Alexander Tom Cussons
The family partnership purchased a farm in Kersal in Manchester which was above an old bleach works at the foot of the hill.
In 1907 the partnership bought this factory and began manufacturing soap, glass bottles and many other products.
In 1920 Cussons purchased an established perfumers named Piesse & Lubin based in London, which was eventually absorbed into the main business in Manchester and ceased to exist in the 1950s.
[6] Cussons grew into a large multinational company, with sales and factories in many Commonwealth countries.
Tom Cussons established the company head office at 84 Brook Street, London in the district of Mayfair.
Marjorie married Leslie Goodwin (a Manchester Soap Maker and former managing director of Cussons Sons and Company Ltd).
They had two children, Hugh Cussons Goodwin (later Marketing Director of Cussons) and Natalie Jane Goodwin (a qualified concert pianist and later a leading female racing driver in the 1960s becoming British Women's champion three times and the only woman to race professionally at Monaco).
After joining the family firm in Manchester at Cussons Sons and Company limited, his father sent him out to South Africa to run the factory that his sister Marjorie and her husband Leslie Goodwin had founded before the war.
He became well known and well respected in the business community in Durban and the midlands, and died in 1986 after a debilitating illness that left him bed bound for the last 9 months of his life.
Jeremy attended Marlborough school, and was a successful county tennis player during his teens, before he contracted poliomyelitis in 1968 in Germany, where he was treated at Cologne hospital for many months.
Richard Cussons married Suzanne in 1979 and they have had four children: Julie,(1983) who died at the age of two, Hazel (1985) who lives in Knutsford, Elizabeth (1988) who works in the banking sector in Germany, and Alexandra (1990) who is studying for her M.A.
He has been in retail, when he was Chairman of the Knutsford Chamber of Commerce in the 1990s, and subsequently retrained to be a teacher of Theology and Philosophy at Secondary schools and a VIth form college in Cheshire, a successful change of career move, as he achieved outstanding results for his students.
Suzanne is a highly qualified Psychotherapist (BSc, BA, MA) with a private practice in Cheshire.
Leslie Nicholas ("Nick") Cussons married Geraldine Mary Ellis in September 1962 in Toft Church, Knutsford, Cheshire.
Simon was Vice Chairman and Executive President of Manchester City Football Club whilst managing the family firm.
Hugh was a talented musician and played in his own jazz band, The Sunset Seven, in the 1950s and 60s with his sister Natalie.
Hugh remarried Carol and had many happy years with her, living in Bowdon near Manchester, before he died in 2004 aged 68.
Alistair married Mandy Yates and lives in Cheshire and runs a recycling company.
Profoundly affected by the damage to the collection, he moved away from Salford to South Manchester, where he considered it safer.
The adverts showed a picture of Imperial Leather soap surrounded by orchids, with the tagline 'both equally exquisite'.
[10] Tom Cussons owned a Victorian mansion called ‘Oaklands’ in Kersal, Salford.
