John Joseph Mechi

John Joseph Mechi, born in London on 22 May 1802, was a silversmith, banker, inventor, and Alderman of the City of London. He made his fortune between 1830 and 1840 with the 'magic razor strop' that bears his name, though sales declined after the Crimean War when beards became fashionable. In 1840 he patented improvements in apparatus for lamps to carry off heat and products of consumption, used for external shop-window lamps. After studying English farming, he purchased about 130 acres at Tiptree Heath, one of the least productive districts in Essex, where he introduced deep drainage and steam power, making the farm profitable.

He served as a juror in art and science at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1855, and his 1857 publication How to Farm Profitably sold ten thousand copies in various forms. Financial ruin followed the failure of the Unity Joint Stock Bank in 1866, where he was a governor, and he died at Tiptree Hall on 26 December 1880.