Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/70

  at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating B.A. in 1823 and M.A. in 1826. While at Cambridge he filled the office of president of the Union Society. On leaving the university he settled in London in order to study law. He never took an active part in the affairs of the family firm (W. G. and J. Strutt), of which he was a partner. On 10 May 1823 he was admitted a student at Lincoln's Inn, and on 13 June 1825 at the Inner Temple. He was not called to the bar.

As a boy Strutt shared his father's interest in science, but he mainly devoted his leisure, while a law-student in London, to a study of social and economic questions. He became intimate with Jeremy Bentham (a friend of his father) and James and John Stuart Mill, and under their influence framed his political views, identifying himself with the philosophical radicals. On 31 July 1830 he was returned in the liberal interest member of parliament for the borough of Derby. He retained his seat until 1847, when his election, with that of his fellow member, the Hon. Frederick Leveson-Gower, was declared void on petition on account of bribery practised by their agents (, Parl. Debates, xcviii. 402–14). On 16 July 1851 he was returned for Arundel in Sussex. That seat he exchanged in July 1852 for Nottingham, which he continued to represent until his elevation to the peerage. From 1846 to 1848 he filled the post of chief commissioner of railways, in 1850 he became high sheriff for Nottinghamshire, and in December 1852, when Lord Aberdeen's coalition government was formed, he received the office of chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, but resigned it in June 1854 in favour of Earl Granville. On 29 Aug. 1856 he was created Baron Belper of Belper in Derbyshire, and in 1862 he received the honorary degree of LL.D. from Cambridge University. In 1864 he was nominated lord lieutenant of Nottinghamshire, and in 1871 he succeeded [q. v.] as president of University College, London. He was also chairman of quarter sessions for the county of Nottingham for many years, and was highly esteemed in that capacity, particularly by the legal profession.

Belper was in middle life a recognised authority on questions of free trade, law reform, and education. Through life he enjoyed the regard of his ablest contemporaries, among others of Macaulay, John Romilly, McCulloch, John and Charles Austen, George Grote, and Charles Buller. His interest in science and literature proved a solace to his later years. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on 22 March 1860, and was also a fellow of the Geological and Zoological societies. He died on 30 June 1880 at his house, 75 Eaton Square, London. His portrait, painted by George Richmond, R.A., is in possession of the present Lord Belper.

Belper married, on 28 March 1837, Amelia Harriet, youngest daughter of [q. v.], bishop of Chichester. By her he had four sons—William, who died in 1856, Henry, his successor, Arthur, and Frederick—and four daughters: Sophia, married to Sir Henry Denis Le Marchant, bart.; Caroline, married to Sir Kenelm Edward Digby; Mary, married first to Mr. Henry Mark Gale, secondly to Henry Handford, M.D.; and Ellen, married to Mr. George Murray Smith.



STRUTT, JACOB GEORGE (fl. 1820–1850), painter and etcher, studied in London, and was a contributor to the Royal Academy and British Institution at intervals between 1819 and 1858. For a few years he practised portrait-painting, but from 1824 to 1831 exhibited studies of forest scenery, and he is now best known by two sets of etchings which he published at this period—‘Sylva Britannica, or portraits of Forest Trees distinguished for their Antiquity,’ &c., 1822 (reissued in 1838), and ‘Deliciæ Sylvarum, or grand and romantic Forest Scenery in England and Scotland,’ 1828. About 1831 Strutt went abroad, and, after residing for a time at Lausanne, settled in Rome, whence he sent to the academy in 1845 ‘The Ancient Forum, Rome,’ and in 1851 ‘Tasso's Oak, Rome.’ In the latter year he returned to England, and in 1858 exhibited a view in the Roman Campagna; his name then disappears. Strutt's portraits of the Rev. William Marsh and Philander Chase, D.D., were engraved by J. Young and C. Turner.



STRUTT, JEDEDIAH (1726–1797), cotton-spinner and improver of the stocking-frame, born at Blackwell in Derbyshire in 1726, was the second son of William Strutt of Blackwell. In 1740 he was articled for seven years to Ralph Massey, a wheelwright at Findern, near Derby. After serving his apprenticeship he became a farmer, but about 1755 his brother-in-law, William Woollatt, a native of Findern, who became a hosier at Derby, called his attention to some unsuccessful attempts that had been made