Charles Bingham Penrose was an American lawyer and politician. He was a solicitor of the United States Treasury.
Background
Charles Bingham Penrose was born on October 6, 1798 in Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, United States. He was the son of Clement Biddle and Anne Howard (Bingham) Penrose, and a descendant of Bartholomew Penrose who emigrated from Bristol, England, to Pennsylvania about 1700.
Education
Charles Bingham Penrose received his education in his native city, where, after studying in the office of Samuel Ewing, he was admitted to the bar on May 9, 1821.
Career
Establishing himself in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Charles Bingham Penrose practised for a score of years and became prominent in local politics. In collaboration with Frederick Watts (William Rawle's name also appears on the title page of the first volume) he published Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (3 vols. , 1831 - 1833) covering the period from 1829 to 1832, which became widely known to the legal profession. In 1833 Penrose was elected a member of the state Senate, and continued as such until 1841, serving for a time as speaker.
Penrose's term thus coincided with the rise of the anti-Masonic movement in Pennsylvania, which figured prominently in the state and county elections in 1838. It was charged that the anti-Masonic Whigs, of whom Penrose was one, were bent on seating senatorial candidates from Philadelphia who had not been elected, and when the session opened on December 4, Speaker Penrose found himself confronted with a crowd in the galleries which included some who were determined to thwart that attempt. When he tried to silence one who, on the face of the returns appeared to have been elected, Penrose and his associates were threatened with violence from the crowd, and were obliged to escape, the speaker, according to a Harrisburg paper, having "jumped out of the window, twelve feet high, through three thorn bushes and over a sevenfoot picket fence".
By way of defense to the opposition's criticism, Charles Bingham Penrose issued an Address to the Freemen of Pennsylvania (1839), also included in Address of the Hon. Charles B. Penrose, Speaker of the Senate; and the Speeches of Messrs. Fraley (City), Williams, Pearson, and Penrose, Delivered. December 1838 (1839). When the first national Whig administration came into power in 1841, Penrose was appointed solicitor of the United States treasury, and he served until the close of the Tyler régime in 1845.
Charles Bingham Penrose then opened an office in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he practised until 1847, removing thence to Philadelphia. In 1856 he was again elected to the state Senate, this time as a "Reform" nominee, and it was while serving there that he died at Harrisburg on April 6, 1857. Two days later a meeting of the Philadelphia bar was held at which resolutions were adopted deploring the loss of one "whose sudden death, in the midst of honorable labors, has ended a career of distinction and usefulness".
Achievements
Politics
Charles Bingham Penrose was a member of a Whig party.
Connections
On March 16, 1824, Charles Bingham Penrose was married to Valeria Fullerton Biddle. He had six children, among whom were Richard Alexander Fullerton Penrose, father of Boies and Richard A. F. Penrose, and Clement Biddle Penrose, for many years associate judge of the Philadelphia orphans' court.