Background
He was born in Manchester in 1868.
He was born in Manchester in 1868.
He claimed to be the inspiration for the title character of Arnold Bennett"s The Card. He was the sole proprietor of Hales Brothers, an export and import shipping line. Hales worked in the pottery and china business in the Stoke-on-Trent area, founding "Hales Brothers", an export and import shipping line, of which he was the sole proprietor.
He first owned a car in 1897, and later bragged that he had never blown his horn, and tried to make it illegal for anyone else to blow theirs.
He flew an airship around Saint Paul"s Cathedral in 1908. In 1910, he was one of the first people to crash an airplane crashes (1910).
After serving in Turkey during World War I, he travelled the world promoting British industry. He enlivened a House of Commons debate on the herring industry by gesturing with a dead herring as he argued.
In 1935, he inaugurated the "Hales Trophy" for the Blue Riband award for the ship with the record for the fastest transatlantic crossing.
Hales gave the firm very specific instructions of what to include in the design so the completed piece as described below was made to fulfil those criteria. The Hales Trophy is almost four feet tall, weighing nearly 100 pounds, made of solid silver, onyx and heavy gilt, showing Victory, Neptune and Amphitrite upholding a globe and topped by a figure called Speed urging a liner into the face of a figure called The Force of the Atlantic. An enamelled blue ribbon surrounds the middle of the prize, and there are memorials to past record-holders, with Harold Hales"s name at the base.
He died in 1942 aged 74, accidentally drowning in the Thames, near Shepperton.
36th United Kingdom Parliament.
He was Conservative Member of Parliament for Hanley from 1931–1935.