Robert Cox (politician)

Robert J. Cox FRSE (6 May 1845 – 2 June 1899) was a Scottish gelatine and glue manufacturer and Liberal Unionist politician.

Cox was the son of George Cox of Gorgie, a district of Edinburgh and his wife Isabella (née Craig), the daughter of Robert Craig, a surgeon from Peebles. He was educated at Loretto School, St Andrews University and Edinburgh University. In 1875 he married Harriet Sophia Bennett, the daughter of the eminent physician and physiologist Professor John Hughes Bennett of the Institute of Medicine at Edinburgh University. They may have had a son, also Robert Cox, who died in 1952.

From 1874, Cox was the sole partner of J & G Cox, Ltd gelatine and glue manufacturers of Edinburgh. He was later Chairman of the Madelvic Motor Carriage Company Ltd of Granton.

In 1885 he was living at 34 Drumsheugh Gardens in Edinburgh's West End.

Cox took an interest in local politics. At one time or another he sat as a member of the Mid Lothian County Council, Edinburgh Parish Council (of which he was Chairman of the Landward Committee), Edinburgh Town Council and the School Board.

Cox first stood for Parliament at a by-election in the Kirkcaldy Burghs constituency on 11 March 1892. Cox was selected as the Unionist candidate for the seat, which had become vacant on the death of the sitting Liberal MP, Sir George Campbell. However Cox was unsuccessful, the seat being held for the Liberals by a majority of 1,036 votes, by J H Dalziel, a journalist and later newspaper proprietor.

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