Papers of Henry Joseph Wilson, Sheffield Radical politician and Liberal M.P., for the period 1859 to 1910.
The collection consists of the following sections:
Henry Joseph Wilson (1833-1914), Sheffield Radical politician and Liberal M.P. for Holmfirth, was born on 14 April 1833 at Old Radford, Nottinghamshire, into a family of strong Nonconformist and Reform sympathies. In 1867, following a fourteen year period as tenant of Newlands Farm, near Mansfield, Wilson came to Sheffield to manage the family firm, the Sheffield Smelting Company, and also began his active involvement in politics.
His wide-ranging political interests included the temperance movement, opposition to the state regulation of vice, non-sectarian education, disestablishment, Irish Home Rule, internationalism, opposition to imperialism and the destruction of the opium trade. He held several offices in organisations connected with his political activities both local and national, amongst which were the secretaryships of the Northern Counties Electoral League for the Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts from 1872 to 1885, of the Sheffield Liberal Association from 1875, and of the British Continental and General Federation for the Abolition of Government Regulation of Prostitution, also from 1875. Wilson was a member of the Royal Commission on Opium in India, from 1839 to 1895, Treasurer of the National Vigilance Association in the 1900s, a Justice of the Peace from 1881, and was for fifteen years a member of the Sheffield School Board. He served on the Sheffield Nonconformist Committee, set up to work for the amendment of the Education Act of 1870, from 1872 to the Committee's effective dissolution in 1877. He was elected Liberal M.P. for Holmfirth division of the West Riding in 1885 and held the seat until his retirement in 1912. He died in Sheffield on 29 June 1914.
There are two biographies of Wilson, both based in part on his papers: Mosa Anderson, H.J. Wilson, Fighter for Freedom (London, 1953) and W.S. Fowler, A Study in Radicalism and Dissent: the Life and Times of Henry Joseph Wilson 1833-1914 (London, 1961).
Chronologically, in sections
Available to all researchers, by appointment
Notes on the provenance of the Papers
Wilson's original archive was divided after his death between his children. The section of papers in the University of Sheffield Library was deposited here by R.E. Wilson in 1961. A further section was deposited in Sheffield City Library by Mrs. Gertrude Lenwood at various dates (these are now with Sheffield Archives), while the records of the Sheffield Smelting Company were placed in the same repository (likewise now with Sheffield Archives). A third section, concerning Wilson's national and international work against the government regulation of vice passed from Dr. Helen Wilson, another of his daughters, via the Josephine Butler Society to the Fawcett Library and subsequently to the City of London Polytechnic (now University) Library.
Deposited 1961
Notes on the provenance of the Papers
Wilson's original archive was divided after his death between his children. The section of papers in the University of Sheffield Library was deposited here by R.E. Wilson in 1961. A further section was deposited in Sheffield City Library by Mrs. Gertrude Lenwood at various dates (these are now with Sheffield Archives), while the records of the Sheffield Smelting Company were placed in the same repository (likewise now with Sheffield Archives). A third section, concerning Wilson's national and international work against the government regulation of vice passed from Dr. Helen Wilson, another of his daughters, via the Josephine Butler Society to the Fawcett Library and subsequently to the City of London Polytechnic (now University) Library.
Description prepared by Lawrence Aspden
Listed
Copyright: University of Sheffield Library
