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PRYCE-JONES, Sir PRYCE (PRYCE JONES until 1887; 1834-1920), pioneer of mail order business

Name: Pryce Pryce-jones
Date of birth: 1834
Date of death: 1920
Spouse: Eleanor Rowley Pryce-Jones (née Morris)
Child: Mary Eleanor Pryce-Jones
Child: Edward Pryce-Jones
Child: Elizabeth Anne Pryce-Jones
Child: William Ernest Pryce-Jones
Child: Albert Westhead Pryce-Jones
Child: Katharine Charlotte Pryce-Jones
Child: Agnes Rosa Pryce-Jones
Child: Henry Morris Pryce-Jones
Parent: William Jones
Parent: Mary Ann Jones (née Goodwin)
Gender: Male
Occupation: pioneer of mail order business
Area of activity: Business and Industry
Author: Maurice Richards

Born Pryce Jones, Newtown, Montgomeryshire, 16 October 1834, second son of William Jones, solicitor, and Mary Ann Goodwin, whose father was a cousin of Robert Owen, the social reformer. After being apprenticed at the age of 12 to a Newtown draper, he established his own business in 1859, in which year he married Eleanor Rowley Morris. He began his mail order business by sending patterns to the local gentry, then lists and ultimately catalogues to all classes of people all over the world, inviting orders by post. From the early 1860s he displayed Newtown's famous Welsh flannel at Welsh National Eisteddfodau, and at great exhibitions in the world's greatest cities - Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Vienna, Melbourne, and Philadelphia among them-gaining many awards and attracting a large volume of orders, ultimately claiming over 300,000 customers worldwide, Florence Nightingale, Queen Victoria, and practically every royal household in Europe among them. He made extensive use of the railways to distribute his goods, developing his own parcel post system and advising the government when it introduced the Post Office Parcels Act 1882. In 1879 he opened a magnificent new Royal Welsh Warehouse near the railway station at Newtown.

He was knighted in Queen Victoria's Jubilee Honours 1887, and changed his name to Pryce Pryce-Jones. He represented the Montgomery Boroughs as Conservative M.P. 1885-86 and 1892-95. He was High Sheriff of the county in 1891. He died at Newtown 11 January 1920, and was buried in Llanllwchaearn churchyard.

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Published date: 2001

Article Copyright: http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/

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