Sir Richard Atwood Glass (1820 – 22 December 1873) was an English telegraph cable manufacturer and a

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...

politician who sat in the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...

from 1868 to 1869.

Biography

Glass was born in

Bradford-on-Avon Bradford-on-Avon (sometimes Bradford on Avon or Bradford upon Avon) is a town and civil parish in west Wiltshire, England, near the border with Somerset, which had a population of 9,402 at the 2011 census. The town's canal, historic buildings, s ...

, Wiltshire, in Southern England, the son of Francis Glass. He was educated at

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's ...

.William Retlaw Williams. ''The parliamentary history of the county of Worcester : including the city of Worcester, and the boroughs of Bewdly, Droitwich, Dudley, Evesham, Kidderminster, Bromsgrove and Pershore, from the earliest times to the present day, 1213-1897 ; with biographical and genealogical notices of the members''
/ref> In 1846 with George Elliot, he provided capital for an insolvent wire-rope manufacturers Heimann & Kuper, and by 1851 the firm was trading as Glass, Elliott & Company. The company produced

submarine communications cable A submarine communications cable is a cable laid on the sea bed between land-based stations to carry telecommunication signals across stretches of ocean and sea. The first submarine communications cables laid beginning in the 1850s carried tel ...

s and in 1854 ran a circuit from Denmark to Sweden and undertook the manufacture of long cables for the French Mediterranean Telegraph Company of J W Brett. The cables with a resin-insulated conducting wire protected by an armour of iron wire proved to be long-lasting, and in the later 1850s the company introduced anti-corrosive compounds to coat the finished cable. The firm merged with the Gutta-Percha Company in 1864, and Glass became managing director of the resulting Telegraph Construction & Maintenance Company. Glass's company provided half of the first

transatlantic telegraph cable Transatlantic telegraph cables were undersea cables running under the Atlantic Ocean for telegraph communications. Telegraphy is now an obsolete form of communication, and the cables have long since been decommissioned, but telephone and data a ...

and all the cable laid by the Great Eastern in 1866. Glass was

knighted A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the Christian denomination, church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood ...

for these services on 26 November 1867. In the 1868 general election Glass was elected

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

for

Bewdley Bewdley ( pronunciation) is a town and civil parish in the Wyre Forest District in Worcestershire, England on the banks of the River Severn. It is in the Severn Valley west of Kidderminster and southwest of Birmingham. It lies on the River Sev ...

. He was unseated on 16 February 1869 when the election was declared void. Glass lived at Ashurst in

Dorking Dorking () is a market town in Surrey in South East England, about south of London. It is in Mole Valley District and the council headquarters are to the east of the centre. The High Street runs roughly east–west, parallel to the Pipp Br ...

, Surrey. He died on 22 December 1873, aged 53, of chronic

Bright's disease Bright's disease is a historical classification of kidney diseases that are described in modern medicine as acute or chronic nephritis. It was characterized by swelling and the presence of albumin in the urine, and was frequently accompanied b ...

at his home at

South Stoneham South Stoneham was a manor in South Stoneham parish. It was also a hundred, Poor law union, sanitary district then rural district covering a larger area of south Hampshire, England close to Southampton. These last four South Stoneham divisions ...

, Hampshire.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Glass, Richard 1820 births 1873 deaths UK MPs 1868–1874 Alumni of King's College London Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies Deaths from nephritis