James Duckworth

Sir James Duckworth (14 February 1840 – 1 January 1915) was a self-made English businessman from Rochdale, Lancashire who rose from poverty to start a large chain a grocery shops known popularly as "Jimmy Duck's" and entered politics as a Liberal. He served three times as Mayor of Rochdale, and was elected twice as a Member of Parliament (MP).

Early life Duckworth was born on 14 February 1840 at Balladen Brook, near Haslingden, Rossendale, Lancashire. His father Ralph was a poor weaver who had been the youngest of fourteen children, and found work in Rochdale. In his autobiography, Duckworth recorded that three weeks after his birth his mother carried him in her arms to join her husband, "begging her way over Ashworth Moor".

Ralph's father died when James three years old, who as the eldest of three sons was set to work at the age of six-and-a-half as a doffer in a cotton mill. He worked half-time until the age of eleven, when he began full-time work, (The doffer's job was at the end of the spinning process, replacing bobbins which had filled with thread with empty ones).

Fifty years later, he described his experiences to the House of Commons, when he spoke in favour of the Education of Children Bill, which raised the minimum working age to 12. In a speech which was widely circulated,

Duckworth attributed the success of his business to selling for cash at the lowest margins possible, and to selling goods "not because they were cheap but because they were good value". He claimed to be "the first to open shops in country districts and sell goods at the same prices as we sold them at in the town", and said that his methods reduced prices by "five to seven-and-a-half per cent". The brothers added further stores and by 1948, when the business became a public company, it had 180 stores. In 1958, North East based Wright's Biscuits purchased the business. During the 1960s Duckworths moved into supermarkets, but by the 1970s stores were either closed or transferred to another brand owned by Wright's or its sister company Moores Stores.

However, two years later he stood at the by-election in November 1897 in the Middleton division of Lancashire, following the death of the Conservative MP Thomas Fielden. Duckworth won the seat by only 300 votes (less than 3% of the total), but at the 1900 general election he was unseated by an even smaller margin by the Conservative candidate Edward Brocklehurst Fielden,

He was knighted on 18 December 1908 and died in 1915, aged 75.