John Hutchinson was a chemist and industrialist who established the first chemical factory in Widnes, then Lancashire now Cheshire, England. He moved from working in a chemical factory in St Helens and built his own chemical factory in 1847 in the Woodend area of Widnes near to Widnes Dock by the junction of the Sankey Canal and the River Mersey. In this factory he manufactured alkali by the Leblanc process.

Widnes is an industrial town in the Borough of Halton, Cheshire, England, which at the 2021 census had a population of 62,400.