Tuesday, 26 April 2016

1190 Joshua Rowntree

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Constituency : Scarborough  1886-92

Joshua  took  Scarborough  from  the  Tories  against  the  trend.

Joshua   was  an  ardent  Quaker. He  was  educated  at  Bootham  School,  York. From  1872  to  1875  he  was  editor  of  the  Quaker  weekly  The  Friend.  He  was  a  former  Mayor  of  Scarborough.

In  1887  Joshua  spoke  out  against  Irish  coercion. He  seconded  a  pro- Home  Rule  motion  at  the  Newcastle  Conference.

Joshua  was  defeated  in  1892, again  against  the  trend, with  the  Tory  regaining  his  seat. After  that  Joshua  worked  to  bring  Quakerism  into  the  modern  world  , accommodating  scientific  discoveries  and  biblical  criticism. He  arranged  a  conference  school  in  Manchester  in  1895, a  summer  school  in  Scarborough  in  1897 and  established  a  study  centre  in  Birmingham  in  1903.

In  1900  Joshua's  business  premises  were  wrecked  for  his  anti-Boer  War  stance.

Joshua  wrote  tracts  against  the  opium  trade.

He  died  in  1915  aged  70.

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