Alfred Seale Haslam

Alfred Seale Haslam
Sir Alfred Seale Haslam in 1891
Born	1844
Died	1927
Resting place	Morley, U.K.
Occupation	Politician
Parent(s)	William Haslam

Sir Alfred Seale Haslam (1844–1927), was an English engineer who was Mayor of Derby from 1890 to 1891, three times Mayor of Newcastle-under-Lyme, and Member of Parliament (MP) for Newcastle-under-Lyme from 1900 to 1906. He had made his money from devising a refrigeration plant that could be used to transport food in ships worldwide. At one time he owned and lived at Breadsall Priory in Derbyshire. His son Eric Seale Haslam was High Sheriff of Derbyshire in 1937.

Alfred Seale Haslam was the fourth son of William Haslam, an iron-founder. He trained as an engineer and took over the Union Foundry in 1868 in partnership with his father, running it by himself from 6 February 1873 after his father retired from the partnership. It became the Haslam Foundry and Engineering Company Ltd in 1876.

Haslam started his civic life in 1879 when he was elected a councillor for Derby and some years later a Justice of the Peace. During the year that he was Mayor of Derby he managed to replace the old William Strutt Infirmary with the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary. In 1890 there had been an outbreak of disease at the old infirmary and Sir William Evans, President of the Infirmary arranged a three-day inspection which condemned the old building. When Queen Victoria came to open the new hospital on 21 May 1891 she knighted Haslam for his services and gave permission for the term "Royal" to be used.

In 1894 Haslam had made a patent application for a new type of compressor for Ammonia. Using this compressor, the gas was compressed in stages without much leakage, enabling refrigerated transportation of food in ships. He started transporting meat from the British Antipodean colonies and for the next fourteen years, "held a virtual monopoly of British marine meat refrigeration".

The portrait shown here is by John Benjamin Stone who started the National Photographic Record Association. Haslam was a member of this association and his son Victor was also an active member.

In 1896 he funded a statue of Queen Victoria by Charles Bell Birch at the north end of Blackfriars Bridge in London. Haslam made a similar donation to create a statue in his constituency of Newcastle under Lyme in 1903. Haslam had a third erected in Derby. There were seven other casts, all of which were based on a marble original which was erected in India.