Constituency : Colne Valley 1910-16
Charles reversed the 1907 by-election result which brought the independent Labour MP Victor Grayson into Parliament. Grayson finished bottom of the poll.
Charles was born to a poor family near Halifax. He went into a mill at eight then became an apprentice shoemaker. At 19 he set up his own boot and shoe business. He then became a Methodist lay preacher and subsequently an ordained minister in 1877. He ran a chapel in Birmingham but moved to London and became a Congregationalist after the Liberal Unionist split in 1886. In 1894 he joined the I.L.P. but his chapel didn't like it and forced him to resign. In 1897 he went to Manchester and became involved in the passive resistance to the 1902 Education Act. In 1904 he moved to a chapel in London. Charles wrote a number of religious books. He also worked for Thomas Cook, taking parties to Jerusalem in time for Easter. With his background he was thought to be the ideal candidate to unseat Grayson and was selected in 1908.
Charles supported female suffrage but disapproved of militant tactics. In 1911 he introduced a private members Trade Union Bill to tackle the Osborne judgment. He was also a temperance campaigner.
In 1914 Charles was appointed a chaplain to the Armed Forces, visiting the wounded in London hospitals. The strain of this task at 67 proved too much and he entered Northumberland House, a private lunatic asylum suffering from dementia in 1915. After eight months he was declared of unsound mind and deprived of his seat under the Lunacy ( Vacating of Seats ) Act, the only time those provisions were ever used.
He died in 1919 aged 72.
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