Charles Leach

Charles Leach
Rev Dr Charles Leach MP
Born	(1847-03-01)1 March 1847 Illingworth, Halifax, Yorkshire, England
Died	24 November 1919(1919-11-24) (aged 72) England
Cause of death	Brain Haemorrhage
Occupation	Shoemaker, Congregational Minister, and politician.
Known for	Only MP to lose his seat for being of unsound mind

Rev. Charles Leach (1 March 1847 – 24 November 1919) was a Congregationalist Minister and Liberal Party politician in the United Kingdom. He is notable as the only Member of Parliament to be deprived of his seat after being declared of unsound mind.

Leach was born in Illingworth, near Halifax, but moved to the town and grew up in a slum called Ratten Row, where his mother died when he was five. He entered a worsted mill at eight which meant that he also had three hours elementary schooling per day. At fourteen he became apprenticed as a clog and patten maker and then trained as a shoe and bootmaker,. At nineteen he set up in that trade and on the strength of that got married to Mary Jane Fox. Moving to Elland near Halifax he built up a successful boot and shoe business, by 1871 employing three men, one woman and two boys.

In Halifax he had become involved with the Methodist New Connexion Church and in Elland became a local preacher for them. Feeling a call to enter the ministry he worked from four to eight in the morning before opening his shop to reach the required educational level. In 1873 the denomination sent him to Sheffield as a 'preacher on trial', with responsibility for Attercliffe chapel, but at the same time he attended Ranmoor Theological College in the city. After two years in Sheffield, he was sent to the Ladywood mission chapel in Birmingham.

In Birmingham he began his Sunday afternoon lectures which were so popular that after a couple of years he was forced to use the Town Hall as the numbers had become so great. They were at time said to have reached 4000 people. He was ordained into the Methodist New Connexion in 1877. After four years at Ladywood the Methodist New Connexion wanted to send him to London, but a committee was set up to use the redundant Highbury chapel in Graham St and he was invited to be the pastor and hence he became an Independent or Congregational minister. He ran a very successful chapel for seven years and also became a regular speaker for, and officer in, the Liberal party. In 1884 he was elected to the Birmingham School Board. However, in 1886, when Joseph Chamberlain split the party he sided with Gladstone which left him in a difficult position in Liberal Unionist dominated Birmingham.