Jump to content

Charles Poulett Thomson, 1st Baron Sydenham

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by BG19bot (talk | contribs) at 08:16, 9 March 2016 (Remove blank line(s) between list items per WP:LISTGAP to fix an accessibility issue for users of screen readers. Do WP:GENFIXES and cleanup if needed. Discuss this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Accessibility#LISTGAP). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The Lord Sydenham
Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada
In office
1839–1841
MonarchVictoria
Preceded bySir George Arthur, Bt
Succeeded byMajor General John Clitherow
Governor General of the Province of Canada
In office
1839–1841
MonarchVictoria
Preceded byThe Earl of Durham GCB
Succeeded bySir Charles Bagot
President of the Board of Trade
In office
5 June – 14 November 1834
MonarchWilliam IV
Prime MinisterThe Earl Grey KG
The Viscount Melbourne
Preceded byThe Earl of Auckland GCB
Succeeded byThe Lord Ashburton
In office
8 April 1835 – 29 August 1839
MonarchsWilliam IV;
Victoria
Prime MinisterThe Viscount Melbourne
Preceded byThe Lord Ashburton
Succeeded byThe Lord Taunton
Personal details
Born13 September 1799 (1799-09-13)
Waverley Abbey, Farnham, Surrey
Died19 September 1841(1841-09-19) (aged 42)
Kingston, Ontario, Canada
NationalityBritish
Political partyWhig

Charles Poulett Thomson, 1st Baron Sydenham GCB PC (13 September 1799 – 19 September 1841) was a British businessman, politician, diplomat and the first Governor General of the united Province of Canada.

Early life, family, education

Born at Waverley Abbey House, near Farnham, Surrey, Thomson was the son of John Buncombe Poulett Thomson, a London merchant, by his wife Charlotte, daughter of John Jacob. His father was the head of J. Thomson, T. Bonar and Company, a successful trading firm that had dealings with Russia.

After attending private schools until age 16, Thomson entered the family firm at Saint Petersburg. In 1817 he came home due to poor health, and embarked on a prolonged tour of southern Europe. He returned to Russia in 1821 and over the next three years travelled extensively in eastern Europe. He established permanent residence in London in 1824 but frequently visited the Continent, especially Paris.

Political career

Thomson was returned to the House of Commons as MP for Dover in 1826. In 1830 he joined Earl Grey's government as Vice-President of the Board of Trade and Treasurer of the Navy, an office he held until 1834. He was then President of the Board of Trade under Lord Melbourne in 1834 and again between 1835 and 1839. A free-trader and an expert in financial matters, he was elected MP for Manchester in 1832, a seat which he held until 1839. He was continuously occupied with negotiations affecting international commerce until 1839, when he accepted the Governorship of Canada.[1]

Governor General of Canada

Order of the Bath Knight Grand Cross Breast Star

Sydenham succeeded Lord Durham as Governor General of Canada in 1839. He was responsible for implementing the Union Act in 1840, uniting Upper Canada and Lower Canada as the Province of Canada, and moving the seat of government to Kingston. Upper Canadians were given a choice in the matter of union, which they accepted; Lower Canada had no say, and as a result, many French Canadians were opposed to both the union and Sydenham himself.

Later that year, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Sydenham, of Sydenham in the County of Kent and of Toronto in Canada.[2]

Sydenham was just as anti-French as Lord Durham had been, and he encouraged British immigration to make the French Canadian population less significant. French Canadians referred to him as le poulet, the chicken. Realizing he had almost no support in Lower Canada (at this time Canada East), he reorganised electoral ridings to give the Anglo-Canadian population more votes, and in areas where that was infeasible, he allowed English mobs to beat up French candidates. Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine was one such candidate who suffered from Sydenham's influence; Lafontaine eventually left Canada East to work with Robert Baldwin in creating a fairer union for both sides.

Sydenham also settled the Protestant land dispute in Upper Canada (at this time Canada West), which the Family Compact had interpreted to refer only to the Anglican Church. Sydenham declared that half of the land set aside for Protestant churches would be shared between Anglicans and Presbyterians, and the other half would be shared between the other Protestant denominations.

Sydenham wanted to make Canada more financially independent, so that there would less danger of annexation by the United States. He had been working on this policy throughout the 1830s, when he was President of the Board of Trade in Britain, though he had little time to implement any economic reforms once he had arrived in Canada.

Death

After less than two years as Governor-General, Sydenham died in 1841, at age 42. He had been described as sickly and an autopsy revealed severe gout. Shortly before his death, he had resigned his position and was due to return to England within weeks. However, on 4 September, Sydenham was "riding a spirited horse near Parliament House, but could not, for a long time, get the animal to pass that building. After a severe application of spur and whip, however, the horse proceeded, but immediately after, put his foot upon a large stone... not being able to recover, fell and dragged his rider with him, fracturing the leg, and lacerating it above the knee." This apparently led to a deadly infection. For fifteen days, Sydenham was described as suffering extreme pain, then died the morning of 19 September 1841.[3] As he was unmarried, his peerage became extinct.[1]

Legacy

Owen Sound

Soon after its founding, the present-day City of Owen Sound, Ontario, was named Sydenham in 1842 in honour of the recently deceased Governor of Canada; in 1856, the community became a town and was renamed Owen Sound after the adjacent body of water. Sydenham is the name of the principal river that runs through Owen Sound. Sydenham was also the name of the former Township of Sydenham, which bordered Owen Sound to the east, and in 2001 amalgamated into the municipality of Meaford, Ontario. Sydenham Community School is located in Owen Sound. For more than half a century, Owen Sound's main street was called Poulett Street; in 1909, the community's street names were renumbered on the New York City model, and Poulett Street became 2nd Avenue East.

Kingston

Sydenham Public School in Kingston, Ontario, which has operated as an educational facility since its construction in 1853 as the Kingston County Grammar School, was renamed in the 1890s in memory of Lord Sydenham. It is located in downtown Kingston, and is an Ontario-designated heritage building.[4]

Sydenham High School, Ontario, a regional high school, is located in the village of Sydenham, Frontenac County, Ontario, northwest of Kingston.

Sydenham Street, located in downtown Kingston, runs north-south, and is a two-section street. Its southern section runs from Court Street to Brock Street. Its northern section runs from Princess Street to Raglan Road. The two sections are separated by a block of buildings between Brock and Princess Streets.

Sydenham Road is also located in Kingston, running from outer Princess Street northwards to Highway 401 and beyond, to the village of Sydenham.

Sydenham Ward, a municipal electoral district in Kingston, is one of twelve such districts in the city, and this designation has been used in Kingston municipal politics since the 1840s, albeit with its boundaries modified several times over the ensuing years.

The Old Sydenham Heritage Conservation District, located in the southeastern sector of downtown, was formally designated by Kingston City Council on 24 March 2015.[5]

Memoirs

His memoirs were published by his brother, G.J. Poulett Scrope, in 1844.

References

  1. ^ a b  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainChisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Sydenham, Charles Edward Poulett-Thomson, 1st Baron". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 26 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 277.
  2. ^ "No. 19883". The London Gazette. 11 August 1840.
  3. ^ Notices on Lord Sydenham's Death (1841). The Examiner, p 37-39. Toronto.
  4. ^ Ontario Heritage Trust Sydenham Public School
  5. ^ http://www.cityofkingston.ca, Minutes for City Council meeting of 24 March 2015.

Bibliography

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Dover
1826–1833
With: The Lord Skelmersdale to 1828
William Henry Trant 1828–1830
Sir John Reid, Bt 1830–1831
Captain Robert Stanhope 1831–1832
Sir John Reid, Bt from 1832
Succeeded by
New constituency Member of Parliament for Manchester
1839
With: Mark Philips
Succeeded by
Political offices
Preceded by Vice-President of the Board of Trade
1830–1834
Succeeded by
Preceded by Treasurer of the Navy
1830–1834
Preceded by President of the Board of Trade
1834
Succeeded by
Preceded by President of the Board of Trade
1835–1839
Succeeded by
Preceded by Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada
1839–1841
Succeeded by
Preceded by Governor General of the Province of Canada
1839–1841
Succeeded by
Academic offices
Preceded by Chancellor of King's College Toronto
1841
Succeeded by
Peerage of the United Kingdom
New creation Baron Sydenham
1840–1841
Extinct