Mander Family - Family Members

Family Members

• Benjamin (1752–1819) and John Mander (1754–1827) were Thomas's sons. By 1773, they were setting up a cluster of loosely integrated businesses in Wolverhampton, including one of the largest chemical manufacturing works in the country, together with businesses in baking, japanning and tin-plate working, canals and gas manufacture. Benjamin Mander was chairman of the Wolverhampton Union Flour and Bread Company, a milling co-operative company set up for charitable purposes in order to provide subsidised bread and flour in the period of social distress following the Napoleonic Wars. The two brothers campaigned actively against the slave trade, founded chapels, libraries and schools, and entered into local politics as town commissioners, four Manders sitting at one time for the Georgian borough.

Hereafter, the eldest sons of the senior line of the family have been given the first name Charles:

• Charles Mander (1780–1853), the eldest son of Benjamin, founded a varnish works in 1803 which was to prosper though the 19th century. He was a penal reformer who campaigned against the Blood Money Act, successfully petitioning with others for its repeal in 1818. The romantic story of how he rescued two soldiers from the gallows accused of stealing just 1s.1d. became the subject of a novel by the jurist Samuel Warren, Now and Then (1848). He was a noted nonconformist, whose exertions for the tenure of endowments by a 23-year Chancery case led to the Dissenters' Chapels Act 1844.

• Charles Benjamin Mander JP (1819–1878) was the eldest son of Charles. He established the first publicly funded institution for art education in Britain in 1852. As a town councillor, he campaigned for clean drinking water fountains, and for the free library in Wolverhampton. With the rise of the railways, he greatly expanded the business of Mander Brothers, forming a partnership with his brother Samuel in 1845.

• Sir Charles Tertius Mander JP, DL (1852–1929), the eldest son of Benjamin, among many public offices was uniquely four times mayor of Wolverhampton 1892-6, an alderman, was awarded an honorary freedom of the borough; he was a colonel in the Staffordshire Yeomanry (Queen's Own Royal Regiment), and the first of the family to serve as High Sheriff of Staffordshire. He was a progressive industrialist and manufacturer as the first chairman of Mander Brothers (1923), the family paint and varnish works, but also in many other companies, including a Midland electrical company credited with the invention of the spark plug. He was created the first baronet of the Mount, Tettenhall Wood, for his public services on 8 July 1911.

• Sir Charles Arthur Mander JP, DL, TD (1884–1951), the second baronet, was the elder son of Charles Tertius by Mary Le Mesurier, daughter of Henry Nicholas Paint, a Member of the Dominion Parliament of Canada. He was twice mayor of Wolverhampton, and an honorary freeman of the borough. He shot (rifle) for England while at Trinity College, Cambridge. In World War I he was a major in the Staffordshire Yeomanry, attached to the Yeomanry Mounted Division in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign. He was wounded in the Battle of Gaza at Beersheba in 1917, and following the decisive battle of Megiddo entered Damascus in triumph with General Allenby. He served on over 65 committees and organisations at one time, was in demand as a public speaker, and presented early radio discussion programmes. He was Vice-Chairman of the National Savings Committee and President of Rotary International for Britain and Ireland. In the USA, he was made an honorary chief Red Crow of the Blackfoot tribe in Montana when he gave the address at the dedication of the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, the first national park to be so dedicated, in 1932.

• Sir Charles Marcus Mander (1921–2006), the third baronet, was the only son of Charles Arthur by Monica Neame, of Kent. He fought with the Coldstream Guards in World War II in North Africa, Germany and Italy, where following the Salerno landings he was gravely wounded in the fierce fighting at Calabritto, on the slopes of Monte Camino, in October 1943. He was a director of Mander Brothers, responsible for its property portfolio, and redeveloped the centre of Wolverhampton, from 1968 establishing the Mander Shopping Centre and Mander Square on the site of the early family works. Sir Charles was High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1962-63 before two City posts, first as chairman of Arlington Securities (sold to British Aerospace) and then as chairman of another property group, London & Cambridge Investments, which went bust in 1991. He developed a township for 11,500 people at Perton outside Wolverhampton on the family agricultural estate, which had been requisitioned as an airfield during World War II. His wife sustained underwriting losses as a Name in the Lloyd's insurance market in the 1990s. The Times newspaper reported on June 24, 2000, that Lady Mander, having refused a settlement offered to her by Lloyd's, was declared bankrupt. In due course, the mansion house at Little Barrow, Donnington, near Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, was sold in order to meet a debt believed to be well over one million pounds.

• Sir (Charles) Nicholas Mander (born 1950), the elder son of Charles Marcus by Dolores (d. 2007), née Brödermann, of Hamburg, is the fourth baronet, a knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, and a FSA. He lives at Owlpen Manor in Gloucestershire. He was co-founder of Mander Portman Woodward and of Sutton Publishing, and is the author of a history on the family and other books.

• (Charles) Marcus Septimus Gustav Mander (born 1976) is the eldest son of Charles Nicholas by Karin Margareta Norin, of Stockholm. He is heir apparent to the baronetcy. He is a barrister of the Middle Temple.