|
|
Post by 🏴☠️ Neath West 🏴☠️ on Dec 23, 2019 7:07:36 GMT
3. London School Board Election 1900 Finsbury:Mrs Dibdin (Moderate) 13,759 Mr A J Mundella (Progressive) 11,725 The Revd E F Farrar (Progressive) 11,290 Miss Eve (Progressive) 11,155 The Revd R F Hosken (Moderate)10,873 Mr J W Sharp (Progressive)10,704 not elected:The Revd WH Thompson (Moderate)10,099 Mr A B Russell (Progressive)9,261 Mr W J Barwick (Ind) 4,617 Mr C Bowden (Ind Progressive) 405 The Evening Standard noted that a woman topped the poll for the second election running (previously it was Miss Eve). The A J Mundella here is the nephew of the famous Liberal MP for Sheffield, who had died in 1897.
Far from clerics being absent from politics as many these days apparently wish, they were all over the place in this election, and as much in the Moderate cause as the Progressive one.
Were they of the established Church, or was Finsbury like some mini-Ulster back then? |
|
|
|
Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Dec 23, 2019 9:11:11 GMT
The Evening Standard noted that a woman topped the poll for the second election running (previously it was Miss Eve). The A J Mundella here is the nephew of the famous Liberal MP for Sheffield, who had died in 1897.
Far from clerics being absent from politics as many these days apparently wish, they were all over the place in this election, and as much in the Moderate cause as the Progressive one.
Were they of the established Church, or was Finsbury like some mini-Ulster back then? School Board elections were mostly fought on religious lines. CofE priests stood for the Moderates (or Conservatives), nonconformists for the Progressives (or Liberals). There were RC priests, and secular candidates. |
|
|
|
Post by finsobruce on Dec 23, 2019 10:02:52 GMT
4. The London School Board Election 1900 GreenwichThe Revd F Storer-Clark (Moderate)13,588 Mrs Bridges-Adams (Labour) 13,497 Mrs E A H Jay (Moderate)13,236 The Revd J Wilson (Progressive) 12,173 not elected:Mr G S Warmington (Progressive) 11,858 This result is a gain for the Moderates with Mr Warmingtons' vote apparently halving from the previous election (with turnout well down all round). Mrs Bridges-Adams was a well know figure in Labour Education circles and in a fortuitous railway reference had married the son of the man who invented both the Adams axle and the railway fishplate. She had first been elected in 1897, having failed in 1894.
She was described by Thomas Gautrey, a Progressive member of the LSB as "that communist woman from Woolwich". Jane Martin has written two articles about her one entitled "that awful woman?".
In September 1908 Revd F Storer-Clark wrote a letter to the "Kentish Mercury" soliciting donations of toys and books for the children of the workhouse in Greenwich. The curate of St Peters Greenwich, he had also been involved in the temperance movement and I've found him delivering a lecture in Barnet on the subject of temperance reform in Norway "which a few years ago was noted for its drunkenness" . The lecture was accompanied by "splendid dissolving views" provided by Mr J Weston, presumably delivered via some sort of magic lantern.
|
|
|
|
Post by finsobruce on Dec 26, 2019 20:01:59 GMT
5. The London School Board election 1900 HackneyMr Howard Kennedy (Progressive) 16,456 Rev Stuart Headlam (Progressive) 15,765 Earl of Shaftesbury (Moderate) 13,648 Mr Graham Wallas (Progressive) 13,425 Mr W Clive Bridgeman (Moderate) 12,452
not elected Mr John Lobb (Ind Progressive) 7,891 Mr W Roston Bourke (Moderate) 1,090 The result here represents a Moderate gain from Progressive, although as Mr Lobb had been elected in 1897 as an Independent Progressive, not a straightforward one. Some famous people here: Graham Wallas, Socialist, secularist and one of the founders of the LSE.
Stuart Headlam, Christian Socialist whose views got him dismissed from every curacy he held.This related particlarly on his attempts to improve the image of the arts and the stage in particular in the eyes of the Church. Also has a claim to fame as the person who paid half of Oscar Wilde's bail money when he went on trial.
The dates would suggest that this is the 9th Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley-Cooper who, in an unusual local government double became Lord Mayor of Belfast in 1907.
W.Clive Bridgeman was Tory MP for Oswestry (1904-1929) and a government whip in the First World War coalition.Then as a founder member of the 1922 committee instrumental in bringing down the same coalition. I don't know if John Lobb was connected to the prestigious boot and shoe firm of the same name, but he was also a councilman for the ward of Farringdon Without in the City of London from 1887 to 1905, until defeated there too. He startled nonconformist and progressive circles by converting to spiritualism in 1904, giving many talks on the subject thereafter.
No idea why Mr Bourke polled so much worse than his Moderate running mates, but I will endeavour to find out. His nomination listed him as the principal of Holloway College.
Kennedy is recorded as a journalist - he had edited the Times Weekly in a short period between his two periods of residence in Canada.
|
|
|
|
Post by gwynthegriff on Dec 26, 2019 20:21:24 GMT
Birmingham Corporation elections December 26th 1838St Martin's ward
Radical listJ Rodway 110 T Phillips 108 T Weston 105 Tory listT Hill 68 James James 66 F R Welsh 63 Let us pause for a minute to consider the cruelty of Mr James's parents. I know of a Councillor Head whose parents named him Richard. Unkind. (Though he wasn't a councillor at the time.)  |
|
|
|
Post by gwynthegriff on Dec 26, 2019 20:29:08 GMT
Were they of the established Church, or was Finsbury like some mini-Ulster back then? . CofE priests stood for the Moderates (or Conservatives), nonconformists for the Progressives (or Liberals). There were RC priests, and secular candidates. As were Poor Law Guardians elections, in Wales certainly. Anglican, landed, Conservative English-speakers v Nonconformist, small businesspeople, Liberal Welsh-speakers |
|
|
|
Post by 🏴☠️ Neath West 🏴☠️ on Dec 27, 2019 17:58:26 GMT
School Board elections were mostly fought on religious lines. CofE priests stood for the Moderates (or Conservatives), nonconformists for the Progressives (or Liberals). There were RC priests, and secular candidates. As were Poor Law Guardians elections, in Wales certainly. Anglican, landed, Conservative English-speakers v Nonconformist, small businesspeople, Liberal Welsh-speakers I can't help reading that in the Wenglish sense of those Anglican Conservatives being absolutely landed on account of winning the election... :-) |
|
|
|
Post by finsobruce on Dec 30, 2019 9:44:29 GMT
6. The London School Board election 1900 East LambethMr T Gautrey (Progressive) 14,046 The Rev A W Jephson (Progressive) 13,435 Mr G C Whiteley (Progressive) 12,571 Mr H C Gooch (Moderate) 9,144 not electedMr J G Laing (Moderate) 8,335 Mr Harry Quelch (Socialist)4,159 Mrs Bracey-Wright (Progressive) 1,092
Some interesting people here too. The report noted that Mrs Bracey-Wright was deemed a representative of the Labour party. She was a member of the Camberwell board of (Poor Law) Guardians, and in 1914 was sued by the Doctor in charge for alleging cruelty, as he had administered corporal punishment to some of the boys in his charge, using a rubber stethoscope or long lengths of string (which apparently hurt more).
She was also known as the Countess de Lormet, being a descendent of one of Napoleon's officers at Waterloo and her obituary in 1939 claimed that she had been the first woman to fight a borough election in London (with her coat of arms painted on her electoral address) and was locally known as the "Poor people's friend". She lived in the area for fifty years, saying towards the end of her life that "she had found peace in the Old Kent Road".
Harry Quelch was a very important figure in the history of the 'far left' in Britain and Lenin was a great admirer. He was born the son of a blacksmith in Hungerford and went on to ( among other things), become the editor of the "Justice" newspaper which I covered in another post. Sticking with Hyndman and the SDF when William Morris split to form the ostensibly more left wing Socialist League, he would certainly have been among the leading lights of the Communist party of Great Britain had he not died relatively young in 1913. He stood for parliament on several occasions, including the notable double of being a candidate in Southampton (1906) and Northampton (1910).
Thomas Gautrey, apart from calling the Labour candidate in Greenwich "that communist woman" pops up in political history as the defeated Liberal candidate in the Peckham by election of 1908. The seat had been one of the Liberal gains in the landslide victory of 1906, and Gautrey as a long term local resident and School board member should have been a good candidate to defend the gain. However, the Tories made an emphatic re-gain, despite local Labour activists deciding not to stand a candidate. There are many points of interest in this by election which is worth and essay in itself but on a subject we often discuss, note that The Tory colours were Red and the Liberals colours Blue!
The Moderate Mr Henry Gooch was the successful candidate in the same by-election and made much of Liberal attempts to limit the number of local licences for beer houses and pubs.
Mr Whiteley was at this point the longest serving School Board member, this being his seventh successive election victory.
|
|
|
|
Post by finsobruce on Dec 31, 2019 10:58:28 GMT
7. The London School Board election 1900 West LambethMr T J Macnamara MP (Progressive) 23,059 The Rev W Hamilton (Progressive) 21,921 The Rev J Hughes (Progressive) 21,034 The Rev Allen Edwards (Moderate) 19,472 Mr S Cresswell (Moderate) 19,035 Mr J Sinclair (Progressive) 16,917 not electedMr H Lynn (Moderate) 13,646 Mr T Tunmer (Independent) 324 The Evening Standard seems very bored with the result which was the same as the last time out, albeit with a new Progressive candidate elected.
T J Macnamara was the Liberal MP for Camberwell North (1900-18) and Camberwell NW (1918-24) having been successively a teacher, editor of "The Schoolmaster" magazine and President of the National Union of Teachers. He served in government under Campbell-Bannerman, Asquith and Lloyd George. His daughter Elsie Elias was Liberal candidate in Southwark SE in 1923.
We might hope for some interest from the Independent candidate Mr Tunmer as non Progressive or Moderate candidates were thin on the ground. The Stage noted that he had been "long associated with the theatrical press" and hoped that , if elected, he would agitate for "greater attention to decent articulation - to say nothing of elecution - in the board's curriculum" going on to say that he could also bring expertise on "the management of schools in Belgium and France". He seems to have been the secretary of the 'Brixton Discussion Forum'. I've found an earlier reference to a Board of Guardians panel doctor who lived on the New Kent Road, who might be some sort of relative. Tunmer seems to be a Suffolk name as there was a drapers of that name in Ipswich for many years. Also a much advertised type of tennis racket... |
|
|
|
Post by Pete Whitehead on Dec 31, 2019 12:08:07 GMT
I'd be interested to know what the boundaries of East and West Lambeth were. It seems odd that a borough with such a long thin vertical shape as Lambeth then had should have East and West divisions at all (presumably there were North and South divisions as well)
|
|
|
|
Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Dec 31, 2019 12:38:47 GMT
The current boroughs of London did not exist at the time the School Board for London was established in 1870 - London was still governed using the Vestry system based on parishes. The original boundaries for SBL divisions were set using various provisions but most derived from the Parliamentary boroughs. Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Southwark, Westminster and Chelsea were identical to the Parliamentary boroughs. Finsbury was almost exactly the same but added Furnival's Inn and Staple Inn (small extraparochial areas included within the City) and excluded the detached part in Alexandra Palace. The City division lost Furnival's Inn and Staple Inn.
Marylebone had the Parish of St John, Hampstead added to it for School Board elections. Greenwich added the rest of Greenwich and Woolwich parishes not included in the Parliamentary borough, and also Plumstead and Lewisham.
Lambeth was originally the Parliamentary borough of Lambeth plus Wandsworth district (as created by the Metropolis Management Act) and all parts of Lambeth and Camberwell parishes outside the Parliamentary borough.
When it was divided in 1885, East Lambeth consisted of the parishes of St Mary Newington and Camberwell; West Lambeth of the parishes of Lambeth and the Wandsworth district.
|
|
|
|
Post by finsobruce on Jan 1, 2020 10:09:57 GMT
8. The London School board election 1900 MaryleboneMr E Barnes (Moderate) 21,135 The Rev E S Smith (Moderate) 15,744 Mr W M Graham-Harrison (Moderate)14,753 Miss S Lawrence (Moderate) 14,513 Mr J A Murry Mcdonald (Progressive) 12,676 Mrs Miall Smith (Progressive) 12,647 Hon L Stanley (Progressive) 12,644 not electedMr J A Shepheard (Progressive) 11,356 The Rev H E B Arnold (Ind) 1,328 Mr J Leighton (Ind) 737 Mr E Hopes (Ind) 558 Mr A Samuels (Ind) 429 Moderate gain of one, Mr Shepheard having been a sitting member of the board.
Miss S Lawrence is Susan Lawrence later Labour MP for East Ham North (1923-4/1926-31). She moved from being a Conservative to Labour after serving on the London County council, and going on to be one of the Poplar councillors who went to prison in 1921 over rate setting.
Mr Barnes is recorded as a retired teacher, which if his teaching career had been local, might go a long way to explain why his vote was so much larger even than those of his fellow moderates.
I haven't been able so far to deduce why there were so many independents here, or if they stood on a unified slate and why, and why they polled so badly, but I do know something of John Leighton. Leighton was a very highly regarded artist particularly in the field of book illustration and he had stood, very unusually, as an Independent in the St Pancras North constituency in 1890 (by election) 1892 and 1895 polling 29,35 and 29 votes respectively.
His running mates (if they were such) were Mr Samuels, listed as a jeweller, Mr Emmanuel Hopes listed as a journeyman bootmaker and the Rev Henry Edgeworth Bicknell Arnold listed as a clerk in holy orders. Although given that he polled well ahead of the other three I suspect Arnold was standing separately from them.
Mr Stanley had his nomination papers signed by Mr Asquith. I'm guessing that this is Edward Lyulph Stanley 4th Baron Stanley and Liberal MP for Oldham (1880-85) who had been first elected a board member in 1876. Wikipedia says he only served until 1896 which is either wrong or this is Stanley's son - but I suspect the former as newspaper reports of Stanley's nomination talk of him as a long standing contributor to London education
|
|
|
|
Post by finsobruce on Jan 1, 2020 20:06:40 GMT
9. The London School board election 1900 Southwark Rev W F Brown (Independent) 9,310 Rev J Scott Lidgett (Progressive) 7,036 Miss Honnor Morten (Progressive) 6,083 Mr J M T Dumphreys (Moderate) 5,331 not electedMr T H Flood (Moderate) 5,213 Rev Brown was actually a Catholic priest, so G K Chesterton would have been interested to note that Father Brown topped the poll. He was just ahead of the Rev John Scott Lidgett, a very famous man in Methodist circles at this time who had lead an attempt to move Methodism from evangelism to social concern and action.
Miss Honnor Morten caught my eye as an early woman candidate who I'd never come across before. She had previously stood in Hackney and had been accounted an Independent , previous to becoming a Progressive. She was a qualified midwife and I have found that she wrote a short story for the 1892 summer number of "The Graphic" entitled " The Story of a Nurse" which the advert said "would interest all those who take pleasure in alleviating human suffering", and in 1901 named as the editor of the new edition of the letters of Abelard and Heloise. In 1905 she moved to Rotherfield in Sussex to found a Tolstoyan community, having previously started a 'settlement' in Hoxton. A great supporter of women's suffrage she resigned her seat on the LSB when her crusade to end the corporal punishment of girls gathered little support.
Mr Dumphreys was accounted a very notable working class Tory, being variously councillor and Mayor of Bermondsey and then in 1909 a surprise candidate for the by election in the parliamentary seat when the putative Tory standard bearer was out of the country. He won a somewhat surprising victory but was defeated at the first general election of 1910. In 1885 he had stood against the then Liberal Joseph Chamberlain in his seat of Birmingham West. Dumphreys opponents in the 1909 by election were quite notable too, being the Liberal writer and journalist Spencer Leigh Hughes and Labour's Dr Alfred Salter who later won the seat himself.
|
|
|
|
Post by finsobruce on Jan 1, 2020 20:42:12 GMT
10. The London School Board Election 1900 Tower Hamlets
Sir Charles Elliott (Moderate) 19,924 Rev F C Beckley (Independent) 17,134 Mr G L Bruce (Progressive) 15, 824 Mrs Frances Homan (Progressive) 14,401 Rev C Schnardhorst (Progressive) 14,382 not electedMr H Luttman Johnson (Moderate) 11,068 Mr G Hewitt 10,350
This seat saw the only Progressive gain of the election making Sir Charles Elliott's achievement of topping the poll even more notable. Elliott had enjoyed a long career in the Indian Service as they used to call it, culminating in being appointed Lieutenant Governor of Bengal. Rev F C Beckley was actually another Catholic priest, so properly, Father Beckley who had given long service in the district. Rev Schnardhorst was a Methodist (?) minister in Bow, having previously been in Birmingham which must make him some sort of relative of the Schnardhorst who was Joseph Chamberlain's agent for a long time and the man who could be said to have invented the "liberal caucus" ie individual party membership and activity which made the Birmingham Liberals (before Chamberlain's defection) such an impressive electoral machine.
Mr Hewitt's party label is not listed in the results provided by the Evening Standard, and he's not an easy man to trace but I have found an advert in "Justice" (that paper again) and another in the 'Tower Hamlets advertiser which describes him as a Social Democratic Labour candidate, perhaps even a direct nomination of the SDF. Either way, he did pretty well.
I was going to make a joke that they were still counting the votes, but as you can see I resisted that. |
|
|
|
Post by finsobruce on Jan 1, 2020 21:24:21 GMT
11. The London School Board Election 1900 Westminster Major Skinner (Moderate) 7,818 Viscount Morpeth (Progressive) 6,288 Mr C Y Sturge (Moderate) 5,803 Hon Maude Lawrence (Progressive) 5,479 Mr Sydney Gedge (Moderate) 5,104 not electedMiss M A Lewis (Moderate) 4,938 Mr R Chivers (Moderate) 478 And last but not least, Westminster.
Sydney Gedge was a prominent Anglican and Tory MP for Stockport (1886-92) and Wallsall (1895-1900) having previously fought Luton and Cambridge. Interestingly he had been solicitor to the School Board for twenty years from 1870.
Clement Young Sturge doesn't seem to leave many traces in the papers, but when he died in 1911 he left £1,500 to the Bishop of Southwark for the adornment of Southwark Cathedral. The Pall Mall Gazette described him as "that strange mixture of a Quaker and a Churchman". Which would explain why I've found a reference to him editing the letters of an early Quaker, published in 1905.
|
|
|
|
Post by David Ashforth on Dec 1, 2020 18:52:34 GMT
|
|
john07
Labour & Co-operative
Posts: 15,774 
|
Post by john07 on Dec 6, 2020 1:22:06 GMT
Birmingham Corporation elections December 26th 1838St Paul's wardRadical listF Clark 162 J Hardman jnr 150 G Lucas 141 Tory listD Malins 129 Souter 128 Marshall 124 This is the one ward for which there is some commentary, the newspaper noting that the Tory Mr Malins was ahead at noon and hopeful of victory, but he was overtaken in the afternoon and all efforts to reverse the trend were unsuccessful.
Maybe there were a bundle of postal votes that Mr Malins had not expected to arrive? He then resorted to Twitter and cried ‘foul’! He then launched multiple legal challenges and blamed just about everyone for the result. He engaged an incompetent Italian lawyer and called a meeting at a well-known Garden Centre. He was pretty well abandoned by all his supporters apart from his loyal sidekick ‘Kipper’. It did not end well after ‘Kipper’ was smoked out. |
|
|
|
Post by David Ashforth on Dec 24, 2020 20:25:41 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by casualobserver on Sept 21, 2022 0:44:05 GMT
The School Board used the 'accumulative vote' system. Each elector had as many votes as there were seats in their district, but could choose to use multiple votes on individual candidates. This helped smaller groups because they would run only one candidate and still stand a chance of getting elected. F.W. Buxton was Francis William Buxton, not Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton. One lives and learns. I always thought that that electoral system was originally devised by Hari Seldon for Cleon I. |
|
neilm
Non-Aligned
Posts: 25,023
|
Post by neilm on Oct 7, 2022 17:28:04 GMT
Just to clarify..
There are 10 seats in my school board district. I have ten votes. I can allocate them to three people say, 5-3-2 or 8-1-1 or whatever?
|
|
