Richard Ellis was an English builder, property developer, alderman, mayor, and a public benefactor to his town. The son of a blacksmith, he was a self-made man who started as a joiner and became a rich developer who joined High and Low Harrogate into a single town, helped obtain a Charter of Corporation, and promoted the erection of civic buildings appropriate for a spa town. Thus he became known as the Bismarck of Harrogate, his achievement in joining two villages to create a single town having been wittily compared in the 19th century with Bismarck's unification of Germany.

A self-made man, is a person whose success is of their own making.