Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/354

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
Smith
344
Smith

illness he died at Bingham's Melcombe on 18 Oct. 1908, and was buried beside his parents and brothers in the churchyard of West Stafford, his birthplace. On 9 Aug. 1865 he married Flora, fourth daughter of the Rev. Edward Dawe Wickham, rector of Holmwood, Surrey (1851–1893), whose fifth daughter, Alice Bertha, was wife of Bosworth's elder brother, Henry John (1838–1879). Bosworth Smith's own handwriting was all but illegible, and his wife, who fully shared all his interests, copied and recopied every line he wrote for publication and most of his important private letters. She survived him with five sons and four daughters; the second son, Alan Wyldbore Bosworth, lieutenant R.N., lost his life at sea when in command of H.M.S. Cobra (18 Sept. 1901).

A portrait of Bosworth Smith, painted by Hugh G. Riviere, presented by old pupils at Harrow and engraved by the Fine Arts Society, is now in the possession of his widow at Bingham's Melcombe. He is commemorated by tablets in Harrow school chapel and in the church at Bingham's Melcombe, and in his memory were erected a portion of the reredos in the church at West Stafford and (by friends and pupils) a stone balustrade in the terrace gardens at Harrow.

[Reginald Bosworth Smith, a Memoir, by his eldest daughter, Ellinor Flora, wife of Major Sir Edward Ian Grogan, 2nd bart., 1909; Harrovian, 27 July 1901 and 14 Nov. 1908; The Times, 20 Oct. 1908; Salisbury Gazette, Nov. 1908; Marlburian, Dec. 1908; Dorset County Chronicle, 22 Oct. 1908.]

E. G-m.


SMITH, SAMUEL (1836–1906), politician and philanthropist, born on 11 Jan. 1836 at Roberton, in the parish of Borgue, Kirkcudbrightshire, was eldest of the seven children of James Smith, a large farmer of Borgue, who also farmed land of his own in South Carleton and other places. His grand-father and an uncle, both named Samuel Smith, were each parish minister of Borgue. The former (d. 1816) wrote 'A General View of the Agriculture of Galloway' (1806); the latter seceded at the disruption of the Scottish church in 1843.

Smith, after being educated at the Borgue parish school and at Kirkcudbright, entered Edinburgh University before he was sixteen, and spent three sessions there. In spite of his literary tastes, he was apprenticed to a cotton-broker in Liverpool in 1853. There he spent his leisure in study, frequenting the Liverpool literary societies and speaking at the Philomathic Society, of which he became president, and forming close friendships with (Sir) Donald Currie [q. v. Suppl. II], W. B. Barbour, and William Sproston Caine [q. v. Suppl. II]. In 1857 Smith became manager of the cotton saleroom and began to write with authority on the cotton market in the 'Liverpool Daily Post,' under the signature 'Mercator' (cf. Thomas Ellison, The Cotton Trade of Great Britain). In 1860 he visited New Orleans and the cotton-growing districts of North America, of which he published a description. On his return, having made a tour of the leading Lancashire manufacturing centres, he started in business as a cotton-broker in Chapel Street, Liverpool, and he established the first monthly cotton circular, conducting it till his entrance into parliament. In the winter of 1862-3 he went to India on behalf of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce to test the cotton-growing possibilities of the country, in view of the depletion of the English market owing to the American civil war. In a communication to the 'Times of India' (embodied in a pamphlet published in England) Smith questioned India's fitness to grow cotton. The visit generated in him a lifelong interest in India and its people. He travelled back slowly by way of the Levant, Constantinople, and the Danube, and greatly improved his business prospects. Toward the close of his career he recommended the growing of cotton in British Africa, Egypt, the Soudan, and Scinde. On 1 Jan. 1864 the firm of Smith, Edwards & Co., cotton-brokers, was launched, and three months later Samuel Smith also became head of the Liverpool branch of James Finlay & Co. of Glasgow and Bombay. Cotton-spinning and manufacturing were subsequently added to his activities by the purchase of Millbrook mills, Stalybridge.

From an early period Smith was active as a philanthropist. At Liverpool he interested himself in efforts for prevention of cruelty to children, for establishing scholarships to connect primary and secondary schools (1874), and for improving public houses; he entered the town council in 1879 as an ardent temperance reformer. A zealous presbyterian of liberal views, he joined in inviting Messrs. Moody and Sankey to Liverpool in 1875; presided at a meeting of 4000 held at Hengler's Circus in aid of 'General' Booth's 'Darkest England' scheme in 1890; and received 14,000 American delegates of the Christian Endeavour Society in 1897. In 1876 Smith