Sir Joseph Walton, 1st Baronet

Sir Joseph Walton, 1st Baronet DL, JP (19 March 1849 – 8 February 1923) was an English coalowner and Liberal Party politician.

Walton was born at Bollihope, County Durham, the second son of John Walton from Frosterley, a colliery owner. He did not attend school and received his education privately. In 1880 he married Faith Gill the daughter of a Middlesbrough solicitor. They had a son, Joe, who was a barrister and died, unmarried, of erysipelas in 1913 and two daughters. Their home was at Saltburn-by-the-Sea in Cleveland. In religion Walton was an active Wesleyan Methodist all his life.

Walton began his commercial career in Middlesbrough in 1870 in the coal industry and allied trades. He recognised the great expansion in the coal industry which was continuing to take place at that time and the key place of Middlesbrough in its development. He eventually built up a large business of coal and coke related merchants and colliery ownership.

Walton’s success in business enabled him to devote his time to political activity. He first contested the Doncaster Division in the West Riding of Yorkshire at the 1895 general election. Doncaster was a Liberal seat but the national mood was swinging to the Conservatives and Walton could not hold the constituency for the Liberals against the trend.

Walton soon got another opportunity to enter the House of Commons when a vacancy occurred at another West Riding seat, Barnsley in 1897. The sitting Liberal MP, William Compton who held the courtesy title of Earl Compton, succeeded to the marquessate on the death in September 1897 of his father. Walton was adopted as the Liberal candidate for the resulting by-election. Despite the unanticipated intervention of an Independent Labour Party candidate, Pete Curran, the chief organizer of the Gasworkers and General Labourers’ Union, who was expected to receive the votes of the mineworking districts of Hemsworth and Kinsley as well as those of other working men, Walton retained the seat for the Liberals with a majority of 3,290 over the Unionist Mr J Blyth, with Curran in last place.

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