Person DS/UK/243 Watson; Robert Spence (1837-1911) Watson Robert Spence 1837-1911

Watson, Robert Spence (1837–1911), politician and educationist, born at 8 Claremont Place, Gateshead, on 6 June 1837, was the eldest son in a family of five sons and seven daughters of Joseph Watson of Bensham Grove, Gateshead, and his wife, Sarah, daughter of Robert Spence of North Shields. His father was a solicitor of literary attainments, who was northern secretary of the Anti-Corn Law League; he and his wife were Quakers. In 1846 Spence Watson became a pupil of Dr Collingwood Bruce, proceeding to York School, the Friends' school in that city, in October 1848. He entered University College, London, in 1853 and tied for the English literature prize that year. He was articled to his father on leaving college, and after admission as a solicitor in 1860, entered into partnership with him; he remained active in the profession throughout his working life. On 9 June 1863 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Edward and Jane Richardson of Newcastle upon Tyne. She became a strong women's suffragist. They had one son and five daughters, only two of the children surviving their father. From youth Spence Watson played an energetic part in public life, interesting himself in political, social, philanthropic, and educational movements. For nearly half a century he held a position of influence in his native city and the north of England. He gave close attention to means of improving and disseminating popular culture, and published, in 1909, a biography of his friend Joseph Skipsey, the pitman poet. In 1862 he became honorary secretary of the Literary and Philosophical Institution, Newcastle upon Tyne, and served for thirty-one years before becoming its vice-president; he succeeded Lord Armstrong as president in 1900. Between 1868 and 1883 he delivered seventy-five lectures to the society, mainly on the history and development of the English language. In 1871 Spence Watson helped to found the Durham College of Science, later known as Armstrong College, first a part of the University of Durham, then of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. For forty years he took a leading part in its government, becoming its first president in 1910, and one of its representatives on the senate of Durham University, which conferred on him an honorary DCL in 1906. He was also elected a member of the first Newcastle school board in 1871, and he continued to sit on the board for twenty-three years. He was a pioneer of university extension in the north of England and of the Newcastle Free Public Library. From 1885 to 1911 he was president of the Tyneside Sunday Lecture Society, and he became chairman of the Newcastle upon Tyne grammar school in 1911. From an early age Spence Watson was an ardent traveller and mountaineer, and he joined the Alpine Club in 1862; his recreations included angling as well as mountaineering. In 1870, at the invitation of the Society of Friends, he went to Alsace-Lorraine as one of the commissioners of the War Victims Fund for the distribution of relief to the non-combatants in the Franco-Prussian War. In January 1871 he revisited France to superintend similar work in the département of the Seine. The French government, through the duc de Broglie, offered him the Légion d'honneur in 1873, but he declined it; he was, however, presented with a gold medal specially struck in acknowledgement of his services. In 1879 he visited Wazzan, the sacred city of Morocco, which no Christian European had entered before. With the assistance of Sir John Drummond Hay, British minister at Tangier, he obtained an introduction to the great sharif of Wazzan and his English wife. He published an account of his journey, A Visit to Wazan, the Sacred City of Morocco, in 1880. Spence Watson was an enthusiastic politician and a lifelong adherent of the Liberal Party. He was Joseph Cowen's election agent in Newcastle, and in 1874 he founded the Newcastle Liberal Association on a representative basis of ward elections, and was its president from 1874 to 1897. He was one of the original convenors of the National Liberal Federation in 1877, and was its president from 1890 until 1902. During that period he was probably the chief Liberal leader outside parliament, influencing the policy of the party by force of character. His political friends included Cowen, John Morley, John Bright, Lord Ripon, and Earl Grey, and he was well acquainted with Gladstone, from the latter's tour of Newcastle, from 1862 onwards. Personally he had no desire to enter the House of Commons, and refused all invitations to become a parliamentary candidate. He was, however, a prominent public speaker and a pronounced defender of home rule. As president of the National Liberal Federation he encouraged ‘the widest and freest discussion’, and opposed attempts to make it into more of a party organization. He wrote its history to 1906 (1907). On 27 February 1893 the federation presented him with his portrait by Sir George Reid, which he gave to the National Liberal Club; a replica by the artist was presented to Mrs Spence Watson. In 1907 Campbell-Bannerman made him a privy councillor. Spence Watson's political principles embraced the cause of international peace, and the welfare of indigenous peoples under British rule, especially in India. He was president of the Peace Society for several years, and took an active part in the Indian National Congress movement. The development of free institutions in Russia was another of his aspirations. He co-operated with S. M. Kravchinsky (known as Stepniak), and other Russian political exiles in England, in the attempt to spread information among the English of existing methods of governing Russia. He was president of the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom from 1890 to 1911. Spence Watson was a pioneer in the settlement of trade disputes by arbitration. He first acted as an arbitrator in 1864, and he was sole arbitrator on forty-seven occasions between 1884 and 1894 in disputes in leading industries in the north of England. Such services, which ultimately numbered nearly a hundred, were always rendered voluntarily. Spence Watson was ill from 1905 and died at his home, Bensham Grove, Gateshead, on 2 March 1911; he was buried in Jesmond old cemetery, Newcastle upon Tyne. He published ten books, including some poetry, and sixty pamphlets and articles, notably The History of English Rule and Policy in South Africa (1897), which sold over 250,000 copies. He represented the Quaker tradition of public action at its sturdiest. Percy Corder, rev. H. C. G. Matthew Sources P. Corder, Robert Spence Watson (1914) · J. W. Steel and others, A historical sketch of the Society of Friends … in Newcastle and Gateshead, 1653–1898 (1899) Archives HLRO, corresp. and journal letters · Newcastle Central Library · U. Newcastle, Robinson L., corresp. and papers | BL, corresp. with Sir Henry Campbell–Bannerman, Add. MSS 41234–41242 · BL, Gladstone MSS, Add. MS 44518 · BL, corresp. with Lord Ripon, Add. MSS 43638, 43640 · Bodl. Oxf., corresp. with Sir William Harcourt · Harvard U., Houghton L., letters to F. V. Volkhovsky · HLRO, letters to David Soskice · Tyne and Wear Archives Service, Newcastle upon Tyne, letters to Mabel Spence Watson Likenesses L. Etherington, oils, 1890, National Liberal Club, London · G. Reid, oils, 1893, National Liberal Club, London · R. Hedley, oils, 1898; at Bensham Grove, Gateshead, in 1912 · P. Bigland, oils, U. Newcastle · L. Etherington, oils, U. Newcastle · C. Neuper, bust; known to be in Newcastle upon Tyne Free Library, in 1912 (DNB) · G. Reid, oils, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne Wealth at death £35,850 5s. 10d.: probate, 6 May 1911, CGPLA Eng. & Wales © Oxford University Press 2004–6 All rights reserved: see legal notice Percy Corder, ‘Watson, Robert Spence (1837–1911)’, rev. H. C. G. Matthew, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36777, accessed 24 Aug 2006] Robert Spence Watson (1837–1911): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36777 Politician Percy Corder, ‘Watson, Robert Spence (1837–1911)’, rev. H. C. G. Matthew, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36777, accessed 24 Aug 2006] International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families - ISAAR(CPF) 2nd edition - ICA 2004 ISBN 2-9521932-2-3 National Council on Archives, Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997 Yes Lrees 24/08/2006 Lrees 24/08/2006 b8500f7b-53bd-4f76-a55d-f9c0ecfa7873