Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/551



EMINENT PERSONS DECEASED IN 1899.

JANUARY.

The Duke of Northumberland, K.G.—Algernon George Percy, sixth Duke of Northumberland, was born in 1810, and was educated at Eton and afterwards at St. John's College, Cambridge. As Lord Lovaine he was first returned in 1881 to Parliament for the family borough of Beeralston, which was disfranchised by the Reform Act of the following year. He then entered the Army, and served for a short time in the Grenadier Guards. In 1852 he came forward as the Conservative candidate for North Northumberland, and continued to represent it until 1865. In 1858 he accepted the post of Junior Lord of the Admiralty in Lord Derby's Administration, and in 1859 became Vice-President of the Board of Trade. On the death of his grandfather in 1865, he assumed his father's courtesy title of Earl Percy, and succeeded to the dukedom two years later. In 1878 he was made Lord Privy Seal in succession to Lord Beaconsfield, and held the post until 1880, when his active interest in politics ceased, and he devoted himself to local affairs in his own county, and although a member of the Catholic Apostolic, or Irvingite Church, contributing largely to Church schools, church-building, and public institutions on Tyneside and elsewhere. He aided munificently in the formation of the See of Newcastle, and in the foundation of the College of Science at Newcastle in connection with Durham University. He also took special interest in the Royal Institution, London, of which he was president from 1878, and in the Royal Lifeboat Institution, of which he was also president from 1866 until his death. In 1845 the duke, then Lord Lovaine, married Louisa, daughter of Henry Drummond, M.P., of Albury Park, Surrey, and published in 1860 his father-in-law's speeches in Parliament. Although for many years a martyr to the most painful form of neuralgia, he maintained the habits of vigorous life down to a few years before his death, which took place on January 2 at Alnwick Castle, and was the result of angina pectoris. Duke Algernon, as he was known throughout his own county, was beloved and respected by all classes, and as a landed proprietor he was distinguished as much by his interest in his tenants' welfare as by his liberality in promoting it.

Nubar Pasha, the distinguished Egyptian statesman, was the son of an Armenian, employed in the Turkish service. He was born at Smyrna in 1825, and at an early age was sent first to Switzerland and afterwards to Toulouse and Paris for education. He came to Egypt in 1842, and by the aid of his kinsman, Boghos Bey, was appointed reader and interpreter to Mahomed Ali, by whom he was chosen to accompany his son, Ibrahim Pasha, on a state visit to the Sultan at Constantinople, and was afterwards attached to him in a more permanent post. On the accession of Abbas Pasha in 1850, Nubar was sent to London to protest against certain claims put forward by the Sultan on the death of Mahomed Ali. His remonstrances impressed Lord Palmerston, and after his return he was sent on a diplomatic mission to Vienna, where he remained until Abbas' death.