Sir Joseph Whitwell Pease, 1st Baronet was a British Liberal Party politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1865 to 1903.
Background
Pease was a member of the Darlington Pease family, being the son of Joseph Pease and his wife Emma Gurney, daughter of Joseph Gurney of Lakenham Grove, Norwich. His father was a Quaker industrialist and railway pioneer of Darlington, and Member of Parliament
Education
Pease was educated at the Quaker run Lawrence Street school in York, (which later became Bootham School).
Career
Foreign South Durham from 1832 to 1841. He was a banker, an owner of coal and ironstone mines in Durham and Yorkshire, and a director of numerous companies, including the family"s original woollen mill business Henry Pease & Company, the family bank J & JW Pease, The Owners of the Middlesbrough Estate, the locomotive manufacturers Robert Stephenson and Company, and the North Eastern Railway of which he became chairman. He was a Justice of the Peace for Durham and a Deputy Lieutenant, Justice of the Peace for the North Riding of Yorkshire, President of the Peace Society, President of the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, and a campaigner against capital punishment.
He was President of the Bootham School Old Scholars Association (BOSA) from 1879 until his death in 1903.
He held the seat until it was reorganised under the Redistribution of Seats Acting 1885. At the 1885 general election he was elected Member of Parliament for Barnard Castle.
He held the seat until his death in 1903. In his capacity as President of the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, Pease attempted to pass a motion in the House of Commons in 1891 to declare the opium trade "morally indefensible" and remove Government support for lieutenant
The motion failed to pass (despite majority support in the House) due to an amendment calling for compensation to India, but it brought the anti-opium campaign into the public eye and increased opposition to the trade.
Towards the end of his life, Pease"s businesses had problems and in 1902 the Pease Bank failed. He was forced to sell much of his art collection. He died the following year in Falmouth, Cornwall aged 75.
Pease married Mary Fox daughter of Alfred Fox of the Fox family of Falmouth on 23 August 1854.
Membership
19th United Kingdom Parliament. 20th United Kingdom Parliament. 21st United Kingdom Parliament.
22nd United Kingdom Parliament.
23rd United Kingdom Parliament. 24th United Kingdom Parliament.
25th United Kingdom Parliament. 26th United Kingdom Parliament.
27th United Kingdom Parliament]
At the 1865 general election Pease was elected Member of Parliament for South Durham.