Charles Pelham Villiers

Charles Pelham Villiers (3 January 1802 – 16 January 1898) was a British lawyer and politician from the aristocratic Villiers family. He sat in the House of Commons for 63 years, from 1835 to 1898, making him the longest-serving Member of Parliament (MP). He also holds the distinction of the oldest candidate to win a parliamentary seat, at 93. He was a radical and reformer who often collaborated with John Bright and had a noteworthy effect in the leadership of the Anti-Corn Law League, until its repeal in 1846. Lord Palmerston appointed him to the cabinet as president of the Poor-Law Board in 1859. His Public Works (Manufacturing Districts) Act of 1863 opened job-creating schemes in public health projects. He progressed numerous other reforms, most notably the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867. Florence Nightingale helped him formulate the reform, in particular, ensure professionalisation of nursing as part of the poor law regime, the workhouses of which erected public infirmaries under an Act of the same year. His political importance was overshadowed by his brother, the Earl of Clarendon, and undercut by the hostility of Gladstone. Background and education Villiers was the son of the Hon. George Villiers and the Hon. Theresa, daughter of John Parker, 1st Baron Boringdon. He was the grandson of Thomas Villiers, 1st Earl of Clarendon and brother of George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon. He was educated at East India Company College and St John's College, Cambridge, becoming a barrister at Lincoln's Inn in 1827. He was raised to the rank of an Earl's son in 1839 and thus entitled to be styled the Honourable Charles Pelham Villiers. Political career Villiers held Benthamite political views and enjoyed a long career in public service and Parliament. In 1832, he was a Poor Law Commissioner, and from 1833 to 1852 was an examiner of witnesses in the Court of Chancery. Villiers was elected as a Liberal Member of Parliament for Wolverhampton in 1835. In each year from 1837 to 1845, he launched parliamentary debates in attempts to repeal the Corn Laws. In 1838, he spoke to over 5,000 "working-class men" in Manchester and told them that the presence of so large an audience gave him the proof that "the working class man was with him." Villiers was unsuccessful in his attempts, but in 1840 sat on the Committee on Import Duties that provided much of the evidence that pressured Robert Peel into his sliding scale concession in 1842.