John Corbett (industrialist)

John Corbett (bapt. 29 June 1817 – 22 April 1901) was an English industrialist, philanthropist and Liberal Party politician of the Victorian era. He is particularly associated with salt mining in Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire. Locally he was nicknamed The Salt King.

Born in Brierley Hill, Staffordshire, 1817 his father, Joseph Corbett, ran a successful canal transport business there. John joined the family business but by 1850 canals were facing increasing competition from the new and expanding railways.

John Corbett sold his share of the family canal business and, in 1853, purchased disused salt workings in Stoke Prior from the British Alkali Company. Corbett brought all the innovations of the industrial revolution to mechanise and commercialise the business, soon making his salt workings the largest in Europe and built a great fortune.

However he did not simply utilise this fortune just for his own ends, preferring to reinvest profits into the business processes, innovation and also into improving his workforce's working conditions and even raising wages. His workers were so well paid, for the time, that many could boast that their wives did not need to work at all.

He was elected at the 1874 general election as Member of Parliament (MP) for the Droitwich, having unsuccessfully contested the seat in 1868. He was re-elected at three subsequent general elections, joining the breakway Liberal Unionists when the Liberal Party split in 1886 over Home Rule for Ireland. Corbett retired from the House of Commons at the 1892 general election.

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