Charles Dilke, 2nd Baronet
Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, 2nd Baronet PC (born September 4, 1843 in London , † January 26, 1911 ibid) was a British politician of the Liberal Party and the radicals within the Liberal Party. He became famous through a sensational divorce case that ended his career in 1885.
Life
His father was Charles Wentworth Dilke (1810-1869), 1st Baron Dilke, a Whig politician who also excelled in horticulture (co-founder of the Gardeners Chronicle) and in the preparation of the Great Exhibition in 1851 in London.
Dilke studied at the University of Cambridge ( Trinity Hall ) and moved into the House of Commons as a Liberal MP for Chelsea in 1869 . From 1880 to 1882 he was Undersecretary of State in the State Department and from 1882 in the Privy Council under the Gladstone government . In the same year he became a member of the Cabinet as President of the Local Government Board, an authority created in 1871 with domestic and trade policy responsibilities. He campaigned for better working conditions for workers and for trade unions, and negotiated an electoral reform with the conservatives in 1884.
He was considered a candidate for Gladstone's successor as Prime Minister within the Liberals. However, his career ended in 1885 when he became embroiled in a divorce scandal. He had a relationship with his younger brother's mother-in-law, who was married to the liberal politician and shipowner Thomas Eustace Smith, and their daughter Virginia, who was first year married to Member of Parliament Donald Crawford, when their relationship was in a divorce case in 1886 came to light. Dilke, named as the suspect, did not testify on the advice of his lawyer in the divorce process, but the husband relied on a confession from Virginia. The judge pronounced the divorce and found that there was no evidence of adultery against Dilke, but Dilke was named as the reason for the divorce, which journalist William Thomas Stead used to campaign against Dilke. He tried to clear himself through a second trial against the prosecution (Queen's Proctor), which failed completely and turned into the opposite when he was cross-examined by Henry Matthews (who was also a Conservative Member of Parliament). While Dilke's career was ruined after this sensational process, Matthews made a career and became home secretary thanks to support from Queen Victoria.
Dilke, who had lost his parliamentary seat in the 1886 elections, tried to rehabilitate himself further, for which he used a large part of his fortune, and described the confession of Virginia Crawford as false. From 1892 to 1911 he was again in Parliament for the constituency Forest of Dean, but received no more senior posts. He is also known for his book Greater Britain from 1868, at that time a bestseller among the English public, in which he spoke out in favor of Britain's imperialist striving for great power. He also coined a term for political discussion.
The divorce scandal was probably one of the inspirations for Oscar Wilde in his play An Ideal Husband (1895), which is about blackmailing a politician.
He was married to the feminist, trade unionist and art historian Emilia Dilke (1840-1904, nee Emily Francis Strong) since 1884 . She was also known as Francis Pattison from a previous marriage prior to her marriage to Dilke.
literature
- Roy Jenkins: Dilke: A Victorian tragedy . London: Papermac 1996
- Roy Jenkins, Article Dilke, Sir Charles Wentworth, second baronet (1843–1911) , Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004
- Stephen Lucius Gwynn, Gertrude Tuckwell The life of the Rt.Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke , 2 volumes, London: John Murray 1917, volume 1 , volume 2
Fonts
- Greater Britain. A Record of Travel in English-speaking Countries During 1866 and 1867 , London, Macmillan 1869, Archive
- The British Empire , Chatto and Windus 1899, Archives
- with Spenser Wilkinson Imperial Defense , Macmillan 1892
- Problems of Greater Britain , Macmillan 1890, Archives
Web links
References and comments
- ↑ Reissued in 2009 by Cambridge University Press
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Dilke, Charles, 2nd Baronet |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Dilke, Charles Wentworth |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British politician, member of the House of Commons |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 4, 1843 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | London |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 26, 1911 |
| Place of death | London |