Public and Business Life in Lancashire
In 1906 Wiggins was appointed a Justice of the Peace for the Municipal Borough of Middleton, in Lancashire. Between 1914 and 1919 he was Mayor of Middleton, and was made an honorary Freeman of the Borough in 1919. In business Wiggins was a successful cotton manufacturer, a director of several spinning companies and was at one time president of the Federation of Master Cotton Spinners Associations and president of International Federation of Cotton Spinners and Manufacturers. He was also sometime president of the British Employers’ Confederation.
Wiggins promoted education in Middleton as it was clear that the town needed a much larger school than the existing Grammar School in Boarshaw, a district in the north of the town. Together with his friend Frederick Bagot who was to become editor of the local paper in Middleton, Wiggins initiated a campaign that ended with Brasenose College, Oxford (which had run the school under the terms laid down by Queen Elizabeth I) handing over many thousands of pounds, which helped towards the building of the new school in Durnford Street, when the administration became vested in the Lancashire County Council.
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