John Moores (British businessman)

Sir John Moores (25 January 1896 – 25 September 1993) was a British businessman and philanthropist.

In the early 1920s, John Moores, a young man from Manchester enjoyed dreaming up schemes to make money. When he did come into cash, most of it was sent to his widowed mother, Louisa. John, Colin Askham and Bill Hughes were friends who had worked together as Post Office messenger boys in Manchester. It was whilst looking for a new money-making idea that John Moores came across John Jervis Barnard, a Birmingham man who had latched onto the public’s growing passion for two things: football and betting. Barnard had devised a ‘football pool’, where punters would bet on the outcome of football matches. The payouts to winners came from the ‘pool’ of money that was bet, less 10 per cent to cover “management costs”. It had not been particularly successful. Clearly, Barnard was struggling to make a profit. Moores got hold of a Barnard pools coupon, and the three Manchester friends decided they could – and would – do it better. But they could not let their employers, the Commercial Cable Company, know what they were doing, or they would be sacked. No outside employment was allowed. That ruled out calling it the John Moores Football Pool, or anything like it. The solution to that particular problem came from Colin Askham. He had been orphaned as a baby and been brought up by an aunt whose surname was Askham, but he had been born Colin Henry Littlewood. And so, in 1923, the Littlewood Football Pool – as it was called originally – was started. Each of the three partners invested £50 of their own money into the venture, and with the help of a small, discreet and cheap printer they got to work. In 1923, £50 was a huge sum to invest in what – based on Barnard’s experience – was a precarious venture, and as John Moores himself recalled: “As I signed my own cheque at the bank, my hands were damp. It seemed such a lot of money to be risking.” A small office in Church Street, Liverpool, was rented and the first 4,000 coupons were distributed outside Manchester United’s Old Trafford ground before one Saturday match that winter. John Moores handed the coupons out himself, helped by some young boys eager to earn a few pennies.

It was not an instant success. Only 35 coupons came back. Bets totalled £4 7s 6d, and the 10 per cent deducted did not even cover the three men’s expenses. They needed to take the idea to another level, and quickly. So they decided to print 10,000 coupons, and took them to Hull, where they were handed out before a big game. This time, only one coupon was returned. Their venture was about to collapse almost as soon as it had begun. In the canteen of the Commercial Cable Company, the three partners had a hushed conversation. It was a crisis meeting. They had kept pumping money into the fledgling business, but midway through the 1924-25 football season it was still losing money. The three young men were each £200 lighter in the pocket, with no prospect of things improving. Bill Hughes suggested they cut their losses and forget the whole thing. Colin Askham agreed. They could see why John Jervis Barnard’s idea of a football pool had failed in Birmingham. They expected their friend John to concur, but instead he said: “I’ll pay each of you the £200 you’ve invested, if you’ll sell me your shares”. That faith eventually made him a billionaire, and helped earn him a knighthood. It also made Littlewoods Pools one of the best-known names in Britain.

With his brother, Cecil, John Moores founded the Littlewoods football pools business, and subsequently used their network of pools agents to establish a mail-order catalogue business. This was followed in 1937 by the opening of the first Littlewoods department store in Blackpool.

John Moores was chairman and major shareholder of Everton F.C.

In 1992, Liverpool Polytechnic took the name Liverpool John Moores University in his honour upon being granted University status.

The Littlewoods business passed to his daughter Lady Grantchester (née Betty Moores), widow of Kenneth Bent Suenson-Taylor, 2nd Baron Grantchester (1921–1995) and to his son Sir Peter Moores.

In the Sunday Times Rich List 2006 the Moores' family wealth was estimated at £1,160m.

Sources

Barbara Clegg, ‘Moores, Sir John (1896–1993)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 3 June 2006

External links

• John Moores painting competition