facts About Charles Hoskins
1.
2.
Charles Hoskins was born on 26 March 1851 in London, to John Hoskins, gunsmith, and his wife Wilmot Eliza, nee Thompson.
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Charles Hoskins emigrated with his family to Australia as a small child in 1853, and all his education occurred in Melbourne.
4.
Charles Hoskins joined his elder brother George in Sydney in 1876, operating a small engineering workshop at Hay Street, Ultimo.
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The Charles Hoskins Brothers were not only efficient; they were innovative, patenting a number of their ideas for improving pipes and their manufacturing processes.
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Politically, Charles Hoskins was for Federation, free trade between the Australian colonies, and uniform tariff protection against imports from other countries.
7.
In 1895, Charles Hoskins was the first President of a reconstituted Chamber of Manufacturers that aimed to advance industry, without partisan political lobbying, an approach that it has followed since that time.
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However, in 1899, when William Sandford attempted to interest Charles Hoskins in buying the Eskbank works at Lithgow, the offer was declined.
9.
Charles Hoskins relocated to Lithgow, to manage the Eskbank works, assisted his two elder sons, Guildford and Cecil.
10.
Charles Hoskins had a more belligerent personality, not given to compromise.
11.
Charles Hoskins was under pressure to turn around a failing enterprise.
12.
Any initial goodwill did not last, when Charles Hoskins attempted to move from contract arrangements to day labour wages, in 1908, and to lower the overall wage paid to his workers.
13.
Charles Hoskins closed the works for five weeks in July 1908, ostensibly to carry out repairs, but later was found guilty of deliberately engineering a lock out and fined.
14.
Lithgow and its coal and ore mines were never to be harmonious workplaces, once Charles Hoskins took over; there were numerous disputes and strikes, right to the end.
15.
The contract with the NSW Government that Charles Hoskins had inherited from William Sandford provided the underlying economic basis of the Lithgow plant.
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Nonetheless, by early 1909, Charles Hoskins was already critical of the contractual arrangements with the NSW Government, his main customer.
17.
Charles Hoskins was required to buy the scrap iron originating from the railways and other government entities.
18.
Charles Hoskins contended that the contract prices for the scrap were significantly higher than he could pay for similar material in the open market.
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Charles Hoskins had secured his first order for steel rails in May 1911.
20.
Charles Hoskins's findings were highly critical of the existing arrangements, the quality of the products being supplied, that not all the steel supplied was made from Australian ores, and of Charles Hoskins himself.
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Charles Hoskins' reaction was to assert that Royal Commission had been intended to justify nationalising the steel industry, which given its terms of reference is conceivable, but the Premier denied that.
22.
Charles Hoskins responded in late December 1911, by initiating legal action, against the NSW Government, stating that it was being "condemned unheard" in an unfair and unjust manner.
23.
That was largely due to the failures of the Sandford period, but it was Charles Hoskins who wore the consequences, when the NSW Government cancelled the exclusive contract in late 1911.
24.
The Lithgow plant was in urgent need of expansion; the Charles Hoskins brothers had the financial means to do so and experience of operating a heavy industrial enterprise.
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Charles Hoskins had modernised and upgraded the mine at Carcoar, by mid 1909, and opened a second iron ore mine at Tallawang in 1911.
26.
Charles Hoskins imported parts for this mill, including a more powerful steam engine to drive it, and reworked its design to create a 27-inch mill.
27.
Charles Hoskins became personally involved in solving problems of wartime production.
28.
However, by the time of the war, difficulties associated with the location of his plant at Lithgow had already become apparent to Charles Hoskins, leading him to reconsider its long term future.
29.
Charles Hoskins had offered to sell the plant to the NSW Government in early 1914 but his offer was not taken up.
30.
Charles Hoskins had believed that he did not need to pay a royalty to the landowner of Coombing Park and could just make a claim under a Miner's Right, following amendments made to the Mining Act in 1919.
31.
Charles Hoskins opened new mines at Lithgow to obtain more suitable coal.
32.
Charles Hoskins began bringing coke from the Illawarra and mixing it with locally-made coke, obtaining improved results.
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In 1916, Charles Hoskins bought the Wongawilli Colliery and built twenty modern 'beehive' coke ovens there.
34.
Between December 1918 and mid-1920, the mine and coke ovens at Wongawillia were shut down, while Charles Hoskins' company erected a coal washery, to reduce the ash content and make freighting the coke to Lithgow more economic.
35.
Consequently, the quality of their steel was higher than Charles Hoskins could make at Lithgow; in 2006 it was stated that, "rail produced before 1914 and all Charles Hoskins rail are generally regarded as being of dubious metallurgical composition".
36.
Charles Hoskins began to form a vision for a larger, more modern steelworks on the coast, close to a seaport and to the source of most of Lithgow's coke.
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Charles Hoskins had not been the first to consider establishing an iron and steel industry in the Illawarra.
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That left the stage clear for Charles Hoskins to take advantage of Port Kembla's seaport location, amidst the Southern Coalfields renown for their excellent hard coking coal.
39.
Charles Hoskins had secured a source of coal and coke, close to a seaport at which iron ore could be unloaded.
40.
Also in 1920, Charles Hoskins secured leases over an ore deposit near Mount Heemskirk in Tasmania, and apparently planned to ship the ore via rail to the port of Strahan.
41.
At an official event in Wollongong in April 1921, Charles Hoskins spoke openly about his plans for a steelworks on the land that he had purchased at Port Kembla but about what he wanted from the NSW Government first, a lease for a private wharf at the harbour and a new railway line connecting Port Kembla to the Main Southern line.
42.
Charles Hoskins gained the lease for a private wharf at Port Kembla that would be completed in 1928.
43.
Charles Hoskins retired as managing director in 1924, leaving the question of the future of the Lithgow works open.
44.
The older Charles Hoskins boys were not notable students, although Sid is recorded in the school magazine, The Newingtonian, as winning the Preparatory School French prize in 1904 and the Upper Modern Form English prize in 1907.
45.
Hilda Charles Hoskins attended the Presbyterian Ladies' College at Croydon, and it is probable that her sisters attended the school.
46.
Charles Hoskins was 28 when he died and already a significant figure in the company.
47.
Charles Hoskins leased some crown land nearby for use as a private zoo to which he allowed public admission.
48.
Charles Hoskins sold the property in 1923, with the land-holding totalling 42 acres.
49.
Charles Hoskins moved, in 1922, to what would be his last home, Ashton in Elizabeth Bay.
50.
Charles Hoskins died at his home on 14 February 1926, not living to see the fulfillment of his plans for Port Kembla.
51.
Charles Hoskins was survived by his wife, Emily, two sons, three daughters and twenty-two grandchildren.
52.
Charles Hoskins' fortune had been made in his own lifetime, starting from nothing at age thirteen.
53.
Charles Hoskins had initiated the Hoskins Trust, in 1919, for charitable purposes, endowing a fund to support the Hoskins Memorial Church.
54.
Charles Henry Hoskins is the subject of two biographical works, The Ironmaster, written by his grandson Don Hoskins and The Hoskins Saga, written by his son Sir Cecil Hoskins.
55.
Charles Hoskins has an entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.