Career
He served in public office, including as a Justice of the Peace for Staffordshire and Worcestershire in 1851, Deputy Lieutenant of Staffordshire in 1856 and for Worcestershire in 1859 (in which time he set up the first Volunteer Rifle Corps in the country), and High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1868. He was educated at London University, then Trinity College, Cambridge. He gifted to the public West Smethwick Park in 1895 and donated £50,000 to the endowment fund of Birmingham University in 1900.
The park includes a memorial to him, in brick and terracotta, with a bronze bust.
Beneath the bust is a plaque reading:
James T. Chance
M.A Justice of the Peace Doctorate.L.
Foreign fifty years a partner in the firm
of Chance Brothers & Company At the Glass Works Smethwick
and the Alkali Works, Oldbury
He purchased the land for the park,
laid it out and endowed it
and on September 7th 1895 opened it
A gift to the public for ever.
He also made the roads on its East and West boundaries. He sat for a portrait by John Callcott Horsley in 1851.
Another, by Joseph Gibbs, may have been painted posthumously.
lieutenant was presented to Smethwick Borough Council in December 1902, eleven months after the subject"s death. lieutenant is now in Wednesbury Museum and Art Gallery.