Hawks family

Hawks
Current region	England
Members	Sir Robert Shafto Hawks (1768 - 1840) Joseph Hawks DL JP (1791 - 1873), Sheriff of Newcastle George Hawks DL JP, (1801 - 1863), Grand Master of the Knights Templar (Freemasonry), and Mayor of Gateshead Mary Hawks (b. 1829), wife of Major-General Richard Clement Moody, Kt. Colonel Richard Stanley Hawks Moody CB (1854 - 1930)
Connected members	Major-General Richard Clement Moody, Kt. Robert Stirling Newall Sir William Hutt William Crawshay II
Estate(s)	Pembroke Square, Kensington
One of the most powerful British industrial dynasties of the British Industrial Revolution. The Hawks owned iron manufacture and engineering companies in Northern England and in the City of London that employed over 2000 people and that exported worldwide using their own ships.

The Hawks family (c.1750 – 1889) was one of the most powerful British industrial dynasties of the British Industrial Revolution. The Hawks owned several companies in Northern England and in the City of London (including Hawks and Co., Hawks, Crawshay, and Stanley, and Hawks, Crawshay and Sons) all of which had the name Hawks in the company name,^[1] and which had iron manufacture and engineering, which they exported worldwide using their own ships, as their main enterprises. The Hawks family were involved in merchant banking, and in freemasonry, and in Whig free-trade politics. They developed areas of West London, including Pembroke Square, Kensington.

The Hawks reached the apogee of their power during the Victorian period, when they employed over 2000 persons, when their reputation for engineering and bridge-building was worldwide. Their Gateshead factories were termed New Deptford and New Woolwich after the location of two of its warehouses on the River Thames, at Deptford and at Woolwich. The company built the High Level Bridge across the River Tyne that was opened by Queen Victoria in 1849; and numerous bridges including in Constantinople and India; and lighthouses in France; and ironclad warships and materials for the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars; and large contracts for the East India Company. The Hawks produced the first iron boat, the Vulcan, in 1821.

Notable members included Sir Robert Shafto Hawks (1768 - 1840); Joseph Hawks DL JP (1791 - 1873), merchant banker and Sheriff of Newcastle; George Hawks (1801 - 1863), Grand Master of the Grand Cross Chapter of the Holy Temple of Jerusalem (Knights Templar); Mary Hawks (b. 1829), who was the wife of Richard Clement Moody, who was the founder of British Columbia; and Colonel Richard Stanley Hawks Moody CB (1854 - 1930), who was a distinguished British Army officer, and historian, and Military Knight of Windsor.

The poet Joseph Skipsey worked for the Hawks' Gateshead ironworks, from 1859 to 1863, until one of his children was killed in an accident at the works in 1863. The job was obtained for Skipsey by the James Thomas Clephan, who was the editor of the Whig sympathetic Gateshead Observer.