Octavius Wigram

Octavius Wigram (18 December 1794 – 20 May 1878) was an English businessman and ship owner in the City of London, a member of Lloyds and Governor of the Royal Exchange Assurance Corporation.

Life Born at Walthamstow House, Walthamstow, on 18 December 1794, despite his name Wigram was the twelfth child and seventh son of Lady Eleanor and Sir Robert Wigram, 1st Baronet (1744–1830) His father was a merchant shipbuilder and Tory politician who had a total of twenty-three children. He was educated privately at Shacklewell, and at the age of sixteen he entered his father's counting-house. In 1819 he became a director of the Royal Exchange Assurance Company, remaining with the company until his death.

Wigram joined the London and Westminster Light Horse (a Volunteer regiment) as a trooper. At the coronation of King George IV at Westminster Abbey in 1820, Wigram was on duty, guarding one of the doors of the Abbey, when the new king's estranged wife Queen Caroline tried unsuccessfully to enter the Abbey by force. She was turned away. In 1822 he was commissioned as a cornet in the same regiment.

Wigram was a partner in Huldart's Patent Cables Company and Reid's Brewery Company, was on the Committee of Lloyd's Register of Shipping, and was a member of a Royal Commission of inquiry into the law governing pilots. and the next year the Company presented him with his portrait in oils by George Richmond. He died on 20 May 1878.

Wigram's eldest son, William Knox Wigram, born on 13 September 1825, became a barrister and married Mary Anne Pomeroy, the daughter of the 5th Viscount Harberton (1790–1862). Their sons Sir Henry Francis Wigram (1857–1934) and William Arthur Wigram were notable business men in New Zealand.