Civic Service
Having made his fortune, he retired from business in 1881 and concentrated on civic service. He became Alderman for Cheap ward in the City of London in 1882. He was Master of the Worshipful Company of Fanmakers in 1884, served as Sheriff that year and was then elected Lord Mayor of London for 1888. He replaced the circus-like Lord Mayor's Show with a State Procession, and was arbitrator in the London Dock Strike of 1889. He also represented England at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889. He was created a baronet on 26 November 1889, as Baronet Whitehead of Culham, Berkshire. He was appointed High Sheriff of the County of London for 1890.
He also did charitable works. He erected a statue of Sir Rowland Hill in 1879, and established the Rowland Hill Benevolent Fund for aged and distressed Post Office workers. He also named his son Rowland. He was Chairman of the Visiting Justices of Holloway Prison, Visitor of the City of London Asylum at Stone, Buckinghamshire, a committee member of Christ's Hospital, a Governor of Queen Anne's Bounty, Lord Lieutenant for the City of London, and a Justice of the Peace in Westmorland and in Kent. He became an Honorary Visitor at Borstal Prison in 1898.
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Famous quotes containing the words civic and/or service:
“It is thus that the few rare lucid well-disposed people who have had to struggle on the earth find themselves at certain hours of the day or night in the depth of certain authentic and waking nightmare states, surrounded by the formidable suction, the formidable tentacular oppression of a kind of civic magic which will soon be seen appearing openly in social behavior.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)
“The gods’ service is tolerable, man’s intolerable.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)