Mitchell Henry (1826 – 22 November 1910) was an English financier, politician and Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. He was MP for County Galway from 1871 to 1885, and for Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown from 1885 to 1886.
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Biography
Mitchell Henry was the second son of Alexander Henry (1784–1862) of Woodlands, near Manchester, England, a very affluent cotton merchant, founder of A & S Henry & Co Ltd and Member of Parliament for South Lancashire from 1847 to 1852, who was married to Elizabeth, daughter of George Brush of Willowbrook, Killinchy, County Down, and a supporter of the Anti-Corn Law League. Mitchell's elder brother, John Snowden Henry, born in 1824, became a magistrate for the County of Southampton.
Mitchell Henry was born at Ardwick Green, Manchester and privately educated and read for a degree in medicine at the Pine Street school of medicine in Manchester. He graduated M.R.C.S. in 1847 and having established himself in practice as a consulting surgeon at No. 5 Harley Street, Cavendish Square and then as a surgeon in the North London Infirmary of Diseases of the Eye. In 1857 he was next appointed surgeon to Middlesex Hospital. He also became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons.
After the death of his father in 1862, Mitchell Henry abandoned his career in medicine and returned to his native Manchester to run the family business. In 1863, he purchased Stratheden House in London. He soon became involved in politics and contested Woodstock for the Liberals in 1865, and stood in the 1867 Manchester by-election, and the 1868 general election, as a moderate Liberal, but was well-beaten in both contests. As part of his candidature in 1868 Henry started up the Manchester Evening News, though it passed out of his hands at the end of the election. He was particularly interested in the cause for a better health provision for the poor.