Richard William Evelyn Middleton Vanity Fair 18 April 1901

Richard William Evelyn Middleton (16 February 1846 – 26 February 1905), was an English political agent for the Conservative Party.

Early life

Middleton was the son of Alexander Middleton and Elizabeth Middleton (née Neave) and a great-grandnephew of

Charles Middleton, 1st Baron Barham Admiral Charles Middleton, 1st Baron Barham, PC (14 October 172617 June 1813) was a Royal Navy officer and politician. As a junior officer he saw action during the Seven Years' War. Middleton was given command of a guardship at the Nore, a Roy ...

. He entered the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...

in 1860, being promoted to navigating lieutenant in 1873. He married Emily Florence in 1877 and they had five sons and two daughters.R. T. Shannon, �
Middleton, Richard William Evelyn (1846–1905)
��, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 15 Jan 2014.

Political agent

In 1882 he was appointed honorary secretary of a Conservative club, the Point House Club in Blackheath. The year after he became Conservative agent for the constituency of

West Kent Kent is a traditional county in South East England with long-established human occupation. Prehistoric Kent Recent excavations and radiometric dating at a Lower Palaeolithic site at the West Gravel Pit, Fordwich, near Canterbury confirmed the ...

. The Corrupt Practices Act 1883,

Reform Act 1884 In the United Kingdom under the premiership of William Gladstone, the Representation of the People Act 1884 ( 48 & 49 Vict. c. 3), also known informally as the Third Reform Act, and the Redistribution Act of the following year were laws whic ...

and the

Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 The Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 (48 & 49 Vict. c. 23) was an Act of Parliament (United Kingdom), act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom (sometimes called the "Reform Act of 1885"). It was a piece of electoral reform legislation that r ...

had greatly affected the electoral make-up of the country and Middleton's success in mastering them ensured that he was appointed the Conservatives' principal agent, succeeding George Trout Bartley.''The Times'' (28 February 1905), p. 10. He held this post until July 1903. Middleton openly admitted the political benefits for the Conservatives when the Liberals adopted unpopular policies; he said he was "grateful" when

Gladstone William Ewart Gladstone ( ; 29 December 1809 – 19 May 1898) was a British politican, starting as Conservative MP for Newark and later becoming the leader of the Liberal Party (UK), Liberal Party. In a career lasting over 60 years, he ...

adopted

Irish Home Rule The Home Rule movement was a movement that campaigned for self-government (or "home rule") for Ireland within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It was the dominant political movement of Irish nationalism from 1870 to the end of ...

; grateful again when Gladstone adopted the

Newcastle Programme The Newcastle Programme was a statement of policies passed by the representatives of the English and Welsh Liberal Associations meeting at the annual conference of the National Liberal Federation (NLF) in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1891. The centrepiec ...

in 1891 and "deeply grateful" when the Liberals attacked the House of Lords and adopted the local veto on liquor licences. After an appeal to Conservative workers made by

Lord Salisbury Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (; 3 February 183022 August 1903), known as Lord Salisbury, was a British statesman and Conservative Party (UK), Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United ...

and

Arthur Balfour Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour (; 25 July 184819 March 1930) was a British statesman and Conservative Party (UK), Conservative politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905. As Foreign Secretary ...

, in March 1896 Middleton was presented at the Constitutional Club with a cheque for £10,000 and a silver casket for his services to the party. At the ceremony, Salisbury paid tribute to Middleton.

Legacy

The historian Richard Shannon assessed Middleton's contribution to the Conservatives:

It was Middleton's skill as an electioneering manager to optimize the prevailing benefits available to the Conservative Party. ... He shrewdly kept fences well mended with the police and the drink trade, and solicitously cultivated the ‘new journalism’ represented most famously by the Harmsworths and the ''
Daily Mail The ''Daily Mail'' is a British daily Middle-market newspaper, middle-market Tabloid journalism, tabloid conservative newspaper founded in 1896 and published in London. , it has the List of newspapers in the United Kingdom by circulation, h ...
''. ... The reputation of Middleton and Central Office...was ‘made’ by the greater achievement in
1895 Events January * January 5 – Dreyfus affair: French officer Alfred Dreyfus is stripped of his army rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island (off French Guiana) on what is much later admitted to be a false charge of tr ...
of gaining a small but telling overall Conservative majority within the Unionist coalition.
Lord Londonderry Marquess of Londonderry, of the County of County Londonderry, Londonderry ( ), is a title in the Peerage of Ireland. History The title was created in 1816 for Robert Stewart, 1st Marquess of Londonderry, Robert Stewart, 1st Earl of Londonderry ...
hailed Middleton on behalf of the National Union as the ‘brilliant agent’, who had done ‘more than anybody else to secure the great victory we have achieved’. ... With the unprecedented ‘double’ of Unionist triumph in the ‘khaki’ election of 1900...Middleton's reputation attained its ultimate lustre.

Early life

Political agent

Legacy

Notes

Further reading