Arthur Kilpin Bulley (10 January 1861 – 3 May 1942) was a British cotton merchant and creator of the

Ness Botanic Gardens Ness Botanic Gardens are at Ness, Cheshire in the Wirral Peninsula. This is near the cities of Liverpool and Chester and close to the English-Welsh border. They occupy a site of 64 acres overlooking the Dee Estuary. The Ness Botanic Gardens wer ...

. He stood for

Parliament In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

as a

women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffra ...

candidate in 1910.

Personal life

Bulley was one of the 14 children of Samuel Marshall Bulley and Mary (née Raffles). He was born in New Brighton, Cheshire, in 1861. He married Harriet Agnes Whishaw in 1890. They were both committed teetotallers and politically active. They had two children together, Agnes Lois Bulley (1901–1995) and Alfred Whishaw Bulley (born 1905). Bulley's sisters included

Amy Bulley Agnes Amy Bulley (20 April 1852 – 16 November 1939) was an English promoter of Female education, women's education. She was an early student at both Girton College, Cambridge and Newnham College, Cambridge, Newnham College and one of the first ...

and Ella Sophia Armitage, who unusually had a university education.

Career

After leaving school he joined his family's cotton trading business, often travelling overseas where he developed an interest in uncommon plants. Bulley purchased 60 acres of land near Ness in Cheshire in 1898, in which he built a house and a plant nursery, opening parts of the garden for free to villagers. Bulley commissioned plant collectors and botanists such as George Forrest, Augustine Henry, and Frank Kingdon-Ward to obtain plants from countries including

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

, and

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

to place in his gardens. In 1903 Bulley opened a nursery, Bees Nursery (later Bees Ltd), at Ness where he sold plants grown from seeds originating in Europe and Asia. In January 1910 Bulley stood as the Women's Suffrage candidate in Rossendale. He received the fewest votes but stated his aim was not to win but to ensure visibility of the suffrage cause. He stood unsuccessfully for

Liverpool City Council Liverpool City Council is the Local government in England, local authority for the City status in the United Kingdom, city of Liverpool in Merseyside, England. Liverpool has had a local authority since 1207, which has been reformed on numerous ...

several times, first as a

Socialist Party of Great Britain The Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) is a small socialist political party in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1904 as a split from the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), it advocates using the ballot box for revolutionary purposes and ...

candidate then as a Labour Party candidate. Bulley campaigned in 1921 to open an Alpine garden on

Snowdon Snowdon (), or (), is a mountain in Snowdonia in North Wales. It has an elevation of above sea level, which makes it both the highest mountain in Wales and the highest in the British Isles south of the Scottish Highlands. Snowdon i ...

, receiving criticism from those concerned about introducing foreign plants to the mountain, leading to his abandonment of the plan soon after. The species ''

Primula bulleyana ''Primula'' () is a genus of herbaceous flowering plants in the family Primulaceae. They include the primrose ('' P. vulgaris''), a familiar wildflower of banks and verges. Other common species are '' P. auricula'' (auricula), '' P. veris'' (cow ...

'' and the orchid genus ''Bulleya'' Schlechter are named after Bulley.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bulley, Arthur 1861 births 1942 deaths Plant collectors People from Cheshire