H. A. L. Fisher

The Right Honourable
Herbert Fisher
OM PC FRS
Member of Parliament
for Sheffield Hallam
In office
23 December 1916  15 November 1922
Preceded by Charles Stuart-Wortley
Succeeded by Frederick Sykes
President of the Board of Education
In office
10 December 1916  19 October 1922
Monarch George V
Prime Minister David Lloyd George
Preceded by The Marquess of Crewe
Succeeded by E. F. L. Wood
Personal details
Born 21 March 1865 (1865-03-21)
London
Died 18 April 1940 (1940-04-19) (aged 75)
Nationality British
Political party Liberal
Spouse(s) Lettice Ilbert (1875–1956)
Alma mater New College, Oxford

Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher OM PC FRS,[1][2] (21 March 1865 – 18 April 1940) was an English historian, educator, and Liberal politician. He served as President of the Board of Education in David Lloyd George's 1916 to 1922 coalition government.

Background and education

Fisher was born in London,[3] the eldest son of Herbert William Fisher (1826–1903), author of Considerations on the Origin of the American War and his wife Mary Louisa Jackson (1841–1916). His sister Adeline Maria Fisher was the first wife of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, another sister Florence Henrietta Fisher married both Frederic William Maitland and Francis Darwin. Fisher was a first cousin of Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell (the children of his mother's sister Julia). He was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, where he graduated with a first class degree in 1888 and was awarded a fellowship.[3]

Career

Fisher was a tutor in modern history at the University of Oxford. His publications include Bonapartism (1908), The Republican Tradition in Europe (1911) and Napoleon (1913).[3] In September 1912, he was appointed (with Lord Islington, Lord Ronaldshay, Justice Abdur Rahim, and others) as a member of the Royal Commission on the Public Services in India of 1912–1915.[4] Between 1913 and 1917 he was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield.[5]

In December 1916 Fisher was elected Member of Parliament for Sheffield Hallam[3][6] and joined the government of David Lloyd George as President of the Board of Education.[7] He was sworn of the Privy Council the same month.[8] In this post he was instrumental in the formulation of the Education Act 1918, which made school attendance compulsory for children up to the age of 14.[3] Fisher was also responsible for the Superannuation Act of 1918, which provided pension provision for all teachers.[9]

In 1918 he became MP for the Combined English Universities.[10]

Fisher resigned his seat in parliament through appointment as Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds on 15 February 1926, retiring from politics to take up the post of warden of New College, Oxford, which he held until his death.[11] There he published a three-volume History of Europe (ISBN 0-00-636506-X) in 1935.[3] He served on the British Academy, the British Museum, the Rhodes Trustees, the National Trust, the Governing Body of Winchester, the London Library and the BBC.[11] He was awarded the 1927 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his biography James Bryce, Viscount Bryce of Dechmont, O.M. and received the Order of Merit in 1937.[12]

In 1939 he was appointed first Chairman of the Appellate Tribunal for Conscientious Objectors in England and Wales.[13]

Fisher died in St Thomas's Hospital, London, on 18 April 1940 after having been knocked down by a lorry and seriously injured the previous week,[11] while on his way to sit on a Conscientious Objectors' Tribunal during the blackout.[14] Some of his possessions, including his library and some of his clothing, remained at New College.

In 1943, Operation Mincemeat, a British Intelligence operation to deceive enemy forces, undertook the invention of a false Royal Marines officer, whose body was to be dropped at sea in the hope the false intelligence it carried would be believed. As the fictitious Major Martin was to be a man of some means, he required quality underwear, but with rationing this was difficult to obtain, and the intelligence officers were unwilling to donate their own. Fisher's was obtained, and the corpse used in the deception, dressed in Fisher's quality woollen underpants, succeeded in misleading German Intelligence.[15][16]

Family

Fisher married the economist and historian Lettice Ilbert (1875–1956) in 1899. Their only child was the British academic, Mary Bennett.

See also

Works

Articles

Pamphlets

References

  1. Murray, G. (1941). "Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher. 1865-1940". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 3 (10): 518–526. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1941.0019.
  2. H.A.L. Fisher: A History of Europe, Volume II: From the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century to 1935, Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1984, p. i.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk Herbert Fisher
  4. The London Gazette: no. 28642. p. 6631. 6 September 1912.
  5. Helen Mathers: Steel City Scholars: The Centenary History of the University of Sheffield, London: James & James, 2005
  6. leighrayment.com House of Commons: Hackney to Harwich
  7. The London Gazette: no. 29865. p. 12227. 15 December 1916.
  8. The London Gazette: no. 29875. p. 12471. 22 December 1916.
  9. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4nUr0rIZn3wC&pg=PA81&dq=UK+Fisher+Superannuation+Act+1918&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bNVnU5v8JoT_PMHKgKgJ&ved=0CFIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=UK%20Fisher%20Superannuation%20Act%201918&f=false
  10. leighrayment.com House of Commons: Clonmel to Cork County West
  11. 1 2 3 "Obituaries." Times [London, England] 19 April 1940: 9. The Times Digital Archive. Web. 29 May 2012
  12. leighrayment.com Order of Merit
  13. Rachel Barker: Conscience, Government and War, Routledge, 1982
  14. Randolph Spencer Churchill; Martin Gilbert (1983). Winston S. Churchill: 1922–1939, the prophet of youth. Houghton Mifflin. Retrieved 1 June 2012.
  15. Macintyre, Ben (14 January 2010). "Operation Mincemeat: full story of how corpse tricked the Nazis". The Times.
  16. Operation Mincemeat, BBC Four, 22 February 2011

Further reading

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: H. A. L. Fisher
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Charles Stuart-Wortley
Member of Parliament for Sheffield Hallam
1916–1918
Succeeded by
Douglas Vickers
New constituency Member of Parliament for Combined English Universities
19181926
With: Sir Martin Conway
Succeeded by
Sir Martin Conway
Sir Alfred Hopkinson
Political offices
Preceded by
The Marquess of Crewe
President of the Board of Education
1916–1922
Succeeded by
Hon. E. F. L. Wood
Academic offices
Preceded by
Charles Eliot
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield
1913–1917
Succeeded by
William Ripper
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