EDWARDS JOHN PASSMORE 1823-1911 PHILANTHROPIST BIOGRAPHY

John Passmore Edwards, 1823-1911: an account of his life and works by Peter Baynes.

John Edwards Passmore 1823-1911

Edwards was born at Blackwater, Cornwall, the son of a carpenter and part-time publican. He was educated at the village school. In the early 1840s he was a free-lance journalist in London. From 1845 he was on the committees for the Abolition of Capital Punishment; for the Abolition of Flogging in the Army and Navy, and helped direct the Political Reform Association, the Ballot Society; the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade. In 1848 he was sent to the International Peace Conference in Brussels as a delegate for the London Peace Society. Edwards represented the society again at Peace Conferences in Paris (1849) and Frankfurt (1850). In 1850 He began the monthly magazine The Public Good, and in 1851 assumed editorship of the Peace Advocate and launched the Temperance Tract Journal. During the 1860s Edwards bought the Mechanics Magazine and the Building News. In 1876 he bought the first London daily halfpenny paper, the Echo, which had started in 1868. During the 1868 General Election Edwards unsuccessfully stood as Liberal candidate for Truro. From 1880 to 1885 he was Liberal MP for Salisbury. In the 1890s he began his philanthropic activities. Beneficiaries included Whitechapel Art Gallery, the Mary Ward Centre and the London School of Economics and Political Science. In 1901 he gave the LSE 10,000 to help it move to a new site at Clare Market in Aldwych, London. Edwards also strove to improve hospitals and libraries. Edwards founded 24 libraries in London, the home counties and Cornwall.

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