John Thornton

John Thornton (1720–1790) was a British merchant and Christian philanthropist who became immensely wealthy through investment in the North Sea Russia trade, and as a result of his Christian faith, gave much of his money away to a huge number of good causes, in so doing becoming the greatest philanthropist of the eighteenth century. Hugely successful in business, it was said that at the time of his death in 1790, Thornton had become the second most wealthy man in Europe. Early life and career Descended from a Hull family that had included five generations of merchants and local council officers who had been involved in the North Sea trade for several generations, John Thornton was born in Clapham, south of London in 1720 and was to inherit a huge fortune from his father Robert Thornton of Yorkshire, (1692–1742), a merchant who was to become a director of the Bank of England. His grandfather, also called John (1664–1731), had been one of Hull’s leading exporters of lead and cloth to the Baltic nations in the early years of the eighteenth century. Thornton used his inherited wealth to further his own career as a merchant and banker, also investing heavily in the lucrative Russian and Baltic trades and the recently-founded sugar refining trade in Hull, in which he had become a partner. Through these interests he acquired enormous riches, a large proportion of which he donated to philanthropic causes. Conversion It is thought that Thornton became an evangelical Christian after his marriage to Lucy Watson (daughter of Samuel Watson, one of his partners in the sugar refining business), herself deeply religious, and through his friendship with Rev. Henry Venn, an Anglican preacher who had been appointed curate of Holy Trinity Church, Clapham, around 1754.