Sir John Reeves Ellerman, 1st Baronet, CH (15 May 1862 – 16 July 1933) was an English shipowner and investor, believed to be the richest man in England.
His shipping interests were combined into the giant Ellerman Lines, and he also invested in newspapers, breweries, coal, and prestige London property.
Ellerman was born in Kingston upon Hull, the only son of a Lutheran ship broker and corn merchant who had emigrated to England from Hamburg, Germany in 1850, and an English mother.
[3] Ellerman spent part of his childhood in France and briefly attended King Edward VI School in Birmingham.
He continued to expand the business, making inroads into the South African, Atlantic and Indian routes while buying rival lines on a regular basis.
In 1916 he paid £4.1 million (equivalent to £351,130,000 in 2023) for Thomas Wilson Sons & Co. of Hull, which had once been the largest privately owned shipping line in the world[citation needed].
[5] By 1917, Ellerman owned 1.5 million tons of shipping, equivalent to the entire French merchant navy[citation needed].
Aristocrats such as the Duke of Bedford, Lord Howard de Walden and Earl Cadogan were increasingly selling off slices of the freehold West End estates which had been in their families for centuries and Ellerman was often the buyer.
[4] He was created a baronet of Connaught Square in the Metropolitan Borough of Paddington on 11 December 1905[6] in appreciation of his contribution to British shipping needs during the Boer War, but he could readily have obtained a higher honour if he had wanted one.
At this time, the Duke of Westminster was generally reckoned to be the second-richest man in the United Kingdom, with a fortune of around £14 million.