John Alexander Agnew

John Alexander Agnew (1872 – 2 August 1939) was a New Zealand mining engineer who worked with future United States president Herbert Hoover and later became chairman of Consolidated Gold Fields, the first chairman of the firm to be from a mining engineering background.

In his spare time he was a noted philatelist whose collection of Chinese stamps and postal history was regarded as one of the finest of his era.

In 1898 he moved to Western Australia where he worked for Bewick Moreing & Company under mining engineer and future American president Herbert Hoover.

[2] He became a director of Consolidated Gold Fields in 1922 and chairman in March 1933, succeeding the fourth Lord Brabourne.

[10] Agnew specialised in the stamps and postal history of China and built a collection that was rumoured to be housed in 60 albums and was regarded as one of the finest of his time.

[12] In 1929, he displayed his collection of "The Treaty Ports of China" to the society and his paper on that subject was published in the journal for December 1929.

[11] In June 1939, Agnew left England on a tour of the mining interests of the Yukon Consolidated Gold Corporation, of which he was the president, on the edge of the Arctic Circle.