Ernest Emil Darwin Simon, 1st Baron Simon of Wythenshawe (9 October 1879 – 3 October 1960) was a British industrialist, politician and public servant. Lord Mayor of Manchester in 1921–1922, he was a member of parliament for two terms between 1923 and 1931 before being elevated to the peerage and serving as the Chairman of the BBC Board of Governors.

Early life and family

Simon was born in

Didsbury Didsbury is a suburban area of Manchester, England, on the north bank of the River Mersey, south of Manchester city centre. The population at the 2011 census was 26,788. Within the boundaries of the historic county of Lancashire, there are ...

, Manchester, as the eldest son of Henry Gustav Simon and Emily Stoehr. He was educated at

Rugby School Rugby School is a public school (English independent boarding school for pupils aged 13–18) in Rugby, Warwickshire, England. Founded in 1567 as a free grammar school for local boys, it is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain. ...

and studied mechanical sciences at Pembroke College, Cambridge. In 1912 he married Shena Dorothy Potter (1883–1972), a noted social reformer. They had three children:

Roger Roger is a given name, usually masculine, and a surname. The given name is derived from the Old French personal names ' and '. These names are of Germanic origin, derived from the elements ', ''χrōþi'' ("fame", "renown", "honour") and ', ' ...

, a solicitor and journalist;

Brian Brian (sometimes spelled Bryan in English) is a male given name of Irish and Breton origin, as well as a surname of Occitan origin. It is common in the English-speaking world. It is possible that the name is derived from an Old Celtic word m ...

, an educationalist and historian; and a daughter Antonia (Tony) who died in childhood. His nephew is

C. G. H. Simon Christopher Gordon Horsfall Simon JP (14 November 1914 – 20 February 2002), known as C. G. H. Simon, was a British General Commissioner of Income Tax.CHRISTOPHER GORDON HORSFALL SIMON, obituary in '' Manchester Evening News'' dated 26 Fe ...

Engineering

After leaving Cambridge on the death of his father, he entered the family's engineering business,

Simon Carves Simon Carves Engineering Ltd. is an engineering company headquartered in Manchester, England. It was founded in 1878 by Henry Simon and is a subsidiary of Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding. History Simon Carves was founded in 1878 by Henry Sim ...

, manufacturers of flour milling machinery and coke ovens. He successfully expanded the company into building

grain silo A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit (caryopsis) – with or without an attached hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and legumes ...

s, and with the wealth generated by the business pursued outside interests, including politics.

Political and public life

Simon served as a member of

Manchester City Council Manchester City Council is the local authority for Manchester, a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. Manchester is the sixth largest city in England by population. Its city council is composed of 96 councillors, three f ...

from 1912 to 1925, and as Lord Mayor of Manchester in 1921–1922, the youngest person at the time to have held the office. He is chiefly remembered for the

slum clearance Slum clearance, slum eviction or slum removal is an urban renewal strategy used to transform low income settlements with poor reputation into another type of development or housing. This has long been a strategy for redeveloping urban communities; ...

s and housing projects he initiated in the city. He purchased

Wythenshawe Hall Wythenshawe Hall is a 16th-century timber-framed historic house and former manor house in Wythenshawe, Manchester, England, five miles (8 km) south of Manchester city centre in Wythenshawe Park. Built for Robert Tatton, it was home to the ...

and park from

Robert Henry Grenville Tatton Robert Henry Grenville Tatton (2 March 1883 – 1 March 1962) was the High Sheriff of Chester from 1936 until 1937. He was the last member of his family to own Wythenshawe Hall and its estate, the ancestral home of the Tattons for 600 years, ...

in 1926 and donated them to the city; the estate farmland became one on Britain's largest housing estates,

Wythenshawe Wythenshawe () is a district of the city of Manchester, England. Historically in Cheshire, Wythenshawe was transferred in 1931 to the City of Manchester, which had begun building a massive housing estate there in the 1920s. With an area of approx ...

. Simon sat as a Liberal Member of Parliament for

Manchester Withington Manchester Withington is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2015 by Jeff Smith of Labour. Of the 30 seats with the highest percentage of winning majority in 2017, the seat ranks 25th with a 55.7% m ...

from

1923 Events January–February * January 9 – Lithuania begins the Klaipėda Revolt to annex the Klaipėda Region (Memel Territory). * January 11 – Despite strong British protests, troops from France and Belgium occupy the Ruhr area, ...

1924 Events January * January 12 – Gopinath Saha shoots Ernest Day, whom he has mistaken for Sir Charles Tegart, the police commissioner of Calcutta, and is arrested soon after. * January 20– 30 – Kuomintang in China h ...

and from

1929 This year marked the end of a period known in American history as the Roaring Twenties after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 ushered in a worldwide Great Depression. In the Americas, an agreement was brokered to end the Cristero War, a Catholi ...

1931 Events January * January 2 – South Dakota native Ernest Lawrence invents the cyclotron, used to accelerate particles to study nuclear physics. * January 4 – German pilot Elly Beinhorn begins her flight to Africa. * January 22 – Sir I ...

. Appointed a

Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health was a junior ministerial office in the United Kingdom Government. The Ministry of Health was created in 1919 as a reconstruction of the Local Government Board. Local government functions were e ...

in August 1931, to remain in office he contested Penryn and Falmouth (he had previously decided not to contest the Withington seat again) in October 1931, however he was unsuccessful. He was knighted in 1932. After the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

he again stood for parliament, as an independent candidate for the Combined English Universities seat during the 1946 by-election. He was unsuccessful and later that year joined the Labour Party. In 1947 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Simon of Wythenshawe, of Didsbury in the City of Manchester, and he was appointed chairman of the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

Board of Governors A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organi ...

, a post which he held until 1952. He was close friends with

Sidney Sidney may refer to: People * Sidney (surname), English surname * Sidney (given name), including a list of people with the given name * Sidney (footballer, born 1972), full name Sidney da Silva Souza, Brazilian football defensive midfielder * ...

and

Beatrice Webb Martha Beatrice Webb, Baroness Passfield, (née Potter; 22 January 1858 – 30 April 1943) was an English sociologist, economist, socialist, labour historian and social reformer. It was Webb who coined the term '' collective bargaining''. She ...

, and he contributed £1000 towards their establishment of the ''

New Statesman The ''New Statesman'' is a British political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members o ...

'' political newspaper in 1913. He also had long association with the

Victoria University of Manchester The Victoria University of Manchester, usually referred to as simply the University of Manchester, was a university in Manchester, England. It was founded in 1851 as Owens College. In 1880, the college joined the federal Victoria University. Afte ...

; except for a short period, he was a member of the court and council from 1915 until his death, and he served as chairman of the Council between 1941 and 1957. Simon died on 3 October 1960 in

Withington Withington is a suburb of Manchester, England. Historically part of Lancashire, it lies from Manchester city centre, about south of Fallowfield, north-east of Didsbury and east of Chorlton-cum-Hardy. Withington has a population of just ov ...

, Manchester, after suffering a stroke whilst on holiday. His eldest son Roger succeeded to the barony.

Publications

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References

External links