EXLIBMS ?# If J
SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL
BARONET
SIR FRANCIS
SHARP POWELL
BARONET
AND MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT
A MEMOIR
BY HIS NEPHEW
HENRY L. P. HULBERT, M.A., M.D., D.P.H.
Trin. Coll., Camb.
PUBLISHED BY
RICHARD JACKSON
1 6 & 17, COMMERCIAL STREET, LEEDS
1914
[all rights reservid]
TO MY DEAR AUNT,
ANNIE POWELL
7>2ht&
PREFACE.
Sir Francis Powell devoted himself, heart and
soul, to public life, and the greater part of this
Memoir deals with his public work and achievements.
The writer's aim has been to let these speak for
themselves and show what manner of man he was.
Only his main interests are described here, but his
love and patient mastery of detail frequently
enabled him to turn aside effectively from these
and to do much useful work by the way. Character-
istic instances of such work are given in the
reminiscences kindly contributed by Professor Hull
(see Appendix I).
Sir Francis was constantly giving away large
sums of money for public purposes. Comparatively
few of these gifts are mentioned here. His method
of giving is well illustrated by an anecdote, which
has the authority of Canon Leach. Soon after the
consecration of All Saints' Church, Sir Francis'
princely gift to Bradford, it was decided to proceed
with another of the ten new churches required by
the town, as a memorial to Mr. Charles Hardy. A
question was raised in committee as to whether
sittings for 500 or 600 persons should be provided.
Sir Francis happened to be there and asked that
the decision should be postponed. Within a few
days he wrote to the Secretary : " I have been to see
the ground ; the sight of that population is
irresistible ; the Church must be for 600. This
means an additional cost of 500, for which I will
send you my cheque in January."
The frontispiece and the photograph of his
statue at Wigan, presented with this Memoir, both
depict Sir Francis late in life, as most readers will
42JM <*^
PREFACE.
best remember him. A small copy in bronze of his
statue at Wigan has been presented by Lady
Powell to the Art Gallery in Manningham Park,
Bradford, and may now be seen there. He was of
medium height, with a massive head and broad
shoulders. His figure was long one of the most
familiar in the House of Commons, where he was
liked and respected for his cheery manner, hard
work, and independence of outlook, by all types of
politician. In business matters he was stern and
resolute, if opposed; but, when he had appeared
most irreconcilable, he sometimes yielded at last,
unexpectedly, and with the most charming grace.
Press cuttings, recording Sir Francis' speeches
and public appearances from 1863 until the end of
his life, have been carefully collected by Lady
Powell in eight quarto volumes. These have
afforded a mine of information, for which it has
been impossible to give references. The writer
has also received much generous help from " friends
in need," many of whom are personally unknown
to him. In addition to helpers mentioned in the
text, his best thanks are due to Dr. G. D. Liveing,
for information with regard to Sir Francis' career at
Cambridge they were contemporaries at St. John's
and life-long friends ; to Mr. Martin Tilby,
Secretary of the Central Church Committee ; to the
Rev. W. H. Keeling, Head Master of Bradford
Grammar School ; to Mr. A. J. Fowler, House
Master at Sedbergh, for much kindness and help ;
to Mr. Brian Fell, Clerk in the House of Commons ;
to Mr. Alderman Layland, for many years agent to
Sir Francis at Wigan and his devoted admirer ;
PREFACE.
to Rev. C. L. Hulbert, for help with the proofs ;
and to many personal friends.
The etchings of Sedbergh are reproduced by
permission of W. H. Beynon & Co., Cheltenham.
The old School House shows the School as Sir
Francis found it, when a boy there. It is meant to
be contrasted with its latest development, the
Powell Hall, which is one of the large group of
school buildings built under his auspices. The
plate of Horton Old Hall is from a large pen and
ink drawing by Mr. Isaac Watts, 570, Wakefield
Road, Bradford, and has been reproduced by his
kind permission.
Finally the writer hopes that those who have
kindly interested themselves in his book will
excuse the unforseen delay in its appearance. This
delay gives him the opportunity of recording that
the Jubilee of All Saints' Church, Bradford, has
just been celebrated. The preachers were the
Bishops of Bath and Wells, Richmond, Whalley
and Knaresborough ; the Archdeacons of Richmond
and Craven; and the Rev. the Hon. R. Parker,
Rector of Wem, formerly Curate at All Saints'.
The Bishop of Bath and Wells, Dr. Kennion, second
Vicar of All Saints', preaching to an overflowing
congregation on All Saints' Day, said how fitting it
would have been if "the wise, generous and
farseeing man," who had founded the Church,
could have been present ; and there were naturally
many other sympathetic references to Sir Francis.
H.L.P.H.
Brixworth, Northampton.
November, 191/?.
CONTENTS.
Chapter Pags.
I. Family History. School and College.
Main Events of after Life ... 9-30
II. Churches and Church Work. All
Saints' Church and Parish, Little
Horton, Bradford ... ... 31-51
III. Nineteen Parliamentary Elections... 52-69
IV. Do. Continued. ... 70-89
V. Education Elementary and Second-
ary Bradford, Wigan, Giggleswick 90-103
VI. Sedbergh School.... ... ... 104-114
VII. Technical and University Education.
Wigan. Yorkshire College. Leeds
University ... ... ... 115-122
VIII. Social and sanitary work ... 123-128
IX. Municipal life at Bradford. Freedom
of the City ... ... ... 129-136
X. Wigan. Freedom of the Borough and
and public statue ... ... 137-145
XI. Foreign Travel The Near East
and the Far West ... ... 146-156
XII. Private life and character. Last
days 157-164
Appendices ... 165-177
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Portrait of Sir Francis Sharp Powell, Bart. (Photo-
graph by London Stereoscopic Co.) Frontispiece
Horton Old Hall, Bradford
Facing Page
18
All Saints' Church, Little Horton Green
Bradford
The Old School, Sedbergh
The Powell Hall, Sedbergh
Statue of Sir F. S. Powell in Mesnes Park
Wigan
38
104
110
144
ERRATA.
For Fulligar read Fullagar, p. 21 line 6.
For charater read character, p. 56 line 21.
For Mr. E. E. Kerape read Mr. C. E. Kempe, p. 109 line 7.
Read (see pp. 32-3), p. 135 line 28;
For oppostion read opposition, p. 53, line 14.
For chapter read chapters, p. 90 line 4.
For decrepid read decrepit, p. 134 line 1.
CHAPTER I.
FAMILY HISTORY.
SCHOOL AND COLLEGE.
MAIN EVENTS OF AFTER-LIFE.
FRANCIS SHARP POWELL of Horton Old
Hall, Bradford, was born at Wigan on
June 29th, 1827, the year of the public-
ation of John Keble's Christian Year, and was
the eldest surviving son of eleven children. His
father, the Rev. Benjamin Powell, of Bellingham
Lodge, Wigan, and Incumbent of St. George's
Church, Wigan, died in 1861. He left property
which became the nucleus of Francis Powell's
Wigan estates.
His mother was Anne, the sole surviving
daughter and heiress of Elizabeth Wade (nee
Bridges), wife of the Rev. Thomas Wade,
Incumbent of Tottington, Lancashire. She died
in March, 1873. His only brother to survive
infancy was the Rev. Thomas Wade Powell,
Vicar of Aspatria, near Carlisle, who died in 1896.
His eldest sister is Elizabeth, widow of the late
IO SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
Right Rev. John Wareing Bardsley, Bishop of
Carlisle. She has two sons and three daughters
living. Her eldest son, Francis Sharp Bardsley,
will succeed to the Horton estates. His fourth
sister, Louisa Powell, married the Rev. C. A.
Hulbert, Incumbent of Slaithwaite and now
Rector of Castor and Honorary Canon of
Peterborough. She died in 1872, leaving two sons.
The elder, the Rev. Charles Lacy Hulbert, Vicar
of Great St. Mary's with St. Michael's Church,
Cambridge, will succeed to the Powell estates
in Wigan and Lancashire. The younger is the
writer of this Memoir. He had also three sisters
who survive him, Mary Anne, Jane Bridges and
Amelia Sharp Powell. Mr. F. S. Bardsley and
the Rev. C. L. Hulbert are both married and have
sons to carry on the succession.
His connection with the Sharp family of
Horton, Bradford, was. through his maternal
grandmother, Elizabeth Wade, co-heiress with
her brother, Francis Sharp Bridges, of Horton
Old Hall, who inherited the Yorkshire estates of
the Sharp family. Mr. Bridges had also two
sisters, Mrs. Lindley of Hallfield House, Bradford,
and Miss Jane Bridges, who lived with him for
many years at Horton Old Hall and died
unmarried.
It is remarkable that the male representa-
tives of the two branches of the Sharp family
FAMILY HISTORY. II
resident at Horton died within a year of each
other in the middle of the eighteenth century,
and that the succession has since been carried on
through heiresses. Abraham Sharp, the dis-
tinguished astronomer and the friend of Sir
Isaac Newton, died in July, 1742, and was the
last of the male line of the elder Cromwellian
and Puritan branch of the family. He lived at
Horton Hall, the larger house adjoining the Old
Hall, where his library and observation tower
still stand.
Isaac $harp, the last male representative of
the younger Royalist branch of the family which
lived in the Old Hall, died in the following year
(July, 1743). Dorothy, his surviving daughter
and heiress, married Francis Stapleton of Little
Horton and by two inter-marriages of the families
of Stapleton and Bridges the Horton estates
descended through heiresses to Francis Sharp
Powell's great uncle, Francis Sharp Bridges.
Mr. Bridges lived a long life at Horton Old Hall
and died a bachelor in 1844, a g e d seventy-eight.
It was by his will that Powell succeeded to his
Horton estates at the early age of seventeen.
Stories of his boyhood are few but his life-
long passion for all kinds of information and
the pertinacity with which he exhausted any
source of it which came his way, are illustrated
by one of them. When digging in the garden
12 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
with his brother (the late Rev. Thomas Wade
Powell), at Bellingham Lodge, Wigan, which
was then their home, the two brothers came on
coal. Imagining themselves the unexpected
owners of a seam, Francis proceeded to find out
how to make coal gas and is said to have
actually produced a short-lived flame. He
showed his inborn love of oratory by erecting a
pulpit in his nursery at an early age, into which
he used to ascend and deliver discourses to his
brother and sisters. His earliest schooldays were
spent at Wigan Grammar School. From Wigan
he went for a few terms to Uppingham School
and the following letter gives a vivid picture of
his life and strength of character at the age of
fourteen.
Uppingham,
April 30th, 1842.
Dear Papa,
" I hoped to have had the pleasure of
hearing from home, before now. We received
your last letter on Monday or Tuesday night.
Pray let me have the pleasure of hearing from
you soon. We have been doing (Edip :
Tyrannus of Sophocles during the week, at
least since Wednesday. Every Wednesday we
go up to Mr. B. with some Theocritus : and I
suppose on that account the week is divided by
that day. We do Xeno : Cyrop : one week,
Homer another and Greek Play the third.
SCHOOL AND COLLEGE. 13
We do thirty lines at a time. Whether there is
a fourth subject I do not as yet know. I will
tell you in my next.
" We have had rather an idle week.
On Tuesday we had a whole holiday, it
being the Audit day, as it is called, of the
trustees of the Oakham and Uppingham
Schools. On Thursday a half holiday for some
reason which I do not know.
" We have to do some verses every week, a
hard and an easy set. I have been set to do the
hard ones, but have done the easy ones also for
a lazy fellow who is in my class and too idle to
do them himself. On Wednesday Mr. B. gave
out in the School that the trustees had the
previous day decided that the annual examin-
ation at Michaelmas would not for the future
be confined to the candidates for Exhibition,
but extend to the whole of the sixth form, the
higher and lower fifth. A gentleman is
coming down from St. John's, Cambridge, next
time. I wrote to George W. the other day. I
have endeavoured to stick up for myself a
little more the last few days and the result is
very satisfactory. Out of eight boys in our
room there are only three who annoy us now.
I was unfortunately concerned in a little affray
the other day, it has only had the effect which I
anticipated, viz : that the boy and I have since
become most excellent friends. I think I may
safely say that we are now.
14 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
" I would not like, even it were possible,
again to pass so unhappy a week as we did on
leaving home for the first time. You spoke
to me in one of your letters about reading over
the Psalms for each day with another fellow.
I do not know any one to whom I can make
the proposal. One little fellow who sleeps in
my room and is in my class, has been marked
out for the purpose ; I have had him in my
study one day, and talked to him of faults that
I observed him very liable to commit and I
have had the satisfaction of seeing him
endeavour to check them. He had when he
first came a great habit of swearing but since I
spoke to him on the subject I have only once
or twice, if that, heard him swear. I am doing
him every little act of kindness that I can,
and think in the course of a few days I shall be
able to make the above-named proposal to him.
I have not omitted the most important step
of all, viz : to make mention of him in my
daily prayers.
"Mr. B. gave me my ? Homer the other day.
I have been reading some of the former parts
on the Divine Inspiration of the Scriptures and
some similar subjects. I like it very much
indeed.
" We had an excellent Sermon from the
Curate on Sunday on the text " Ye cannot serve
two Masters, ye cannot serve God and Mammon."
I have only room for a word or two more.
Please to write soon and do send me a news-
SCHOOL AND COLLEGE. I 5
paper now and then. If you have not time to
write, a newspaper will serve to say that you
are all well. I have not been very well lately.
I have had a slight ***** complaint, but it is
much better to-day.
" I entreat you to give me permission to
bathe. I bathed yesterday and it certainly has
done me a great deal of good. I do hope that
you will let me know how you all are, if you
have not time to write ***** has."
I remain,
Your affect. Son,
Fras. S. Powell.
From Uppingham, at the age of sixteen, he
went with his only surviving brother (the late
Rev. T. W. Powell) to Sedbergh Grammar
School of which the Rev. J. H. Evans was then
Head Master. At that time all the classes were
held in one room, now the library. The
education given was almost exclusively classical,
only about eight hours a week being devoted to
mathematics. Notwithstanding this, the list of
successes secured by Sedbergh boys at Cambridge in
mathematics as well as in classics, during the time
of Mr. Evans, was very remarkable. The School
was founded some years before the traditional
date, 1527, by Roger Lupton, Provost of Eton
and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, who
1 6 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
was probably born at Sedbergh.* It was closely
connected from the beginning with St. John's
College, Cambridge, where it held six scholar-
ships (afterwards increased to eight), and two
Fellowships for scholars " chosen out of Setber
School and no other."
Powell left Sedbergh in June, 1846, and went
to St. John's as a Lupton Scholar the same year.
In 1850, he was last but two in the Second
Class (Senior Ops.) of the Mathematical Tripos
and head of the Second Class in the Classical
Tripos. His reading was interrupted by an attack
of smallpox just before the examination, and his
place was disappointing. The fact that he had
been placed in the First Class in the College
Examination in classics both in 1848 and 1849,
shows that he was expected to be in the First Class
in the Classical Tripos. In 1851 he entered for
a Fellowship under the Lupton Foundation and
was elected, but not before he had consulted his
tutor, Dr. Hymers, as to the propriety of this
course, seeing that he was heir to considerable
property.
There were at that time at St. John's thirty-
two unrestricted Fellowships for which all
graduates of Oxford or Cambridge, born in
England or Wales, were eligible. There were
also twenty-one Fellowships restricted to
* See Sedbergh School Register, 1546-1909, p. 3
SCHOOL AND COLLEGE. 17
graduates from particular counties or schools.
An eligible member of another College might be
elected, or a Fellow of the original Foundation
transferred to a Lupton Fellowship. Both these
methods of keeping up the standard of learning
were in use until the revision of the Statutes in
i860, but as neither of them was adopted when
Powell applied, it is clear that his scholarship
must have been up to the mark. After holding
his Fellowship for three years, he resigned it
and was succeeded by the Rev. F. H. Woodward.
On leaving Cambridge in 1850 he read Law
in London^ was called to the Bar at the Inner
Temple in 1853 and went the Northern Circuit
for a short time.
This brought him to Liverpool where he first
met his wife, Annie, second daughter of Matthew
Gregson of Toxteth Park, Liverpool and niece of
Samuel Gregson, M.P. for Lancaster. He soon gave
up law for politics and had been Member of
Parliament forWigan for more than a year when he
was married on August 26th, 1858, at St. Michael's
Church, Toxteth Park. There were ten groomsmen
andten bridesmaids and theparents of the bride and
bridegroom were all present on the occasion.
After the honeymoon, spent in Germany, Austria
and Italy, Mr. Powell brought his bride home to his
Father's house, Bellingham Lodge, Wigan. The
following description of their home-coming
l8 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
written by an eye-witness at the time of their
Golden Wedding appeared recently in a Wigan
paper :
\
" I well remember the time when he
(Sir Francis), brought home his bride to
Bellingham Lodge, Wigan, and a number of
his supporters took the horses out of the
carriage at the Station and pulled it them-
selves. It could not have been an easy task
as the road was very steep all the way * * *
As it was evening when the carriage arrived
at Bellingham, the grounds were illuminated
with scores of coloured lamps suspended in
the trees and where the Royal Albert Edward
Infirmary now stands, there was a row of
cottages, called Cinnamon Row, where
every window was lit up as a welcome to
the Member for Wigan and his bride."
After two Parliamentary Sessions spent in
temporary residences in London the young couple
took and furnished I, Cambridge Square, Hyde
Park, in i860. There was a most tastefully
selected collection of old pictures at Horton for
many of which there was no room in the Old
Hall. Mr. Powell had the largest and some of
the choicest of these moved to 1, Cambridge
Square and no one who enters the house can fail
to be struck by the beauty and dignity which
they lend to it and the admirable way in which
MAIN EVENTS OF AFTER-LIFE. ig.
he had them hung there. Mrs. Powell and he
made this house and Horton Old Hall their homes
for the remaining fifty one years of their married
life.
They had no family ties to keep them at
home but the most tempting invitations never
seduced them from their Parish Church at All
Saints', Bradford, at the great festivals. Con-
servatism and unswerving adherence to fixed
times and habits of life, so far as they were
compatible with a busy social and political
career, were characteristic of the domestic regime
under which Mr. Powell lived. There can be few
households in England which have changed sa
little during the last fifty years as those of Horton
Old Hall and i, Cambridge Square.
When the London season and the Parliamen-
tary Session were over Mr. and Mrs. Powell usually
went abroad for their annual holiday. They
visited many parts of Europe together besides
taking two more extensive tours to America and
the East, which will be described in a later chapter.
At the time of the building of All Saints' Church
at Bradford, from i860 to 1864, Mr. Powell made
a special study of the Cathedrals of France and
Belgium, taking measurements of many of them.
On their return home, unless an Autumn
Session took them to London, they spent most
of the remainder of the year at Horton. During
20 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
this time they visited the farms on the
Yorkshire estates. In this way Mr. Powell
made himself personally acquainted with his
tenants and their needs, in which he took the
most kindly and practical interest. His kindness
and consideration as a landlord were fully apprec-
iated. In November 1891, his tenants at
Cullingworth presented him with an illuminated
address, expressed in most affectionate terms,
on the occasion of the opening of the new
Conservative Club in the village. The members
of the old Conservative Club had received notice
to quit and Mr. Powell stepped into the breach
and converted some of his cottage property at
Towngate, Cullingworth into a club for them.
The tenants on his Yorkshire farms also gave him
an address and silver punch bowl at Horton in
November, 1892 to celebrate his baronetcy.
The supervision of his estates in Yorkshire
and Wigan was but a small part of his work at
Horton.
He was the oldest living Magistrate for the
West Riding at the time of his death. He sat on
the Bradford Board of Guardians as regularly
as he could and attended an almost endless
succession of meetings both in Yorkshire and
Lancashire. There were certain fixed engagements
for which he sacrificed everything else and which
he rarely, if ever, broke. Such were the Sedbergh
MAIN EVENTS OF AFTER-LIFE. 2T
School Speech days and Govenors' meetings, the
Rent Days at Horton in July and December, and
the meetings of the York House of Laymen and
of the Lancashire and Cheshire Union of
Conservative Associations.
Concerning this Union Mr. W. P. Fulligar of
Bolton writes as follows in a letter dated 17th
July, 1912 :
" I have for many years past resided in the
Blackpool Parliamentary Division and have
represented it on the Executive and Council of
the Lancashire and Cheshire Union of Con-
servative Associations of which Sir Francis
Powell was Chairman up to shortly before his
death. We met quarterly in Lancashire and
Cheshire and, whatever the time of year, or the
weather, or his distance from the meeting place,,
we always felt sure that our Chairman would be
there with his warm and friendly greeting and
prepared to give us an address full of sound and
thoughtful comment and advice on the political
questions of the day and which would send us
home amply repaid for our trouble of attendance.
" We were together on the York House of
Laymen and on the Committees of several
Church Societies and his first enquiry when we
met was always " Well, and how is our party
going on in Lancashire ?" He seemed to throw
himself heart and soul into every question
affecting the best interests of Church and State,
22 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
and no man, I believe, worked harder or more
consistently in support of the principles which
he loved so dearly. Without being in any sense
an orator, his words always bore weight because
they had the true ring of sound wisdom and
heartfelt conviction. His death left a blank
which, in these days, is very difficult to fill."
In 1900, after the Council Meeting of the
Association held at Manchester, he was entertained
at dinner at the Manchester Conservative Club.
Sir William H. Houldsworth, Bart, M.P., presided
and when proposing " Our Guest " he stated that
since the Council was formed in 1883 Sir Francis
had attended 106 of the 11 1 meetings which had
been held. Commenting on the value of his
speeches, Sir William said that he had come to
the conclusion and this was not far from the
truth that the only recreation Sir Francis allowed
himself was the reading of Blue Books. Sir
Francis retired from the post of President of the
Lancashire and Cheshire Union in 1906 when the
National Union of Conservative Associations was
re-organized on a more democratic basis.
This brings us to his political life. He
was a ready speaker and thoroughly enjoyed
addressing a large audience from a public plat-
form. When the audience consisted of sturdy and
critical North - countrymen at Wigan or in
Yorkshire, he was always particularly happy and
entered thoroughly into the spirit of the thing.
MAIN EVENTS OF AFTER-LIFE. 23
His commanding voice, sonorous periods and
good natured chaff were just what a North
country workingman likes and admires. He
sometimes lapsed into the Lancashire dialect to
amuse them. They thought him grand and he
became known as " Wigan's Grand Old Man."
His nineteen contested elections claim a
separate chapter.
He was first elected a Member of the House
of Commons in 1857 at the age of 29, having
contested the two previous elections, and sat
there intermittently for nine years, between 1857
and 1885. For the next twenty five years, until
he retired from Parliament in 1910, he sat contin-
uously for the County Borough of Wigan his
"" native borough " as he loved to call it. He sat
under ten Governments and attended the House
most assiduously, arriving early and seldom leaving
before it rose. Some of his most important work
was done on Special Committees. The Annals
of the House record that he sat on seventy two
such Committees between i863and his retirement.
He had the honour of being Chairman of the
important Police and Sanitary Committee in the
Session of 1892 when it sat for forty one
days. He was also Chairman of the Museums
Committee in the 1898 Session, having previously
taken the chair four times during the absence of
Sir John Gorst. This Committee brought to light
24 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
abuses and defects in the state of the South
Kensington Museum and Art School. It resulted
in the complete re-organization of the national
collections of which the present generation
is now reaping the benefit. Sir Francis liked to
see things for himself and was constantly at the
Museum during this time and often in consultation
with the late Sir Purdon Clarke, its Director.
To return to the House of Commons. Though
Sir Francis complained in his later years of its
increasing exactions there was no place which he
liked better. When he rose to address the House
it was to draw attention to points, which from
special knowledge and experience he knew to be
important or likely to be overlooked. He was a
thoroughly practical legislator. Bills connected
with the Church of England, Education and
Public Health were those in which he was mainly-
interested. When such measures were before the
House, he endeavoured to study their probable
effects in every detail and watched their progress
with the most vigilant care. By this vigilance he
was able to effect many improvements in points-
of detail, even in the case of measures to which he
was opposed. This often won him the consider-
ation and gratitude of friends and foes alike.
Years advanced, but his energy seemed to
remain unabated. On the Queen's Birthday, 1892
he was created a Baronet. In 1907, it being fifty-
MAIN EVENTS OF AFTER-LIFE. 25
years since he first took his seat, he celebrated his
Parliamentary Jubilee. On the evening of April
23rd of that year, his colleagues in the House
gave him a complimentary banquet. The Rt.
Hon. A. J. Balfour took the Chair and Mr. Finch,
who was then Father of the House, sat on his
right hand. The following inscription was printed
in letters of gold upon the menu :
Te, Franciscum Powell, Ascriptum Curiae
Brit : Fere Per Lustra Decem, Regni Et
Eccles : Servum Fidelem, Amici Tota
Mente Salutant.
The proceedings were private but a newspaper
gave the following list of some of those present :
Sir Alexander Acland Hood, Mr. Akers
Douglas, Lord Balcarres, Mr. F. E. Smith,
Mr. Walter Long, Mr. Claude Hay, Sir
Edward Carson, Sir P. Magnus, Sir William
Ball, Sir W. H. Hornby, Hon. Arthur Stanley,
Colonel Hall Walker, Mr. Ashley, Mr. E.
Parkes, Colonel Lockwood, Mr. T. L. Corbett,
Sir H. Fletcher, Mr. H. W. Forster, Mr. R. P.
Houston, Sir Gilbert Parker, Sir George
Fardell, Mr. Wolff, Lord R. Cecil, Mr. T.
Rutherford, Mr. W. W. Rutherford, Sir W.
Anson, Colonel McCalmont, Lord Valentia,
Mr. H. Pike Pease, Lord E. Talbot, Mr.
Stavely Hill, Mr. Lane Fox, Colonel Williams,
Viscount Helmsley, Mr. Lawrence Hardy r
26 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
the Hon. F. Lambton, Sir F. Lowe, Mr.
Mitchell Thompson, Sir F. Banbury, Mr.
Gervase Beckett, Mr. Rawlinson, Mr. C.
Craig, Mr. G. L. Courthope, Mr. Abel Smith,
Colonel Harrison Broadley, Mr. C. Salter and
Mr. F. B. Mildmay.
The House of Commons had been recruited
at the General Election of the preceding year by
an unprecedented number of new Members. Many
of these were of a class with which it had been
hitherto unfamiliar. The Labour Party had been
formed. Sir Francis must have found it difficult
to realize that it was the same place in which he
had sat in 1857 when Lord Palmerston was Prime
Minister. He took a remarkably unprejudiced
view of the situation saying that though the new
House was " marvellously inexperienced " at first,
it was " learning its business well " and contained
an exceptional number of men who were serious
students of social and political questions.
On August 26th 1908, the year following his
Parliamentary Jubilee, Lady Powell and he
celebrated their Golden Wedding. They were
taking a holiday at the time at the Moor Park
Hotel, Chagford, North Devon, where they
received many telegrams of congratulation,
amongst them being one from the Mayor of Wigan,
Mr. Sam Wood, on behalf of the people of Wigan
and himself.
MAIN EVENTS OF AFTER-LIFE. 27
Soon after their return home, the parishioners
of All Saints', Bradford, invited them to the Schools
on the evening of September 28th to celebrate the
same event by giving them a solid silver bowl,
richly gilt, and an illuminated address followed by
a list of subscribers. In the course of his reply of
thanks Sir Francis said : " During fifty years
Lady Powell and he had lived in the same house
and had pursued the same work. They had
endeavoured to serve and had perhaps sometimes
succeeded in serving those of their neighbours who
in successive generations had occupied houses and
streets within a short distance of Horton Green.
He felt as he walked about the district that he
was not a mere sojourner for a part of the year in
a busy manufacturing town, but that he moved
among sympathising friends. He had thought it
possible in looking through the records of his
family to find instances of a similar occasion to
that, but he had not done so. John Sharp, well
known as a Royalist, was a gentleman of leisurely
disposition. He lived in this world to the age of
ninety three. He (Sir Francis), confessed that he
should have thought that this forerunner of his,
might have had the opportunity of enjoying fifty
years of connubial bliss, (laughter). He appeared
to have looked round very carefully but in a
manner fatal to that long term of family joy.
As to the occurrences in the parish of All Saints
within the last fifty years, he thought it was not
extravagant to say that their history was the
28 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
history of that parish, and, so long as life was
preserved to them, so long would they remain in
close association with All Saints' Parish, and be
in residence during part of the year in the old
home where they and their ancestors had dwelt
so long."
The protracted Summer Session of 1909
allowed him no time for his usual holiday. At
length, influenced largely by his increasing and
incurable deafness, he reluctantly determined to
retire from the House of Commons and wrote the
following letter to his Electors. It was published
in fac-simile and was written in his clear bold
hand which showed no sign of faltering :
To the Electors of Wigan.
Gentlemen,
" The progress of time and advancing years
warn me that my political association with my
native Borough must soon end.
"Under those circumstances I do not propose
to seek the honour of representing you in the
next Parliament.
" I take this opportunity of thanking you
for the consideration and confidence which you
have so generously extended to me on many
occasions during these long and arduous years,
and for the high honour which you have thus
conferred upon me.
MAIN EVENTS OF AFTER-LIFE. 29
" The regret which I feel on this separation
is greatly increased by my sense of the grave
importance of the questions which will be
discussed by the constituencies throughout the
country and subsequently dealt with by the
Legislature at Westminster. Once more, but not
for the last time, I thank you for the abundant
opportunities of taking part in public life which
you have given me, and assure you that my earnest
desire for the welfare of our ancient and loyal
Borough will ever remain unchanged."
I remain,
Gentlemen,
Your ever grateful servant,
Francis S. Powell.
House of Commons,
Sept 30th, 1909.
Retirement from Parliament gave him more
time to reflect on the dangers which were besetting
his country and its time-honoured institutions
during 1910 and 191 1. He deeply resented the
Government's disregard of old rules of Parliamen-
tary procedure and the constitutional changes
embodied in the Parliament Bill. Yet he con-
demned the policy of Lord Halsbury and his
followers with regard to this measure. When
he saw that it must pass, he thought that the
dangerous precedent of creating new peers in order
to pass it, should be avoided. The heat, the strikes
30 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
and the political events of the Summer of 191 1
distressed him sorely. He became more and more
worried and anxious about political affairs and
on September 12th, 191 1 little more than three
months before his death he wrote in a private
letter : " As regards politics I can only hope or
" endeavour to hope that they have reached their
worst."
After this time he became rapidy feebler but
struggled on with his work as long as he could.
His last public appearance of any importance was
at the Bradford West Riding Court House on
November 9th, 191 1. He appeared there as
Senior Magistrate, and on behalf of Lady Peel,
presented the portrait of the late Sir Theo. Peel to
his colleagues on the Bench. Soon after this he
was obliged to keep to his room owing to increasing
infirmity. He died peacefully and unexpectedly
in his sleep on the night of Christmas Eve,
1911.
CHAPTER II.
CHURCHES AND CHURCH WORK.
All Saints' Church and Parish, Little Horton,
Bradford.
WHEN the Yorkshire Estates of the Sharp
family descended to Mr. Powell in 1844,
the family residences, Horton Hall and
Horton Old Hall, which are near each other, were
in the country on the outskirts of the town of
Bradford and their owners had been accustomed
to attend Bradford Parish Church. These two
Halls with their gardens, the fine old Yorkshire
houses and cottages belonging to the estate round
Horton Green and the surrounding fields, which
Mr. Powell kept green regardless of tempting
offers and increasing taxes, now form an oasis in
the City of Bradford. Many little one storey stone
cottages also survive in the neighbourhood to
testify to Sir Francis' consideration for his tenants,
whom he would not turn out to make way for
so-called improvements. Still nothing could
prevent the extraordinary increase in the man-
ufactures of Bradford converting Horton into a
thickly populated urban district. This resulted in
the building of All Saints' Church and Schools,
32 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
and the formation of All Saints' parish. The first
vicar, the Reverend Henry Leach, whom Mr.
Powell appointed in 1863 to inaugurate the
parish, has kindly written for this book the
following account of the origin of All Saints'.
"Nothing," writes Canon Leach in a covering
letter, "could be more welcome to me than to
help in any way to honour the memory of my
dear friend to whom I am so deeply indebted:"
"ATTENTION had been directed to the
spiritual destitution of Bradford by the Report of
the Bishop of Exeter's Commission of inquiry into
the want of Church accommodation throughout
the country. It was found that no large town in
England was so ill supplied, and a Committee
was appointed which took a broad view of the
whole position and propounded a comprehensive
scheme for providing ten churches, each with its
assigned parochial boundary, its school and
parsonage. It was no light task that was thus
undertaken. As might have been expected,
Nonconformity was rampant, and numbered the
vast majority of the leading merchants and
manufacturers among its staunchest adherents.
Chapels and Sunday Schools of every denomination
abounded and at once absorbed and diverted into
alien channels religious feeling, which Church
apathy had disregarded, and which was so leavened
with antagonism to the Establishment, that a
few years later, Mr. Miall the protagonist of
CHURCHES AND CHURCH WORK. 33
Liberationism, was elected one of the members
for the borough. But the Committee manfully
faced the situation. The Hardy family, already
honorably identified with Church extension in
the district, and other prominent Churchmen
contributed generously. For the proposed new
parish of All Saints, Little Horton Green, Sir
Francis at once claimed the entire responsibility
on a scale of munificence far surpassing what was
attainable for any of the other churches embraced
in the Ten Church Scheme.
" A vacant plot of ground immediately
opposite Sir Francis' house, Horton Old Hall, and
on rising ground, provided a conspicuous and
central site for Church and Schools. There were
five Chapels and Sunday Schools, but no public
elementary school in thenewparish. Three quarters
of the population were of the working class, just
then enjoying thriving times and earning ample
wages keen, intelligent, independent, outspoken,
warm-hearted, the best and highest type of the
British workman. How to reach and win these
was the problem. A brief address, explaining
that the new Church was to be theirs and inviting
them to make it their own, was issued by the new
Vicar and delivered by his own hands at every
house in the Parish. ' Who's that man with them
papers ? ' he heard a woman call out to her
neighbour, as he ducked under the linen hung out
to dry on lines stretched across the public streets.
34 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
'That's the new parson, going about to get a
congregation ' was the terse and admirably
accurate reply.
"In March, 1863, the Vicar designate began
work in the Parish, and on Whit Sunday the
school was opened for Sunday school and services.
At the same date, a day school the only one in a
wide area, under a trained teacher was commenced.
An exceptionally excellent choir had most kindly
volunteered their aid. The room was provided
with movable fittings suitable for public worship
by the patron's care, and from the very first, a full
Cathedral service was given. So hearty was the
attendance, it was almost with affectionate regret
that the earliest adherents of All Saints looked
back upon the School-room services when the
statelier worship in the Church had superseded
them. Day and Sunday schools filled up rapidly
and the nucleus of a congregation was formed.
" The Sunday Schools of Lancashire and the
West Riding are unique. Young men and women
continue to attend until marriage or even later.
The influence and importance of the institution are
therefore obvious and repay careful consideration
to details. For the Sunday School an elaborate
scheme of prizes was devised which rewarded
regular attendance and good conduct rather than
exceptional ability, and brought these coveted
distinctions within the reach of all. Such a plan was
CHURCHES AND CHURCH WORK. 35
inevitably costly, but Sir Francis took keen interest
in all its minutest details and lavishly supported
it. The greatest parochial gathering of each year
was the Christmas-tide tea party, when he
invariably presided over the huge after-meeting,
and himself gave the prizes with words of kindly
humour and encouragement that won the hearts
of his hearers.
" In the early spring of 1864 the Church was
ready for consecration. It was built with walls
of ashlar stone, carefully finished inside and out,
the capitals of the massive columns beautifully
carved, the arches enriched with elaborate
mouldings; no thought or expense spared to
render it a dignified temple for Christian worship.
The Bishop of the Diocese, Archdeacon Musgrave,
Bishop Atlay (at that time Vicar of Leeds), Dr.
Vaughan, Canon Gregory and others preached at
the opening services. The building calculated (I
think), to hold from 900 to 1,000 worshippers, was
from the first well filled, and the appropriated
sittings eagerly secured, the main difficulty being
to dissuade applicants from renting more seats
than they could occupy. It was characteristic of
the founder that no spot inside or outside of the
Church bore his name or proclaimed at whose
expense it had been erected. When, in after years
the transept and chancel windows repeated in
stained glass the glorious song of the Te Deum,
a kneeling figure in the final compartment alone
36 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
recalled Sir Francis, surrounded by the legend,
* In Thee have I put my trust : let me never be
confounded.'
" Needless to say, both Church and Schools
passed through some anxious vicissitudes. Attempts
of zeal, not adequately tempered with discretion,
to force an advanced ritual on an unwilling Vicar
and congregation, brought on a serious crisis.
The change from seat rents to the free and
unappropriated system, although only adopted at
the request of two-thirds of the seat-holders and
energetically upheld by a personal visit from
Archdeacon Emery and other foremost advocates,
proved a failure and resulted in the loss of some
valued friends, not all of whom were recovered by
reversion to the original plan. Throughout these
trials, the Vicar was supported by Sir Francis with
the staunchest loyalty.
" The growth of the schools was chequered
in like manner. It may be taken as an indisputable
maxim that the teacher makes the school, and it
was only after one or two trials that the right
men and womem were secured. The day school,
once satisfactorily manned, speedily outgrew the
accommodation it afforded, which was then more
than trebled. The new rooms were so planned
with movable partitions that Boys', Girls' and
Infant Schools could be opened out as one large
room, thus affording a splendid hall for Parochial
CHURCHES AND CHURCH WORK. 37
concerts and other meetings. The cost of these
additions, about 5,000, was raised by public
subscription without the aid of the interference
of the Committee of Council on Education.
Generous contributions flowed in readily, many
Dissenters as well as Churchmen desiring to show
their appreciation of Sir Francis' munificence*
A few years later further school space was called
for, and, on a site in Bramley Street, an admirable
structure was erected to serve as a large Infant
School and Mission Room. The requisite funds were
provided after long and laborious preparation
by a three days' bazaar in St. George's Hall, which
resulted in a profit of nearly a thousand pounds.
With the successful conclusion of this work, the
material equipment of the Parish was for the time
complete.
" Many of the parents expressed their high
appreciation of the schools, and paid the fees so
readily that little besides these and the Govern-
ment grant was required for their annual mainten-
ance. Indeed, one of the mothers, coming into the
Girls' School when the children's weekly pence
were lying on the table, gave it as her opinion that
the Vicar was making a fine thing out of it. It
must suffice to say that about 800 children were on
the Day School registers, and a thousand scholars
and teachers were enrolled in the Sunday Schools
when the first Vicar after an incumbency of
thirteen years, left for a South Country living."
/H'A'M/T^
38 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
The architects of the Church were Messrs.
Mallinson and Healey. The shaft of an old mine
was unexpectedly discovered on the site for the
tower, which gave them great difficulty and
resulted in an additional expenditure of 500
to secure the foundations. Mr. Powell carefully
studied all the details of the plans and made some
of the drawings himself, as he was a serious student
of architecture, and took a great interest in the
Gothic Revival, which aroused so much enthusiasm
in England at this time. His greatest concern,
however, was to see that the needs of a growing
population should be met. Canon Leach was
succeeded in 1876 by the Rev. G. W. Kennion,
who left the Parish to be consecrated Bishop of
Adelaide, in 1882 and is now bishop of Bath and
Wells. During Bishop Kennion's time the Mission
Church of Dirkhill was built on a site given by
Mr. Powell, and the Bishop gathered a strong
staff of six curates around him. Among these
was the Rev. Rawdon Briggs, now Honorary
Canon of Ripon, who came to the Parish in 1876
and has been Vicar since Bishop Kennion left in
1882. During Canon Briggs' time, the Mission
Churches of Bramley Street and Dirkhill have
been enlarged at a cost of 1,400. Mr. Powell
took his share in this as in all extensions of the
Parish. He also added an Infants' School to the
existing school buildings at All Saints', and
improved the Church by building a Clergy Vestry,
and re-building the organ at a cost of 850.
ALL SAINTS' CHURCH, BRADFORD.
CHURCHES AND CHURCH WORK. 39
He addressed the parishioners every year at
their New Year's gathering in All Saints' Schools,
and attended the Anniversaries at the Mission
Rooms. Lady Powell and he, entertained the
Sunday School children every Whit Monday in
the field in front of Horton Old Hall, and gave each
child the time-honoured school-treat bun with
their own hands. Every Christmas, the All Saints'
Choir boys sang and were regaled in good old
English Style in the dark panelled hall of Horton
Old Hall with its old pictures and armour, high
mullioned windows, oak gallery and blazing fire.
However busy he had been during the week, Sir
Francis attended both the morning and evening
services on Sunday at All Saints' with the greatest
regularity, sitting in the front pew under the
pulpit with Lady Powell. For many years he
read the lessons, and continued to take round the
Alms dish until the end of his life. He objected
to any innovations in the Church services, whether
Ritualistic or Evangelical. On this account he
was always glad to return to the dignified Cathedral
service at All Saints' after the many changes and
chances which befell him at the London churches
which he attended. Though he took a common-
sense line of his own on many points, he objected
for instance to a proposed abandonment of the
system of pew rents, which was a convenience to
many as well as a source of income to All Saints'.
he loyally supported his Vicars both with advice
40 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
and money. Canon Briggs writes of him, in a
letter dated February 8th, 191 3 :
" No squire could take a more real and
deeper interest in the spiritual welfare of a Parish
than he, constantly writing and asking how we
were faring, when he was busy with his
Parliamentary duties, either at Wigan or in
London. Our Church was his child of which
he was greatly proud, He grudged no time given
for anything that it needed, and no reasonable
appeal made on its behalf was ever refused.
There are few clergymen who have enjoyed the
friendship of such a faithful and kind patron as
has been my privilege during the whole of the
past thirty years."
St. Columba's Church and Schools, Bradford.
Nothwithstanding the building of Dirkhill
Mission Room Church and Schools in 1877 and
the additions to them in 1883, the population in
the neighbourhood increased so rapidly that more
Church accommodation became necessary. The
congregation at Dirkhill first approached Mr.
Powell on the subject in 1890. He promised a
site for a new Church, and in 1893 ne bought and
afterwards walled in the plot of ground on the
town side of Horton Grange Road, on which the
Church of St. Columba now stands. It was not,,
however, until January 1899 that he was able to
announce at the annual tea party at Dirkhill,
CHURCHES AND CHURCH WORK. 41
that a new Parish of St. Columba was to be
formed from parts of the parishes of Great Horton,
All Saints' and St. Andrew's, Lister Hills, and
that Lady Powell intended to build the new
Parish Church.
From that time there was no further delay.
Lady Powell laid the foundation stone of the
Church on Whitsun- Monday of the same year
(May 22nd 1899), and it was consecrated by Bishop
Boyd Carpenter and dedicated to St. Columba
three years later on Easter Tuesday, April ist, 1902.
The Wardens presented Sir Francis and Lady
Powell with appropriately inscribed prayer books
and hymn books to commemorate the day of the
Consecration.
The architects of St. Columba's were Messrs.
T. H. and F. Healey who had built All Saints'.
It is a dignified building in the Early English
style and an ornament to the neighbourhood.
Sir Francis, on behalf of Lady Powell, paid the
most minute attention to all the business con-
nected with it and with the formation of the new
Parish. Lady Powell endowed the living and
the patronage was invested jointly in her and Sir
Francis. At the death of either it was to remain
with the survivor and it is to pass eventually to the
Bishop of the Diocese. There are no Church Day
Schools connected with the Parish, but in 1910-
191 1, Sir Francis and Lady Powell, assisted by
D.
42 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
funds raised by the Parishioners, built a Sunday
School and a comfortable Men's Institute, on a
site which had to be bought for the purpose.
The Sunday School consists of class rooms
surrounding a large Central Hall, according to
the convenient modern plan which secures quiet
and privacy for each class.
The Rev. Aislabie Denham Barker, who had
been curate-in-charge at Dirk Hill since 1897,
was appointed the first Vicar in accordance with
expressed wishes of many Parishioners. His
devoted and able ministry has attracted a large
congregation and a band of loyal and enthusiastic
workers. St. Columba's Church has become a
new centre of spiritual life in the neighbour-
hood.
The Formation of the Diocese of Wakefield.
Mr. Powell was one of the leaders of the
movement for the sub-division of the unwieldy
Diocese of Ripon. The first practical step which
appears to have been taken in this direction was
the publication of the following circular, dated
Halifax, June 2nd, 1875:
Proposed Diocese of Halifax.
The wide extent of the Diocese of Ripon,
and the vast population included therein, have
CHURCHES AND CHURCH WORK. 43
during many years caused friends of the Church
of England to look forward to the time when a
sub-division of the Diocese will become necessary.
The death of Archdeacon Musgrave and the
consequent vacancy in the Crown living of
Halifax, present an opportunity of no ordinary
importance, and it is thought that measures ought
now to be taken vith a view to the creation of a
new Diocese of Halifax.
The revenues of the Parish are considerable,
and the Parish Church, which would become the
Cathedral, is one of the most spacious and
venerable in Yorkshire.
The position of Halifax is such that a Diocese,
already containing a population of six hundred
thousand, may be formed with Halifax as a
convenient centre. The boundary would leave
the Diocese of Ripon with a population far in
excess of that found in an ordinary Diocese. The
assignment of this boundary is, however, a matter
of subsequent detail to be settled under the sancton
of the highest authorities.
The income of the new See would be derived
in part from a portion of the present income of
Halifax Vicarage ; partly from Voluntary
Contributions.
It is thought that, after making liberal
44 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
arrangements for the Vicarage of Halifax, 1,000
per annum may be spared from the revenue of that
Vicarage towards the endowment of the See ;
the augmentation of income from the falling in
of leases will produce further emoluments
estimated at no less than 1,500 per annum, and
it is hoped that the liberality of Churchmen will
provide such a contribution say 50,000 as will
raise the income of the future Bishop to at least
4,000.
There is reason to believe that the Bishop of
Ripon would offer no opposition to a well-
considered plan, and it is not probable that
Government would regard otherwise than with
favour, a scheme which, like the constitution of
the See of St. Alban's, increases the efficiency of
the Church by the sub-division of a most populous
Diocese. Halifax, June 11th, 1875.
Mr. Powell was a supporter of this economical
scheme from the beginning. The rival claims of
Wakefield to become the new Cathedral City
were however, so great that the decision be-
tween the two towns had to be left to the
Home Secretary, who decided against Halifax.
Mr. Powell regretted this, but submitted to
the inevitable and helped to work out the Wake-
field scheme. In March, 1877, an elaborate
statistical table of "Suggestions for New Dioceses
in South Yorkshire" was published under his name
CHURCHES AND CHURCH WORK.
45
together with those of Lord Wharncliffe and Mr.
W. Spencer Stanhope. In this scheme the New
Diocese of Wakefield was to be constituted as
follows :
Proposed Diocese (Wakefield).
Area. Population.
Taking from Diocese of York >
the Unions of Wortley,
Rotherham, Sheffield and \ 149,038 353,012
Ecclesall ; also Darfield
and Normanton Township. >'
Taking from Diocese of Ripon N
the Superintendent Regis-
trars' Districts or Unions
of Dewsbury, Halifax,
Todmorden, Huddersfield,
Barnsley (Silkstone), and ! 256,276
Wakefield, with the ex-
ception of Darfield and
Normanton Township,
which are in the Diocese of
York. J
559,418
405,314 912,430
On October nth, 1878, Mr. Powell explained
this scheme and the Act for the extension of the
Episcopate at the Ripon Diocesan Conference at
Leeds. He pointed out that no such extensions of
46 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
the Episcopate as those which were taking place
had occurred since the reign of Henry VIII. In
his reign were founded five new Sees : Bristol,
Peterborough, Oxford, Gloucester and Chester.
In the reign of Queen Victoria it was proposed to
constitute six Sees : St. Albans, Truro, Southwell,
Liverpool, Newcastle and Wakefield. The former
five were made by the re-distribution of eccles-
iastical revenues, those in our days, in the main
at least, by the self-sacrifice of Churchmen. He
urged his hearers not to be behind Lancashire
where the fund for the Liverpool Diocese was
almost complete.
The Wakefield scheme, however, continued in
abeyance until 1884, when the death of Bishop
Bickersteth, over- burdened with work, led to its
revival. In October of that year, Mr. Powell once
more drew the attention of the Ripon Diocesan
Conference to it, moving that the Bishop be called
upon " to name a Committee to carry out the Act
of Parliament authorizing the See of Wakefield."
In June, 1885, the subscriptions to the fund
of which Mr. Powell was a Treasurer and
had contributed "1,000, reached 24,365 out of
the "90,000 computed to be required. The new
Bishop of Ripon (Boyd Carpenter), published a
Pastoral urging the completion of the scheme,
and meetings were announced under his presidency
at Huddersfield, Leeds, Bradford, Dewsbury,
CHURCHES AND CHURCH WORK. 47
Keighley and Halifax in rapid succession, from
June 30th until July 7th. These were followed
by a meeting at the Mansion House in London,
on July 14th, 1885. Three years after this (1888),
the present Bishopric and Diocese of Wakefield
were founded.
Ripon Diocese was the most populous and
cumbersome in England before its division and
Mr. Powell never had any doubt of the need of
this new See. On the general question of the
desirability of making more Bishops, he expressed
himself in favour of a moderate increase in the
Episcopate at the Ripon Conference of 1907,
when the question of new Yorkshire Bishoprics
was under discussion. Speaking of Bishop's
Palaces, he said it was certain that in the future,
Bishop's residences would be constructed on a
more modest scale, but at the same time he hoped
that they would not run impulsively from one
extreme to the other. " I believe," he said, " that
so long as we live in this mortal state something
does depend upon keeping up a certain air of
dignity and consequence in connection with every
high office."
Church Defence.
All through his life, Sir Francis strenuously
resisted all attempts to dis-establishand dis-endow
any part of the National Church, and he was an
active member and Treasurer of the organizations
for Church Defence.
48 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
These seem to have been almost excessively
careful to define their positions by means of
cumbersome titles. Thus in 1859, the " Church
Institution and Association of Clergy and Laity for
defensive and general purposes " was founded.
Mr. Powell became an active worker with this
Institution in 1863, when Member for Cambridge.
During this time he did all he could for the
Church of Ireland, both inside and outside the
House, watching the progress of the Irish
Dis-establishment Bill of 1869. In 1873 he was
elected Treasurer of the Institution with the late
Mr. H. Gerard Hoare, which had in the meantime
( 1 871), simplified its name to that of "The Church
Defence Institution."
It was not, however, to be allowed to keep
this more convenient name when the Church of
Wales was seriously attacked in 1 892 . Archbishop
Benson was anxious to have an organization for
Church Defence in every Parish and founded a
" Central Church Committee " with this object.
Sir Francis saw that it was a mistake to have two
organizations with the same object, and took a
leading part in the delicate negotiations which
resulted in their amalgamation in October, 1896.
" The Church Committee for Church Defence and
Church Instruction" (now known as " The Central
Church Committee for Defence and Instruction")
was thus evolved, and Sir Francis remained
Treasurer of this amalgamated body by special
CHURCHES AND CHURCH WORK. 49
request of the Archbishop. Throughout his
political life he was an actively working member
of these various bodies, which served one object
with such a multiplicity of names. He attended
their various Committee and sub- Committee
Meetings with great regularity, and patiently
studied the details and difficulties of their
organization. He frequently visited the Church
Defence Office on his way to the House of
Commons and helped its Committee to defeat
such Bills as the Welsh Disestablishment Bill
of 1895. His was also a familiar figure on the
platform at Church Defence Meetings.
As already stated, Sir Francis was a regular
attendant of the York House of Laymen. He
was elected a representative of the Diocese of
Ripon in 1892, the date of the constitution of the
House. He was made its Vice Chairman on May
8th, 1 901. He continued to hold that office until
May 25th, 1910, and was a Member of the House
until his death.
He attended the first Church Congress which
was held at Cambridge in 1861, and was a regular
speaker at subsequent Congresses for many years.
He was Member of the Councils of Selwyn
College, Cambridge, and of the Whitelands and
St. Katherines, Tottenham, Training Colleges for
School Mistresses : Governor of St. Mark's College,
Chelsea : Vice-President of the Incorporated
50 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
Society for Promoting Enlargement, Building and
Repairing of Churches and Chapels : Trustee of
St. Margaret's Church, Ilkley, since its foundation :
connected for many years with the Ripon Training
College and the Ripon Diocesan Lay Helpers'
Association : a constant subscriber to the Church
School Masters and Mistresses Benevolent Instit-
ution and a Member of the Standing Committee
of the S.P.C.K. from 1875 until 1887. Perhaps,
however, it was the " National Society for
Promoting the Education of the Poor in the
Principles of the Established Church" to which he
was most devoted. Its Secretary, Mr. Talbot
Baines, writes :
July 26th, 1913.
" He first became a Member of the National
Society's Committee in 1864. Under the
Constitution of the Society the elected Members
of the Standing Committee go out by rotation
every four years, but are eligible for re-election;
and Sir Francis Powell's repeated re-election at
those intervals for over 45 years, until his
retirement, was a striking proof of the
confidence reposed by the Members of the
Society in his faithful and effective advocacy of
its principles."
" There was hardly any leading Church
Society," wrote a correspondent in the " Record "
(Jan. 12th, 1912), at the time of his death, "of
CHURCHES AND CHURCH WORK. 51
which he (Sir Francis), was not an active
supporter, but the National Society perhaps
owed more to him than any other. A former
Secretary said of him, " You can always rely on
Powell. He never shirks work. His judgment
is so accurate, that once he is convinced any
particular course he is taking is right, nothing
will change his opinion or make him compromise.
His piety and his work are alike unostentatious
but real. The late Bishop Bardsley (of Carlisle), a
brother-in-law of his, once said : ' If England
possessed a hundred Members of Parliament of
the sterling worth of Francis Sharp Powell,
humble, honest, fearless, one who never knew an
idle hour, wise, patriotic, God-fearing, the face
of Society, the position of Church and State
alike would be transfigured.' "
CHAPTER III.
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS.
MR. POWELL, one of the most patient and
indomitable wooers of the suffrages of
the English people who have ever lived,
was first returned to Parliament as Member for
Wigan in 1857 at the age of twenty-nine. He
contested the seat unsuccessfully in 1852 and
1854, an< 3 again in 1859.
He was introduced to the electors of the
Borough of Cambridge as Conservative candidate
in January, 1863. In his opening speech he
advocated non-intervention in the American War,
which was then the one great question in the
public mind. He deprecated alike Lord John
Russell's promise of British protection to the Pope
at Malta and the cession of the Ionian Islands to
Greece. He rejoiced at the freedom of Italy and
promised to do all that lay in his power to support
the Church of England. In the event he was
elected, defeating Professor Fawcett by 81 votes.
This victory he repeated at the General Election
of 1865, and continued to represent Cambridge
in Parliament until the General Election of 1868.
During this time he was indefatigable in his
promotion of Working Men's Conservative
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. 53
Associations, speaking to such Associations on
the subject of reform and the Reform Bill of 1867,
at Bradford, Wakefield, Cleckheaton, Huddersfield
and Leeds. He took up the cry for " Household
Suffrage " as embodied in this Bill, saying that the
proposal of the Government excluded no man
who occupied a house, but gave opportunities of
access to the franchise to every family man in
England and Wales. Every householder who paid
rates was to have a vote. This provision would
have excluded all those who occupied houses for
which the landlords paid the rates, called
" Compound Householders." Eventually, Mr.
Disraeli silenced oppostion to this limitation by
unexpectedly accepting the proposal of Mr.
Hodgkinson, Liberal Member for Newark, to
abolish " compounding " in the limits of
Parliamentary Boroughs. The Bill was passed
in 1867 and led to an increase in the electorate of
1,109,711 votes by 1870.
At the General Election which followed in
1868, an alarm was raised that the rate-paying
clause in the Reform Act was likely to be a terrible
burden on the poor tenant, who now had to
pay rates which, under the old system of
" compounding," had been paid by his landlord.
Mr. Powell, who stood again for Cambridge with
Mr. John Gorst (now Sir John) as his colleague,
replied that he had not opposed this clause and
believed the landlords would re-adjust their rents
54 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
to meet its provisions. He made a counter-attack
on his opponents by accusing them of an abortive
attempt to transfer from candidates to the rate-
payers, the expense of erecting the hustings at
Elections. Feeling in Cambridge was so strong
that Mr. Gorst and he had stones thrown at them
in the streets, and at the Nomination on November
21st, they spoke with much difficulty, owing to
disturbances and uproar. They were both defeated,
and thus ended Mr. Powell's connection with the
borough of Cambridge. It is worth noticing, that
the poll at this Election was more than double
that at the last General Election at Cambridge in
1865, partly owing to the inclusion of the Liberal
suburb of Chesterton.
Out of Parliament, Mr. Powell became an
active supporter of the National Education Union,
whose object was to secure the primary education
of every child, by judiciously supplementing the
existing denominational system of national
education. He spoke for the Union at places as
divergent as Newcastle, Leeds, Leicester, Man-
chester and Oxford, and its objects became largely
embodied in the Government Education Bill of
1870. Noth withstanding the fact that this was
a Liberal measure, he became one of its warmest
supporters. At the beginning of April, 1870, we
find him addressing an important meeting at
Chatham in support of a petition, praying " your
honourable House to pass the Bill in the present
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. $$
Session of Parliament, preserving unimpaired the
principle therein contained, of the liberty of
religious teaching." A few days later he was
speaking in the same sense at Cambridge in
connection with the proposed new schools for St.
Matthew's district. The number of children in
England without education at that time (April
1870) was estimated to be 1,000,000. He
advocated twelve or eighteen months grace before
the measure came into operation, to allow time
for the building of the additional schools required
by voluntary effort, believing that such would be
the repugnance of the people to an additional call
from the rate-collector, that they would rather
build schools for themselves than pay an extra
rate for the purpose. At the same time he
considered that the moral value to the community
of a religious education was sufficient to make
unjustifiable John Stuart Mill's demand that those
who made use of religious teaching should pay for
it themselves, instead of taxing others for it. He
advocated that the community 'be trained to
respect the Divine Law, "Thou shalt not steal,"
and the promptings of Christian charity, rather
than be restricted from theft by penal settlements,
and relieved from want with money extracted by
the rate collector.'
At the end of this year, 1870, he became a
candidate for election at Marylebone upon the
new Metropolitan School Board but was rejected.
56 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
In his election address, he urges the importance
of elementary instruction on the physical laws of
health, then entirely neglected, basing this on
his experience as a member of the Royal Sanitary
Commission.
In February of the next year, 1 87 1 , he contested
the seat of Staleybridge and Dukinfield at a
bye-election in the Conservative interest. This
election was of a most uproarious nature and full
of dramatic contrasts. The uproar began the
very week after the public funeral of the late
Conservative member, Mr. Sidebottom, had cast
a gloom over the neighbourhood. The Liberal
candidate, Mr. Buckley, was a large employer of
labour in the district, and had lately built a new
mill in Dukinfield. Mr. Powell was a stranger,
but did his best during the week at his disposal
to make himself and his views known, ending it
by addressing immense open-air meetings, both at
Staleybridge and Dukinfield, and disposing of the
attempts made to blacken his charater by the
" Ashton News." He stated that he had never
before been so enthusiastically received. Then
followed the nomination. Twelve thousand
people assembled before the hustings. These
were at the back of Victoria Market, Staley-
bridge, and accommodated some 300 persons.
In the centre were the Mayor, town councillors,
town clerk and other officials. The left side,
near the river Tare, was set apart for Mr. Powell
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. 57
and his friends. On the right, near the Hudders-
field Canal, were Mr. Nathaniel Buckley and
his Liberal supporters. The crowd nearly broke
down the barriers. A plank fell on the Liberal
side, after the smashing of a beam. This caused
a panic, but failed to do any useful execution
for the Conservative cause. The Mayor restored
confidence in the stability of the hustings
by stepping forward upon them and saying,
" Ladies and Gentlemen, let me request you to be
as peaceful as possible during this election. It is
time that we should redeem our character and
conduct ourselves better than we have done for
some years past. Therefore let us try to differ
without coming to blows."
The writ had already been read, and there
followed the proposals and secondings of the
candidates, and their speeches. These were made
amidst shouts, hissings, groans, free fights and
singing of the refrain " We will all sing gay, when
Natty comes marching home." " Natty," alias
Mr. Nathaniel Buckley, seems to have encouraged
his friends to obstruct the proceedings. At length
came the show of hands. About a third of the
assembly put up their hands for Mr. Buckley, but
these included many factory girls and children.
When " Hands up for Mr. Powell " was called
by the Mayor, a perfect forest of hands was raised.
The Liberals, who had made the most noise, were
58 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
so much surprised and dismayed, that they
suspected some misunderstanding and demanded
another show. The Mayor yielded, and more
hands than ever were put up for Mr. Powell. He
then declared the show of hands to be in favour
of Mr. Powell, an announcement met by deafening
cheers and the demand of a poll by the Liberals.
In the event Mr. Buckley was returned next day
by a majority of 208. Mr. Ralph Bates, Chairman
of the Conservative Committee, attributed this
result to the fact that their candidate was not a
fellow townsman. He added that Mr. Buckley,
" since the last Election had gained considerable
influence in Dukinfield by opening a new mill.
In three months time, however, they would have
the ballot (cheers), and then they would not see
mill owners bringing up their men to vote."
It is significant that Mr. Powell, who had
denounced the ballot in 1865 on account of its
secrecy, had declared himself in favour of it, as a
necessary complement to the enlargement of the
franchise, in his election address on this occasion.
He explained this apparent inconsistency, which
the Liberals of course pointed out, by saying that
the old 10 householders were rightly required to
vote openly, as representatives of the class of
small householders, many of whom had no votes.
Now that all householders could represent them-
selves, he thought there was no further need for
open voting. However this may be, the question
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. 59
of the ballot which had been fought for forty
years, was settled the next year by the tardy
passage of the Bill through the Lords.
The sequel of this paradoxical election is
thus described in a newspaper of June 26th, 1871 :
" On Saturday afternoon, a grand Con-
servative demonstration, accompanied by a
procession and gala, took place at the Recreation
Grounds, Cheetham Hill Road, Staleybridge, in
honour of Mr. F. S. Powell, the late Conservative
candidate .... Staleybridge and Dukinfield
wore quite a holiday aspect during the day, and
the popularity of the event was demonstrated,
alike by the hundreds of pretty flags and
banners to be seen in the principal thorough-
fares, and the thousands of people abroad, who
displayed the predominating Conservative
colours. 1 '
A presentation was made to Mr. Powell on
this occasion.
On August 5th of this year, 1871, he sailed
for America with Mrs. Powell in what he described
as " one of those fine steamers that cross the
Atlantic." It was a paddle boat. They visited
New York, Boston, Quebec, Montreal, Niagara,
Chicago, Salt Lake City, the Yo Semiti Valley
and San Francisco, returning to New York by
way of Denver, St. Louis, Philadelphia and
Washington. They went well armed with
60 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
introductions, particularly to Bishops of the
American Church, Education and Sanitary-
authorities.
Soon after his return, at the end of the year,
Mr. Powell retailed the results of his study of
American schools and American methods of
education, in a speech on December 23rd, 1871 at
the opening of St. Matthew's School-room, Cam-
bridge. He hesitated to express an opinion as to
" whether it was an advantage or not that all
classes of society should assemble together and
receive instruction in common ? " He described
as a novelty to an English audience the breaking
up of entire schools into small class-rooms.
Sixty children in one room under one teacher
was then considered a "small class" in America,
and was the usual arrangement. Forty is now
thought here to be the greatest number which
can be adequately controlled by one teacher in
a class-room. If the hint had been taken from
America in those days and class-rooms had been
built instead of the large school-rooms which
became prevalent, a vast amount of expensive
building, and expensive but usually unsatisfactory
alterations to existing buildings, might have been
avoided in subsequent years.
He found large schools ranging from 500
to 1,500, where the population admitted of it,
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. 6 1
the rule in America. As regards discipline,
corporal punishment had already been abolished.
In San Francisco, a schoolmaster showed him
"with much pride" a school of 1,400 children,
where it was unknown. On the other hand, the
School Board of a City on the Atlantic Coast was
most anxious to abolish corporal punishment, but
the parents objected to the proposal "on the ground
that such boys as theirs would never be taught
without the birch." In New York again, the
abolition of the rod seems to have led to chaos.
He quotes " the following pathetic lamentation "
from the New York report of 1870 : " Indeed so
much time many teachers say, is taken up, and
their energies exhausted to such a degree in
preserving order in keeping their pupils quiet
that they have little of either left to enable
them to give sufficient instruction." The largest
amount of religious instruction was given in the
schools of Chicago. It was forbidden by enactment
in St. Louis and Cincinnati, and optional in New
York where every school except one availed itself
of the privilege of reading a portion of
Scripture at its opening He visited schools
for the black population also, and expresses his
satisfaction that they were not only being well
educated, but also owing to the recent American
War being educated as freemen.
The onset of the New Year (1872), found him
in the thick of the momentous Bye-Election for
62 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
the Northern Division of the West Riding of
Yorkshire.
The vacancy was caused by the lamented
death of Sir W. Crossley, to whose public-spirited
generosity and business genius Mr. Powell gave
eloquent testimony. The situation was a peculiar
one. The militant Nonconformists were resolved
to have Mr. Forster's Education Act of 1870
amended, on the ground that it gave too much
support to denominational schools, most of which
belonged to the Church of England. Churchmen
and moderate Liberals supported the Act, as being
favourable to religious education, and better than
the alternative policy of allowing nothing but
secular education in state-supported schools.
The Constituency had always been Liberal and
was largely under the control of Nonconformists.
Should the Liberals nominate a moderate Liberal
or an extremist ? They adopted the latter course
by nominating Mr. Isaac Holden rather than Mr.,
afterwards Sir H. W. Ripley. The Conservatives
replied by nominating Mr. Powell, an ' out & out '
Churchman, and a supporter of Mr. Forster's
Act, so far as it concerned religious education.
This, together with the fact that he had declared
in favour of a Ballot Act (though he refused to
give unqualified support to the Bill then before
the House, owing to its confused nature), enabled
him to conciliate a large number of moderate
Nonconformist Liberals and Liberal Churchmen.
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. 63
The main points in his election address
were his support of the Church of England as a
valuable national asset ; distrust of purely secular
education, and a desire that the denominational
schools should have fair play ; the need for Public
Health legislation as the result of the recent
Royal Sanitary Commission, of which he was a
member ; the need of a Minister of Commerce ;
that the remedy for intemperance was to improve
the moral tone of the community rather than
resort to legislation such as the " The Permissive
Bill," then before the House ; that publicans
should be compensated for any loss due to a new
Licensing Bill ; that the Government had been
negligent in dealing with the Mines Regulation
Bill and with the iniquities of the truck system.
The address was published on January 15th,
1872. Large and often noisy meetings were held
in all parts of the Constituency. The largest
were at Bradford, where St. George's Hall and
the New Mechanics' Hall were crowded. The
noisiest, judging from the newspaper reports, were
at Halifax and Hebden Bridge. At the latter
place Mr. Powell was heard with difficulty owing
to the uproar and shouts of "Three cheers for
Holden." He enjoyed re-visiting Settle, Sedbergh
and Dent, and rejoiced that the fells in the valley
about Dent, which were waste in the early part
of his school-days, were now enclosed and
cultivated. When asked at Dent what he thought
64 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
of the game laws, he said " he thought the main
mischief was from excessive preservation of game.
When a man preserved moderately and gave
liberally to his neighbours, he did not see that
there was any harm in the game laws. Those
who preserved game ought to deal moie liberally
with those around them ; then everyone would
assist to preserve moderately."
In his speeches the greatest emphasis was
laid on the necessity for religious education and
the open Bible in the schools. He advocated equal
Government grants for Denominational and Board
schools, based on their efficiency in secular
subjects. He strongly supported the contentious
25th clause of Mr. Forster's Education Act which
allowed School Boards to pay the school pence
for certain needy children at Denominational
equally with Board schools, according to the wish
of the parent. He maintained that this was not
an acknowledgment of the principle of the
concurrent endowment of both types of school, as
not one penny of what the Government gave
would be spent upon religious teaching.
The Election turned largely on such provisions
of the Education Act and on the question of
Church Establishment.
The nomination of the two candidates took
place from extensive hustings erected in the
Bradford Fair Ground, where an immense crowd
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. 65
assembled. Mr. Powell was proposed by James
Farrar, Esq., J. P. and seconded by William
Fison, Esq., J. P. He declared from the hustings
that he was righting for the preservation of the
Church and for Bible teaching in the schools.
The poll took place on February 6th. It was a
neck-to-neck contest. At ten, eleven and twelve
Mr. Holden was ahead. After that, until the end,
Mr. Powell held his own, and on February 7th he
was declared to be elected by 44 votes. Though
rain fell the whole time, an enthusiastic crowd of
eight to ten thousand people stood before the
hustings to hear the declaration of the poll. The
proceedings terminated with a speech and three
cheers for the Queen at the call of the newly
elected member.
This was Mr. Powell's last contested Election
under the system of open voting. It was a unique
victory in the history of the Constituency, which
has, on all other occasions, been Liberal. It is
said that when Mr. Disraeli heard of it, he did
not believe it. During 1873, Mr. Gladstone's
Government was gradually falling to pieces.
On April 17th of that year, a meeting of the
Conservatives of the Northern Division of the
West Riding was summoned, and a Resolution
passed, congratulating Mr. Powell "upon the
ability and assiduity with which he had dis-
charged his Parliamentary duties," and inviting
him to stand again. He accepted in a letter
'
66 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
dated " House of Commons, May ist, 1873."
During the year 1873, as Member of
Parliament for the West Riding, Mr. Powell took
a leading part in two important events at
Bradford. The first was the opening of the
new buildings of the Bradford Grammar School
in June. In his speech then, he expressed a wish
that the school might soon be open to girls as
well as boys a wish which has since been
fulfilled. The second event was the meeting of
the British Association. Speaking on a paper by
Professor Lewis in Section F (Economic Science
and Statistics), he claimed that there had been
a decrease in expenditure on Poor Law Relief
during the last ten years, and that it was an
incontrovertible fact that the wages of the
working classes had increased in a far larger
proportion than their expenses. He regretted the
small proportion of their wages spent by the
working classes upon rent, which had been shown
in the Professor's paper, urging them to create a
demand for better houses, by being willing to pay
a higher rent. By doing this, he said they would
be serving their own interests, as the building
trade more than any other, when prosperous, gave
employment to large masses of labourers.
The President of the Section, the Right Hon.
W. E. Forster, had said that some refused to obey
the laws of Political Economy, but Mr. Powell
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. 6/
maintained that all must obey these laws, either
as " masters or martyrs," as they must ' obey
physical laws. He urged them, therefore, to 'learn
and master' them.
During this time he was pressing sanitary
legislation on a House occupied by the futile
Irish Universities Bill, and on a Government much
embarrassed by the financial mal-administration
of some of its members. He took a large share
in the drafting of the Bill which eventually
became the Public Health Act, 1875, and forms
the basis of English Public Health administration.
The General Election came in January,
1874. Mr. William Fison was nominated as
Conservative candidate with Mr. Powell, against
Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Wilson. Mr.
Powell remained faithful to the 25th Clause of
the Education Act, and his speeches deal
principally with Church and Education, as before.
There were many hecklers and much uproar at
some of the meetings. At Settle, the mob refused
him a hearing. At Sedbergh, the landlord of the
White Hart, the head- quarters of the Liberal
Committee Rooms, seems to have successfully
interrupted the proceedings from first to last.
Most of the questions asked were on party lines,
but at Todmorden a mill-hand began this part
of the proceedings by shouting out to Mr. Powell,
"Why did you stop the whistles?" a question
68 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
which was received with loud laughter. Mr.
Powell said he never stopped the whistles, but
had given the representatives of the rate-payers
an opportunity of stopping them, if the rate-payers
did not like them. The matter, however, seems
to have rankled, for he was asked later at another
meeting with delicate innuendo, " Will you stop
the Church bells on Sundays ? " The reference of
course was to " The Steam Whistles Act," to
regulate " buzzers " used to summon mill-hands
to their work. Owing to his action with regard
to them, Mr. Powell was nicknamed " Buzzer"
Powell at this time.
Democratic candidates must beware of
interfering with the personal convenience of
voters, and it is impossible to say how many votes
"the buzzer" may have lost Mr. Powell. Be that
as it may, the Liberals rallied, and Lord Frederick
Cavendish and Mr. Wilson were returned. The
figures were :
Cavendish - - 8,68 1
Wilson - - 8,598
Powell - - 7,820
Fison - - - 7,725
The main consolation was that the Conser-
vatives had gained votes since the Bye-election,
when the figures were Powell, 6,961, Holden,
6917.
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. 69
In September, 1874, Mr. Powell was
nominated as official Conservative candidate for
a vacancy in the County of Cambridge and Isle
of Ely. His opponent was Mr. Hunter Rodwell,
Q.C. of Ampton Hall, Bury St. Edmunds, also a
Conservative. Mr. Rodwell came forward at the
request of the tenant farmers, who were
determined to elect him. The walls of the " Lion
Hotel " at Cambridge were completely covered
with " Powell " placards on this occasion, and
Mr. Rodwell made a display at the "Bull."
Eventually Mr. Powell retired and thereby
avoided the risk of the nomination of a Liberal
candidate.
CHAPTER IV.
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS.
(Continued.)
HE passed the year 1875 without an
election. On February 1st, 1876, he
published his election address as Con-
servative candidate for the City of Manchester.
This was another gigantic enterprise under-
taken against great odds. There were 60,000
electors ; the Constituency extended from one
end of Manchester to the other, and he was a
stranger to it, except by reputation. His
opponent was Mr. Jacob Bright. The defence of
the National Church and Voluntary schools were
once more brought to the fore in his address.
He also urged the necessity of improving our
technical education, so as to enable our artisans
to compete on more favourable terms with those
of foreign nations. This matter was much in
his thoughts at this time, as he had had much to
do with the recent inauguration of the Yorkshire
College of Science for the benefit of the
manufacturing industries of the County. He
advocated amendments of the Public Health
Laws and commended the action of the Govern-
ment in passing the Public Health Act of 1875,
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. 7 1
much of which he had himself drafted. With
regard to social legislation, he said : " I shall
eagerly embrace every opportunity of thus
promoting the happiness of all classes." No
promise was ever more abundantly fulfilled. He
reminded the electors that he was a Lancashire
man by birth, and that his prosperity was bound
up with their own, and promised heartily to
support the removal of the duties on the
importation of cotton goods into India. This was
a " bonne bouche " at the end of his address.
At the meeting at the Conservative Club,
St. James' Square, Manchester, at which he was
enthusiastically adopted as the party candidate,
more than half his speech is occupied with the
old point. " Education, I have declared on
many occasions, is imperfect unless a citizen is
taught duty towards God as well as fear of the
Magistrate (Cheers) and I know not how duty
towards God can be inculcated in a better
manner than by the reading and the teaching of
Holy Scripture in our schools on every day of the
week." (Loud cheers.)
A side educational issue at that time was
the question whether education should be
made compulsory in Rural Districts, as it had
been in Urban. He declared himself in favour
of this, and said that with Mr. Hugh Birley,
their sitting Member, he had pressed it upon both
72 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
Mr. Gladstone's and Mr. Disraeli's Governments.
Abroad he advocated the annexation of the Fiji
Islands, as a British base in the Pacific likely
to keep slavery in check. He supported the
Government's move in purchasing shares in
the Suez Canal. He blamed the Liberals for the
Alabama claims and for the nine millions spent
on the Abyssinian War. In business matters he
claimed to have been the consistent advocate of
Free Trade throughout his political life, and
boasted that at Cambridge he had strongly
denounced the remaining shilling duty on corn.
At the same time the spice of common sense
seasoned his economic theory. At the Man-
chester Town Hall " amid cheers, uproar and
laughter," he defended Mr. Disraeli's Govern-
ment's action in retaining the paper duties in a
year when the country could not afford to do
without them.
His opponent, who came from Eccles, had
been very indignant about the currant duties
and in one of his elaborate jokes he said this was
natural, for Eccles stood for a corruption of
Ecclesia, and Mr. Bright's great political maxim
was " Up with the cakes and down with the
Church."
His connection with sanitary and factory
reforms made Mr. Powell a strong candidate as
far as regards social legislation, but at five
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. 73
o'clock in the morning of July 30th, 1873, he
gave a vote which was much canvassed at this
election. It was against a motion to omit a
clause in Lord Elcho's Master and Servants Act,
which exposed to penalties of imprisonment
working-men who failed in the performance of a
contract. This motion was brought forward in
order to make the Bill non-contentious and get
it passed in the " dog-days " without adequate
discussion. To avoid this undue haste, and to
ensure that the measure should be discussed
again in detail, and either amended or repealed,
he voted against the motion. In spite of his
explanation and condemnation of the clause,
the matter was brought up again and again at
meetings during this election. The fact of his
vote to retain the obnoxious clause could not be
denied, and the diplomatic reason for his action
was hard to explan to heckling matter-of-fact
audiences.
He supported the principle of Trades
Unionism even in these early days, in a speech at
Higginbotham's New Mill, Canal Street,
Ancoats, in which he asserted that work-
people of this country were " fully entitled
to combine for their own protection."
He received a letter from the Trades
Unions of Manchester in the course of the
election and was delighted by the moderation
74 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
and sense of their demands. They desired a
more efficient system of factory inspection, and
that the sanitary condition of factories and
workshops should be improved. He had worked
for both these ends, and was able to express
himself in general agreement with all the wishes
expressed in this letter. He was also able to
remind his working class audiences that the
Conservative Ministry had made their savings
more secure by improving the laws affecting
Friendly and Building Societies. He went on
to boast of the Reform Act of 1867 in the same
speech, but was answered by a wise Conservative
voice " a leap in the dark ! "
No stone seems to have been left unturned
to find grounds for personal attack during
this election. He was accused of turning his
back on Wigan, of contradicting his principles
by holding grossly insanitary property, of giving
two sums of 100 to Manchester Institutions
in order to secure votes. All these charges
were easily contradicted by the facts, but
their appearances on the hoardings may have
done him injury.
At a meeting in the Memorial Schools,
Howarth Street, he produced a telegram found
in the street, asking a Bradford man to send
information against Mr. Powell, and promising
that the name of the sender should not be
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. 75
divulged. His characteristic rejoinder on this
occasion was " Dont leave telegrams about
in the street," and he generously refused to
publish abroad the names of those concerned
in the telegram. There was much organized
disturbance, particularly at the Town Hall,
where the disturbers forced their way through
the doors opening on to the platform.
A feature of the election was his vast
meeting at the Free Trade Hall, on February
7th. An account of it can be given in his
own words, quoted from a private letter
written the same evening from the Conservative
Club.
" We have had the most marvellous meet-
ing. The Free Trade Hall in Manchester the
largest room in this City, probably the largest
room in England was not only crowded,
but the number of those unable to get in
was equal to those admitted. Birley kindly
went out and addressed those outside. The
crush and consequent noise were such, that
until this step was taken I could not proceed.
I spoke one hour thirty minutes, and then went
outside and gave them another speech. Our
friends are in raptures. They say it was
some the very best, others one hundred per
cent the best speech ever made in that room
on a political occasion. Of course I can feel no
confidence in the result, as we deal with 60,000
76 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
voters, but I think there is some ground for
hope. I am feeling perfectly well, but am
living with extreme care."
The writ arrived two days later. The
nominations took place on February 14th, and
the poll on February 17th. All his available
time was occupied by constant meetings in all
parts of the City, but he lost three opportunities
of addressing the Electors through enforced
absence to attend the funeral of his Father-
in-law, Mr. Matthew Gregson, at Liverpool.
The result was another disappointment, mingled
with triumph on account of the unique magnitude
of the poll.
The figures were :
Jacob Bright (L) 22,536
F. S. Powell (C) 20,974
Liberal Majority 1,562
Whatever may have been the effect on the
Poll of the dastardly attacks made on
Mr. Powell's personal character during this
election, his friends were not content to let
the matter rest. The Wigan Conservative Men's
Club, the Wigan Conservative Association and
the Cambridge Junior Conservative Club showed
their indignation by presenting him with
Addresses (See Appendix) of which as a large
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. 77
property owner and public man he was justly
proud. Two of them still hang in his dressing
room at Cambridge Square, where he could
always see them.
In his speech of thanks at Wigan he said :
" When the attacks were made respecting
my actions in a particular district in Yorkshire, I
consulted the most eminent engineer in the
district. I asked him to visit the property
and make an independent report. He made
the report and he found that the property
was in a condition eminently satisfactory ;
and went on to state in reference to many
portions of it that so satisfactory was its
condition that no improvement known to
science and no amendment could be made
I consulted the highest legal advice
within the reach of any Englishman, and I
was advised that if I did take proceedings,
those proceedings would result in a manner
satisfactory to myself ; but those whom I
consulted proceeded to say that ' they advised
Mr. Powell to treat the matter with the
contempt it seemed to them to merit.' '
This speech ends with a review of his
position at that time : " It has fallen to my
lot to fight many a hard battle for the Con-
servative cause, and I have at least this
78 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
gratification that if I have not in my own
person always been successful, the cause has
been served. It was my duty to accept the
invitation of the northern division of the West
Riding in 1872, because I would not permit
that constituency to be represented by one
who was in favour of secular education, and
the disestablishment of the Church. It was
my duty, at least I thought it to be my
duty in 1874, not to desert my friends. It
is true that upon this occasion I was not
successful, but the cause was served, because
no man dared to appear before that division
of Yorkshire who would speak one word against
the Church of England, or utter one syllable
in favour of secular education. It is true that
when accepting the invitation of the Con-
servatives of Manchester the majority of votes
was not cast in my favour ; but there was
given me a larger number of votes than had
ever been previously recorded in favour of
any candidate* in any constituency in Great
Britain or in Ireland. I received 1000 votes
more than even my friend, Mr. Birley, and I
received between 2000 and 3000 more votes
than were recorded at the strictly party vote
of the Election of 1874. I therefore repeat
once more my gratitude to the Conservatives
of Manchester, and my acknowledgment of the
* i.e. Conservative candidate.
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. 79
manner in which they fought by my side on
the occasion of the last election."
In July, 1877, a testimonial was presented
to him by his Manchester friends at his London
house, No. 1, Cambridge Square. The Addresses
from Wigan and Cambridge were in the room,
the latter in its beautiful silver casket, and
the deputation consisted of the following old
friends: The late Sir J. W. McClure, Bart.,
Chairman of the Manchester Conservative
Association ; Messrs. Gatrix, Windsor, Rose and
Birch, Vice-Presidents ; and Messrs. Hugh
Birley, M.P., J. R. Tennant, M.P., W. S.
Stanhope, M.P., J. E. Gorst, Q.C., A. G.
Marten, Q.C., M.P., L. R. Starkey, M.P.,
J. Hick, M.P., Basil Woodd, M.P., Thomas
Knowles, M.P., Edward Hardcastle, M.P. Mrs.
Powell, their hostess, was the only lady present.
In his speech of thanks he not unnaturally
dwelt upon the social progress which he him-
self and so many of those present had helped
to bring about. Speaking of Lancashire, he
said : " I can remember the time when the
factory lamp was lighted early indeed in the
morning, and when it burnt far into the night ;
when there were to be seen at each street
corner during the brief hours of leisure, weird
and haggard forms, the victims of industry ;
when the streets were encumbered with refuse,
themselves scarcely passable by carriages \
80 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
when water was hardly obtainable, and when
its quality was so mischievous that its scarcity
was by no means its chief defect ; when the
habitations harboured wretchedness and disease ;
and when education was in a great degree
unknown. Can it appear surprising that in
those days there was discontent in Lancashire
and Yorkshire ? . . . . Happier indeed are the
days in which we live. Legislation has been
active and the condition of the people has
improved. That reform has been accomplished
in no small measure by the Conservative party."
From the Manchester election to the
dissolution in March, 1880, the country was
agitated by the Afghan and Zulu wars, but the
predominating interest was the Eastern question,
produced by the Bulgarian atrocities and the
Russo-Turkish war, and ended for the time by
the famous ' Peace with Honour' Treaty of Berlin
in 1878, in which Mr. Disraeli and Lord Salisbury
represented this country. Mr. Powell defended
Mr. Disraeli's foreign policy throughout this time
on many platforms, and came forward for the
third time at the 1880 General Election as
Conservative candidate for the Northern Division
of the West Riding with Mr. C. S. Lister,
afterwards Lord Masham, against Lord Frederick
Cavendish and Sir Matthew Wilson.
In his election address, dated March 15th,
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. 01
1880, he declares : " With Home Rulers and their
devices I have not and never have had, any
sympathy. It is the first duty of a statesman to
maintain the integrity of the Empire." As regards
our foreign policy he maintains that "the
foresight and energy of the Government have
preserved this country from war, and have
defeated the ambitious designs of Russia ;" that
" the action of Lord Beaconsfield in relation to
other countries has received the emphatic
approbation of Parliament," and that it remained
for the constituencies to determine whether a
change of the administration of foreign affairs
" at a critical moment " was desirable. In answer
to a question at Clayton as to whether the
Conservative candidates would support a proposal
to put an impost on corn for the protection of
farmers, Mr. Powell declared himself a " Free
Trader altogether," and Mr. Lister a "Protectionist
altogether." This difference of opinion however
did not affect the voting to any important extent.
The contest seems to have been conducted
on party lines, but Mr. Powell had to waste
much time in refuting the charge of being a
Home Ruler. He had promised the Manchester
electors that he would vote for Mr. Butt's
Resolution in favour of an inquiry into the
question of Home Rule for Ireland, should the
majority of the Irish members desire it. He did
this merely from a sense of justice, but, with the
82 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
loose logic of party politicians, it was interpreted
to mean that he had a lurking love of Home
Rule.
His speeches dealt for the most part with
foreign policy, and the use made by the
Conservative Government of Mr. Gladstone's
surplus. He claimed that it had been paid back
to the tax-payers in the form of reduced Income
Tax, by the abolition of the Horse Tax (which
restored into the pockets of horse owners
^"840,000 a year), of the tax on sheep-dogs, and
of the sugar duties, and by the reduction of the
National Debt.
The result was another defeat which can
hardly have been a surprise. Mr. Gladstone was
at the height of his popularity in Yorkshire at
this time, being at the top of the poll at Leeds
with 24,622 votes, and there was a swing of the
pendulum throughout the country.
These uphill fights were fought one after the
other with an energy which never flagged, and a
courage undaunted by defeat, at a great sacrifice
of money and personal inclination. They won
the warrior that respect of all political parties,
which he retained and increased until the end
of his life.
It is a pleasure to find him returning at
last to his old home among the burgesses
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. 83
of Wigan, who elected him once more after an
interval of twenty-two years. The vacancy
was caused in 1881 by the death of the Earl
of Crawford and the succession of his son,
the sitting member for Wigan, to the title.
His opponent was Mr. J. Lancaster. The first
public meeting was held in the Theatre
Royal, King Street, where Mr. Powell was
most enthusiastically received by about 3,500
people. He had similar receptions in all parts
of the town. He could address his audience
as old friends. He reminded them in the
Scholes Ward, that he had watched the
building of their church, St. Catherine's, from
the windows of Bellingham Lodge. At Bishop-
gate his mother had been educated, in the
very house in which he was then a guest.
At Clayton Street he told them that he had
laid the foundation-stone of the school in
which they were meeting. He was most kindly
received in the homes of the colliers, but
alluded frequently in his speeches to his distress
at the poverty which he found there, confessing
that it was due to the difficulties produced
by the recent Employers Liability Act. He
advised free and friendly .discussion between
masters and men which, he said, was sure to
lead to the overcoming of their difficulties.
Everything depended on the maintenance of
a friendly spirit between the parties.
84 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
The campaign terminated with a great
Conservative demonstration in the Circus,
Market Street, on January 25th, at which over
3,000 people were present. A letter supporting
his " old friend," Mr. Powell, was read on this
occasion from the late Home Secretary, the
Right Hon. Sir R. A. Cross (the late Lord Cross).
The result of the poll was a Conservative victory
by 476 votes. A petition, however, was lodged,
the Election declared void the following March,
and the writ suspended. Mr. Powell defended
the seat and was declared by the Judge, Lord
Bow en, to be free from all blame. On April 2nd
he published a letter to the electors, in which he
says : " When the petition was presented, it
became my duty to defend the seat, not only for
my own sake, as your representative, but also in
order to protect the town against grave accusa-
tions, and to prove that there was no desire on
my part, either to conceal or to excuse any
irregularities which had been committed without
my knowledge, and contrary to the most
express instructions given in the clearest words by
Mr. Eckersley and myself."
There was never any doubt that Mr. Powell
was the true choice of the electorate of Wigan
on this occasion. To revenge themselves upon
the petitioners, a decided majority of the electors
gave him a written guarantee that his seat would
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. 85
be safe if he presented himself as a candidate
at the next General Election.
In 1882 he helped to secure the return of the
Hon. A. F. Egerton as Conservative member for
Wigan. In October 1884 he was entertained at
at a complimentary dinner at the Bradford and
County Conservative Club and was presented
with his portrait by Mr. W. W. Ouless, R.A.,
which had been subscribed for by upwards of
300 Yorkshire friends.
At the General Elections of November, 1885,
and June, 1886, he was again returned for
Wigan and retained his seat for 25 years, though
never without a contest, until he retired from
Parliament in 1910.
On the Queen's Birthday, 1892, he was made
a Baronet, to the great joy of friends and foes alike.
At the next General Election, in June, 1892,
he was able to claim that Lord Salisbury's
Government had kept the peace by a firm and
dignified foreign policy ; reduced the National
Debt by ^38,000,000 ; the duty on tea by 2d. in
the pound, on currants by 6d. and on tobacco by
4d., and all with actual profit to the Exchequer,
owing to increased consumption. As to his own
more personal work he could point to the Public
Health Acts Amendment Act of 1890, which had
been voluntarily adopted by public authorities
86 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
representing more than half the population of
England and Wales outside London. This Act
deals with a multiplicity of details in sanitary
administration omitted from the more com-
prehensive measure of 1875. By means of it Mr.
Powell claimed to have benefited Lancashire by
preventing the river at Manchester from becoming
a mere sewer, emptying itself into the new Ship
Canal.
He opposed the Eight Hours Bill for miners
until such time as the miners themselves were
unanimously in its favour. Quoting the evidence
recently laid before the Labour Commission, he
says : " I find these miners, one after another, say
an eight hours' bank to bank means seven, six or
even a less number of hours at the face, and I
want to know how you can lower the hours at the
face without diminishing the get, and consequently
without lowering the wages Does
anybody think that Parliament, after having
passed a Bill to reduce the hours of labour, will
also pass a Bill to keep up wages?" (laughter).
Recent events show how the claims of labour
upon capital have altered since these words were
spoken at the General Election of 1892.
Another Act at which he had worked
during the past Parliament for the benefit of
Wigan was the Cotton Cloth Factories Act
of 1889. This Act regulated the condition of
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. 87
the atmosphere in factories in which cotton
was steamed, and was the first step towards
improving what had been a very unhealthy
occupation.
It was thus with a record of useful work
on their behalf that he successfully appealed
to his old constituents on this occasion. At
the next General Election in 1895 his majority
was increased from no to 874, and in addressing
the crowd from the dining - room window of
the Conservative Club in Market Street after the
declaration of the poll he pledged himself as
follows : " Depend upon it, the effect of this
Election is to make me more and more bound up
with the people of this town (Applause)
41 and my connection with you will only end
with the termination of my command of physical
energy."
He was destined to fight two more elections
before this time arrived, the so-called Khaki
Election of 1900, and the General election of
1905. At his nomination as candidate at the
latter, which proved his last election, his
proposer, Mr. Alderman Gee, referred to the fact
that there were both Liberal and Labour
candidates in the field. "If there had been
such a thing as gratitude in this twentieth
century," he said, " one would have expected
that in the case of an old man, seventy-eight
88 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
years of age, who had spent the whole of
his life for the amelioration of his country,,
and in season and out of season, many times
under great physical disability, had attended
his place in the House of Commons that the
interests of all classes should be safeguarded
one would have thought that gratitude alone
would have suggested that, at this time of
life, he should have no opposition." As there
was opposition, Mr. Gee urged them to work
harder than ever to secure Sir Francis' return,,
and concluded a most eloquent speech by
confessing to "a sentimental reason" for their
giving their support to Sir Francis "he was
a fine old English gentleman. They had know-
ledge of his past Sir Francis did not make
promises which were to be unfulfilled ; he was
a typical man to represent them, and it could
be said without fear or hesitation that Sir
Francis had never forgotten the interests of
Wigan in all matters which came before
him."
The result was that, notwithstanding the
Liberal and Labour triumphs all along the line
at this Election, Sir Francis was returned with
the magnificent majority of 1,368. Although he
attended regularly at the House of Commons
until the dissolution in 1910, he determined
not to stand again, owing to his increasing
deafness.
NINETEEN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS. 89
Thus ends the unique tale of Sir Francis'
nineteen contested Parliamentary Elections.
He fought, regardless of expense, in all the
thirteen General Elections which took place
during fifty years, and also in six Bye-elections,
scoring eleven victories and eight defeats.*
His retirement resulted in the election of Mr.
Twist, the Labour candidate, at the first General
Election of 1910, though he twice visited Wigan
in the depth of winter to advance the claims
of Mr. R. Neville, K.C. Mr. Neville won back
the seat at the second election of 1910 and
remains the sitting member.
* For dates, names and figures, see Appendix ill.
CHAPTER V.
EDUCATION.
(i) ELEMENTARY EDUCATION.
THAT Mr. Powell was an enthusiastic and
indefatigable supporter of denominational
schools and Christian education has been
made clear by the preceding chapter. It remains
to give an account of some of the various means
which he took to attain his ends.
In 1869 and 1870 he was Secretary of the
National Educational Union of which some
mention has been made in the last chapter, in
order to explain his political attitude on
educational questions. This Union was in
opposition to the National Educational League,
which was designed to propagate a new type of
schools at the public expense, in which the
education should be purely secular, free, and
compulsory. The League maintained that the
provision of school accommodation was grossly
inadequate, whereas the Union held that it was
rapidly increasing and that the existing system
of denominational schools only required to be
supplemented to meet the increasing demand,
and in order to avoid an increase in expenditure
from "100,000 to 3,700,000 per annum. School
EDUCATION. 91
pence should be continued, as their abolition
would involve throwing away 500,000 a year.
To meet necessitous cases more use should be
made of the law enabling Boards of Guardians to
pay the pence for children of parents receiving
out-door relief. The conclusion of the whole
matter was, as Mr. Powell said in his speech for
the Union at Manchester in 1870, that " legisla-
tive measures should at once be taken for the
completion of the present denominational
system."
The result of this widespread educational
battle was the introduction of Mr. W. E. Forster's
Education Bill of 1870. Wherever Mr. Powell
went, he spoke in favour of the principle of the
liberty of religious teaching embodied in this
Bill.
We find him in April, 1870, addressing an
important meeting on the subject at Chatham
one day ; at Cambridge, in connection with the
proposed new schools for St. Matthew's Parish,
the next ; and later, at Wigan. It was in the
interests of the Union that he became candidate
for the Marylebone Division on the Metropolitan
School Board, in November, 1870, but being
unsuccessful, he never stood again.
In 1883, his constant attention to all the
details of education was recognized by his being
92 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
made President of the Educational Department
of the National Association for the Promotion of
Social Science, at Huddersfield. The question of
over-pressure in elementary schools was brought
prominently forward by Dr. Clifford Allbutt and
Dr. J. S. Cameron, and he proposed a Resolution
drawing the attention of the Government to it.
This over-pressure referred more particularly to
pupil teachers. At this time these were trained
out of school hours by the masters and mistresses
of the schools in which they worked during the
day, a method which led to over-work. Mr.
Powell recommended the present system of Pupil
Teacher Centres in secondary schools in the
nearest convenient town, and a system of
intelligent observation of the health of the
children in elementary schools. The latter
project was at length realized by the appointment
of School Medical Officers under the Education
(Administrative Provisions) Act, 1907.
After successfully opposing the Education
Bill of 1 89 1, he became an ardent supporter of
Mr. Balfour's Act of 1902. He approved of the
County and Borough Councils being made the
single central authority. Owing to their inex-
perience, he agreed that it might have been
better for the Councils to undertake secondary
education only at first, had not a more com-
prehensive measure been urgent on account of the
straits of the denominational schools.
EDUCATION. 93
Considering the uncertainties of Parliamen-
tary life, he thought it essential that a single
comprehensive measure should be passed at once,
to avoid further delays. He opposed the
principle of local option of the form of school to
be adopted.
Dealing with the opposition to the Act in a
speech at Wigan in February, 1903, he said,
" What the country would require to know was
whether the children of the parents of England
were to be kept out of their inheritance, and to
continue in undeserved ignorance in order to
gratify the malice of disappointed statesmen,
the anger of choleric Welshmen, and the
imperious temper of party demagogues." He
recognized that the interests of the children
themselves were being neglected in the party
conflicts.
He must have been somewhat disappointed
for a while in the working of Mr. Balfour's
complicated measure. After heralding it as a
solution of the education problem, we find him
saying at the annual gathering at All Saints',
Bradford, in 1905 that " unless the friends of
voluntary schools persevered in their excellent
labours, he believed religion would vanish from
the schools of the country."
In 1906 he championed the Opposition in
94 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
the North to Mr. Birrell's Education Bill. He
considered that it weakened the security afforded
by Trust Deeds. "The security would be no
longer in the deed, but in the deed subject to the
chances of negotiation, conducted by the trustees
and managers for the time being, with all the
uncertainties of their humour or disposition.
These trustees and managers would often be
exposed to pressure, difficult or impossible to
resist."
When he stepped on to the platform as
Chairman of the meeting to protest against the
Bill at St. George's Hall, Bradford, with Lord
Hugh Cecil and the Bishop of Manchester, he
had a most enthusiastic reception from an
audience of 4,000. He happily recalled a
meeting in the same Hall in defence of the
Welsh Church, at which he had presided in 1895,
and predicted a similar victory for the schools.
In 1*908 he gave his support to the Clauses
in the Education (Administrative Provisions)
Act, which rendered the feeding of necessitous
children by Education Committees out of the
rates, legal, and the provision of medical
inspection for elementary school-children com-
pulsory. This brought him into friendly relations
with the Labour Party in the House. He was
on the Committee which investigated the
question of school meals, and there can be no
BRADFORD GRAMMAR SCHOOL. 95
doubt that the harrowing evidence which he
heard on that Committee, led him to recognize
the need of such meals under existing social
conditions, with proper safeguards to prevent
" cadging."
In addition to his general interest in
elementary schools, he took a detailed interest in
all the schools of Wigan and the parts of
Yorkshire where his estates lay, and was a
generous subscriber to them. At the annual
gathering of the Parishioners of All Saints',
Bradford, in January, he usually took the
opportunity of commenting on the present
prospects of the denominational schools, and of
impressing on his hearers, over and over again,
the need for securing definite religious teaching.
(2) SECONDAEY EDUCATION.
BRADFORD GRAMMAR SCHOOL.
" At the Annual Meeting of the Governors of
the Free Grammar School of King Charles the
Second at Bradford, held at the Talbot Inn in
that town, on Monday, the 29th day of September,
1862, it was resolved that Mr. Francis Sharp
Powell of Horton, he elected a Governor in the
place of Mr. W. R. C. Stansfield, who resigned."
On the same date in the following year
(1863,), the same school records state that "Mr.
F. S. Powell attended (i.e. the Governors' Meeting),
96 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
and having been duly elected a Governor ....
.... has this day taken the oath required by
the Charter to be taken for the due execution of
the trust reposed in him." .... He continued
this connection with the school until his death,
48 years later. At the re-opening of the school
in July, 1873, he proposed the vote of thanks to
the Rt. Hon. W. E. Forster, for presiding on the
occasion, which gave him an opportunity of
expressing his admiration for a political opponent,
who was also a friend with whom he had travelled
in the East.
In 1878, speaking of the enlargement of the
school, he said he could remember a time when
the Grammar School had remained small, though
Bradford had increased, and he had seen with
despair ' the dreary room and the empty benches
of the school, and the air of decay which
surrounded the building.' They had then (1878),
400 boys, of whom 50 learnt Greek, with
accommodation for 550, but the Governors
required more money that they might have at
least 20 a boy, wherewith to secure efficient
masters. The number of boys at the time of the
250th anniversary in 191 2 had further increased
up to 580, and a Modern Side had been formed.
BRADFORD GIRLS' SCHOOL.
As early as 1873 we have found Mr. Powell
expressing the hope that the advantages given to
BRADFORD GIRLS SCHOOL. 97
boys might soon be extended to the girls of
Bradford. The words of the Charter granted by
Charles II in 1662 are: "That there shall be
one Free Grammar School of King Charles The
Second at Bradford, for the teaching, instructing
and better bringing-up of children and youth in
Grammar and other Good Learning and Liter-
ature."
The Endowed Schools Commissioners under
Mr. W. E. Forster's Endowed Schools Act, 1869,
admitted the claim that this included girls; a
scheme was formed and accepted, and the
Bradford Girls' Grammar School was opened in
J875, with Mr. Powell as one of its Governors.
Though administered under a separate scheme,
it has always maintained its connection with the
original Foundation, in so far as it draws 250 a
year from the Governors of the Boys' Grammar
School.
At the opening ceremony there was an
evening meeting in St. George's Hall, at which
Mr. John Morley (now Viscount Morley) was
present. The advisability of the Higher Edu-
cation of Girls was still being argued, but
Mr. Powell, as we have seen, had long supported
this movement, and at this meeting put the
matter in this form : " What a man desired
much," he said, " was opulence and comfort ;
what he desired more, if he were a wise man, was
98 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
sound hearty work ; but what he desired most
was a healthy home, and home was woman's
realm."
Although Mr. Powell's other engagements
prevented his giving detailed attention to the
management of the Bradford Boys' and Girls'
Grammar Schools, he was ever ready to support
them on the public platform at any critical
stage in their career.
WIGAN GRAMMAR SCHOOL.
Sir Francis was one of the main supporters
of this school, at which his earliest school-days
had been spent. It passed through most trouble-
some times during his lifetime, before its
establishment on its present basis. He was
elected one of its Trustees as early as 1857 and
continued to hold that office until 1873, the year
of the adoption of a new scheme under the
Endowed Schools Act, 1869. In 1879 the school
was entirely rebuilt on a new site at the edge of
the Mesnes Park, at a cost of ^16,000. Hinc
Mae lacvimae ! As the subscriptions did not
rise to this amount, the required balance was
supplied by the town and apprentice charities.
In return for this assistance, and as a sort of
interest, estimated at 350 on the loan, the
Governors guaranteed free education to thirty-
five boys to be nominated from the elementary
schools of Wigan by the Joint Board of Wigan
WIGAN GRAMMAR SCHOOL. 99
Charities. As there were no endowment funds
which could be allocated to the cost of educating
these boys according to the usual practice of
Governing bodies in such cases, the school
became embarrassed by what the present Head-
master (Rev. E. C. Chambres) aptly calls a
" negative endowment."
In 1896 the Royal Commission on Secondary
Education reported that there were 106 boys at
the school, of whom thirty-two had to be taught
for nothing and that the Headmaster took the
fees with ^ioo from the Trust Funds in lieu of a
salary, and carried on the school as best he could,
having even to resort to sub-letting the school-
house, the large schoolroom and two class
rooms.
Shortly after the issue of this report the late
Colonel Blundell and Sir Francis lunched
together at the Royal Hotel, Wigan, and are
said to have agreed to find as much as ,"800
between them for any additions to the school
which the Headmaster might ask for. They then
summoned him to their presence and he was
obliged to reply that additions would merely be
a further burden, as they would entail more
expense.
During many anxious years, Mr. Powell r
who was created a Governor in 1892 and was
TOO SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
Chairman of the Governors from 1896 until his
death, and other well-wishers did all they could
to keep the school above water. He allowed
some of an accumulating sum which he set aside
for a University Scholarship (The Powell
Scholarship) to be spent on such requirements as
gymnastic apparatus, woodwork plant and
laboratory benches. He also contributed 10 a
year for school prizes for some years, and 250 to
help to clear off its debts in 1892, the year
following Mr. Chambres' election as Headmaster.
Brighter days at last dawned, through the
facilities afforded by Mr. Balfour's Education Act
of 1902. The Governors agreed to make the
school premises complete by building laboratories
out of their endowment fund, and on this
condition the Borough Council undertook to
meet the yearly deficit incurred on current
expenses. As a result, the School nearly trebled
its numbers, rising from 78 to 208, and this
increase has been maintained ever since. At the
Prize Day in 1906, when the successful completion
of these new arrangements was celebrated and
the new laboratories were opened, Sir Francis
commented on the thirty-nine years during which
he had been connected with the management of
the school, and said that " Though he had had
his discouragements in his life-time, he had
always hoped and always succeeded ; but as
regards the Grammar School of Wigan he
THE POWELL SCHOLARSHIPS. IOI
confessed his hopes had been meagre, and he felt
that he should have, on his retirement from
public life, one failure to record. But what was
a failure years ago was no longer a failure. The
Municipal Authorities of the town, being rightly
endowed with power and responsibility by the
Act of 1902, had appreciated the difficult
situation and risen to the occasion."
The Powell Scholarships.
At the time of the opening of the new school
buildings in 1879, Mr. Powell offered a Scholar-
ship at Oxford or Cambridge to the most deserving
Wigan Grammar School boy who was eligible.
The Scholarship was to be of 50 a year for
three years, and no boy who had not been three
years at the school could hold it. During the
nineties the leaving age at the school had become
low, and there were no eligible candidates whose
parents were prepared to supplement the
Scholarship with an additional 100 a year,,
necessary for residence at the older Universities.
Consequently the money accumulated.
In 1907 Sir Francis allowed the Scholarship
to be divided into two of 25 a year, and
enlarged its scope to include Liverpool,
Manchester, Leeds, or other Universities with the
consent of the Governors. 2$ about covers the
fees of the modern Universities, Owing to the
102 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
accumulation of the funds, it is now possible to
offer a third Scholarship, and one Scholarship of
25 a year for three years is given annually
instead of the original single Scholarship of ^"50
a year, given triennially.
During Sir Francis' lifetime the terms of the
Scholarship seem to have been informal, but it
was founded by his Will. Owing to two
candidates being equal in 1910 there are at
present (January 191 3), four Powell Scholars, one
at Oxford, two at Manchester and one at Liverpool.
Giggleswick Grammar School.
Mr. Powell and Mr. Thomas Yorke of Halton
Place, Hellifield and afterwards of Beverley,
were first appointed Representative Governors of
Giggleswick School by the Master and Fellows
of St. John's College, Cambridge, in October,
1872, according to the provisions of the scheme
of the Endowed Schools Commissioners dated the
9th day of August of that year. Sir Francis
continued to represent the College at Giggleswick
until the end of his life. In January 1873, he
was nominated a member of the Executive and
Finance Committee and was always a member of
the London Committee appointed from time to
time for consultations with the Charity Com-
missioners. He attended the General Meetings of
the Governing Body with great regularity, and took
GIGGLESWICK GRAMMAR SCHOOL. IO3
a keen interest in all that concerned the welfare
of the School. Although specially devoted to
Sedbergh, he heartily supported the development
of Giggleswick on its own lines, and the late
Headmaster, the late Rev. G. Style, to whose
kindness the reader is indebted for these
particulars, wrote (August, 1913) that "his wide
acquaintance with educational affairs in the
North of England gave special weight to his
counsels."
CHAPTER VI.
SEDBERGH SCHOOL.
MR. POWELL entered Sedbergh Grammar
School at the age of sixteen in August,
1843, and left for Cambridge in June,
1846. He was fortunate in having as his Head-
master the Rev. John Harrison Evans, Third
Wrangler and Tenth Classic in 1828, and Fellow
of St. John's College, Cambridge, 1830. During
his school days the number of boys increased from
58 to 95. On the resignation of Mr. Evans in
1 86 1, until it was re-constructed under a new
scheme in 1874, the school rapidly declined.
There were only six boys in it in 1874, when
Mr. Powell was elected a Governor. He was
elected Chairman of the Governors in 1876
and presided regularly at their meetings both in
Manchester and Sedbergh, until his death in 191 1.
There were then 210 boys and five boarding
houses at the School, and he has been justly
called its second founder.
Three new buildings were added in 1879 by
Messrs. Paley & Austin, at a cost of 27,250, and
a new era was inaugurated at the Prize-giving of
SEDBERGH SCHOOL. IO5
1880, when Mr. Powell announced the appointment
of Mr. Henry George Hart, Seventh Classic (1866),
and Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, as
Headmaster. He also announced on this occasion
that " they hoped soon to have a gymnasium,
and then, with swimming in the river, and their
magnificent playground, extending over 16,000
acres of fells, they would be as well equipped as
any school in England."
During Mr. Hart's wise reign of twenty years,
the school was completely re-organized on
modern public school lines, and new buildings
rose up almost year by year. Besides paying for
most of these, Mr. Powell gave the minutest
attention to the details of the plans, and spared
himself no pains in dealing with any matter
connected with the welfare of the school, which
was submitted to him. As Chairman of the
Governors he always presided at the annual
Prize Days at the end of the Summer Term, and
made the speech of the day. Latterly, other
worthies, such as Sir Alfred Hopkinson and Sir
Alfred Dale, were invited to give away the
prizes, but with few exceptions Mr. Powell did
this himself, and hundreds of Sedbergh boys in
all parts of the world must have received prizes
from his hands. He reviewed the principal
events of the past year on these occasions, and
generally had some important developments to
announce.
106 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
In 1883 he was able to report that Mr W. H.
Wakefield, one of the Governors, had promised
to build a sanatorium to replace the existing
one, which the townsmen complained of as being
in the midst of the town. He added that
another Governor had offered to build a
gymnasium. At the subsequent luncheon Mr.
Hart called upon the man who had made this
offer to speak out, and in the event of this not
being done, he coupled the toast of the Governors
with the name of Mr. Powell, amid laughter and
cheers.
On the 1884 Prize Day he and Mr. Wake-
field laid the foundation stones of the gymnasium
and sanatorium, with silver trowels presented
by Mr. Hart. On the same occasion he read an
highly satisfactory report from the examiner of
the school, who said : " The boy who knows
next to nothing of his subject and sends up
papers nearly worthless, seems to be an extinct
species at Sedbergh." In nearly all the papers it
had been quite a phenomenon for a boy to get
less than half marks, and the only fault which
this gentleman (Mr. Burtridge) could find with
the boys of Sedbergh was that " they gave an
examiner too much to do."
In 1885 Mr. Powell announced the found-
ation of a Greek Testament Prize in memory of
Mr. Evans, and to this object nearly all his old
pupils contributed.
SEDBERGH SCHOOL. I07
In 1888 three Sedbergh boys, H. J. Whigham,
E. Selby, and B. H. Fell had won Hastings
Exhibitions at Queen's College, Oxford. The
cricket eleven had beaten Giggleswick, and
young Wilkins, son of Professor Wilkins of
Manchester, a Governor of the school, had been
third out of 1,900 candidates at the London
University Matriculation Examination. " Two
of these victories," Mr. Powell said, " he
mentioned with great satisfaction because young
Fell and Wilkins were both Lancashire lads, and
he was very glad to find that two boys from
Sedbergh had good large Lancashire roses in
their buttonholes that day."
The same afternoon he laid the foundation
stones of a big schoolroom and three class-rooms,
for which he promised 3,000. Mr. Hart gave
him a silver trowel on this occasion, aptly
remarking that it would go into a perfect
armoury of such instruments, with which Mr.
Powell had laid similar stones of buildings,
which his generosity had provided.
In the following year, 1889, he declared
these new buildings open.
In 1892 he had to congratulate masters and
boys on their conduct during a serious epidemic
of scarlet fever at the school, and in 1894 ne
rejoiced that the Local Authority had risen to its
108 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
duty and improved the drains of Sedbergh. A
' Tuck ' shop and a Hostel for the masters had
been added, and as regards the chapel for which
the masters were then collecting money, he made
the following wise remarks :
" First, when a chapel was built, it must be
worthy of that great school. It must be solid
and massive in character, because it was destined
to continue for centuries, and because a building
distinguished by these features was most adapted
to this district of the hills. Secondly, while it
was massive in character, it must be devotional
in aspect ; and next, he did not think that
succeeding generations ought to have to enlarge
the chapel."
The masters persisted in their efforts to
collect the funds, and in 1897 the chapel was
opened and dedicated by the Bishop of Ripon
(Boyd Carpenter), who preached from the text :
" Whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that
sanctifieth the gift?" St. Matthew xxiii. 19.
The late Bishop Bardsley, Sir Francis' brother-
in-law, and the late Bishop Ware of Barrow,
were also present at the dedication. At the
luncheon afterwards, the Bishop of Ripon
proposed the health of the school, rising to the
occasion in a speech of wonderful wit, and Mr.
Powell responded. The chapel fulfilled his
SEDBERGH SCHOOL. IOg
requirements. It was designed, like all the
beautiful new buildings at Sedbergh, by Messrs.
Paley & Austin, and is built of rubble from
the school quarry. It combines dignity with
simplicity, both in its masonry and plain oak
fittings. The stained glass is being added by
degrees, to fulfil a scheme by Mr. E. E. Kempe.
Sir Francis gave the east window, and Lady
Powell the reredos. An admirable illustrated
account of the chapel and opening proceedings
has been published. (Sedbergh School and its
chapel Leeds, Richard Jackson, 1897.)
Three years later, at the 1900 prizegiving,
Sir Francis had to be spokesman to bid farewell
to Mr. Hart, who retired from the head -master-
ship after twenty years service. During this
time they had worked together in close consult-
ation over countless details of administration.
In reply, Mr. Hart said that " twenty-one
times Sir F. S. Powell had been looked for on
this occasion, and had only failed them once."
This was a remarkable record, as these visits
always involved a special journey from London
and back, generally at the weary end of a
Parliamentary session.
In 1 901, the first Speech Day under the
head-mastership of Mr. Charles Lowry, now
headmaster of Tonbridge school, the event of
IIO SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
the past year has been the appeal of more than
half the boys, whose patriotism had been stirred
by the Boer War, to be allowed to shoulder a
rifle. A Cadet corps was formed under the
command of Mr. Lowry himself. He was the
first Headmaster in England to act in this
capacity. The inspection of this corps on prize
days became one of Sir Francis' new duties.
In 1904 the prize day was marked by the
unveiling by Major O'Shea, of the Cross in honour
of six Old Sedberghians, killed in the War.
Among them was Lieutenant R. J. T. Digby
Jones, the first old Sedberghian to win the
Victoria Cross, and Lieutenant F. G. Tait, of the
Black Watch, Amateur Golf Champion in 1896
and 1898. The same afternoon Sir Francis laid
the foundation stone of the new Hall on March
Hill, which was to be named after him, and was
built largely at his expense. Two years
afterwards (1906), the building was completed,
and he had the satisfaction of declaring " The
Powell Hall" open. The first music heard in
the Powell Hall was the singing of " God Save
the King" as arranged by Sir C. V. Stanford.
R. E. Atkinson, afterwards three-miler for Cam-
bridge, sang the first verse as a treble solo.
On June 6th, 1906, Sir Francis and Lady
Powell opened a Sedbergh Mission Club for boys,
at Norton Gate, in their own Parish of All Saints,
SEDBERGH SCHOOL. Ill
Bradford. The Vicar, Canon Rawdon Briggs,
had been invited to address Sedbergh School on
the subject in the previous year. The result was
that a gloomy warehouse had been transformed
into a play-room, a comfortable reading-room
and a book-room. A strong deputation came from
Sedbergh, headed by Mr. Lowry, and the Bradford
boys showed great enthusiasm. Next year, 1907,
Mr. Lowry was appointed Head Master of
Tonbridge School, and Sir Francis and the
Governors had once more the difficult task of
choosing a new Head Master, This always
caused him the greatest anxiety, and he spared no
pains to get the right man. This time the lot
fell on Mr. F. B. Malim, of Trinity College,
Cambridge, then a most successful House Master
at Marlborough.
In 1908, Sir Francis, further improved
Sedbergh by giving electric light to the Chapel,
School House and Hostel. In 1909 he bought the
covered fives courts and presented them to the
School, and in 1910, he provided a workshop for
manual instruction, and is described in the
Sedberghian for July, 1910 as having "delivered
an oration on that subject with his usual vigour."
The Speech Day of 191 1, within five months
of his death, proved his last. By this time he
was suffering from rapidly increasing infirmities
which made railway travelling precarious, but it
112 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
never occurred to him not to keep his annual
engagement at Sedbergh.
His conduct of the Governor's Meetings is
thus described by Professor S. J. Chapman, in a
private letter : " I am delighted to hear that you
are publishing a Memoir of Sir Francis Powell.
I joined the Board of Governors of Sedbergh
School in 1902, and then, as you know, Sir Francis
was Chairman. I was at once impressed by his
striking personality, and was soon convinced that
the school was fortunate in having so devoted,
capable and generous a Chairman. At that time
Sir Francis was already very deaf, but he had a
remarkable power of conducting business, never-
theless. He became deafer as time went on.
In the case of very many people, deafness would
have been fatal to effectiveness in such a capacity.
However, it was not so in the case of Sir Francis
Powell. Everybody felt (as I think I may say
with truth), that his retirement would have been
a serious loss to the School. He had high ideals
and an amazing grasp of detail. It was his
practice, I believe, to discuss different questions
with different Governors before the meetings,
verbally and by correspondence. In this way
proper deliberation on debatable points was
insured. Sir Francis was a strong man and
generally got his way ; but that, I should say,
was mainly because his own way was usually the
right way. His ascendency over the Board was
SEDBERGH SCHOOL. 113
largely due to the members' affectionate regard
for their Chairman, and assurance that he
carefully weighed points at issue and always had
the best interests of the school at heart.
It is not too much to describe him as one of
the founders of the school as it is now. How
lavish he was in his gifts to the school, you know.
(The University, Manchester, 27th, April 1912)."
These gifts to the School included school
buildings, the gymnasium, the Powell Hall, the
cricket field, the east window of the chapel, the
fives courts and the workshop. He also often
made up awkward deficiencies in its accounts.
It was seldom that neither plans nor other
business connected with the School were
commanding his attention, either at Horton or
Cambridge Square. One of the last serious
anxieties of his life was connected with the choice
of a new Head Master, when Mr. Malim left for
Haileybury in the autumn of 191 1 ; but as long
as his mental vigour remained unimpaired, he
spared himself pains, neither for Sedbergh, nor,
indeed for anybody or anything which he had at
heart. His services were fittingly acknowledged
by the presentation of his portrait by Mr. Edward
Patry, R.B.A., at the 1909 Speech Day. This is
eventually to find a permanent resting place in
the Powell Hall. In making the presentation
Mr. Malim said : " He had done for Sedbergh
114 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
what no other Sedberghian, and he believed no-
other old boy had ever done for his school ....
The English schoolboy was always devoted to his
school, but Sir Francis was more than that. He
had given them every aid by his wealth, personal
interest, and personal service."
The picture was accompanied by an
illuminated album, containing the names of
the 162 subscribers, and these vigorous and
ingeniously rhymed stanzas -from the pen of
the Head Master:
London may know you as a keen debater,
A critic sound, a doughty fighting man ;
But here we think of you as something greater,
A loyal and a true Sedberghian.
Elsewhere you go to fight some grim election,
Amid the clash of party hopes and fears ;
Hither the spell that draws you is affection,
And far-off memories of your boyish years.
Through good and ill your love has faltered never,
You have encouraged, guided, counselled, planned,
Splendidly fostered every new endeavour
With the rare bounty of your open hand.
Here is your picture, here is our expression,
Truest of friends, of gratitude to you ;
This is the thought of which we make confession
You have loved Sedbergh and we love her too.
CHAPTER VII.
Technical and University Education.
Wigan Mining and Mechanical School
and Technical College.
The Wigan Mining and Mechanical School
was the first institution of its kind in England r
having been founded as the result of a meeting in
October, 1857, at which the late Lord Derby and
the late Lord Playfair delivered addresses. It
was opened in August, 1858. Mr. Powell
supported it from the beginning, thinking Wigan
ideally situated for such an institution, as it was
possible there to combine the teaching of the
theory of mining with its practice in the pits
hard by. He spoke year after year at the
presentation of prizes and medals to students at
the School, rejoicing to see its gradual increase.
This increase resulted, in 1884, in some of its
classes being held in the Grammar School
buildings, Grammar School boys being admitted
to them. Mr. Powell was long content with this
method of expansion, as experience made him
cautious about embarking on ambitious and
Tl6 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
expensive buildings for technical education.
When however the time was ripe, he gave both
his moral support and the sum of 2,500 towards
the building of the large Wigan Mining and
Technical College in Library Street. The
building of this College, intended not only for
Wigan but also for the neighbouring districts,
was first mooted by Mr. Alfred Hewlett to
commemorate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee
in 1897. The completion of the enterprize, which
was closely connected with the colliery industries
of Wigan and Lancashire, was wittily celebrated
by a local journalist as the " Black Diamond
Jubilee of King Coal." The College cost 50,000,
of which sum 42,500 had been raised at the time
of its completion in October, 1902, when Sir
Francis inaugurated the first day of a gigantic
bazaar in the new building, held to raise the
remaining 7,500 required.
It was formally opened by the Countess
of Crawford in 1903. Sir Francis spoke on this
occasion, and this School and College must be
added to the swelling list of educational institu-
tions which he helped to develop.
Yorkshire College. Leeds University.
Among the earliest organizations for technical
education in England were the Mechanics'
Institutions. These were particularly flourishing
LEEDS UNIVERSITY. 117
in some of the smaller towns of the West Riding
of Yorkshire. They were intended to teach
working-men the scientific principles on which
their various industries were based. They largely
failed in the sixties and seventies, owing to the
lack at that time of a proper foundation of
elementary education, and because the working-
man was too weary for strenuous intellectual
work in the evening, after a long day's manual
work. The consequence was that these Mechanics'
Institutions tended to become little more than
clubs for light reading and recreation. Mr.
Powell noted this. He commended the clubs,
saying that such clubs for recreation ought to
exist in every town and village, but added that
the time was come to aim also at something
better. He thought that working men might
well be brought to understand something of the
thought and invention required in order to turn
out a bale of wool or cotton. At the same time
he urged the study of English literature, and a
wider culture. He expounded these views at the
annual meeting of the Meltham Mechanics'
Institution in 1872, and later in the same year at
the annual Soiree of the Skipton Mechanics'
Institution. He gave them concrete form when
he assisted at the foundation of the Yorkshire
College of Science, whose first Session began in
October, 1874. By virtue of his donation of
500 towards its funds, he became one of its first
Il8 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
life governors. At the luncheon which formed
part of the inauguration ceremonies of the
College, on October 6th, 1875, he was called upon
to propose the toast of " the manufacturing
industries of Yorkshire," in the absence of Sir
Joseph Whitworth. In his speech he urged the
great need of the application of science to those
industries. He added that he had formerly held
that Owens College, Manchester, was enough for
both Yorkshire and Lancashire, but later
experience had brought him round to the opinion
that Yorkshire must have an Owens College of
her own.
In 1877, the Yorkshire College of Science
added an Arts Course to her curricula, and
assumed the less limited title of " The Yorkshire
College, Leeds." Mr. Powell was elected a
member of the Council of the Yorkshire College
in 1878, and held this office until the foundation of
the University of Leeds in 1904, when he became
a Member of the Court and Council of Leeds
University. When distributing the prizes at the
College in July, 1879, he announced that it was
soon to be connected with a University : it might
be with Oxford or Cambridge, or with the
Victoria University of the North, if chartered.
He was able to boast on the same occasion that
Yorkshire College had already command of
resources, the capitalized value of which was
LEEDS UNIVERSITY.
119
,105,000, whereas Mr. Owen had endowed his
College with a gift of 150,000.
In the following year, 1880, the Charter of
the Victoria University was granted to Owens
College, Manchester, and the Yorkshire College,
Leeds. Yorkshire College, however, did not
complete its University Curriculum and take full
part in the Victoria University until 1887, when
additional Professors were appointed for this
purpose. Mr. Powell rejoiced at this consum-
mation in his speech at the annual meeting
of the College in 1888, and prophesied the
accomplishment of useful work by the new
University, which could not be done for the North
by Oxford and Cambridge. He never forgot to
do a " good turn" in Parliament to institutions
with which he was connected, and, during the
discussion of the Budget Bill in 1894, we nn d
him speaking on behalf of Victoria University,
and helping to obtain the concession from
Sir William Harcourt, whereby legacies to
Universities were exempt from the Death Duties.
In 1899, at the annual meeting of the
Governors of Yorkshire College, he pointed out
the inadequacy of the College buildings at Leeds,
and set the ball rolling which resulted in the
future extensions. In 1902, he raised a plea for
a new University for Yorkshire, with its head
quarters at Leeds. Aiter much controversy this
120 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
idea was dropped, and there were eventually two-
Charters given for Leeds and Sheffield respectively.
Thus, on October 6th, 1904, he had the satisfaction
of being present at the inauguration ceremony of
the Leeds University. His thirty years' work on
behalf of adult education in Yorkshire naturally
led to the inclusion of his name in the
distinguished list of Honorary Graduates on that
occasion, when he received the Degree of LL.D.
from the Marquis of Ripon, the first Chancellor,
along with the late Duke of Devonshire, the
late Earl Spencer (Chancellor of the Victoria
University of Manchester), Lady Frederick
Cavendish, the late Viscount Cross, and other
well known men.
On the death of Sir John Barran he was
elected to fill his place as Treasurer of Leeds
University at the meeting of the Court on March
2nd, 1906, and held this office until his death,
when he was succeeded by Lord Allerton. When
acknowledging the honour paid him, he said that
he believed there was no public work which
brought a richer reward than that connected with
such an institution as the Leeds University.
In January, 1907, Sir Francis was present at
the Court dinner, and responded to the toast of
" The University," proposed by Baron Komura,
Japanese Ambassador, who was the guest of the
evening. In the following year, on Tuesday*
LEEDS UNIVERSITY. 121
July 7th, 1908, he took part in the opening of the
new buildings by King Edward VII and Queen
Alexandra. He had the honour of being presented
to the King in his scarlet Academic robes, which
he wore as Treasurer and Hon. LL.D. of the
University. He was then eighty-two, and Pro-
chancellor A. G. Lupton, with whom he stayed,
writes that " all were much struck by his wonderful
vigour throughout a long ceremonial day,
including the reception in the morning at the
Town Hall, the luncheon in the Mayor's Rooms,
and the afternoon University programme ; and
concluding with a display of fireworks at
Roundhay Park in the evening at which he
insisted on being present, whilst he left the house
the next morning to catch an early train to enable
him to preside at a meeting of the Sedbergh
School."
At the meeting of the Court in the following
July (1909), he paid a moving tribute to the late
Lord Ripon, first Chancellor of the University, on
the occasion of the presentation to the University
of Herkomer's portrait of that nobleman in his
Chancellor's robes. He told his audience that
Lord Ripon and he were born within a few weeks
of each other, and had entered Parliament at the
same time, in 1857. Though their views had
never been identical, they had agreed on questions
affecting education. He prefaced his remarks by
saying that he had probably been called upon as
122 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
one of the few survivors of those who met together
in a back room and took counsel as to how to lay
the foundation and as far as possible secure the
prosperity of Yorkshire College. Sir Francis took
an active interest in the selection of a new
Chancellor, and his proposal of the present Duke
of Devonshire to succeed Lord Ripon in that office
was accepted unanimously by the University
Court on December ist, 1909.
To sum up : Pro- Chancellor A. G. Lupton
writes : " In addition to the time and thought
given by Sir Francis to the College and the
University, his purse was always open to the
growing needs of its Finance, and his original
donation of 500 had grown at the time of his
death to the generous sum of "5,000
The growth of the University during his life is
shown by the fact that whilst in April, 1875,
donations amounting to "27,000 were announced,
the last balance-sheet signed by Sir Francis, that
of October, 191 1, shows a capital account in
buildings and investments of "397,000."
As a final instance of his persistent anxiety
for the welfare of the University, he appeared at
the Court on October 20th, 191 1, to support the
claims of the present Vice-Chancellor, Professor
Michael Sadler, for that office. His health was
then rapidly failing and, with one exception, this
was his last important public appearance.
CHAPTER VIII.
SOCIAL AND SANITARY WORK.
BRADFORD AND WIGAN,
SIR FRANCIS was one of the old school of
sanitarians, inspired by Mr. Edwin Chad-
wick, Dr. William Farr, Sir John Simon,
and Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, which
preceded the modern school of microscopical
research. These men took a broad view of the
problems of disease and advocated with inspiring
zeal measures to remove the undisputed causes of
ill health, dirt, squalor, overcrowding, bad drains
and insanitary conditions of labour. They
would minimise ill health by securing better
conditions of life and a better environment for
all classes.
Their work was preventive and it never
occurred to them that it was the duty of a states-
man to secure doctors and bottles of medicine for
every one who wanted them. Sir Francis had a
hand in nearly all those sanitary reforms, initiated
by these men, which are some of the chief glories
of Queen Victoria's reign.
It was to no small extent the result of his
124 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
own exertions that he lived to see the age of
child labour raised from eight to thirteen ;
vast improvements in the conditions of labour re-
sulting from "Factory and Workshop" legislation;
the prohibition of " back-to-back " houses ; the
compulsory provision of adequate open spaces in
front and behind, wholesome water supplies
within a reasonable distance, and good drainage,.
in the case of every newly built house ; the
gradual abolition of cellar dwellings ; the
enforcement of legislation to prevent overcrowd-
ing ; the virtual extirpation of small pox and
typhus fever and the better control of other
infectious diseases. As the result of all these
reforms, the death rate in England and Wales
was reduced during his lifetime from 22*4
(quinquennium, 1846- 1850) to 13*5 (19 10) per
thousand living.
Sir Francis studied buildings and sanitation
wherever he went and his own estates, being
both in the country districts of the West Riding
and in Wigan and Bradford, gave him valuable
experience. When out walking, he would often
stop and square himself up to look at some new
building or disappear down a back yard or into
a back street to explore. When he visited any
Institution he usually carefully enquired into its
ventilation and sanitation, and, when abroad, he
studied the sanitary conditions of the Continental
towns which he visited.
SOCIAL AND SANITARY WORK. 1 25
His first great work connected with sanit-
ation was done as a Member of the Royal
Commission in 1871. He drafted much of the
Report of this Commission and of the resulting
Public Health Act of 1875, although he was
unfortunately not a member of the House at this
time. In Parliament he took an active interest
in all sanitary legislation, particularly in the
Housing Acts. He also gave detailed attention
to the question of the pollution of rivers, and
framed Private Bills on the subject.
In 1890 he introduced his Public Health
Acts Amendment Bill and had the satisfaction of
seeing it passed into law, after it had been
consolidated with Mr. Fowler's Urban Sanitary
Authorities (Further Powers) Bill. This Act
deals with many sanitary details overlooked in
previous legislation. It incorporates into general
law enactments passed in local acts on the
recommendation of the " Police and Sanitary
Regulation Committee " of the House of
Commons. Sir Francis first served on this
Committee in 1887. He acted twice as its
Chairman in 1890 when it sat for fifty days,
before being elected Chairman for the whole
Session in 1892. As he explained in an elaborate
letter to the Times dated May 27th, 1890, the
time he had devoted to this Committee enabled
him to embody in his bill a complete collection
of clauses recommended by the Committee.
126 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
The act is adoptive and, by the adoption of its
provisions, Local Authorities can now obtain
powers which could before only be obtained by
the expensive and cumbersome procedure of
local bills. It also tended to reduce the labours
of the Police and Sanitary Regulations Com-
mittee which had become so exacting that it
was almost impossible for its members to attend
properly to their other Parliamentary duties.
Sir Francis urged for many years the
importance of granting security of tenure to
Medical Officers of Health a principle which
has been embodied at last in Mr. John Burns'
Housing and Town Planning Act. He also
supported bills for the superannuation of Medical
Officers of Health, with pensions on a con-
tributory basis.
He was President of the Health Section of
the Congress of the " National Association for the
Promotion of Social Science " held at Manchester
in 1879, and allusion has already been made to
his recommendations with regard to overpressure
and the health of pupil teachers and scholars
when he was President of the Education Section
of a similar Congress held at Huddersfield in 1883.
He became a Member of the Sanitary
Institute of Great Britain in 1886. This Institute
amalgamated with the Parkes Museum in
Margaret Street in 1888, to become the Royal
SOCIAL AND SANITARY WORK. 1 27
Sanitary Institute. It is now housed in more
spacious buildings in Buckingham Palace Road.
Sir Francis was a regular speaker at the
sumptuous annual banquets of the Institute at
which he supported the late President H.R.H. the
Duke of Cambridge and the present President,
His Grace the Duke of Newcastle, and had the
opportunity of making acquaintance with leading
engineers, architects and physicians who were the
guests of the evening. In 1894 he was elected
a Vice President of the Institute and had the
honour of presiding over its annual Congress at
Liverpool. In his presidential address, as in duty
bound at Liverpool, he drew special attention
to the abolition of quarantine, quoting the words
of Sir John Simon (L.G.B. Report 1892). " Where
great commercial countries are concerned, it can
scarcely be dreamt of that quarantine restrictions
will be anything better than elaborate illustrations
of leakiness." He urged the necessity of " prompt
and effective action " with regard to the pollution
of rivers, reminding his hearers that, at the opening
of the Manchester Ship Canal in 1892, Her Majesty
the Queen had been prevented from passing more
than a few yards down the Canal owing to the
state of its waters. Though he said that further
legislation was needed on this subject, he
proclaimed the general truth that it is not more
laws but the more thorough administration of
existing sanitary laws which is required. This is
128 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
becoming more and more difficult to attain in
these days of rapid legislation, often without
financial provision for the necessary increase in
the staff of Medical Officers of Health.
Sir Francis also made use of the Royal
Statistical Society as a source of information.
He became President of this Society in November
1904, when he delivered an elaborate inaugural
address. In this he compared the number of
scholars and the cost of educating them in
England and Wales, Scotland, the United States,
France and Germany. He next discussed School
Hygiene and the statistics dealing with the
wastage of School Teachers ; that is to say the
numbers of teachers who leave the profession
before they have served their time, after having
been trained at the public expense. This address
is an elaborate compilation of facts and figures
composed during his summer holiday, while he
was still in Parliament and in his seventy-eighth
year.
CHAPTER IX.
MUNICIPAL LIFE AT BRADFORD.
Bradford Board of Guardians.
MR. POWELL took the Oath as a Justice
of the Peace for the West Riding of
Yorkshire on Decmber 4th, 1862 and
this entitled him to be an ex-officio member of
the Board of Guardians of the Parish within the
Division in which he resided. He thus early
became a member of the Bradford Board of
Guardians and was afterwards regularly co-opted
a member of each succeeding Board. Writing to
the Chairman, Mr. J. H. Bentham, from the House
of Commons, on April 22nd, 1901, in reply to a
cordial invitation to join the Board once more, he
thus expressed his position: "It would be a great
pleasure to continue my connection with the
Board. I have always felt a keen interest in
Poor Law Administration, involving as it does
so many questions of the highest interest and
affording so much opportunity of performing
useful service. It has always been my endeavour
to aid the Board by every means within my
I3O SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
power, and I have found knowledge gained in our
Board Room of considerable value when matters
relating to the Poor Law are under debate here."
When resident at Horton, he attended the
meetings of the Bradford Guardians as regularly
as he could ; he was always ready to intervene
with the Local Government Board in London on
their behalf and carefully watched the progress of
legislation, which affected them, at the House of
Commons.
This work brought him into constant com-
munication with Mr. J. H. Bentham, Chairman
of the Bradford Board of Guardians, who has
preserved a series of his letters on Poor Law
business. These letters are all brief but they
prove how unbiassed his opinions were on these
matters and how anxious he was to avail himself
of Mr. Bentham' s large experience as Chairman
of the Guardians.
Although they were on opposite sides in
politics, Sir Francis regularly signed Mr.
Bentham's nomination papers at the Guardians*
Election and rejoiced at his success.
They both adversely criticised the Unem-
ployed Workmans' Bill intoduced by Mr.
Gerald Balfour in the summer of 1905. Speaking
in the House of Commons on the second
reading of this measure Sir Francis declared his
dislike of the enormous powers which it gave to
MUNICIPAL LIFE AT BRADFORD. 13I
the Local Government Board and regretted the
proposed creation of a new authority for the
relief of destitution, as he thought that the
existing Boards of Guardians sufficed for the
purpose. He said that the law would encourage
those employed under it to continue in the
employment of the local authority and would
create a new dependent class in the community.
He added that its financial provisions were quite
inadequate.
In the autumn of the same year, 1905, Sir
Francis helped Mr. Bentham to secure the
presence of Mr. Gerald Balfour, then President of
the Local Government Board, at the opening of
the Bradford Union Infirmary, which is one of
the best equipped hospitals in the country. It is
close to Horton Old Hall, and Sir Francis and
Lady Powell had the pleasure of entertaining
Mr. Gerald Balfour there after the opening
ceremony. In the preceding year, Sir Francis had
himself had the honour of opening the Bradford
Union sanatorium for pauper consumptives at
Eastby, This was the first sanatorium of its kind
in England.
Throughout 1906 Sir Francis was in constant
communication with Mr. Bentham concerning
the provision of meals for necessitous school
children. The " Relief (School Children) Order "
issued by the Local Government Board in 1905,
132 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
which made the Guardians of the Poor responsible
for this duty, had not been entirely successful ;
the Departmental Committee on " Medical
Inspection and Feeding of Children attending
Public Elementary Schools " appointed by Lord
Lansdowne, President of the Board of Education,
had issued its report and further legislation was
framed. This resulted in the Education (Provision
of Meals) Act 1906. He served on the Committee
dealing with this measure which sat for ten days
and was deeply impressed by the evidence. It
convinced him of the necessity of enforcing the
principle of the measure for the benefit of helpless
children. He therefore supported the measure
but did his best, aided by Mr. Bentham, to secure
that the cost of the meals could be promptly
recovered from parents who were found after
investigation to be able to afford to pay. The
Act transfers all powers in the matter from the
Guardians of the Poor to the Local Education
Authorities. Mr. Bentham, as Chairman of the
Bradford Board of Guardians, which had already
tackled the question, was naturally anxious that
the two bodies should co-operate and Sir Francis
tried hard but failed to secure the inclusion of
Guardians on the local sub-committee dealing
with the matter.
Sir Francis' knowledge of the conditions of
Bradford and his service on the special com-
mittee, appointed to obtain evidence in connection
MUNICIPAL LIFE AT BRADFORD. 1 35
with this bill, made him realize the seriousness
of the need for legislation on this subject. He
was so indignant at the frivolous attitude of
some of his colleagues that on one occasion he
left the House in disgust during the discussion of
the measure. These are his words in a letter to
Mr. Bentham dated December 8th, 1906. "I left
at that point. A little clique, not twenty in all,
were the sole survivors of our benches. Their
action was frivolous and childish : and I saw no
good in remaining any longer, as I could not
associate myself with silly people."
Although Sir Francis supported the measure
for feeding necessitous children out of the rates
when other means had failed, he much preferred
that this work should be performed by voluntary
agencies. He subscribed to the Mayor of
Bradford's Fund for this purpose in January 1907
when the Act had just come into operation and
took the opportunity of emphasizing his pre-
ference for voluntary philanthropy to rate aid in
these cases, when Chairman at the annual
meeting of Bradford Royal Infirmary Samaritan
Society in January 1909.
In 1906 Sir Francis was President of the
annual conference of the representatives of
Yorkshire Poor Law Unions held at Bradford.
In his address he rejoiced that " in well ordered
workhouses, such as Bradford's, the sick and
134 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
decrepit had every consolation and comfort.
The pauper attendant was going or had gone
and the trained nurse occupied the place to
which she ought long ago to have been sum-
moned." He suggested industrial colonies for the
"sturdy vagrant," and prison if these failed.
He commended the adoption of the system
of " boarding out " pauper children and said
that they should always be sent preferably
to the elementary schools and not educated
within the walls of the Unions. In March, 1897,
he expressed much the same views as president
of a conference organized by the Central Com-
mittee of Poor Law Conferences at the Guildhall
in London. During the last years of his life he
seemed to take at least as much interest in the
physical well-being of children as in their
religious education.
FREEDOM OF THE OITY OF BRADFORD.
It is a rare distinction to be made a Freeman
of the City of Bradford. The late Sir Henry
Mitchell was the first to receive it, a few days
before his death. Next came Lord Masham and
on October 24th, 1902, the names of Mr. Alfred
Illingworth and Sir Francis were added to the list.
The ceremony of signing the roll took place
in the Council Chamber of the Town Hall.
Alderman Willis Wood and Alderman RatclifEe
proposed and seconded the motion " that the said
FREEDOM OF THE CITY OF BRADFORD. I35
freedom be now presented" and a letter was
read from Lord Masham expressing his regret
at his inability to be present. In the course of it
he wrote : " It would have been a great pleasure
to me to welcome the two gentlemen to their new
dignity as I have known them almost from my
boyhood. No better choice could have been
made as they are both thoroughly representative
men and their lives and the results of their lives
form a remarkable object lesson to the rising
generation. For one, born to a fortune, has
shown how it may be well and wisely spent how
seldom is this the case ! for it is easier to make a
fortune than to spend it wisely and well ! the
other how by hard work, patient industry and
business aptitude a man may rise from the ranks
and take a leading position among his fellow
townsmen."
In his speech Sir Francis returned special
thanks for the handsome gold casket containing
the certificate of freedom. He said it would " go
down to other generations as a precious memorial
of the past, and might, perhaps in an hour of
despondency, encourage younger men and younger
women in a future age to renewed exertions for
the benefit of their fellows." He referred to the
exceptional need which had led him in early days
(see pp. 32) to use his exertions for the strengthening
of religion in Bradford, to " the wonderful work"
of the Bradford Schools and Technical College
136 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
and to the difficulties and dangers of Poor Law
Administration with which he had so long been
associated as a Bradford Guardian. He concluded
by promising to " continue to work for the benefit
of his fellow creatures so long as the necessary
physical and mental resources were accorded to
him by his Maker."
The fact that Sir Francis had valuable
property in the City and its outskirts brought him
frequently into business relations with the City
Council. He was not a man to be easily over-
ruled and he steadfastly refused to have his green
fields about Horton Old Hall and Little Horton
Green enroached upon. The increased taxes on
" undeveloped " land in towns much exceeded the
rent he got for these fields. Fortunately he could
afford to pay them and so preserve an oasis of
fresh air and green grass in the midst of houses
and mills. In the matter of street improvements
and harmless alterations to his property which
were necessary for the development of the town,
he met the Council in a generous spirit to which
Alderman Willis Wood testified on this occasion-
CHAPTER X.
WIGAN. FREEDOM OF THE BOROUGH.
STATUE.
At Wigan Sir Francis conscientiously fulfilled
all his obligations as a property owner and
Member of Parliament. For many years he spoke
at the Mayor's Banquet and his was a familiar
figure in the Mayor's procession to the Parish
Church on the following Sunday. He supported
schools of all denominations in the town, "both by
means of subscriptions and by speaking for them
at their bazaars and fetes, when invited to do so.
On these occasions he was welcomed alike by-
Roman Catholics and Protestant Nonconformists,
as well as by members of his own Church. All
recognized in him a wholehearted supporter of
religious and denominational education. In this
connection he remarked in 1887 : " It is a source
of satisfaction to me and a cause of joy that
Wigan should be one of those very few large
towns in the country where education is conducted
in a highly satisfactory manner wholly and
entirely on voluntary principles."
There are two Conservative Working Men's
K.
I38 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
Clubs in Wigan which owe their existence to Sir
Francis. One is a spacious building in Market
Street which he built in 1887 at a cost of 5,000
for the members of the existing club in Commercial
Yard whom he allowed to become his tenants.
The other is in the Scholes Ward which he built
twenty years later (1907).
Another of his interests in Wigan was the
Free Library. The happy idea occurred to him
of supplementing this by building a "Boys
Reading Room" in a separate building in the
Scholes Ward. This building is probably the
only one of its kind in England. It consists of
two storeys. The ground floor is occupied by
the reading room which is 56 feet long, and the
first floor consists of offices and a large lecture
hall. On April 17th, 1895, Sir Francis declared
this Club open and was presented with the
Freedom of the Borough in honour of the occasion.
The town was gay with crowds and bunting.
A civic procession was formed from the
Magistrates' Room, where the Mayor (Mr. D. Dix) ;
received his guests, to the new building. On
arrival there Sir Francis opened the door with a
golden key presented to him by Mr. Winnard, the
builder. The procession entered, followed by the
crowd. In his opening speech, Sir Francis referred
to the choice of books for Free Libraries. He
urged the Library Committee to consider all
classes of the population when choosing books.
WIGAN, FREEDOM OF THE BOROUGH. 1 39
" It had occurred to him," he said, " as an observer
of the human race, that there were periods in the
history of every man when he was not a man but
a boy. The object of his Reading Room was to
enable the young folk to pursue their studies
somewhat after their own manner." This part of
his speech, which enlarged on the diversity of the
needs and habits of men and boys, was in the
vein of pompous and good humoured verbosity
which he often adopted. He concluded by
formally handing over the building to the Mayor.
Master Charles Mason, a scholar of the Presbyterian
School, then presented an illuminated address of
thanks from the boys at twenty-two Wigan Boys'
Schools, signed by representatives of each. Sir
Francis was delighted by this graceful act of
gratitude on the part of the boys, whom he
thanked in another short speech.
Soon after this, the procession was re-formed
and made its way by another route to the Council
Chamber where the Freedom of the Borough was
conferred. The Mayor made special reference to
Sir Francis' many previous gifts to the Wigan
Free Library ; to his donations to the Wigan
Mining and Technical School, which had freed
that Institution from debt ; to his many donations
to the building funds of various schools in Wigan,
especially St. George's new school. He said that
the eminence of Sir Francis' services to the town
and to his country were apart from all question
I40 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
of party politics and that the town has felt
specially honoured by the recent bestowal of a
Baronetcy on their Member. At the Banquet
which followed, Mr. Alderman Smith proposed
the health of their new Freedman. He said that
every month, since the opening of their Free
Library in 1878, the minutes contained a record
of some donation from Sir Francis and that it
was mainly due to his excellent engineering that
the country was in possession of the Act which
consolidated and amended all previous library
legislation. Mr. Alderman Phillips relieved
the monotony of all these encomiums and
the minds of the Wigan ratepayers by informing
anxious enquirers that the Freedom of the
Borough would not relieve Sir Francis from
the duty of paying his share of her rates.
Not only did Sir Francis pay his own rates
but he was also a generous benefactor to the
ratepayers. He pulled down many of his own
cottages in order to leave more open spaces for
those left, and gave the town a plot of land in
the Scholes Ward, which is now a children's
. playground. When making large donations to
schools of all denominations, he was mainly
actuated by his wish to perpetuate religious
education. Yet he was not unmindful of the
economy to the rates which the preservation of
Voluntary Schools secured.
WIGAN, FREEDOM OF THE BOROUGH. 141
A few days after this ceremony Lady Powell
laid the foundation stone of St. George's new
schools, the handsome block of red brick buildings
which now stand on an eminence upon the open
ground at the end of Windsor Street, Wigan.
The Vicar (Rev. P. Hains), drew attention to the
struggles they had had with the Government
Authorities to keep open the old St. George's
School in Church Street. After all it had been
condemned and Sir. Francis contributed ^2,000
towards the building of the new school to replace
it. Sir Francis said that he could remember the
time when the old St. George's school was not in
existence, and the anxious care with which his
father had built it, when Vicar of the parish.
The Bishop of Chester of that day had described
this old school as one of the most complete schools
in his Diocese, and he thought that this was
remarkable as showing how improvements
advanced.
The new school was opened by Lady Powell
in the following year (1896), and Sir Francis
made a characteristic speech on the occasion.
He was naturally attached by associations to the
old school in which he had taught on Sunday as
a boy, but he always moved with the times and
expressed his satisfaction that the Churchpeople
of St. George's had satisfied more modern
requirements by building the new schools without
the aid of the Government or the ratepayers. He
I42 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
said he hoped that the youth educated in those
schools might reach a higher level in the social
scale, as opportunities arose. This might or
might not be an advantage to an individual
citizen, but what he desired to see was a raising
of every class, as a class, in the social scale. He
went on to say that he was not speaking in
depreciation of School Boards, but that there was
a sense of freedom and comfort, a feeling of home
life, an atmosphere of wholesome domesticity, so to
say, in their Voluntary Schools which they did not
find in their Board Schools. He ended by asking
the parents who were present to help to make
the new schools fulfil their high purpose and
more and more dear to the inhabitants of St.
George's Parish.
In June, 1897, the Mayor of Wigan (Alderman
Richards), gave a public banquet in honour of
Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. When
proposing his Worship's health, Sir Francis said
that he could remember walking in the procession
at Wigan at the time of the Queen's Accession in
1837. He attributed the wonderful improvements
of the past sixty years to " orderly progress."
Sir Francis continued to take a leading part
in Wigan public events throughout the succeeding
year. It was on November 4th, 19 10, that his
fellow townsmen conferred on him a last and
most uncommon token of their esteem. He was
WIGAN, THE STATUE. I43
invited to be present at the unveiling of a statue
of himself in Mesnes Park. On April 12th,
1907, the Mayor (Councillor James O'Donahue)
summoned a representative meeting to present
him with a testimonial to commemorate his
services to the town, it being then fifty years
since he was elected its parliamentary represent-
ative for the first time. Mr. R. C. Burland proposed
that this should take the form of a statue and a
committee of leading men of all opinions was
formed to carry out this suggestion, which was
accepted unanimously. Councillor O'Donahue
was appointed honorary treasurer, and two
hundred and seven guineas were promised in the
course of a few minutes. There was an open
competition for sculptors of which Mr. Goscombe
John was appointed adjudicator. He decided in
favour of the specification and model made by
Mr. E. G. Gillick.
The statue is a bronze figure seated, bare-
headed, in an easy attitude. It stands upon a
granite pedestal. On the front panel of the
pedestal is the following inscription :
SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL, BARONET.
BORN IN WIGAN, 1 827. M.P. FOR HIS NATIVE TOWN,
I857 9 AND 1885 I9IO.
ERECTED BY PUBLIC SUBSCRIPTION, igiO.
When consulted about this inscription, Sir
Francis characteristically made short work of
144 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
the matter by drafting it himself as it stands.
On the two side panels are symbolical represen-
tations of Health and Education, Sir Francis'
two main public interests. The whole is guarded
by chains attached to stone posts on which are
British lions and is well placed near the main
walk of the park, between Mesnes Terrace and
the fountain. Sir Francis and Lady Powell
came over from Bradford for the unveiling
ceremony, which was performed by Lord Derby.
The Civic Procession headed by the Old Borough
Band, Borough and County Magistrates, Mace
bearers, halberdiers, and the Town Clerk (Mr.
Harold Jevons) conducted Sir Francis, who
drove in a landau with the Mayor, (Alder-
man Sam Wood, J.P), from the Municipal
Buildings through crowded streets to the main
entrance of the park. The walk from the park
gate to the site of the statue was lined by the
Wigan Grammar School boys, and several thousand
school children were assembled on the terraces of
the park. A large gathering of leading men
connected with the movement were on the
reserved platform near the statue. The Chairman
of the Statue Committee, Councillor O'Donahue,
greeted them, in the most expressive manner
possible for an Irishman, with the words " Caed
Mille Failthe " (One hundred thousand welcomes).
He explained that " the Statue was not erected by
any party but purely and simply by the whole of
STATUE OF SIR F. S. POWELL, MESNES PARK, WIGAN.
WIGAN, THE STATUE. 145
the people of the town. Whether they differed
from Sir Francis in politics or not, they
appreciated the unswerving manner in which he
tried to do his duty to Wigan." Lord Derby then
unveiled the statue amid cheers. He emphasized
again Mr. O'Donahue's point that it was the
statue of a man who did his duty to all those
with whom he came into contact. Colonel
Eckersley proposed a vote of thanks to Lord
Derby ; the statue was accepted by the Mayor
on behalf of the town ; and Sir Francis made a
brief reply, saying that he did not wish unduly to
prolong the proceedings in the open air on a
Lancashire November Day. He hoped that his
prolonged labours on behalf of the town were not
yet ended, and remarked, amid laughter and
applause, that the hour had not arrived when he
felt any conscious decay of intelligence. He
thanked the great concourse for their presence
and addressed a few words to the Wigan Grammar
School boys who were there, reminding them that
he was not only Chairman of the Governors of
the school but an old boy. The ceremony in
the Park, which was followed by a public
luncheon, were concluded by the band striking
up the appropriate refrain "A fine Old English
Gentleman."
CHAPTER XI.
FOREIGN TRAVELS.
THE NEAR EAST. THE FAR WEST.
THROUGHOUT the fifty three years of their
married life, Sir Francis and Lady Powell
made a practice of taking at least a month
or six weeks' holiday together. On thirty of these
occasions they went abroad, visiting Norway and
Sweden, Holland, Denmark, Belgium, many parts
of France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and
Italy. Twice they toured in Ireland (1876 and
1896) and four times in Scotland.
They also made two longer tours, one to the
Near East and the other to the Far West, some
details of which have been culled from Lady
Powell's note books.
The Near East.
It was on September 9th, 1869, that they left
London for Constantinople halting at Paris,
Munich, Salzburg, Vienna and Buda Pesth.
Leaving Buda Pesth at 7 a.m. on September 23rd
in a comfortable steamer, they sailed down
the Danube to Rustchuk. There was much
FOREIGN TRAVELS. 147
traffic on the river and they passed many floating
corn mills with rough wheels worked by the
stream and with the millers' habitations attached,
" looking like Noah's arks." The population
on the banks was very scanty and barbarous in
appearance. The passengers had to disembark to
cross the rapids on small steamers. Re-embarking
on another larger steamer they passed the Iron
Gate Rocks, which are precipitous down to the
water's edge. They next had an hour's drive in
the dark, lighted by wooden torches, to yet
another steamer, which landed them at Rustchuk
by way of Widdin, the first typically oriental
town they saw. From Rustchuk they travelled
to Varna, by a line on which the porters were
English and the engines from Manchester. They
crossed at Varna the boiling serf and in rowing
boats embarked for Constantinople. A very rough
night marred their enjoyment of the Black Sea
and they were glad to find themselves in a
comfortable hotel at Constantinople on September
27th. They visited St. Sophia, the finest mosques
in the neighbourhood and Stamboul.
They were joined at Constantinople by the
Rt. Hon. W. E. Forster and Mr. John Ball, who
formed a party with them to climb Mount
Olympus in Asia Minor. After steaming down
the Sea of Marmora to Mudania, they rode on to the
side of the mountain and encamped there. They
reached the summit next day. Clouds robbed
I48 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
them of their view and a furious wind soon
brought them down. While they were on the
top an exciting adventure befell Mr. Forster.*
He went off alone to climb a neighbouring peak,
was attacked by a brigand and obliged to fire
two shots. This incident deterred the party from
any more straggling and they all descended
together to Broussa unmolested. From Broussa
they rode on horseback to the coast, staying at
Gemlik and passing on to Isnik (the ancient
Nicaea). They returned to Constantinople on
October 15th.
Leaving by boat the next evening, a voyage
of two nights and a day brought them to Smyrna
at seven o'clock on the morning of October 18th.
From Smyrna they visited Magnesia on the slopes
of Mount Sipylus, where they partook of coffee
and sherbet with the Pacha and made their first
and last serious attempt to smoke cigarettes.
They left Smyrna on the Austrian Lloyd Steamer
for Athens on the 25th. They had a very rough
crossing to the Isle of Scio and thence to Ipsera
The voyage from Scio to Ipsera took sixteen hours
instead of seven ; in fact their general experience
was that the steamers in the East took double the
scheduled time to make their voyages.
* For a full account of this adventure see " Life of
Rt. Hon. W. E. Forster" by T. Wemyss Reid.
Vol. I. pp.,419-421.
FOREIGN TRAVELS. I49
At last they reached Athens on the 28th, after
three nights and two days on the sea. Luckily it
was a lovely morning. The sight of the City,
the Parthenon and the Piraeus surpassed all their
expectations and they felt amply repaid for the
discomforts of their journey. They saw all they
could in Athens and the neighbourhood but could
not go through the Pass of Phylae nor visit
Marathon, for fear of brigands.
On November 2nd they saw the town and
Acropolis of Athens illuminated in honour of
the marriage of the late King of Greece, and
left Piraeus by steamer at 6 a.m. the following
morning. They were driven across the Isthmus
of Corinth in an omnibus. The second and third
class passengers were consigned to hay carts.
After a four days' voyage through stormy seas
they much appreciated the comforts of the hotel
at Corfu, which they reached on the night of
November 6th.
The next day they had another stormy
passage to Brindisi. They should have reached
Brindisi from Corfu in twelve hours, instead
of which the voyage took twenty three hours.
They much enjoyed the journey home across
Italy. The mountains were looking more beautiful
than they had ever seen them, owing to the newly
fallen snow. They arrived home in London after
a final tossing on the Channel, on November 16th,
having been away more than two months."
1$0 sir francis sharp powell.
The Far West.
On August 5th, 1 87 1 they left Liverpool on
board the S.S. China for New York. The voyage
was uneventul, except for a few squalls, and took
ten days. After a short stay in New York,
they sailed North up the Hudson River to Albany.
From Albany they visited the Clifton Mill at
Cohoes under the guidance of Mr. Stimpson, the
proprietor. Here they saw all the processes of the
manufacture of wool and woollen goods. They
also saw the Harmony Paper Mills which employed
five thousand workpeople. The hours of work in
these mills at that time were sixty-six hours a
week. From Cohoes they went to Saratoga,
which they found full of gay fashionable people.
They then sailed down Lake George to Burlington,
"sandy as Southport," and principally composed
of wooden houses. From Burlington they made
their way to Montreal. From Montreal they went
by train and boat to Quebec, and enjoyed the
view from the Plains of Abraham on Sunday,
September 3rd. After a few more days at Montreal,
where they made many friends, they steamed up
the Ottawa River to Ottawa. Here they made
the acquaintance of Sir John and Lady Macdonald
and Sir George Cartier, a descendant of Jacques
Cartier. While at Ottawa they took a day's
excursion to Carlton Place, in order to get some
idea of Ontario. From Ottawa they steamed
amongst the thousand islands of the St. Lawrence
FOREIGN TRAVELS. 151
River and down Lake Ontario to Toronto. They
spent two days at Toronto, where Mr. Powell met
Professor Cherriman, an old college friend, and
Mr. Martland, a school friend at Sedbergh, and
saw Mr. Goldwin Smith at the club. They next
visited Hamilton and Niagara and this completed
their three weeks in Canada.
From Niagara they went west to Buffalo
and Cleveland and saw the processes for
refining crude green petroleum and the manu-
facture of the barrels to contain the finished
product. Their next stay was at Chicago,
where they were hospitably entertained by Bishop
and Mrs. Whitehouse. Mr. Powell, here as
elsewhere, spent much time in the schools. On
their way to San Francisco they stayed first at
Omaha, which was the most primitive town they
had yet visited, but was being laid out on a
magnificent scale. Here they both visited the
Common Schools and saw all the classes, from
the first consisting of infants of five to the ninth
where they found young men and women of
seventeen and eighteen studying Algebra together.
They much enjoyed the journey on to Ogden
in a comfortable " drawing room," seeing many
antelopes and packs of prairie dogs. Leaving the
important railway junction at Cheyenne, the
train took them up to Sherman, 8,500 feet above
the sea, then the highest railway point in the
I52 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
world. Crossing the Rocky Mountains they saw
something of their wonders. The fantastically
shaped granite rocks seem to have particularly
impressed them. On Sunday, October 1st, they
had elk steak to breakfast, and passed the Echo
and Weber Canyons, reaching Salt Lake .City by
moonlight. Here they visited the Mormon Temple
and Mormon University. They saw Brigham
Young's house enclosed in walls which included
also a school for his numerous family, and the
sulphur springs.
Passing lovely Sierra Nevada they left the
train at Stockton, to prepare for an expedition
to the Yo Semite Valley. They started, a party
of eight in a carriage and four, at six o'clock
in the morning. This was by no means an
unusual hour for these indefatigable sight-seers.
Having gone eight miles out of their way they
had eventually to sleep at a German farm, two of
them walking with a lantern in front of the
leaders to show the way. Here they were most
hospitably received and their hosts gave up their
beds to them. They were following the Coulter-
ville route, which took them through groves of
the most magnificent and gigantic trees. After
another day's drive they had to ride on horseback
down the rough trail into the valley. They gazed
long at El Capitan, The Graces, The Three
Brothers, The Bridal Veil, The Virgin's Tears
falls, The Cathedral Spires, The Sentinel. The Yo
FOREIGN TRAVELS. 1 53
Semite falls were dry. Sunday (October 9th)
was spent quietly, as always with them, at
Hutching's Hotel. The next week they rode up
both the north and south forks of the Yo Semite
Valley, saw the round North Dome, the precipitous
South Dome, the Mirror Lake, the Nevada Falls,.
The Kings Star Mountains, and the Mariposa
Grove of large trees, some of which Mr. Powell
set to work to measure.
They reached San Francisco the next week
and were much struck by the beauty of the
Golden Gate, which forms the entrance to the
bay, and by the oriental appearance of the
town, when seen from a distance. The morning
after their arrival they breakfasted at Cliffe
House to see the seals on the rocks and took
their first drive along the shores of the Pacific, so-
near the great green waves that the foam dashed
against the wheels of the carriage. At San
Francisco, as elsewhere, they were well armed
with introductions and spent much time in paying
and returning calls and in visiting schools and
other public institutions.
Before leaving the Far West, they made their
way by sea and land to Callistoga to see the
geysers, the Devil's Canyon, the sulphur springs,
and the Witches' Cauldron. Here the ground under
them burned their boots, the air reeked of sulphur
and the very sides of the hills seemed to be "boiling
154 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
and hissing and ready to explode." Their way to
and from Callistoga was through the luxuriant
vegetation of the tropics and was enlivened by
the sight of deer, squirrels, blue birds, humming
birds, and highly coloured lizards.
On their way back to New York they spent
a Sunday at Denver and came upon deep snow
near Kansas City on October 30th. They travelled
East from Cheyenne by the more southern route
and were thankful to reach St. Louis on October
31st, after two nights and a day in the train from
Denver. Here they varied their round of visits to
the principal schools and institutions of the town
by going to hear a lecture by George Francis
Train. He appears to have been a clever but
excitable fool who was making a " succes de
scandale" in St. Louis, by his attacks on the English
nation and by styling himself a fenian, a Mormon,
and a pagan.
St. Louis reminded them of Liverpool and
Manchester ; Cincinnati and the country round it
which they visited next, of Bradford and its
neighbourhood. At Cincinnati they were startled
by seeing dogs, horses, lambs, and cows on the
monuments in the cemetery and by a cake in a
glass case, adorning the grave of a confectioner.
Continuing their journey they visited Pittsburg,
Harrisburg, Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia
and Jersey City. They went straight on to Boston
FOREIGN TRAVELS. 1 55
the day after their return to New York. At
Boston they put themselves under the wing of
Dr. Bowditch and Professor Shattock. They
visited all the principal schools and institutions
of the town and saw something of Harvard and
Cambridge Universities. They exchanged calls
with the poet Longfellow whom they visited at his
house, which had once been Washington's head-
quarters, and heard Mr. Phillips Brooks preach.
They spent their last week in America at New
York and it is characteristic of them that they
passed the last night at the Opera retiring at
12-30 a.m., to be called at 5-30 in order to be in
time to start home on board the S.S. Scotia.
They arrived in England on December 9th after
another ten days' voyage.
Indefatigible energy and constant pursuit of
information were the characteristics of this tour.
When travelling they always seemed to choose
the earliest trains or steamers in order that no
time might be wasted, and usually arrived at
their destinations late at night or early in the
morning. When in towns, Mr. Powell often went
out before breakfast and spent the whole day
in visiting the educational and sanitary authorities,
schools, prisons, asylums, orphanages, reform-
atories, public buildings and institutions of all
sorts. He never rested except on Sundays. Then
he attended church, twice if possible, and usually
called on the clergyman. His interest in all he
I56 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
saw and heard, and his determination to make
the most of all his opportunities, when abroad,
never flagged, and he considered foreign travel the
best way of spending a holiday and an almost
indispensable part of the education of a gentle-
man.
CHAPTER XII.
PRIVATE LIFE AND CHARACTER.
LAST DAYS. FUNERAL SERVICES.
MEMORIALS.
AS Sir Francis had no children and indulged
in no expensive tastes or amusements, he
was able to devote most of his time and
very large sums of money to the public and
parliamentary interests described in the pre-
ceding chapters, but he also had the cares of two
large estates in Yorkshire and at Wigan and
much private business. When he was at home,
he always seemed almost overwhelmed with
work, but he grappled bravely with it all,
seldom grumbling and never despairing. He
never had a secretary and the prompt manner
in which he got through an immense amount of
important business in his library, day by day,
without assistance, was perhaps one of his most
astonishing characteristics. His days were
generally fully occupied with meetings or
Parliament and he had to write his letters when
he could find time for them. They were usually
I58 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
short and to the point, but he seldom omitted a
kind message or a few genial words when writing
to his intimates. When asked for advice or help,
he expected to hear all the facts of the case and
to have all the many questions he put frankly
answered. He was apt, perhaps, to mistake
reserve for unnecessary secrecy ; but, when he was
convinced that nothing was being withheld from
him, he was a most sympathetic counsellor who
spared himself no pains.
Except on his holidays, he had little leisure
for general literature but he mastered an immense
number of Blue Books and was a voracious
newspaper reader. He learned from what he saw
and heard rather than from books, and cross-
examined every one he met on their own subjects.
Although most people gave him more information
than they received from him, even experts were
often delighted by the acuteness and sympathy
of his comments on what they told him. Unless
he was making a public speech, he was not a man
of many words, but could put much humourous
wisdom into a few.
During the Parliamentary Sessions he was
little at home, often leaving his house in the
forenoon and not re-appearing there until the
small hours of the next morning. He thought
nothing of going down to Yorkshire or Lancashire
from London for a meeting and returning the
PRIVATE LIFE AND CHARACTER. I5O/
following day. He sometimes did this twice in a
week. Saturday afternoon was the only time
which he devoted definitely to pleasure, when in
London. For many years Lady Powell and he
drove then to Kew Gardens for an hour's walk,
or to Putney, Kingston, or Hampton Court to see
friends. When the days were too short for
this, they visited picture galleries, museums or
exhibitions.
As Sir Francis grew older he seemed to-
become increasingly fond of pictures and would
often spend a spare hour by himself in a gallery.
He did not even profess to be fond of music. He
never cared for games nor gave serious attention
to any kind of sport, but was a great believer in
the necessity for daily exercise, and tried to find
time for a walk every day. One of the first
questions he asked a young man in whom he was
interested was how he got his exercise. " It is
not the time but the thought devoted to sport
which is excessive," he once said at Sedbergh. On
these principles he grudged neither land nor
money to cricket and football clubs, and was
President ot the Wigan Golf Club from its
commencement.
He always preferred town to country,
architecture to scenery, and soon became tired
of a quiet place when on a holiday. He
liked to walk in a park, where he could observe a
l60 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
crowd of working class people, and indulged this
taste in Hyde Park every Sunday evening in
summer. He would often stop on these occasions,
to express his satisfaction at seeing so many
well dressed family parties quietly enjoying
themselves. He had a most robust constitution.
Commenting on a passing indisposition which
had caused some alarm in March, 1898, a
journalist observed : " They need not be unduly
alarmed. Sir Francis was born in the substantial
jannock* days and his constitutional foundation
was not laid with puff paste ; though he has
reached three score and ten years, he is a hardy
veteran who is likely to outlive some of the
younger generation."
It was only during the last few years of his
life that he was obliged to curtail the long hours
spent in the House of Commons, and allowed
himself the luxury of a private brougham to
bring him home at night. It was increasing
and incurable deafness which led him to resign
his seat in 1910. Up to the end, when anxious
for others he never dreamed of sparing himself.
During the last year of his life, when he was
* In the Pall Mall Gazette for Feb. 10th, 1914, A. J. C.
records a discussion upon the meaning of this word, which he
overheard in a railway carriage. " Neither of you know what
jannock is, so I'll tell you," said one of the disputants. " It is
a girdle cake made at Wigan and elsewhere, about 3 to 4 inches
thick, and a small slice will last you some time ; I'll send you
a sample."
PRIVATE LIFE AND CHARACTER. l6l
becoming very infirm, he travelled twice within
the space of a few weeks from London to
Brixworth, a village in the middle of North-
amptonshire, for a few hours, to look after a
sick nephew.
It was not until the last few weeks of his
life that his mental power began to fail. He
passed away in his sleep at Horton Old
Hall on the night of Christmas Eve, ign. He
was buried in the enclosed ground outside the
chancel of All Saints' Church, Bradford, on
December 30th. His funeral was an impressive
and touching tribute to. the respect and affection
with which he was held. The arrangements
were made by one who had been a member of
All Saints' congregation for many years. The
bearers were old tenants on his Yorkshire estates.
There was a large concourse of local clergy and
representatives of the following public bodies
lined up along the drive from the Old Hall and
on the neighbouring road, while the coffin
passed : The Bradford City Council, Chamber
of Commerce, City Magistrates and Board of
Guardians ; the West Riding Magistrates, Leeds
University, the Ripon Training College and
Diocesan Association, the National Society, the
Bradford Conservative Association, the Yorkshire
Division of the National Conservative Union, the
Elland Division Conservative Association, the
Bradford Junior Conservative Club, the Con-
1 62 SIR FRANCIS $HARP POWELL.
servative Association (Central Office, London), the
Lancashire Division of the National Conservative
Union, the Little and Great Horton Conservative
Clubs, the Bradford Liberal Association, the Little
Horton Orpheus Glee Club, the Governors of
Sedbergh School, the burgesses of Wigan, the
Executive Council of the Lay Helpers' Association,
the Horton Green Young Men's Class, the C.E.T.S.,
the Bradford Co-operative Society, Bradford Royal
Infirmary, Bradford Primrose Leagues, Bradford
Permanent Orchestra, Bradford Grammar School,
City Guild of Help, Old Polling District of
Howorth, Wigan and District Nursing and
Technical College, Central Church Defence
Committee, Bradford Mechanics' Institute and
Church Institute, Bradford Parish Church, Brad-
ford Church Extension Society, Eastbrook Hall r
Bradford C. A. and F. C.
There were also a large number of relatives
and private friends from all parts of the country.
The late Bishop of Richmond, Dr. Pulleine,
consecrated the grave and the service was
conducted by Canon Rawdon Briggs, Vicar of
All Saints', Rev. H. Gresford Jones, Vicar of
Bradford, and the Rev. A. E. Sidebotham, Senior
Curate of All Saints'. At the graveside " I heard
a Voice from Heaven " was sung to Goss's
setting. " Now the labourer's task is o'er " was
the last hymn and the last " Amen " was Dr
PRIVATE LIFE AND CHARACTER. 1 63
Naylor's "Threefold Amen," as sung in York
Cathedral.
While the funeral was taking place, a
Memorial Service was being held at the Parish
Church, Wigan, which was attended by the
Mayor and Corporation, the leading men and
public officials of the town and Lord Balcarres,
M.P. (now Earl of Crawford).
On Christmas Eve, 191 2, the anniversary of
Sir Francis' death, a stained glass window was
dedicated to his memory at the east end of the side-
chapel of S. Columba's Church, Bradford. It was the
gift of Lady Powell. The Vicar, Canon Rawdon
Briggs, gave All Saints' Church an altar cross in
his memory and the parishioners of All Saints'
commemorated him, in the following summer, by
fixing a brass plate on the north wall of their
Church, embossed with the following inscription,
which will form a worthy conclusion to this
volume.
" To the greater glory of God and in
sacred remembrance of the sterling worth,
the widespread liberality and the con-
spicuous public services of Sir Francis Sharp-
Powell, Bart., of Horton Old Hall, the
founder of this Church in 1864, an d Member
of Parliament during thirty-seven years,
representing Wigan, Cambridge and York-
I64 SIR FRANCIS SHARP POWELL.
shire (Northern Division of the West
Riding), who died on the 24th day of
December in the year of our Lord 191 1, and
in the eighty-fifth year of his age. This
tablet is placed here by the Parishioners."
" Blessed are the dead which die in the
Lord : They rest from their labours and
their works do follow them." Rev. xiv, 13.
APPENDIX I.
Reminiscences by Professor Edward Hull,.
LL.D., F.R.S.
I gladly contribute a few lines of rem-
iniscences to the memoir of Sir Francis Sharp
Powell whom it was my privilege to call my
friend through a period of about half a century ;
and for whom I entertained the highest respect
and admiration as a Christian and Public Man.
It was about the year 1864 tnat * made his
acquaintance when resident for a short period at
Wigan, engaged on the work of the Government
Geological Survey of Lancashire. Mr. Powell
then resided in a house near that centre of
manufacturing industry, wherein coal-mining
was being carried on from pits the deepest in the
British Isles, side by side with cotton spinning
and weaving in mills of the largest structure and
most elaborate machinery.
How I became acquainted with my friend I
am at this time unable to say, but the friendship
then established was one for life. I was a
frequent guest at Mr. Powell's house ; and I
recollect on one occasion he was kind enough to
show me the plans of a handsome Church he was
preparing to erect on his property at Bradford
1 66 APPENDIX.
which, with parsonage and schools, remain a
monument to his munificence and zeal for the
cause of Christianity, and of that form of it,
which was so dear to his heart, the English
Church.
Powell took a great interest in the work
of the Geological Survey and occasionally
accompanied me into the field in order to become
acquainted with the mode and manner of
geological mapping. On one of these occasions
as we were returning home in the evening, he
made enquiry regarding the scale of remuneration
the Surveyors received for their services, as
constituting a branch of the Public Service
requiring special training and scientific knowledge,
which placed it outside and above the status of
the ordinary Civil Service. At that time the pay
of the staff was scarcely, if at all, above that of a
clerkship in some public office. When I informed
my friend on this subject, he stopped short in his
walk, turned to me and exclaimed " is it possible
that for so important and highly scientific duties
as those you are engaged upon that is all the
remuneration you receive. I am astonished," or
words to that effect. Happily for my colleagues
and for the work of the survey itself as a public
department, the Government sometime after
recognized the inadequate pay we received, and
an improved scale of remuneration was arranged
to our advantage ; and it was not improbable
APPENDIX. 167
that my friend's influence was brought to bear in
favour of the change, owing to his position as a
Member of Parliament for an important mining
constituency.
Many years elapsed after the events above
recorded and my next meeting with my friend,
during which he had received the well earned
honour of a baronetcy but on coming to reside
in London our acquaintance was soon renewed
and I was always amongst his guests at Lady
Powell's receptions. One event, however, occurred
of some importance, which ought not to be
omitted from this little narrative, in connection
with the institution with which I had been
associated for forty years.
The Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn
Street had been and still remains the head-
quarters of the Geological Survey of the United
Kingdom. It was designed and founded by the
first Director-General of the Survey, Sir Henry
T. de la Beche, and enlarged and enriched under
his successor, Sir Roderick J. Murchison, with
minerals, fossils, and rock specimens representative
of the geological formations of England, Ireland
and Scotland. Amongst these was the magnificent
vase presented by the Czar Nicholas to Murchison
on the completion of his survey of Russia, and the
publication of his great work " Russia and the
Ural Mountains." The Museum was the central
168 APPENDIX.
office for giving information to enquirers regarding^
minerals and fossils on their estates, and supplying
geological maps and sections, and for this purpose
its position was very convenient for visitors, as
being near the centre of the metropolis. Not-
withstanding these advantages, a desire had arisen
amongst members of Parliament and others to
have the contents of the building transferred to-
South Kensington ; the intention being on the
part of the authorities to convert the building
itself into a Central Post Office ! for which it
was absolutely unfitted, without a complete
transformation involving a large sum of public
money. Accordingly a Parliamentary Committee
was appointed to take evidence and advise the
Government, and of this Committee Sir Francis
Powell was happily nominated Chairman. On
seeing the proposal in the papers, I determined to
oppose it to the best of my ability, as it seemed
to me almost a sacrilege to destroy the work and
design of my former chiefs, and to convert a
centre of scientific utility to the ordinary use of a
department of state. I pictured to myself the
feelings of indignation which would have been
aroused in the hearts of the great leaders in
geological science had such proposals been made
during their tenure of office, and as a faithful
follower I determined to oppose the plan. With
this view I communicated my intention to the
Chairman, who granted me an interview at his
house, when I discussed the whole question with
APPENDIX. 169
him and made him acquainted with the history
and purpose of the building. Sir Francis gave me
a patient hearing and expressed his intention that
I should have an opportunity of placing my views
before the Committee, directing me to prepare
beforehand my evidence. In due course the
Committee sat in one of the rooms of the House
of Commons, and I was called on to give my
evidence, which appears to have satisfied the
Committee not to recommend the transfer, for
the proposal was allowed to lapse, and the
Museum with its collections remains to this day.
I fear it is not even now out of danger from
further attack from the enthusiasts of South
Kensington.
The only other occasion on which I was
brought into contact with Sir Francis Powell
was one shortly preceding his retirement from
public life as M.P. for the Borough of Wigan.
At the request of the Committee of the British
Constitution Association I gave an address on
the " Eight Hours Bill for Miners," which is now
generally recognized as the origin and cause of
the unrest in the coal mining districts. I
recognized this measure as unwise and likely to-
lead to trouble amongst the mining population,
a forecast which has unhappily proved correct.
Amongst my audience was Sir Francis Powell,
who sat in front of the Chairman, Lord Hugh
Cecil, and with a copy of the address in his
hand followed the lecture, and gave his approval
of its object.
M.
APPENDIX II.
THREE ADDRESSES
AFTER MANCHESTER ELECTION, 1876.
Address I.
At a meeting of the Managing Committee
of the Wigan Conservative Working Men's Club,
held on the 2nd of March, 1876, the following
resolutions were carried unanimously :
" That this Club, comprising nearly one
thousand members, desire to place on record their
gratification on Francis Sharp Powell, Esq., having
been selected as the Conservative candidate for the
representation of so influential a Constituency as
the City of Manchester, at the election of February
17th, 1876. That they view with profound regret
the result of that Election, believing that Mr.
Powell's absence from the House of Commons at
this juncture is a national loss. That they desire to
convey to Mr. Powell the expression of their
unbounded confidence in him as a consistent
politician, and their respect for him as a good and
generous landlord, and regret that the so-called
Liberal party thought it necessary and becoming
during the contest to asperse the character of a true
English gentleman by charges the most gross and
unfounded. That the members of this Club desire
also to tender their respectful sympathy to one so
APPENDIX. 171
generally esteemed by his fellow-townsmen. That
a Deputation wait upon Mr. Powell to present him
with a copy of the foregoing resolutions."
William Harding, Chairman.
R. F. Hopwood, Treasurer.
Address II.
At a meeting of the Managing Committee of
the Wigan Conservative Association held at the
Offices on Friday, the 3rd day of March, 1876,
the following resolutions were passed unani-
mously :
" That while congratulating Francis Sharp
Powell, Esq., on his being invited to become
candidate for the City of Manchester, and having
the unprecedented number of twenty thousand
nine hundred and eighty-five votes* recorded in his
favour, this meeting expresses its deep regret that
he was not successful. The meeting also desires to
express its full confidence in the political character
and conduct of Mr. Powell, and believes him to be
a true and consistent Conservative, a sound Church-
man, and a gentleman of the highest honour and
integrity. This meeting also expresses deep regret
that the Liberal party at Manchester thought it
necessary, in order to forward their cause, to bring
*The final official return was 20,974 votes and not 20,985 as
given in all these addresses.
172 APPENDIX.
false accusations against Mr. Powell, and that they
resorted to most unfair and unjustifiable means to
sully the character of a gentleman much honoured
and beloved in his native town of Wigan. That a
Deputation from this Association wait upon Mr.
Powell to present him with a copy of the foregoing
resolution."
N. Eckbeslby, President.
Wm. Beyham, Vice-President.
Address III.
To
Francis Sharp Powell, Esquire, formerly M.P., for
the Borough of Cambridge.
Sir,
We, the members of the Cambridge Junior
Conservative Club, beg most respectfully to tender
you this expression of our cordial respect, and to
declare our most emphatic protest against the
unfounded aspersions cast upon your public and
private character by an unscrupulous "opposition"
in your late contest as the Conservative Can-
didate for the City of Manchester.
From a fourteen years' intimate knowledge
of your public carreer, and from your personal
worthiness, we know the groundlessness and
calumny of the attacks made upon you ; but from
our general experience of tactics so employed, we
know that such attacks, in a large and excited
Constituency, must of necessity be, at the time,
APPENDIX. 173
prejudicial, nothwithstanding which it is
gratifying to remember that you on that occasion
polled the unprecedented number of 20,985 votes.
From the time when you first and successfully
contested this Borough against Professor Fawcett,
in 1863, up to the present time we know that,
whether in Parliament as one of our honoured
representatives, or out of Parliament as a private
citizen, your best and untiring efforts have been
devoted to your country's service. Many of the
objects into which you have thrown your zeal and
influence are objects which, although not forming
part of the public administrative machinery of the
country, are objects of Imperial and worthy
interest ; witness your efforts, but now bearing
fruit, to acquire and disseminate reliable
information on the vital question of the Public
Health and the Sanitary Laws, and your self-
sacrifice in the cause of public education and
religion amongst your own people of Lancashire
and Yorkshire.
No less have we as members of the Con-
servative party in Cambridge, to thank you for
the great sacrifice you have made in our cause,
and especially for the kindly aid and encourage-
ment you gave us in forming this Institution, and
in enabling us to acquire the building in which
we now have the honour to meet.
174 APPENDIX.
That you may for many years be spared to
see the success of the cause for which you have
so long laboured, and to continue your works of
usefulness will ever be the prayer of
Your faithful servants,
The Members of
The Cambridge Junior Conservative Club.
APPENDIX III.
Results of Parliamentary Elections.
WIGAN. July 2nd, 1852.
Thicknesse, K. A. L. 366
Lindsay, Col. Hon. J. C. 356
Francis Sharp Powell C. 324 Defeated.
October 3rd, 1854.
Acton, Joseph L. 339
Francis Sharp Powell C. 334 Defeated.
March 28th, 1857.
Francis Sharp Powell C* 493 Returned.
Woods, Henry L. 447
Lindsay, Col. Hon. J. C. 303
April 30th, 1859.
Lindsay, Col. Hon. J. C. 503
Woods, Henry L. 470
Francis Sharp Powell C. 276 Defeated.
CAMBRIDGE. February 12th, 1863.
Francis Sharp Powell C. 708 Returned.
Fawcett, Professor Henry L. 627
July 12th, 1865.
Forsyth, W. C.
Francis Sharp Powell C.
Torrens, Col. L.
Christie, W, D. L
762
760 Returned,
726
725
November 18th, 1868.
Torrens, Col. L. 1,879
Fowler, W. L. 1,857
Francis Sharp Powell C. 1,436 Defeated.
Gorst, John E. C. 1,389
176 APPENDIX.
STALYBRIDGE. March 1st, 1871.
Buckley, N. L. 2,189
Francis Sharp Powell C. 1,033 Defeated.
YORKSHIRE, N.W. RIDING.
February 3rd, 1872.
Francis Sharp Powell C. 6,961 Returned.
Holden, Isaac L. 6,917
Fbbruary 18th, 1874.
Cavendish, Lord Frederick L. 8,681
Wilson, Sir M. L. 8,598
Francis Sharp Powell C. 7,820 Defeated.
Fison, W. C. 7,725
MANCHESTER.
February 19th, 1875.
Bright, Jacob L. 22,535
Francis Sharp Powell C. 20,974 Defeated.
YORKSHIRE, N.W. RIDING.
April, 1880.
Cavendish, Lord Frederick L. 10,878
Wilson, Sir M. L. 10,732
Francis Sharp Powell C. 7,140 Defeated.
Lister, S. C. C. 7,096
WIGAN. January 18th, 1880.
Francis Sharp Powell C. 3,003 Declared
Lancaster, J. L. 2,536 $*
November 25th, 1885.
Francis Sharp Powell C. 3,637 Returned.
Lea, G. H. L. 2,721
July 3rd, 1886.
Francis Sharp Powell C. 3,371 Returned.
Percy, C. L. 2,780
appendix. 177
July, 1892.
Francis Sharp Powell 0. 3,422 Returned.
Aspinwall, T. Lab. 3,312
July 15th, 1895.
Francis Sharp Powell C. 3,949 Returned.
Aspinwall, T. Lab. 3,075
October 1st, 1900.
Francis Sharp Powell C. 3,772 Returned.
Woods, Col. L. 3,130
January 17th, 1906.
Francis Sharp Powell C. 3,573 Returned.
Smith, T. Lab. 2,205
Woods, Col. L. 1,900
INDEX OF PERSONS AND PLACES.
Allbutt, Sir Clifford, 92
Allerton, Lord, 120
America, Visit to, 19, 59-61
Ashton News, 56
Aspatria, 9
Athens, 149
Atkinson, R. E., no
Atlay, Bishop and Vicar of
Leeds, 35
B
Baines, Talbot, 50
Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J., 25-
92-3, 100
Balfour, Rt. Hon. Gerald, 130-31
Ball, Mr. John, 147
Bardsley, Rt. Rev. John Waring,
Bishop of Carlisle, 10, 51,
108
Bardsley, Elizabeth, 9
Bardsley, Francis Sharp, 10
Barker, Rev. A. D., 42
Barran, Sir John, 120
Barrow, Bishop of, 108
Bates, Mrs. Ralph, 58
Benson, Arbhbishop, 48, 49
Bentham, Mr. J. H., 129 ff
Birrell's Education Bill, 94
Birley, Mr. Hugh, 71, 78, 79
Bo wen, Lord, 84
Bradford, All Saints' Church
and Schools, 19, 31-40, 93,
95, no, 151, 163
Bradford, St. Oolumba's Church
and Schools, 40-2, 163
Bradford.Bramley Street School
and Mission Room, 37
Bradford. Board of Guardians,
20, 129 ff
Bradford, Dirkhill Mission
Church, 38, 40, 42
Bradford, Election Meetings at,
63,64
Bradford, Freedom of City of,
I34-3 6
Bradford, Girls' School, 97
Bradford, Grammar School, 66,
95-6
Bradford, Parish Church, 31
Bradford, Ten Church Scheme,
3 2 -3
Bradford, Union Infirmary, 131
Bradford, West Riding Court
House at, 30
Bridges, Francis Sharp, 10, 11
Bridges, Miss Jane, 10
Briggs, Rev. Canon Rawdon,
38, 40, in, 162, 163
Bright, Jacob, 70-6
Brix worth, 161
INDEX OF PERSONS AND PLACES.
179
Blundell, Colonel, 99
Buckley, Mr. Nathaniel, 56-8
Burns,Mr. John, Town Planning
Act, 126
Burtridge, Mr., 106
Burland, Mr. R. C, 143
Butt, Mr. Isaac, 81
Cambridge, St. John's College,
16, 102
Cambridge, Selwyn College, 49
Cambridge, M.P. for Borough
of, 48-52
Cambridge, Borough Elections,
52-4
Cambridge, Speeches at, 55, 91
Cambridge Square No. 1, 18, 19
Cambridgeshire Election, 69, 72
Cameron, Dr. J. S., 92
Cavendish, Lord Frederick, 67,
68,80
Cavendish, Lady Frederick, 120
Cecil, Lord ugh , 94
Chadwick, Mr. Edwin, 123
Chagford Moor Park Hotel, 26
Chambres, Rev. E. C, 99, 100
Chapman, Professor, S. J., 112
Chatham, 91
Chelsea, St. Mark's College, 49
Cherriman, Professor, 151
Cincinnati, 151
Clarke, Sir Purdon, 24
Constantinople, 146-8
Crawford, Earl of, 163
Crawford, Countess of, 116
Cross, Lord, 84, 120
Crossley, Sir W., 62
Cullingworth, 20
Dale, Sir Alfred, 105
Derby, Late Earl of, 115
Derby, Earl of, 145
Devonshire, Duke of 120-122
Dicks, Mr. D., Mayor of WL an,
138
Disraeli, Rt. Hon. B., 53, 65, 72,
80,81
Eckersley, Mr., 84, 145
Egerton, Hon. A. F., 85
Elcho, Lord, Masters and
Servants Act, 73
Evans, Rev. J. H., 15, 104, 106
Exeter, Bishop of, 32
Farr, Dr. W., 123
Farrar, James, Esq., J.P , 65
Fawcett, Professor, 52
Fell, B. H., 107
Finch, Mr., 25
Fison, William, Esq., J.P., 65,
67,68
Forster, Rt. Hon. W. E., 62,
63-6, 91-6, 147-8
Fowler, Urban and Sanitary
Authorities Bill, 125
Fullagar, Mr. W. P., 21
a
Gee, Alderman, 87-8
Giggleswick Grammar School,
102-3
Gillick, Mr. E. G., 143
Gorst, Rt. Hon. Sir John, 23,
53-4, 79
i8o
INDEX OF PERSONS AND PLACES.
Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W. E., 65,
72, 82
Gregson, Mr. Matthew, 17, 76
Gregson, Mr. Samuel, 17
Gregory, Canon, 35
H
Hains, Rev. P., 141
Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Sir W., 119
Hardy, Family of, 33
Hart, Mr. H. G., 105-6-7-9
Healey, T. H. & F., 41, Mallin-
son and, 38
Hebden Bridge, 63
Hewlett, Mr. Alfred, 116
Hoare, Mr. H. Gerard, 48
Hodgkinson, Mr., 53.
Hopkinson, Sir Alfred, 105
Holden, Mr. Isaac, 62, 63, 68
Houldsworth, Sir W. H. Bart,
M.P., 22
Horton, Sharp Estates at, 10, 31
Horton Hall, 11, 3 1
Horton Old Hall, 9, 10, 18, 19,
3i, 39. 131, 136, 161
Huddersfield, Social Science
Congress at, 91
Hulbert, Canon C. A., 10
Hulbert, Rev. C. L., 10
Hull, Professor Edward, Ap-
pendix I
Hymers, Dr., 16
I
Ilkley, St. Margaret's Church,
50
Illingworth, Mr. Alfred, 134
Ireland, Church of, 48
Jevons, Mr. Harold, 144
John, Mr. Goscombe, 143
Jones, Rev. H. Gresford, 162
Jones, Lieut. R. J. T. Digby, no
Keble, John, 10
Kempe, Mr. C. E., 109
Kennion, Rev. G. W., Bishop
of Bath and Wells, 38
Kotnura, Baron, 120
Leach, Rev. H., Notes by, 32-7,
38
Leeds, University, 116 ff
Lindley, Mrs., 10
Lowrie, Mr. Charles, 109-10-11
Lupton, Pro-Chancellor A.G.,
121-2
Lupton, Roger, Founder of
Sedbergh School, 15-16
Lupton Scholarships and
Fellowships, 16, 17
M
Macdonald, Sir John and Lady
150
Malim, Mr. F. B., m, 113-4
Mallinson and Healey, 38
Manchester, 22, 70-6, 80, 81-6
Manchester, Owens College,
1 18-9
Manchester Ship Canal, 127
Manchester, Bishop of, 94
Mason, Master Ch irles, 139
Martland, Mr., 151
INDEX OF PERSONS AND PLACES.
II
Marylebone, Candidature for
School Board, 55-6
McClure, Sir J. W., 79
Masham Lord, C. S. Lister, 80,
81, 134, 135
Meltham, Mechanics' Institu-
tion, 117
Miall, Mr., 32
Mitchell, Sir H., 134
Morley, Lord, 97
Museum, S.Kensington, 24
Musgrave, Archdeacon, 35, 43
N
National Society, 50-51
Neville, Mr. R., K.C., 89.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 11
New York, 150-5
O'Donahue, Councillor J., 143-4
O'Shea, Major, no
Olympus, Mount, 147-8
Omaha, 151
Ouless, W. W., R.A., Portrait
by, 85
Paley and Austin, Messrs., 104,
108
Parkes Museum, 126
Palmerston, Lord, 26
Patry, Edward, Portrait by, 113
Peel, Sir Theo., 30
Peel, Lady, 30
Phillips, Mr. Alderman, 140
Playfair, Late Lord, 115
Powell, Rev. B., 10
Powell, Mary Anne, Jane
Bridges, Amelia Sharp,
Louisa, 10
Powell, Rev. T. W., 9, 12
Powell, Lady, 17, 18, 19, 26, 39,
41, 79, no, 141, 146 ff, 159-
163
Powell, Francis Sharp
Born 29 June, 1827, 9
B.A., Cambridge, 1850, 16
Called to Inner Temple
1853, 17
M.P., Wigan 1857, 52
Married August 26, 1858, 17
J.P. for West Riding 1862,
129
York House of Laymen,
Member 1892-1911, Vice-
Chairman 1901-10, 21, 49
Founded All Saints', Brad-
ford, 1863-4, 31 ff
M.P., Cambridge Borough,
1863-5, 1865-8, 52
M.P., N.W. Riding York-
shire, 1872-4, 61-7
M.P., Wigan Borough,
1885-1910, 85-9
Baronetcy, 1892, 24
Freedom of Borough of
Wigan 1895, 138-140
Freedom of City of Brad-
ford 1902, 134-6
Parliamentary Jubilee, 1907,
25
Golden Wedding 1908, 26
Retired 19 10, 28-9
Died, Christmas Eve, 1911,
30
l82
INDEX OF PERSONS AND PLACES.
Pulleine, Late Bishop, 162
Ratcliffe, Alderman, 134
Ripley, Sir H. W., 62
Richards, Alderman, 142
Richardson, Sir B. W., 123
Ripon
Bickersteth, Bishop of, 44,
46
Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of,
41, 46, 108
Diocesan Conference, 45,
46-7
Diocese, 42-3, 49
Marquis of, 120, 121, 122
Training College, 50
Sadler, Dr. Michael, 122
Salisbury, Lord, 80, 85
Salt Lake City, 752
San Francisco, 153
St. Louis, 154-5
Sedbergh, 67
Sedbergh School, 15, 21, 104-14
Selby, E., 107
Settle, 67
Sharp, Family of, 10, 11
Sharp, Abraham, 11
Sharp, Isaac, 11
Sharp, John, Royalist, 27
Skipton, Mechanics' Institu-
tion, 117
Smith, Alderman J., of Wigan,
140
Smith, Mr. Goldwin, 151
Sidebottom, Esq., M.P., 56
Sidebotham, Rev. A. E., 162
Simon, Sir John, 123, 127
Spencer, Earl of, 120
Stalybridge and Dukinfield,
56-9
Stanford, Sir Charles, no
Stanhope, W. Spencer, Esq., 45
Stansfield, W. R. C, Esq., 95
Style, Rev. G., 103
Tait, Lieut., F. G., no
Todmorden, 67
Totteenham St. Catherine's
College, 49
Tottington, 10
Train, George Francis, 154
Twist, Mr., M.P., 89
U
Uppingham School, 12
Vaughan, Dr., 35
W
Wade, Anne, 9
Wade, Rev. Thomas, 9
Wade, Elizabeth, 9
Wakefield, Diocese of, 42, 47
Wakefield, W. H., Esq., 106
Wales, Church in, 48-9
Wharncliffe, Lord, 45
Whigham, H. J., 107
Wilkids, 107
Whitelands College, 49
Wigan
Address from, and Speech,
76-8
INDEX OF PERSONS AND PLACES.
183
Wigan
Birth at, 1827, 9
Bellingham Lodge, 10-12
Elections, Parliamentary,
83-9
Election Petition, 84
Freedom of Borough, Free
Library, Boys' Reading
Room, 137-40
St. George's Church and
Schools, 9, 141
Grammar School, 12,98-102
Statute in Mesnes Park,
143-5
Mining and Mechanical
School and Technical
College, 115-6, 139
Memorial Service, 163
Wilson, Sir Matthew, 67, 68, 80
Winnard, Mr. W., 138
Wood, Mr. S., Mayor of Wigan,
26, 144,
Wood, Alderman Willis, 134-6
Woodward, Rev. F. H., 17
York House of Laymen, 21, 49
Yorke, Mr. Thomas, 102
Yorkshire Northern Division
West Riding Parliamentary
Elections, 62-8, 78, 80-2
Yorkshire College, 70, 116 fF
Yo Semite, Valley, 152-3
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