Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Edwards, John Passmore
EDWARDS, JOHN PASSMORE (1823–1911), editor and philanthropist, born at Blackwater, near Truro, on 24 March 1823, was second son in a family of four sons of William Edwards by his wife Susan Passmore of Newton Abbot, Devonshire. His father, a carpenter by trade, kept a small public-house, to which was attached a large fruit garden; he was a calvinistic methodist, and his wife an orthodox baptist. John, after a very rudimentary education at the village school, helped his father from the age of twelve in brewing or gardening, continuing his attendance at the school of an evening, and reading, with the help of a dictionary, the 'Penny Magazine' and such cheap books as he was able to purchase. At fifteen he made futile experiments in verse and as a lecturer. Afterwards he helped to found and run a free evening school with good results.
In 1843 Edwards became at a salary of 10l. a year clerk to Henry Sewell Stokes [q. v.], a lawyer in Truro, and a poet. He had already interested himself in the Anti-Corn Law League agitation, and had distributed pamphlets for which he had applied to the league's secretary. At the end of eighteen months he left Stokes's employment and some months later became representative in Manchester of the 'Sentinel,' a new London weekly newspaper started in the interest of the Anti-Corn Law League. The paper failed, and Edwards received only 10l. for fifteen months' service. He met a debt to his landlord by lecturing for temperance societies at one shilling a lecture. At Manchester he heard Cobden and Bright at public meetings, and became a staunch adherent of the Manchester political school.
In 1845 Edwards went to London, and while maintaining himself by lecturing and journalism developed his interest in political and social reform. He actively promoted the Early Closing Association, and he suggested the invitation which led Emerson in 1848 to lecture on behalf of the association at Exeter Hall on 'Montaigne,' 'Napoleon,' and 'Shakespeare.' He showed sympathy with the Chartist movement but deprecated the use of physical force. The London Peace Society sent him as a delegate to the Peace Conference at Brussels in Sept. 1848, and he was at Paris and Frankfort-on-the-Maine on the like errand in 1849 and 1850.
In 1850 Edwards with savings of some 50l. started 'The Public Good,' a weekly newspaper, which he wrote, printed, and published single-handed in a small room where he lived in Paternoster Row. The paper, though widely sold, did not pay, and Edwards started others, the 'Biographical Magazine,' the 'Peace Advocate,' and the 'Poetic Magazine,' in the vain hope that they would advertise and so support each other. After a three years' struggle his health broke down and he became bankrupt, paying five shillings in the pound to his creditors. Engaging strenuously in journalistic work, he so far recovered his position as to be able to purchase at a nominal price in 1862 the 'Building News.' By careful management the paper was brought to a flourishing condition, and in 1866 Edwards paid in full his old debts, from which he was legally absolved. An inscription on a watch and chain presented by his former creditors on 29 Aug. 1866 at a banquet given in his honour at the Albion Tavern, Aldersgate Street, testified to their appreciation of 'his integrity and honour.' In 1869 he also acquired for a small sum the 'Mechanics' Magazine,' which rapidly returned substantial profits.
Edwards's next venture was the purchase in 1876 of the 'Echo,' the first halfpenny newspaper. He bought it from Baron Albert Grant [q. v.], who in 1875 had acquired it from Cassell, Petter & Galpin, its founders in 1868. Edwards became his own editor, and under his control the paper gained greatly in popularity. Its politics were liberal and it advocated the causes of social reform in which Edwards interested himself. After some years he excluded betting news, a step by which the paper gained commercially rather than lost. In 1884 he sold a two-thirds share of the paper to Andrew Carnegie and Samuel Storey for, it is said, 50,000l, but, difficulties of management arising, he re-bought it almost immediately at double the price. He retained control of the paper till 1896, when it was sold at a high figure to a syndicate specially formed for its purchase. The 'Echo' collapsed in 1905. Together with the 'Echo' Edwards also ran for many years the 'Weekly Times,' a periodical acquired from Sir John Hutton.
To all progressive movements Edwards accorded active and continuous support. From 1845 onwards he was on the committee of societies for the abolition of capital punishment, of taxes on knowledge and of flogging in the army and navy. He helped to direct the Political and Reform Association, the Ballot Society, and the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade. He became president (in 1894) of the London Reform Union, formed to stimulate progressive municipal legislation in London, and of the Anti-gambling League. He pressed his views on the public in pamphlets like 'The Triple Curse' (1858), which dealt with the effects of the opium trade on England, China, and India, and 'Intellectual Tollbars' (1854), a protest against taxes on paper and newspapers. An almost fanatical member of the Peace Society, he protested in 'The War: a Blunder and a Crime' (1855) against the Crimean war, and in later years strongly advocated the Transvaal's claim to independence. He was president of the Transvaal Independence Committee (1881) and of the Transvaal Committee (1901).
At the general election of 1868 Edwards was an unsuccessful candidate in the liberal interest for Truro, but made no further attempt to enter parliament till 1880, when he was returned with William Henry Grenfell (now Lord Desborough) for Salisbury. An unsupported charge of Bribery led to a petition against Edwards's election, but it was contemptuously dismissed by the court. Edwards was disappointed at the lack of opportunity for useful work which the House of Commons offered, and he withdrew at the dissolution of 1885.
His later years Edwards mainly devoted to generous yet discriminate philanthropy, his public gifts generally taking the form of free libraries and hospitals. In all some seventy public institutions bear his name as founder. The first institution founded by him was a lecture and reading room at his native village, Blackwater, in 1889, followed in the same year by a school and meeting-room at St. Day, a literary institute at Chacewater, and a mechanics' institute at St. Agnes, all small villages in Corn- wall within three miles of his birthplace. Among the hospitals which he afterwards established were those at Falmouth, Liskeard, Willesden, Wood Green, Acton, Tilbury, East Ham, and Sutton in Surrey. He also founded convalescent homes at Limpsfield, Cranbrook, Perranworth, Herne Bay, and Pegwell Bay. At Chalfont St. Peter, Buckinghamshire, he established separate epileptic homes for men, boys, women, and girls; and at Swanley, Bournemouth, and Sydenham 'homes for boys.' He erected free libraries at Whitechapel, Shoreditch, Hoxton, Edmonton, Walworth, Hammersmith, East Dulwich, St. George's in the East, Acton, Poplar, Limehouse, Nunhead, East Ham, Plaistow, North Camberwell, Newton Abbot, Truro, Falmouth, Camborne, Redruth, St. Ives, Bodmin, Liskeard, and Launceston. He also founded an art gallery for the Newlyn colony of artists, near Penzance, and technical schools at Truro, and contributed to the foundation of art galleries at Whitechapel and Camberwell. To him were also due the erection of the West Ham Museum; the Passmore Edwards Settlement, Tavistock Place, with Mrs. Humphry Ward as honorary secretary; University Hall, Clare Market, and the Sailors' Palace, Commercial Road. He erected drinking fountains in various places, presented over 80,000 volumes to libraries and reading-rooms, and placed thirty-two memorial busts of Lamb, Keats, Ruskin, Hogarth, Elizabeth Fry, Emerson, Dickens, and other well-known men in public institutions through the country. At Oxford in 1902, on the suggestion of John Churton Collins [q. v. Suppl. II], he endowed a Passmore Edwards scholarship for the conjoint study of English and classical literature, and he presented a lifeboat to Broughty Ferry, near Dundee, and a public garden to Woolwich. Edwards declined offers of knighthood from both Queen Victoria and Edward VII. He accepted the honorary freedom of the five boroughs West Ham, Lisk Falmouth, Truro, and East Ham.
In 1905 Edwards printed privately 'A Few Footprints,' a rough autobiography (2nd edit, published 1906). He died at his residence, 51 Netherhall Gardens, Hampstead, on 22 April 1911, and was buried at Kensal Green cemetery. His net personalty was sworn at 47,411l. He made no public bequests. Edwards married Eleanor, daughter of Henry Vickers Humphreys, artist. One son and one daughter survived him.
A bust by Sir George Frampton presented to Mrs. Edwards in 1897 a exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1898. Replicas were made and presented to various institutions in Cornwall. A portrait was painted by G. F. Watts for the National Portrait Gallery. A cartoon portrait by 'Ape' appeared in 'Vanity Fair' in 1885.
[Daily Telegraph, and The Times, 24 April 1911; A Few Footprints; J. J. Macdonald, Passmore Edwards Institutions, 1900; E. Burrage, J. Passmore Edwards, philanthropist, 1902; J. J. Ogle, The Free Library, 1897; Life and Memoirs of John Churton Collins, 1911.]