Philip Henman

Philip Sydney Henman (1899–1986) was a transport entrepreneur. He is best known today for being the creator of The Philip Henman Trust.

At age 15 Henman was severely ill and found himself bedridden for a year with fever and forced to leave his studies at Caterham School. After two years in the army, he spent a further two years queuing up at the dole office during The Great Depression that followed World War I. He then moved to London, where he found work running lighterage on two dilapidated ex-army barges on the River Thames.

Over the next thirty years Henman's natural genius for logistics turned the fledgling The General Lighterage Company, started in 1922, into a huge public international transport company. It later became in 1957 The Transport Development Group and then a public limited company (PLC) in 1982 re-registered as the Transport Development Group plc. The company now has over 7,000 employees across Europe.

TDG Plc timeline
1922 The General Lighterage Co Ltd. was formed from the lighterage department of the London Cologne Steam Ship Company.
1950 Became a public limited company.
1957 Changed its name to Transport Development Group.
1982 Re-registered as a plc – Transport Development Group plc.
2000 Changed its name to TDG plc.

The original aims of the trust, since its inception in 1986, were to continue funding causes supported by Henman during his lifetime but its remit has since changed focus.

After ten years the trust's trustees felt a need to restructure and a consultant was brought in to recommend more effective grant making. The trust now spends all its grant expenditure on long-term projects operated by major UK overseas development charities.

Henman was well known for his philanthropy. He took a personal interest in every cause he supported and today there are many memorials to his charity both in Britain and abroad. His list of Beneficiaries and benefactors, contained in a small diary that was discovered after his death, shows the enormous diversity of his interests and it is for this reason that the trust today has little restriction on the nature of the charities it will support. It is currently run by his two grandsons, Andrew and David Clarke, and his grandson in law, Jason Duffey. They trust is in the family and is likely to be run for many years.

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