Sir James Duckworth (14 February 1840 – 1 January 1915) was a self-made English businessman from Rochdale, Lancashire who rose from poverty to found a large chain a grocery shops known popularly as "Jimmy Duck's" and entered politics as a Liberal. He served three times as Mayor of Rochdale, and was elected twice as a Member of Parliament (MP). Early life Duckworth was born on 14 February 1840 at Balladin Brook, near Haslingden, Rossendale, Lancashire. His father Ralph was a poor weaver who had been the youngest of fourteen children, and found work in Rochdale. In his autobiography, Duckworth recorded that three weeks after his birth his mother carried him in her arms to join her husband, "begging her way over Ashworth Moor". Ralph's father died when James three years old, who as the eldest of three sons was set to work at the age of six-and-a-half as a doffer in a cotton mill. He worked half-time until the age of eleven, when he began full-time work, (The doffer's job was at the end of the spinning process, replacing bobbins which had filled with thread with empty ones). Fifty years later, he described his experiences to the House of Commons, when he spoke in favour of the Education of Children Bill, which raised the minimum working age to 12. In a speech which was widely circulated, he attributed his own good health and six-foot stature to the "survival of the fittest", noting: By the age of fourteen he was earning 15 shillings per week and was the main support of his family. At seventeen, he joined the Royal Marines, but served only for about eight months. In his teens he attended a night school, but irregularly, and did not study seriously until he was 20, when he began to attend evening classes and to study arithmetic, writing, grammar, composition and elocution. When the Lancashire Cotton Famine devastated the local economy in 1862, Duckworth had a wife and child to support. Having considered emigration to the United States, he escaped unemployment with a job in the warehouse of a wool merchant, and later described this as the turning point in his career. He later he became town missioner in Heywood, but his health collapsed and he had to relinquish the job. Business career He was advised that an active, outdoor life would restore his health, so on the suggestion of a