Nathaniel Eckersley (1815 – 15 February 1892) was an English mill-owner, banker and Conservative Party politician from

Standish Hall Standish Hall was an estate and country house, built in 1573, owned by the Standish family in the south-west of Standish, Wigan. No standing structures of the hall remain on the former estate, however, some of its wooden-panel interiors are p ...

, near Wigan in Lancashire. He sat in the House of Commons for three years in the 1860s, and two years in the 1880s.

Career

His uncle was Colonel Nathaniel Eckersley, from Laurel House in Hindley, who served with the Duke of Wellington and at the military station established in Manchester after the Peterloo Massacre. In addition to his cotton mills, Eckersley was a partner of the ''Wigan Old Bank'', formerly ''Thomas Woodock's, Sons and Eckersle''y, which amalgamated in 1874 with ''Parr's Banking Company'' in Warrington. He was Mayor of Wigan in 1853 and in 1873, and was appointed as a Deputy Lieutenant of Lancashire in September 1863. In January 1860 he raised the

21st (Wigan) Lancashire Rifle Volunteer Corps The 21st (Wigan) Lancashire Rifle Volunteers, later the 5th Battalion, Manchester Regiment, was a unit of Britain's Volunteer Force and Territorial Army recruited in and around Wigan. It served as infantry in Egypt, at Gallipoli, and in some of ...

, drawn mainly from artisans employed by the local collieries and engineering works, officered by local professional men. He commanded the unit as a

captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

, and was later promoted to

major Major (commandant in certain jurisdictions) is a military rank of commissioned officer status, with corresponding ranks existing in many military forces throughout the world. When used unhyphenated and in conjunction with no other indicators ...

after it joined the

4th Administrative Battalion, Lancashire Rifle Volunteers The 21st (Wigan) Lancashire Rifle Volunteers, later the 5th Battalion, Manchester Regiment, was a unit of Britain's Volunteer Force and Territorial Army recruited in and around Wigan. It served as infantry in Egypt, at Gallipoli, and in some of ...

. In June 1873 Eckersley led Wigan's welcome for the Prince and

Princess of Wales Princess of Wales (Welsh: ''Tywysoges Cymru'') is a courtesy title used since the 14th century by the wife of the heir apparent to the English and later British throne. The current title-holder is Catherine (née Middleton). The title was firs ...

, who opened a new hospital in the town, which the Princess named the Royal Albert Edward Infirmary.

Parliament

He was elected as one of the two Members of Parliament (MPs) for Wigan at a by-election in March 1866, following the resignation of the Conservative MP Hon. James Lindsay. Nominations for the contest took place in the moot hall in Wigan, supervised by the Mayor

Thomas Knowles Thomas Knowles (30 May 1824 – 3 December 1883) was an English businessman and Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1874 to 1883. Knowles was born at Ince-in-Makerfield, the son of a colliery underlooker. According to his ...

. The candidates then addressed the voters in the town hall. Eckersley offered himself as a "free and independent candidate", and said that until then he had never considered himself to be a politician. The Mayor called for a show of hands, which he found to be in favour of Eckersley, but a poll was demanded and Eckersley won 411 votes to the 349 cast for his Liberal opponent John Lancaster. He was defeated at by John Lancaster (MP) at the 1868 general election, when Liberal candidates took both seats in Wigan, and he did not stand for Parliament again for another 15 years. He was High Sheriff of Lancashire in 1878, and in that capacity helped to organise a fund for the dependants of the victims of the explosion on 7 June 1878 at the

Wood Pit Colliery The Wood Pit disaster was a mining accident on 7 June 1878, when an underground gas explosion occurred at the Wood Pit, in Haydock, then in the Historic counties of England, historic county of Lancashire, in North West England. The official death ...

in Haydock, where more than 200 miners were killed. When Wigan's Conservative MP

Lord Lindsay Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the peerage in the United Kingdom, or are ...

succeeded to his father's peerage in 1880, and Eckersley was asked to stand at the by-election in January 1881, but refused. Following the death in December 1883 of Wigan's other Conservative MP

, Eckersley was returned unopposed at the resulting by-election on 21 December 1883. He held the seat until when Wigan's parliamentary representation was reduced from two seats to one by the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885, and did not contest the 1885 general election.

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Eckersley, Nathaniel 1815 births 1892 deaths People from Standish, Greater Manchester Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies UK MPs 1865–1868 UK MPs 1880–1885 Deputy Lieutenants of Lancashire High Sheriffs of Lancashire Mayors of Wigan Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for Wigan British textile industry businesspeople English bankers 19th-century English businesspeople