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JACKSON,¹ Sir John, CVO, MP, FRSE (1851–1919), contractor, was born on 4 February 1851 at 15 Coney Street, York, the youngest of the four sons and a daughter of Edward Jackson (1786–1859), goldsmith, and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of David Ruddock of Horbury, Yorkshire. He was educated at Holgate Seminary in York, and in 1866 was apprenticed to Thompson, Boyd & Co., marine engine manufacturers of Spring Gardens Engineering Works, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In 1869 he proceeded to Edinburgh University, where he won prizes for engineering, surveying, and political economy. Several of his fellow-students, including P. W. ***Meik and James ***Walker, remained lifelong friends. He left in 1871 without graduating, which was not unusual at that time, and returned to Newcastle, where he worked for his brother, William Edwin Jackson, twenty-two years his senior and a well-established contractor, before establishing his own firm in 1875.