Page:EB1911 - Volume 28.djvu/872

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WREXHAM—WRIGHT, S.

two hands. The man loses, any part of whose person, except the feet, touches the ground.

The style mostly affected by the professional wrestlers of Europe at the present day is the Graeco-Roman (falsely so called, since it bears almost no resemblance to classic wrestling), which arose about 1860 and is a product of the French wrestling schools. It is a very restricted style, as no tripping is allowed, nor any hold below the hips, the result being that the bouts, which are contested almost entirely prone on the mat, are usually tediously long. British and American wrestlers, being accustomed to their own styles, are naturally at a disadvantage when wrestling under Graeco-Roman rules.

WREXHAM (Welsh Gwrecsam, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Wrightesham), a market town and parliamentary and municipal borough of Denbighshire, N. Wales, 11 m. S.S.W. of Chester, with stations on the Great Western railway, and on the Great Central railway, 202 m. from London. Pop. (1901) 14,966. “One of the seven wonders of Wales” is St Giles's church, of the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, with a panelled tower of several stages erected between 1506 and 1520, and containing ten famous bells cast (1726) by Rudhall; the interior is Decorated, and has two monuments by Roubilliac to the Myddletons. Wrexham is the seat of the Roman Catholic bishop of Menevia, whose diocese includes all Wales except Glamorganshire. The endowed free school was established in 1603. The markets and fairs are good, and the ales, mills (corn and paper) and tanneries locally famous. Brymbo Hall, in the neighbourhood, is said to have been built from a design by Inigo Jones, as were probably Gwydyr chapel (1633) and the Conwy bridge (1636), both at Llanrwst. Erddig Hall was noted for its Welsh MSS. Near Wrexham, but in a detached portion of Flintshire, to the S.E., is Bangor-is-coed (Bangor yn Maetor), the site of the most ancient monastery in the kingdom, founded before 180; some 1200 monks were slain here by Æthelfrith of Northumbria, who also spoiled the monastery. Bangor-is-coed was probably Antoninus's Bovium, and the Banchorium of Richard of Cirencester. Wrightesham was of Saxon origin, and lying E. of Offa's Dyke, was yet reckoned in Mercia. It was given (with Bromfield and Yale, or Iâl) by Edward I. to Earl Warenne.

WRIGHT, CARROLL DAVIDSON (1840-1909), American statistician, was born at Dunbarton, New Hampshire, on the 25th of July 1840. He began to study law in 1860, but in 1862 enlisted as a private in a New Hampshire volunteer regiment. He became colonel in 1864, and served as assistant-adjutant-general of a brigade in the Shenandoah Valley campaign. He was admitted to the New Hampshire bar after the war, and in 1867 became a member of the Massachusetts and United States bars. From 1872 to 1873 he served in the Senate of Massachusetts, and from 1873 to 1878 he was chief of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. He was U.S. commissioner of labour from 1885 to 1905, and in 1893 was placed in charge of the Eleventh Census. In 1894 he was chairman of the commission which investigated the great railway strike of Chicago, and in 1902 was a member of the Anthracite Strike Commission. He was honorary professor of social economics in the Catholic university of America from 1895 to 1904; in 1900 became professor of statistics and social economics in Columbian (now George Washington) University, from 1900 to 1901 was university lecturer on wage statistics at Harvard, and in 1903 was a member of the special committee appointed to revise the labour laws of Massachusetts. In 1902 he was chosen president of Clark College, Worcester, Mass., where he was also professor of statistics and social economics from 1904 until his death. Dr Wright was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1903, and in 1907 received the Cross of the Legion of Honour for his work in improving industrial conditions, a similar honour having been conferred upon him in 1906 by the Italian government. He died on the 20th of February 1909.

His publications include The Factory System of the United States (1880); Relation of Political Economy to the Labor Question (1882); History of Wages and Prices in Massachusetts, 1752-1883 (1885); The Industrial Evolution of the United States (1887); Outline of Practical Sociology (1899); Battles of Labor (1906); and numerous pamphlets and monographs on social and economic topics.

WRIGHT, CHAUNCEY (1830-1875), American philosopher and mathematician, was born at Northampton, Mass., on the 20th of September 1830, and died at Cambridge, Mass., on the 12th of September 1875. In 1852 he graduated at Harvard, and became computer to the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac. He made his name by contributions on mathematical and physical subjects in the Mathematical Monthly. He soon, however, turned his attention to metaphysics and psychology, and for the North American Review and later for the National he wrote philosophical essays on the lines of Mill, Darwin and Spencer. In 1870-71 he lectured on psychology at Harvard. Although, in general, he adhered to the evolution theory, he was a free lance in thought. Among his essays may be mentioned The Evolution of Self-Consciousness and two articles published in 1871 on the Genesis of Species. Of these, the former endeavours to explain the most elaborate psychical activities of men as developments of elementary forms of conscious processes in the animal kingdom as a whole; the latter is a defence of the theory of natural selection against the attacks of St George Mivart, and appeared in an English edition on the suggestion of Darwin. From 1863 to 1870 he was secretary and recorder to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in the last year of his life he lectured on mathematical physics at Harvard.

His essays were collected and published by C. E. Norton in 1877, and his Letters were edited and privately printed at Cambridge, Mass., in 1878 by James Bradley Thayer.

WRIGHT, JOSEPH (1734-1797), styled Wright of Derby, English subject, landscape and portrait painter, was born at Derby on the 3rd of September 1734, the son of an attorney, who was afterwards town-clerk. Deciding to become a painter, he went to London in 1751 and for two years studied under Thomas Hudson, the master of Reynolds. After painting portraits for a while at Derby, he again placed himself for fifteen months under his former master. He then settled in Derby, and varied his work in portraiture by the production of the subjects seen under artificial light with which his name is chiefly associated, and by landscape painting. He married in 1773, and in the end of that year he visited Italy, where he remained till 1775. While at Naples he witnessed an eruption of Vesuvius, which formed the subject of many of his subsequent pictures. On his return from Italy he established himself at Bath as a portrait-painter; but meeting with little encouragement he returned to Derby, where he spent the rest of his life. He was a frequent contributor to the exhibitions of the Society of Artists, and to those of the Royal Academy, of which he was elected an associate in 1781 and a full member in 1784. He, however, declined the latter honour on account of a slight which he believed that he had received, and severed his official connexion with the Academy, though he continued to contribute to the exhibitions from 1783 till 1794. He died at Derby on the 29th of August 1797. Wright's portraits are frequently defective in drawing, and without quality or variety of handling, while their flesh tints are often hard. He is seen at his best in his subjects of artificial light, of which the “Orrery” (1766), the property of the corporation of Derby, and the “Air-pump” (1768), in the National Gallery, are excellent examples. His “Old Man and Death” (1774) is also a striking and individual production. An exhibition of Wright's works was brought together at Derby in 1883, and twelve of his pictures were shown in the winter exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1886.

His biography, by William Bemrose, was published in 1885.

WRIGHT, SILAS (1795-1847), American political leader, was born at Amherst, Mass., on the 24th of May 1795. He graduated at Middlebury College, Vermont, in 1815, was admitted to the bar in 1819, and began practice at Canton, in northern New York. He was appointed surrogate of St Lawrence county in 1820, and was successively a member of the state Senate in 1824-1826, a member of the national House of Representatives in 1827-1829, comptroller of the state in 1829-1833,