Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/611

 was chairman till his death, when the company possessed 6000 tenements, which housed 30,000 persons. The company now has a capital of 1,000,000l.

Waterlow was returned as Liberal member for Dumfriesshire in 1868, but was unseated in 1869 on technical grounds, his firm having taken a government contract of which he had no personal knowledge. After an unsuccessful contest for the same seat in 1869 and for Southwark in 1870, he was returned for Maidstone in 1874, and sat for that borough until 1880, when he was defeated. He was shortly afterwards elected for Gravesend, and retained that seat until 1885, when he unsuccessfully fought the Medway division of Kent. A stalwart liberal, he spoke in parliament in favour of a reform of the London Corporation. In 1870 he was appointed on the royal commission for inquiry into friendly and benefit societies (report presented 1874), in September 1877 on the royal judicature commission (which reported in 1881), and in July 1880 on the Livery Companies Commission (report presented 1884).

In 1872, a few months before his mayoralty, he presented Lauderdale House at Highgate, with its grounds, to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, for use as a convalescent home. The building was adapted and furnished at his expense, and was opened on 8 July 1872 by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, then Prince and Princess of Wales, but it was disused for hospital purposes in 1880. In 1889 Waterlow presented the house with a surrounding estate of twenty-nine acres to the London County Council. The fine grounds have since been known as Waterlow Park, where a statue of Waterlow was erected by public subscription in 1900.

Waterlow joined the livery of the Stationers' Company in 1847, serving as Master in 1872-3, the year of his mayoralty. He also became by redemption a freeman and liveryman of the Cloth workers' Company on 30 July 1873, and the same day passed (by election and fine) through the offices of assistant, warden, and master. He was a juror for Great Britain at the International Exhibitions of Paris (1867) and Philadelphia (1876), one of the royal commissioners of the 1851 exhibition, chairman of the city of London income tax commissioners, and treasurer of the City and Guilds of London Institute from 1879 (the year after its inception) to 1891. He was also a director of the Union Bank of London, vice-chairman of the London, Chatham and Dover Railway, and vice-president and chairman of the distribution committee of the Hospital Sunday Fund. In 1902 he was made a K.C.V.O.

Waterlow died, after a brief illness, on 3 August 1906, at his country residence, Trosley Towers, Wrotham, Kent, and was buried at Stansted, Kent. His estate was sworn for probate at 89,948l. 19s. 8d. gross; the residue after payment of various legacies was left to his wife, the testator having made in his lifetime what he considered an adequate provision for each member of his family.

He was twice married: (1) on 7 May 1845 to Anna Maria (d. 1880), youngest daughter of Wilham Hickson of Fairseat, Wrotham, Kent, by whom he had five sons and three daughters; (2) in 1882 to Margaret, daughter of William Hamilton of Napa, California, U.S.A., who survived him. His eldest son, Philip Hickson, succeeded to the baronetcy. A subscription portrait by (Sir) Hubert von Herkomer (1892) is in the hall of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. A cartoon portrait appeared in 'Vanity Fair' in 1872.



WATKIN, EDWARD WILLIAM (1819–1901), railway promoter, born in Ravald Street, Salford, on 26 Sept. 1819, was son of Absolom Watkin, a cotton merchant and prominent citizen of Manchester, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of William Makinson of Bolton. Of two brothers, John (1821–1870) took holy orders and was vicar of Stixwold, Lincolnshire, and Alfred (1825–1875), a merchant, was mayor of Manchester in 1873–4.

Watkin, after education at a private school, entered the office of his father. Interesting himself from youth in public movements, he became when about twenty-one a director of the Manchester Athenæum, and helped to organise the great literary soirées in 1843-4. With some other members of the Athenæum he started the Saturday half-holiday movement in Manchester. In 1845 he wrote 'A Plea for Public Parks,'