Cecil Jackson-Cole

Cecil Jackson-Cole

Cecil Jackson-Cole (Albert Cecil Cole; 1 November 1901 – 9 August 1979) was an English entrepreneur and humanitarian. He was associated with a number of charities including Oxfam, Help the Aged and Action Aid.

A devout Christian, Jackson-Cole set up charitable trusts including the Voluntary and Christian Service Trust that ultimately gave rise to the charities Help the Aged (1961), the Anchor Housing Trust (1968) and Action Aid (1973). He was a co-founder of the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief which became the largest charity of its kind in the British Commonwealth. He was the founder of the Andrews Charitable Trust (formally the Phyllis Trust and World in Need) the first modern Venture Philanthropy organisation.

In 1946, Jackson-Cole founded Andrews and Partners Estate Agents as a business with an ulterior purpose: the development of charities. He created the Christian Initiative Trust and Christian Book Promotion Trust in 1967. Andrews & Partners is 100% owned by the three trusts, who are its only shareholders. His powers of inspiration were rooted in his own beliefs in his causes.

Cecil Jackson-Cole was born on 1 November 1901 at 27 Knox Road, Forest Gate, London, the elder child and only son (there was another son from a later marriage) of Albert Edward Cole, a dealer in new and secondhand furniture, and his wife (who was also his cousin), Nellie Catherine Jackson. He had a sister called Winifred Gertrude Cole (born in 1906). He had an unsettled childhood, as his father moved so frequently that he spent an average of only nine months at each of the many schools he attended. In 1911 they lived at Whitehall Road, Grays, Essex and his father was a Credit Boot and Shoe Dealer and his mother a Retail China and Glass Merchant. In 1914, the family lived on Ashton Street, in Poplar, London and Cecil and Winifred attended Prospect Terrace School. Cecil's Father Albert, fought in World War 1 in the Birkenhead Bantam Battalion. Cecil decided to leave education to start working full-time and provide for his family at the age of 13. He got a job as an Office Boy at George and John Nicksons General Provision Merchants on Tooley Street, London and left in 1918.

Cecil married Phyllis Cole in 1936 (who was also his cousin). When she died in 1956, he set up a Charitable Trust in her name; the Phyllis Trust. In 1973, Cecil married Theo Handley. They married in the UK and had a blessing at Delhi Cathedral; India.

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