Horatio Davies elected Lord Mayor of London (1897)

Post date: Dec 10, 2011 1:2:32 PM

Reynolds’s Newspaper Sunday 3^rd October 1897 reported as follows:

THE LORD MAYOR ELECT.

Alderman Horatio David Davies was on Wednesday nominated unopposed to fill the office of Lord Mayor of London for the ensuing year, in succession to Sir Faudel Phillips. Alderman Davies is an old Dulwich College boy, who was first apprenticed to an engraver, but afterwards struck out in a commercial line for himself and was able to retire at middle age. He is now fifty-five and lives when he can a semi-rural life down at Wateringbury Place, near Maidstone, although his City Corporation duties bring him a great deal up to town. His first connection with the Court of Common Council was his election as representative of the Ward of Cheap in 1885. Four years later he became a member of the Court of Aldermen for Bishopsgate Ward, and was soon chosen to serve as Sheriff of London and Middlesex.

The Alderman has had varied political experiences. His first attempt to enter Parliament was for Rochester as a Tory in 1889, but Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen defeated him. Standing again for the same constituency in 1892 he topped the poll, only to be unseated on petition soon afterwards. Alderman Davies was more fortunate at the last election, when he carried Chatham and kept it. Mr. Alderman Frank Green and Mr. Thomas R. Dewar, the new Sheriffs of the City of London, were on Tuesday formally admitted into office at the Guildhall in the place of Sir James Ritchie and Sir Robert Rogers.

The Evening Telegraph on 15th November 1897 reported as follows:

THE NEW LORD MAYOR'S COUNTRY HOME.

The country home of the new Lord Mayor is at Wateringbury Place, some three miles from Malling Station, in Kent. We gather from the World that his lordship is a devoted lover and a discriminating purchaser of pictures, and many famous works of art are to be found on his walls. The Lord Mayor has also a remarkable collection of old silver and other curiosities. Quaint old silver porringers of the time of "William the Dutchman," antique goblets, vinaigrettes, and other time-worn articles of the same metal areforthcoming in almost endless profusion. Among his other treasures are a bowl of solid gold once the property of King Theebaw, and an extensive assortment of curious rings and of Oriental fetishes and other graven golden images and knick knacks.

A SUCCESSFUL CITY MAN

In reaching the civic chair Colonel Davies has attained what he frankly declares to have been one of the cherished ambitions of his life. As a young man Colonel Davies relinquished the craft of engraving -to which he had been apprenticed for seven years after completing his education at Dulwich College- because it did not seem to afford a wide enough field to his activity and ambition. In conjunction with others, he then turned his attention to the promotion and development of various commercial enterprises, which, on the whole, were conducted with results which gave him no cause to regret the abandonment of his original calling. In course, of time he acquired the freehold of Crosby Hall and of other valuable properties in the City of London and also became the owner of large estates in Nottinghamshire. He is now a man or considerable, wealth-as all Lord Mayors of London ought to be.

Horatio Davies was the second owner of Wateringbury Place to be Lord Mayor, Mathias Lucas having been elected 70 years previously in 1827.