Short answers, pulled from the story.
John Cockerill was an English-born industrialist, born at Haslingden, Lancashire, on the 3rd of August 1790, who became a central figure in Belgian industry. He built an ironworks at Seraing that by 1840 employed 3,000 people and ran sixteen steam engines producing 900 horsepower. He is remembered as the founder of the Belgian manufacturing industry.
Cockerill converted the former palace of the Prince Bishops of Liège at Seraing into a vertically integrated iron foundry and machine manufacturing complex. The foundry was established in 1817, a machine plant was added in 1819, and a coke-fired blast furnace came into operation in 1826.
Le Belge, made in 1835, was Belgium's first steam locomotive. It was produced at the Cockerill works in Seraing under John Cockerill's direction.
Military tensions between Belgium and the Netherlands in 1838-39 triggered a run on the banks, draining liquidity from the financial system. Cockerill's company could not survive the credit crisis and went bankrupt, with debts of 26 million francs against assets of only 15 million.
John Cockerill died in Warsaw on the 19th of June 1840 after contracting typhoid on his return journey from St. Petersburg, where he had travelled to seek financial help from Nicholas I of Russia. He left no heirs.
The company was reformed in 1842 as the Société pour l'Exploitation des Etablissements John Cockerill and later became Societe Anonyme Cockerill-Ougree in 1955. Steel operations continued through mergers, eventually becoming part of Cockerill-Sambre in 1981, with the Cockerill name retained until a 1998 merger with Usinor.