Leeds North by-election, 1902

The Leeds North by-election, 1902 was a parliamentary by-election held for the House of Commons constituency of Leeds North in the West Riding of Yorkshire on 29 July 1902.

The by-election was caused by the elevation to the peerage of the sitting Conservative MP William Jackson. Jackson had held the seat since its creation for the general election of 1885, having previously been one of the MPs for the multi-member seat of Leeds.

It was reported that both the Conservative and Liberal parties in Leeds were unprepared for a by-election, suggesting that Jackson’s peerage come as a surprise to the party organisations if not to Jackson himself.

The Conservatives considered a number of possible candidates including Colonel Thomas Walter Harding, a Liberal Unionist who had contested West Leeds against Herbert Gladstone and was a former Lord Mayor of Leeds; F. Stanley Jackson, the son of the retiring MP and a Yorkshire County cricketer; and Reginald Wigram and Sir Arthur Lawson, who were both officers of the party in Leeds. They eventually selected Lawson, a 58-year-old businessman who was President of the Leeds Conservative Association.

North Leeds Liberal Association, who decided they wanted a strong local candidate, adopted Rowland Barran as their candidate in early July 1902. Other possible candidates mentioned in the press were G. J. Cockburn, chairman of the North Leeds Liberal Association and the Leeds School Board, and W. Beckworth, but there was no real contest. Barran was aged 44, and prominent in a firm of local clothing manufacturers and merchants. He was the son of Sir John Barran a former MP for Leeds and for the nearby seat of Otley. Rowland Barran was a member of Leeds City Council and a former member of the Leeds School Board.

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