several provincial newspapers, he purchased the Standard, which had fallen on evil days, and at the end of 1907 entered into abortive negotiations for the purchase of The Times. In 1908 he underwent an operation for glaucoma, and was never afterwards able to read or to write. In 1910 he sold both the Standard and Evening Standard, and in 1912 disposed of his interest in the Daily Express. A year later he learned from Professor Fuchs of Vienna that he would soon be blind. He told his wife that he would never be a blind man: ‘I am going to be the blind man’. He forthwith joined the council of the National Institute for the Blind, and carried its income from £8,010 in 1913 to £358,174 in 1921. At the outbreak of war in 1914 he directed the Prince of Wales's fund, and in less than six months collected over a million pounds.
Early in 1915 Pearson devoted himself to soldiers and sailors discharged from the hospitals as blind, first opening a hostel in Bayswater Road, and in March transferring this work to St. Dunstan's, in Regent's Park. He succeeded in teaching the blind not only to earn their own living, but to bear their deprivation with courage and cheerfulness. He became a popular figure and was known as ‘the blind leader of the blind’. In 1916 he was created a baronet, and in 1917 received the G.B.E. On 9 December 1921 he met his death in London in a tragic manner. His foot slipped on the enamel of his bath, he was stunned by striking one of the taps, and he fell face forward into the water. He was found dead an hour and a quarter after he had entered the bathroom. He was twice married: first, in 1887 to Isobel Sarah, daughter of the Rev. F. Bennett, of Maddington, near Salisbury, by whom he had three daughters who survived him; secondly, in 1897 to Ethel Maude (created D.B.E. 1920), daughter of W. J. Fraser, of Cromartie, Herne Bay. Their only child, Neville Arthur (born 1898), succeeded to the baronetcy.
Apart from its admirable philanthropic aspect, Pearson's career is perhaps more alarming than edifying. Intellectually he was unfitted to guide, much less to form, public opinion. He knew nothing of philosophy, little of history, and less of literature and art. His opinions were the caprice of his uncriticized intuitions, and he was resentful of opposition, impatient of argument. Happily for his readers, whom he sought to stampede rather than to inform, his tastes were harmless and his nature wholesome. He had a genuine feeling for country life and a real devotion to games and sports. Wealth did not corrupt him, and the loss of sight did not deject him. He will be remembered chiefly by his work for the blind, the part which he played in helping General Baden-Powell to start the boy scout movement, and his ‘fresh air fund’ (1892) which for many years has sent numbers of poor children into the country. He paid in his own person most of those penalties which nature exacts of the ‘hustler’.
[The Times, 10 December 1921; Sidney Dark, Life of Sir Arthur Pearson, 1922; personal knowledge.]
PEEL, ARTHUR WELLESLEY, first Viscount Peel (1829–1912), Speaker of the House of Commons, was born in London 3 August 1829. He was the youngest of the five sons of Sir Robert Peel, second baronet, prime minister [q.v.], by his wife, Julia, daughter of Lieutenant-General Sir John Floyd, first baronet [q.v.]. He was named after his godfather, the first Duke of Wellington. He figures as a boy in The Private Letters of Sir Robert Peel' (1920). His early years were spent at Drayton Manor, Tamworth, and he was educated at Hatfield, Eton, and Balliol College, Oxford, taking second-class honours in literae humaniores in 1852.
In 1865, two years after an unsuccessful candidature at Coventry, he began his career in the House of Commons as liberal member for Warwick. He represented Warwick until 1885, and, when that borough was joined to Leamington, he sat for the new constituency until his elevation to the peerage in 1895. At the end of 1868, when Mr. Gladstone formed his first ministry, Peel became parliamentary secretary to the Poor Law Board, and then, from 1871 to 1873, served as secretary to the Board of Trade. From 1873 to 1874 he was patronage secretary to the Treasury, that is, chief whip to the liberal party. When Gladstone returned to office in 1880, Peel became under secretary to the Home Department, but resigned after a few months on account of ill-health.
In 1884, on the retirement of Sir Henry Brand (afterwards Viscount Hampden) [q.v.] from the speakership, Gladstone nominated Peel, who was unanimously elected 26 February. His speech of acceptance was reckoned so much a masterpiece that The Times recorded that ‘the House suddenly woke to the knowledge that its numbers had among them
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