Samuel Whitbread (politician, 1764)

Samuel Whitbread ( January 18, 1764 - July 6, 1815 ) was a British politician.

Life

Samuel Whitbread was the only son of Samuel Whitbread and his first wife Harriet (nee Hayton, † April 1764). He grew up with two sisters and a half-sister from a later marriage of his father. From 1775 to 1780 he attended Eton College . Then the College Christ Church of the University of Oxford and the St John's College of the University of Cambridge .

Whitbread's relationship with his father was clouded throughout his life. He found it difficult to come to terms with the fact that his son was not interested in the brewery he had built. Nor did his father agree to his marriage to Elizabeth Gray, the daughter of Charles Gray, 1st Earl Gray , which took place on January 26, 1788. The marriage resulted in two sons, William and Samuel Charles Whitbread , and two daughters. Politically, too, the two had different opinions. The difficult relationship between father and son led in 1790 to Samuel Whitbread ousting his father as a candidate in the constituency of Bedford. He had already represented the constituency in the House of Commons for several years and was badly affected by his son's behavior. Samuel Whitbread himself was a member of the House of Commons for the next 25 years.

After the death of his father, he inherited his fortune, the brewery and his lands. Whitbread later in his life expanded his family's estates in Bedfordshire in the Southill area so that he eventually owned 12,000 acres in the county and sold most of the land in the other counties. He managed the brewery alone for the first two years. He then took on three partners in the company and finally three more partners in 1800. With each of these two operations, he withdrew more and more from the company, so that he was ultimately only responsible for the brewery's finances.

After his health continues to deteriorate during the year 1815, he committed in 1815 on the morning of July 6 suicide . His son-in-law, William Waldegrave, took over his vacant seat in the House of Commons.

Web links

• R. Thorne (Ed.): Entry on Samuel Whitbread in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1790–1820 (1986)