Note 250 — Chapter XVI

Mr. Samuel Plimsoll was first returned to Parliament in December, 1868, as one of the members for the town of Derby, which he had unsuccessfully contested three years previously. In the ‘Parliamentary Companion’ he is described as a “coal-merchant,” and author of various pamphlets on the coal trade, and on the ‘Rights of Workmen,’ and of a ‘Plan to have Fatherless and Motherless Children cared for instead of being consigned to the Workhouse.’