Charles Henry Perry

Charles Henry Perry was a member of the British industrial community in Yuzivka (modern Donetsk, Ukraine), the steel town founded in 1869 by Welsh ironmaster John Hughes. Following Hughes's establishment of the New Russia Company, hundreds of skilled engineers, metallurgists, and administrative personnel were brought from Great Britain to construct and operate blast furnaces, coal mines, and rail networks across the Donbas steppes. Perry belonged to this technical diaspora that provided the operational backbone for what became one of the largest heavy-industrial enterprises in Europe.

Within Hughesovka, the foreign staff established a self-contained expatriate community featuring dedicated housing, an Anglican church, a British school, and social clubs. Perry’s personal life was closely woven into this circle; in 1894, he married Elizabeth Mary James—who was born in Hughesovka to a Welsh family—at a ceremony in Odessa. Records and photographs of Perry and his family are preserved today in the Hughesovka Research Archive at the Glamorgan Archives in Wales, serving as an important historical record of Western industrial partnerships and community life in late 19th-century Ukraine.