1227 Sydney Stern

Constituency : Stowmarket  1891-5

Sydney  took  Stowmarket  from the  Tories  by  214  votes.

Sydney  was  the  son  of  Viscount  de  Stern, senior  partner  in  a  banking  firm. He  was  Jewish. He  was  educated at  Cambridge. He  specialised  in  Portugese  finance; his  father's  viscountcy  was in  Portugal. He was  a  perennial  candidate  before  the  by-election - Mid  Surrey  1880  and 1884, Tiverton  1885, Ipswich  1886.

Sydney  was  vice-president  of  the  London  and  Counties  Radical  Union. He  asked  a  few  questions  in  Parliament  but  made  no  real  speeches.

Sydney  won  in  1892 by  144  votes  but  stood  down  before  the  1895  election.

Sydney  was  raised  to  the  peerage  that  year as  Baron  Wandsworth. He  effectively  bought  it  by  contributing  to  party  funds, a  deal  arranged  by  Gladstone  and  reluctantly  rubber-stamped  by Rosebery.

He  died  in  1912  aged  67. Most  of  his  money  was  left  to  charity.