John A. Willox

Sir John Archibald Willox (9 June 1842 – 9 June 1905) was a British journalist, newspaper owner and Conservative Party politician from Liverpool. He rose through the ranks to become the owner of the Liverpool Courier newspaper and sat in the House of Commons from 1892 to 1905.

Willox was born in Edinburgh, the son of the journalist John Willox who also wrote several books related to shipping. His family moved to Liverpool, where he was educated at Liverpool College.

Leaving school in his mid-teens, Willox was apprenticed to the journalists Lee and Nightingale. They seconded him to the Liverpool Courier, which was then published twice each week. He became a sub-editor, then a partner in Tinling & Co which owned the paper. By 1863, aged only 21, he was the editor.

Under Willox's editorship, the paper promptly became a daily, with a Saturday Weekly Courier. The Evening Courier was established in 1870 and became the Evening Express.

He was a member of the Institute of Journalists and chairman of the Press Association in 1875 and 1900.

In 1884, he was an executor of the will of Thomas Cope, the founder of Cope Brothers tobacco merchants. He became a director of the company in 1885. When Thomas's brother George died in 1888 he became managing director, and married Thomas's widow, Sara (died 1904). who had ten children from her first marriage. She was a philanthropist, and 1897 she donated the £15,000 cost of constructing the Sanitorium for Consumptives at Delamere Forest in Cheshire.

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