William Cockerill

William Cockerill (1759–1832) was an English inventor, entrepreneur, and industrialist. Designing and producing machines for new industrial textile manufacturing, he is best known for having established a major manufacturing firm in what is now Liège Province of modern-day Belgium. He is widely considered to have been instrumental in spreading the Industrial Revolution in Continental Europe.

Biography William Cockerill was born in Haslingden, Lancashire in 1759, but little is known about his early life. He initially worked as a blacksmith in England and was said to be exceptionally skilled as a mechanical engineer and model maker. He was probably married in this period but enjoyed little commercial success.

Russia and Sweden Cockerill was recommended to the Empress Catherine the Great as a skilled craftsman and settled in Saint Petersburg in the Russian Empire in 1794. However, his prospects of advancement collapsed after Catherine's death in 1796. Her successor, Paul I, imprisoned him after he failed to complete a model on time. Cockerill escaped to the Kingdom of Sweden where he was employed as an engineer, constructing canal locks. However, civil engineering did not suit him. Cockerill heard of the wool industry emerging around the city of Liège in modern-day Belgium which had recently been occupied by France. Although the French Revolutionary Wars were still ongoing, Cockerill decided that his prospects would be better there as a machine-maker. At Hamburg, he offered to return to England rather than help the French if he was awarded a pension in exchange. However, he heard nothing and after six months arrived in the Low Countries where he travelled to Amsterdam and then the pays de Liège. He then brought his family from England and settled in Belgium. He became a French citizen in 1810 and, in 1813, imported a Watt steam engine.