Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/677

  School at Liverpool, an important group of buildings near St. George's Hall, followed shortly after the Sheffield work. In Battersea he erected the town hall and the Polytechnic, and among other London buildings he designed St. Olave's grammar school, Southwark (1893); the Northampton Institute, Clerkenwell (1898); and finally his chief work, the Central Criminal Court at Old Bailey, occupying the site of Newgate Prison (1907) [see, the younger].

Mountford believed in the association of first-rate sculpture and painting with architecture, and the Central Criminal Court affords a good example of such a union of the arts. His style developed from a free Renaissance method as exhibited at Sheffield to the more normal classic of the Old Bailey. He became an associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1881 and a fellow in 1890. He was for fourteen years a member of the council. In 1893-5 he was president of the Architectural Association. Though failing in health he was in January 1908 one of the eight specially selected competitors for the designing of the London County Council Hall. He died at his residence, 11 Craven Hill, London, W., on 7 Feb. 1908.

Mountford was twice married: (1) on 28 June 1888 to Jessie Elizabeth, daughter of John Saunders Smith of Northampton; (2) on 11 July 1903 to Dorothy, daughter of A. G. Hounsham of Hampstead Heath. He had a son by his first marriage, and a daughter by his second.

 MOWAT, OLIVER (1820–1903), Canadian statesman, born at Kingston, Upper Canada (now Ontario), on 22 July 1820, was eldest son in a family of three sons and two daughters of John Mowat of Canisbay, Caithness-shire, who had come out to Canada as sergeant with the 3rd Buffs in 1814, had taken his discharge to occupy a grant of land near Kingston, and had married Helen Levack of Caithness in 1819. A younger brother, John B. Mowat, D.D., was professor of Hebrew in Queen's University, Kingston, from 1867 until his death in 1900.

After education at private schools in Kingston, Mowat, who was brought up and remained a presbyterian, was articled in 1836 to (Sir) John Alexander Macdonald [q. v.] as a student-at-law. In Nov. 1840 he left Mr. Macdonald's office for Toronto When, in May 1841, the governor, Lord Sydenham, temporarily moved the seat of government from Toronto to Kingston Mowat followed the court of chancery to that place, and being there called to the bar of Upper Canada in Nov. 1841, was at once admitted into partnership with his principal, Robert Easton Burns. In Nov. 1842 the firm moved back to Toronto with the court of chancery, and from that time until his death Mowat lived almost continuously in Toronto. He rapidly gained distinction in equity practice, and was for many years the acknowledged leader of the chancery bar. He was a bencher of the Law Society of Canada from 1853 until his death, safe from 1864 to 1872, and was made Q.C. in 1856. In January 1866, of the motion of Macdonald, he was appointed by the Taché-Macdonald government one of the commissioners to revise and consolidate the statutes of Upper Canada and such of the other statutes as affected the upper province. At a later date he was also a commissioner for the consolidated of the statutes of Ontario.

Mowat's first incursion into public life was in Dec. 1856, when he was elected an alderman for the city of Toronto; his first entry into the political field was at the general election of 1857, when he was elected to the legislative assembly by the riding of South Ontario. Mowat supported the radical party, which was led by George Brown [q. v. Suppl. I], and advocated a reform of parliamentary representative by population and the secularization of state schools.

In July 1858 the Macdonald-Cartier ministry resigned on a vote censuring the selection of Ottawa as the proposed capital, and Mowat became provincial secretary in the George Brown cabinet, which lived only forty-eight hours. The new ministers had resigned their seats to seek re-election, and the opposition snatched the opportunity to carry a vote of want of confidence. Within a few hours the old Macdonald-Cartier administration was installed in office as the Cartier-Macdonald government, and carried on the government until their defeat in the house shortly after the general elections of 1862. It was meanwhile becoming increasingly evident that some method must be devised to simplify the machinery of government of Canada, which the division between the two provinces hampered. At a great convention of reformers held at Toronto in 1859, which discussed the situation, Mowat