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James Martin White (usually known to as Martin White or J. Martin White) (1858 – 7 July 1928)〔Death registers, Scotland, http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk〕 was a wealthy Scottish businessman and Liberal Party politician. He also took a keen interest in the establishment of the scientific study of sociology in association with his boyhood friend Patrick Geddes and was an enthusiastic supporter of the development of the pipe organ. White was born in New York, the son of wealthy jute merchant James Farquhar White and his wife Elizabeth Grundy. White Sr. had, in 1849, established a 'dry goods' company, J F White & Co. in New York selling all kinds of imported and domestic textiles.〔Financial Review USA, 24 Aug 1897〕 However with the onset of the American Civil War he had returned home to Scotland and leased Castle Huntly, Perthshire as the family home. In 1880 they bought and moved to a baronial castle at Balruddery, Angus, near the city of Dundee. Ran his family business from Dundee and New York, but took a back seat to pursue political and scientific interests. J Martin White studied engineering at Cassel in Germany and was very interested in the technological innovations of his time, becoming chairman of the Dundee Technical Institute. He was a keen photographer and had his own darkroom from the late 1870s. In April 1881 he and his father, James F White, installed electricity at their house, Balruddery by Longforgan, outside Dundee. They generated the electricity with a Siemens SDJ Shuntwound 50-volt dynamo driven by a turbine on a stream on the estate〔The Electrician, 22 Jan 1886〕 and thus established probably the first domestic generating plant in Scotland and the second, after Cragside, in Britain. Martin White was also a collector and connoisseur of Japanese art.〔Dundee Free Library Report, June 1898〕 ==Parliamentary career== By the 1890s White had become increasingly wealthy through the family business, J F White & Co.〔 He first stood for Parliament at the 1892 general election, when he unsuccessfully contested St Andrews Burghs. When the Liberal member of parliament for Forfarshire, Sir John Rigby was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal in 1894, it was expected that White would be the party's candidate at the ensuing by-election. However, a London based stock-broker, Henry Robson was chosen, with the result that the seat was lost to the Liberal Unionists. A general election was held in the following year, and on this occasion White was chosen to contest the seat. He regained the seat comfortably for the Liberals, with a majority of 441 votes. His membership of the Commons was to be brief, however. Following weeks of rumours, the ''Dundee Advertiser'' reported on 14 November 1896 that he had resigned his seat. This was initially denied by his private secretary, who stated that he simply gone to India on business, and expected to return for the opening of parliament. However, on 20 November, the executive committee of the Forfarshire Liberal Association received an angry letter from White. In it, he stated that he had not intended to resign. However he felt the story had been inserted in the ''Advertiser'' by members of the committee, and this act of disloyalty meant that he no longer had any obligations to the party. Accordingly he resigned his seat, by accepting appointment as Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds. The reason for the rumours circulating in Dundee and for his resignation were that a court case for breach of promise to marry had been brought by clergyman’s daughter Helen Grant. She and White had known each other from the age of twelve and had had a longstanding affair. Ella Grant claimed that she had become pregnant and had refused the abortion that had been suggested by White. White made an out-of-cort settlement and the case never became public knowledge at the time.〔Summons of Miss Helen or Ella Guillan Grant, 1896, National Archives of Scotland NAS02023 CS248‑2390/1.〕 White was subsequently chosen as prospective Liberal candidate for the Wilton Division of Wiltshire. However, when a by-election occurred in July 1900, the Second Boer War was in progress. The party decided not to contest the seat, allowing James Morrison, an army officer, invalided from the front in South Africa, to be returned unopposed. At the general election in October 1900, White did contest Wilton, but Morrison held the seat with a majority of 841 votes (12.6% of the total).〔Craig, page 418〕 At the 1906 general election, he failed to be elected at Great Yarmouth. He lodged an election petition, attempting to have the result overturned due to alleged bribery, treating and illegal payments by his Conservative opponent Arthur Fell.〔 The election court found that treating and bribery had indeed taken place, but the two judges sitting on the case did not agree whether Fell was responsible for the actions of a Mr Baker who was found to have had acted illegally. The first judge, Justice Channell, held that Baker was acting as an agent of Fell; but the more senior judge, Justice Grantham, held that Fell was not responsible,〔 and the petition was therefore dismissed.〔 However, the outcome was widely denounced as perverse, and was one of a series of election petition judgments in which Grantham (himself a former Conservative MP) was seen to have acted in a partisan manner. The judgment in the Yarmouth petition was the subject of a debate in the Commons in July 1906 in which Grantham's partisanship was widely condemned. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Martin White (politician)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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