James Stevenson Kilpatrick, master plumber of Paisley, can hardly have imagined he was sowing the seed of a multi-national giant when he decided to diversity into the newfangled business of electrical contracting in the last year of the 19th century.
He knew nothing about it, but he realised it was the coming thing in the new century. He must also have been a man of youthful mind and sound constitution, for he launched this venture into the unknown at the age of 65.
He had been born and served his time in Gourock, moving to Paisley to set up shop as a master plumber in Gilmour Street at the tender age of 20 in 1854 (the year Florence Nightingale took her squad of nurses to the Crimea).
The commercial use of electricity for lighting and power did not get under way for another 30 years. Just before this era began, James moved his business to Dyers’ Wynd in 1880. He also raised a typically ample Victorian family of five daughters and four sons. Two of the sons, James and John, were taken into partnership.
It was John who teamed up with his father to launch the electrical business. Premises were found in Terrace Buildings at Paisley Cross and they included a basement that had previously housed a pub known unofficially to the citizenry as "The Dive". Counters and other furnishings were left undisturbed for years by the new occupants. This building of character, now demolished, was the birthplace of James Kilpatrick and Son, electrical contractors. The other son, James, stuck to plumbing. That business later moved to Old Sneddon Street and traded there as James Kilpatrick and Sons until about 1970.
Since neither father nor son knew about electrical work, they employed a series of managers, who in the first dozen years tended to move on to set up on their own account or better themselves in other ways. In these early days most of the work consisted of installing private plant in country houses. Since this was the heyday of upstairs/downstairs, it was quite common to omit the servants’ bedrooms when installing electric light. Somewhat later in the march of progress the servants got their electric light - with the switch outside the door where the mistress could control it.
In his seventies, James Kilpatrick suffered a personal tragedy. In 1907 his son Robert was sent to take charge of a branch in Greenock but, only a few years later, he died.
It was in 1912 that the business finally found a manager - its fifth - who not only stayed but was to become its first managing director. He was W.R. Scott, an incomer from Glasgow, but a good man all the same. In the year he arrived, the firm made a profit of £700 and the staff numbered seven.
The following year James Stevenson Kilpatrick finally called it a day and, as he bowed out, John formed a new partnership with Mr Scott. They had a working capital of £750, a loan of £1000 from the founder, and a lot of sympathetic help from their bankers.
This was enough for them to take the first step in the firm’s expansion by branching out into armature winding, for which they took over an additional workshop at Cumberland Court (the site was later occupied by the garage of the La Scala cinema). The country was then on the brink of the First World War, which inevitably brought further expansion. This included diversifying into electric welding. Before the war ended, the workforce had grown to 25, but the really significant development lay just ahead.