Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/634

 useful work which the House of Commons offered, and he withdrew at the dissolution of 1885.

His later years Edwards mainly devoted to generous yet discriminate philanthropy, his public gifts generally taking the form of free libraries and hospitals. In all some seventy public institutions bear his name as founder. The first institution founded by him was a lecture and reading room at his native village, Blackwater, in 1889, followed in the same year by a school and meeting-room at St. Day, a literary institute at Chacewater, and a mechanics' institute at St. Agnes, all small villages in Corn- wall within three miles of his birthplace. Among the hospitals which he afterwards established were those at Falmouth, Liskeard, Willesden, Wood Green, Acton, Tilbury, East Ham, and Sutton in Surrey. He also founded convalescent homes at Limpsfield, Cranbrook, Perranworth, Herne Bay, and Pegwell Bay. At Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire, he established separate epileptic homes for men, boys, women, and girls; and at Swanley, Bournemouth, and Sydenham 'homes for boys.' He erected free libraries at Whitechapel, Shoreditch, Hoxton, Edmonton, Walworth, Hammersmith, East Dulwich, St. George's in the East, Acton, Poplar, Limehouse, Nunhead, East Ham, Plaistow, North Camberwell, Newton Abbot, Truro, Falmouth, Camborne, Redruth, St. Ives, Bodmin, Liskeard, and Launceston. He also founded an art gallery for the Newlyn colony of artists, near Penzance, and technical schools at Truro, and contributed to the foundation of art galleries at Whitechapel and Camberwell. To him were also due the erection of the West Ham Museum; the Passmore Edwards Settlement, Tavistock Place, with Mrs. Humphry Ward as honorary secretary; University Hall, Clare Market, and the Sailors' Palace, Commercial Road. He erected drinking fountains in various places, presented over 80,000 volumes to libraries and reading-rooms, and placed thirty-two memorial busts of Lamb, Keats, Ruskin, Hogarth, Elizabeth Fry, Emerson, Dickens, and other well-known men in public institutions through the country. At Oxford in 1902, on the suggestion of John Churton Collins [q. v. Suppl. II], he endowed a Passmore Edwards scholarship for the conjoint study of English and classical literature, and he presented a lifeboat to Broughty Ferry, near Dundee, and a public garden to Woolwich. Edwards declined offers of knighthood from both Queen Victoria and Edward VII. He accepted the honorary freedom of the five boroughs West Ham, Lisk Falmouth, Truro, and East Ham.

In 1905 Edwards printed privately 'A Few Footprints,' a rough autobiography (2nd edit, published 1906). He died at his residence, 51 Netherhall Gardens, Hampstead, on 22 April 1911, and was buried at Kensal Green cemetery. His net personalty was sworn at 47,411l. He made no public bequests. Edwards married Eleanor, daughter of Henry Vickers Humphreys, artist. One son and one daughter survived him.

A bust by Sir George Frampton presented to Mrs. Edwards in 1897 a exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1898. Replicas were made and presented to various institutions in Cornwall. A portrait was painted by G. F. Watts for the National Portrait Gallery. A cartoon portrait by 'Ape' appeared in 'Vanity Fair' in 1885.

 ELGAR, FRANCIS (1845–1909), naval architect, born at Portsmouth on 24 April 1845, was eldest son of nine children of Francis Ancell Elgar, who was employed at Portsmouth dockyard, by his wife Susanna Chalkley. At fourteen Elgar was apprenticed as a shipwright in Portsmouth dockyard, where his general education was continued at an excellent school for apprentices maintained by the admiralty. There he won a scholarship entitling him to advanced instruction. In 1864, when the admiralty, with the science and art department, established the Royal School of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering at South Kensington, Elgar was appointed, after a competitive examination among shipwright apprentices in the dockyards, one of eight students of naval architecture. After the three years' course, he in May 1867 graduated as a first-class fellow, the highest class of diploma. Of much literary ability, he long helped as an old student in the publication of the school's 'Annual.' From 1867 to 1871 Elgar was a junior officer of the shipbuilding department of the royal navy, and was employed at the dockyards and in private establishments.

Leaving the public service in 1871, 