Charles Poulett Thomson, 1st Baron Sydenham, (13 September 1799 – 19 September 1841) was a British businessman, politician, diplomat and the first Governor General of the united Province of Canada.Baron Sydenham
Retrieved on 19 Feb 2018

Early life, family, education

Born at Waverley Abbey House, near Farnham, Surrey, Thomson was the son of John Buncombe Poulett Thomson, a London merchant, by his wife Charlotte, daughter of John Jacob. His father was the head of J. Thomson, T. Bonar and Company, a successful trading firm that had dealings with

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

, and was a principal merchant house in the Russian–Baltic trade. After attending private schools until age 16, Thomson entered the family firm at Saint Petersburg. In 1817 he came home due to poor health, and embarked on a prolonged tour of

Southern Europe Southern Europe is the southern region of Europe. It is also known as Mediterranean Europe, as its geography is essentially marked by the Mediterranean Sea. Definitions of Southern Europe include some or all of these countries and regions: Alba ...

. He returned to Russia in 1821 and over the next three years travelled extensively in

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whic ...

. He established permanent residence in London in 1824 but frequently visited the Continent, especially Paris.

Political career

Thomson was returned to the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

as MP for Dover in 1826. In 1830 he joined

Earl Grey Earl Grey is a title in the peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1806 for General Charles Grey, 1st Baron Grey. In 1801, he was given the title Baron Grey of Howick in the County of Northumberland, and in 1806 he was created Viscou ...

's government as

Vice-President of the Board of Trade The office of Vice-President of the Board of Trade is a junior ministerial position in the government of the United Kingdom at the Board of Trade. The office was created in 1786 but fell into abeyance in 1867. From 1848 onwards, the office was he ...

and

Treasurer of the Navy The Treasurer of the Navy, originally called Treasurer of Marine Causes or Paymaster of the Navy, was a civilian officer of the Royal Navy, one of the principal commissioners of the Navy Board responsible for naval finance from 1524 to 1832. ...

, an office he held until 1834. In November 1831 Thomson accompanied Lord Durham to Paris to negotiate a new commercial treaty with

July Monarchy The July Monarchy (french: Monarchie de Juillet), officially the Kingdom of France (french: Royaume de France), was a liberal constitutional monarchy in France under , starting on 26 July 1830, with the July Revolution of 1830, and ending 23 F ...

France, but the project was not accomplished. He was then President of the Board of Trade under

Lord Melbourne William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, (15 March 177924 November 1848), in some sources called Henry William Lamb, was a British Whig politician who served as Home Secretary (1830–1834) and Prime Minister (1834 and 1835–1841). His first pre ...

in 1834 and succeeded Lord Auckland as president, and again between 1835 and 1839. A free-trader and an expert in financial matters, he was elected MP for

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

in 1832, a seat which he held until 1839. He was continuously occupied with negotiations affecting international commerce until 1839, when he accepted the Governorship of Canada. After his appointment as a governor general of

British North America British North America comprised the colonial territories of the British Empire in North America from 1783 onwards. English colonisation of North America began in the 16th century in Newfoundland, then further south at Roanoke and Jamestow ...

, he persuaded the legislature of

Upper Canada The Province of Upper Canada (french: link=no, province du Haut-Canada) was a part of British Canada established in 1791 by the Kingdom of Great Britain, to govern the central third of the lands in British North America, formerly part of th ...

to consent to a union with

Lower Canada The Province of Lower Canada (french: province du Bas-Canada) was a British colony on the lower Saint Lawrence River and the shores of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence (1791–1841). It covered the southern portion of the current Province of Quebec an ...

, and framed the constitution of the united province. In 1832 he organised a special statistical department at the board of trade, and in 1837 instituted the school of design at Somerset House, in accordance with the recommendation of a select committee of the House of Commons made in 1835.

Governor General of Canada

Sydenham succeeded

Lord Durham Earl of Durham is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1833 for the Whig politician and colonial official John Lambton, 1st Baron Durham. Known as "Radical Jack", he played a leading role in the passing of the Gr ...

as Governor General of Canada in 1839. He was responsible for implementing the Union Act in 1840, uniting

and

as the Province of Canada, and moving the seat of government to Kingston. Upper Canadians were given a choice in the matter of union, which they accepted; Lower Canada had no say, and as a result, many French Canadians were opposed to both the union and Sydenham himself. Later that year, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Sydenham, of

Sydenham Sydenham may refer to: Places Australia * Sydenham, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney ** Sydenham railway station, Sydney * Sydenham, Victoria, a suburb of Melbourne ** Sydenham railway line, the name of the Sunbury railway line, Melbourne ...

in the County of Kent and of

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

in Canada and was appointed knight

grand cross Grand Cross is the highest class in many orders, and manifested in its insignia. Exceptionally, the highest class may be referred to as Grand Cordon or equivalent. In other cases, there may exist a rank even higher than Grand Cross, e.g. Grand ...

of the

Order of the Bath The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I of Great Britain, George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate medieval ceremony for appointing a knight, which involved Bathing#Medieval ...

.Charles Edward Poulett Thomson, Baron Sydenham (1799–1841)
Retrieved on 19 Feb 2018 Sydenham was just as anti-French as Lord Durham had been, and he encouraged British immigration to make the French Canadian population less significant. French Canadians referred to him as ''le poulet'', "the chicken". Realising he had almost no support in Lower Canada (at this time Canada East), he reorganised electoral ridings to give the Anglo-Canadian population more votes, and in areas where that was infeasible, he allowed English mobs to beat up French candidates.

Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine Sir Louis-Hippolyte Ménard '' dit'' La Fontaine, 1st Baronet, KCMG (October 4, 1807 – February 26, 1864) was a Canadian politician who served as the first Premier of the United Province of Canada and the first head of a responsible governmen ...

was one such candidate who suffered from Sydenham's influence; Lafontaine eventually left Canada East to work with

Robert Baldwin Robert Baldwin (May 12, 1804 – December 9, 1858) was an Upper Canadian lawyer and politician who with his political partner Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine of Lower Canada, led the first responsible government ministry in the Province of Canada. " ...

in creating a fairer union for both sides. The new constitution, after being carried through the colonial parliaments and ratified by the House of Commons, came into force on 10 February 1841. It led ultimately to the great confederation of 1867. In addition to this measure he carried another for local government, and he set on foot improvements in the matters of emigration, education, and public works. Charles Greville, in his ''Memoirs'' wrote about Thomson: Sydenham also settled the Protestant land dispute over the

clergy reserves Clergy reserves were tracts of land in Upper Canada and Lower Canada reserved for the support of "Protestant clergy" by the Constitutional Act of 1791. One-seventh of all surveyed Crown lands were set aside, totaling and respectively for each Prov ...

in Upper Canada (at this time Canada West), which the

Family Compact The Family Compact was a small closed group of men who exercised most of the political, economic and judicial power in Upper Canada (today’s Ontario) from the 1810s to the 1840s. It was the Upper Canadian equivalent of the Château Clique in ...

had interpreted to refer only to the

Anglican Church Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of the ...

. Sydenham convinced the legislators to pass an Act whereby half of the land set aside for Protestant churches would be shared between Anglicans and Presbyterians, and the other half would be shared between the other Protestant denominations. Sydenham wanted to make Canada more financially independent, so that there would less danger of annexation by the United States. He had been working on this policy throughout the 1830s, when he was President of the Board of Trade in United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Britain, though he had little time to implement any economic reforms once he had arrived in Canada.

Death

After less than two years as Governor General, Sydenham died in 1841, at age 42. He had been described as sickly and an autopsy revealed severe gout. Shortly before his death, he had resigned his position and was due to return to England within weeks. However, on 4 September, Sydenham was

riding a spirited horse near Parliament House, but could not, for a long time, get the animal to pass that building. After a severe application of spur and whip, however, the horse proceeded, but immediately after, put his foot upon a large stone ... not being able to recover, fell and dragged his rider with him, fracturing the leg, and lacerating it above the knee.

This apparently led to a deadly infection. For fifteen days, Sydenham was described as suffering extreme pain, then died the morning of 19 September 1841. As he was unmarried, his peerage became extinct. He was buried at Kingston, in the crypt of St George's Cathedral.

Legacy

Owen Sound

Soon after its founding, the present-day city of Owen Sound, Ontario, was named Sydenham in 1842 in honour of the recently deceased Governor of Canada; in 1856, the community became a town and was renamed Owen Sound after the adjacent body of water. Sydenham is the name of the principal river that runs through Owen Sound. Sydenham was also the name of the former Sydenham, Grey County, Ontario, Township of Sydenham, which bordered Owen Sound to the east, and in 2001 amalgamated into the municipality of Meaford, Ontario. Sydenham Community School is in Owen Sound. For more than half a century, Owen Sound's main street was called Poulett Street; in 1909, the community's street names were renumbered on the New York City model, and Poulett Street became 2nd Avenue East.

Kingston

Sydenham Public School in Kingston, Ontario, which has operated as an educational facility since its construction in 1853 as the Kingston County Grammar School, was renamed in the 1890s in memory of Lord Sydenham. It is in downtown Kingston, and is an Ontario-designated heritage building. Sydenham High School, Ontario, a regional high school, is in the village of Sydenham, Frontenac County, Ontario, northwest of Kingston. Sydenham Street, in downtown Kingston, runs north-south, and is a two-section street. Its southern section runs from West Street to Brock Street. Its northern section runs from Princess Street to Raglan Road. The two sections are separated by a block of buildings between Brock and Princess Streets. Sydenham Road is also in Kingston, running from outer Princess Street northwards to Highway 401 and beyond, to the village of Sydenham. Sydenham Street in Simcoe, Ontario, is named in his honour. Sydenham Street in London, Ontario, which runs between Wellington and Talbot Streets, north of Oxford Street, is also named after him. Sydenham Ward, a municipal electoral district in Kingston, is one of twelve such districts in the city, and this designation has been used in Kingston municipal politics since the 1840s, albeit with its boundaries modified several times over the ensuing years. The Old Sydenham Heritage Conservation District, in the southeastern sector of downtown, was formally designated by Kingston City Council on 24 March 2015.http://www.cityofkingston.ca, Minutes for City Council meeting of 24 March 2015.

Memoirs

His memoirs were published by his brother, G. J. Poulett Scrope, in 1844.

References

Statutes

Bibliography

* Buckner, Phillip.
Thomson, Charles Edward Poulett, 1st Baron Sydenham
, in ''Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online'', Université Laval and University of Toronto, 2000 * Knaplund, Paul, ed. (1973). ''Letters from Lord Sydenham, Governor-General of Canada, 1839–1841, to Lord John Russell'', New York: A. M. Kelley, 180 p. * Shortt, Adam (1908). ''Lord Sydenham'', Toronto: Morang & Co., Limited, 367 p.
online
* Scrope, George Poulett and Charles Edward Poulett Thomson Sydenham (1844) ''Memoir of the Life of the Right Honourable Charles, Lord Sydenham, G. C. B.: With a Narrative of His Administration in Canada'', London: John Murray, 403 p.
online
* *

External links

* * * * * Archives of Charles Edward Poulett Thompson, 1st Baron Sydenha
(Charles Edward Poulett-Thomson, Baron Sydenham fonds, R2483)
are held at Library and Archives Canada , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Sydenham, Charles Poulett Thomson, 1st Baron 1799 births 1841 deaths People from Farnham Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for Manchester Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for Dover, Poulett-Thomson, Charles UK MPs 1826–1830, Poulett-Thomson, Charles UK MPs 1830–1831, Poulett-Thomson, Charles UK MPs 1831–1832, Poulett-Thomson, Charles UK MPs 1832–1835, Poulett-Thomson, Charles UK MPs 1835–1837, Poulett-Thomson, Charles UK MPs 1837–1841, Poulett-Thomson, Charles UK MPs who were granted peerages Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom Barons in the Peerage of the United Kingdom Governors-General of the Province of Canada Lieutenant-Governors of Upper Canada Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath Persons of National Historic Significance (Canada) Diplomatic peers Presidents of the Board of Trade British expatriates in the Russian Empire Peers of the United Kingdom created by Queen Victoria