Wednesday, 25 December 2013
363 Sir Francis Goldsmid
Constituency : Reading 1860-78
We move on to 1860 and Francis came in at Reading when Sir Henry Keating the Solicitor-General resigned to become a Judge of Common Pleas.
Francis was a member of the Goldsmid banking family. His father was a baronet. He was privately educated and became the first Jewish barrister in England. He produced a number of pamphlets supporting the Jewish Disabilities Bill. He was one of the founders of the Reform Synagogue in 1841.
Francis was a great philanthropist for Jewish causes. He founded the Jews Free School and made many endowments to University College London. He also frequently raised the plight of Jews in Eastern Europe in Parliament. He founded the Anglo-Jewish Association in 1871. He also donated £5,000 to the cost of Reading's new town hall.
Francis was also a supporter of women's causes. He was on the committee of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women and voted for Mill's female suffrage amendment to the Reform Bill in 1867. His wife Louisa was a member of all the early women's suffrage societies although always on the moderate side.
Francis was a moderate in his politics. In the great Reform debates he moved the exclusion of joint occupiers from the franchise.
He died in 1878 in an accident at Waterloo Station a day after his 70th birthday.
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