Jabez Spencer Balfour, M.P. for Burnley

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iBase ID

313193

Reference identifier

EBU-U01-P11-18-1

Title

Jabez Spencer Balfour, M.P. for Burnley

Place

Burnley

Personal names

Jabez Spencer Balfour

General notes

When the Liberal M.P. For Burnley John Slagg resigned due to ill health on 26 February 1889, the very next day Jabez Spencer Balfour was adopted as the Liberal candidate for Burnley, and the opposing factions being taken unawares, was elected unopposed. He was a supporter of Gladstone and Home Rule.He was a corpulent man, reputed to be rich, and was a director of at least 12 companies. He was re-elected in July 1892 with a larger majority despite being opposed by a Unionist candidate and the Burnley Express. (Edwin Lawrence 5035, Balfour 6450 Maj.1415) By 1893 his business empire began to collapse and it became obvious that massive fraud was involved. Thousands of investors, many of them ordinary local people , lost their money particularly in the Liberator Mortgage Co. In December 1893 Balfour resigned his seat, and fled the country, eventually taking up residence in Buenos Aires. He was declared bankrupt in his absence and a warrant issued for his arrest. Whilst he was imprisoned pending extradition the Pall Mall Gazette published his prison diaries such was his notoriety. The British Government eventually negotiated his extradition, by which time charges were also being brought against him in Argentina, and in a dramatic episode a Scotland Yard detective Inspector Froest got him away and onto a ship for England, "The Tartar Prince", which ironically, according to the Burnley Express, was largely Burnley owned. He landed back in England in May 1895. In October he was found guilty of fraud and imprisoned for 14 years penal servitude. Released in 1906, his memoirs were serialised in the press but then he faded from public view, until on 23rd February 1916 he was found dead of a heart attack on a train from London to Wales aged 72. He was buried in Paddington on 28 2 1916, largely unmourned.

The original image of Balfour as caricatured by "Spy" in Vanity Fair, March 1892 is in colour.

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Medium

Photographic print

Colour

Monochrome

Year of image

Late 19th Century

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Subjects

Place Names > Burnley

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