Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mills, George (1808-1881)
MILLS, GEORGE (1808–1881), ship-builder, journalist, and novelist, born in 1808, was son of William Mills, lord provost of Glasgow 1833–6. He was educated at the university of Glasgow, and from 1827 to 1833 was manager for the company then started by his father to run steamers from Leith to London. From 1835, in partnership with Charles Wood, he carried on the business of shipbuilding at Bowling-on-the-Clyde, under the style of Wood & Mills. In 1838 the firm, the first, it is said, on the Clyde, began building iron steamers; they built also a large number of iron canal boats, many of which are still (1894) existent. In 1844, in consequence of the depression in the trade, Mills withdrew from the concern, and from 1845 to 1850 was a stockbroker; he was at the same time manager of the Bowling and Balloch Railway and of the Loch Lomond Steamboat Company. In 1857 he started the ‘Glasgow Advertiser and Shipping Gazette,’ a weekly penny paper, the first penny paper published in Glasgow. When in the following year the daily papers reduced their price to a penny, the ‘Gazette’ was beaten out of the field. After that Mills designed and had built, by Messrs. Tod & McGregor, a double-bodied steamer with central wheel, named the Alliance. She was the first steamer on the Clyde which had a saloon on deck, but she had not sufficient speed. She was sold, and afterwards, it is said, proved very successful as a blockade-runner, a service for which, with her slow speed and small carrying capacity, she does not seem to have been well adapted. She was lost in or about 1867. In 1869 Mills started a halfpenny paper, called ‘The Northern Star,’ in Aberdeen. It was given up in 1871. He was also for many years the literary critic of the ‘Glasgow Mail.’ In 1866 he started the Milton Chemical Works, which he carried on till his death. He was also the author of ‘Craigclutha: a Tale of Old Glasgow and the West of Scotland,’ 1857, ‘I remember,’ 1858, and ‘The Beggar's Benison, or a Hero without a Name, but with an Aim: a Clydesdale Story,’ 1866, 2 vols. post 8vo. They were all published anonymously; only the last is in the British Museum. Mills died at Glasgow in May 1881. He was married, and left issue one son.
[Information from the family.]