Sir Henry Norman, 1st Baronet

Norman was born in Leicester, the son of Henry Norman, a merchant and local radical politician. Norman was educated at Leicester Collegiate School and Grove House School and later studied theology and philosophy at Leipzig and Harvard University. His family were Unitarians in religion and Norman first embarked in a career as a preacher but he gave up this calling and his religion on his return to England.

In 1891 he married author Ménie Muriel Dowie (1867–1945) but they divorced in 1903 on the grounds of her adultery with a family friend, Edward Arthur Fitzgerald.[3] Norman was awarded custody of their son Henry Nigel St Valery Norman who was born in 1897.

In 1907 he married Florence Priscilla McLaren (1884–1964), the daughter of the wealthy industrialist and Liberal MP, Sir Charles McLaren. They had three children.

In 1922 he purchased Ramster Hall, Chiddingfold, Guildford, Surrey with Lady Norman.[4]

Norman became a journalist working for the Pall Mall Gazette and the New York Times. As a journalist he was famous for uncovering the truth behind the Dreyfus Affair. He was on the staff of the Daily Chronicle from 1892, becoming assistant editor. Norman travelled extensively in the East, where he took a number of photographs that are held at Cambridge University.[5] Later he founded and edited the magazine The World's Work (vols 1-42 1902-1923).

He was appointed Assistant Postmaster-General in 1910 and his interest in international communications led to a number of appointments related to wireless and telegraphy, among them Chairman of the War Office Committee on Wireless Telegraphy 1912, and Chairman of the Imperial Wireless Telegraphy Committee of 1920, the latter convened to draw up a complete wireless scheme for the Empire.[6] He was an early advocate of wireless broadcasting, opening the All British Wireless Exhibition at the Royal Horticultural Hall, Westminster in 1922 at which he predicted the ubiquitous uptake, to a very sceptical press, of the technology into all homes.[7]

In other business, Norman was a director of a number of companies connected to the coal mining and iron trades industries.

Sir Henry was the Munitions Inventions Department's permanent attaché to the French Ministry of Inventions.[8] At the end of the war Sir Henry got involved in the detailed planning for a proposed transatlantic flight using a F.B.27. Vickers Vimy. This planning included the route to be flown and of course, the hangar facilities and the provision of fuel needed for preparation of the aircraft in Newfoundland.[9]

Sir Henry Norman

Norman was a Liberal Member of Parliament for Wolverhampton South from 1900 to 1910, and for Blackburn from 1910 to 1923.[10] He was an advocate for a number of causes, notably women's suffrage.[11] He was created Baronet of Honeyhanger in the Parish of Shottermill in the County of Surrey, in 1915. In 1918 he was admitted to the Privy Council. In January 1910 he was appointed Assistant Postmaster General, a position which fitted well with his interests in wireless communications. He sat on the War Office Committee on Wireless Telegraphy in 1912. In 1914, he became the first President of the Derby Wireless Club, founded in 1911. He was Chairman of the Imperial Wireless Telegraphy Committee from 1919, (The Norman Committee), which recommended wireless communications covering a range of 2,000 miles.[12] He contributed to government committees including chairing a Select Committee on Patent Medicines (specifically advertisements for them and fraudulent claims), on rent restrictions, on betting duty and on industrial paints. He championed the rights and regulation of motorists in the House of Commons even though he had himself been fined for speeding (30 mph) under a scheme he himself had advocated to the Royal Commission.[13] Norman was appointed a Justice of the Peace for Surrey.

Norman was a supporter of David Lloyd George, organising the Budget League in support of his People's Budget in 1909–10, personally representing Lloyd George in France on a number of occasions during the First World War, and helping organise the government's campaign during the "Coupon Election" of 1918.[2]

• An Account of the Harvard Greek Play (1881)
• The Preservation of Niagara Falls (1882)
• The Real Japan (1892)
• The Peoples and Politics of the Far East (1895)[14]
• The Treatment and Training of Disabled and Discharged Soldiers in France (1917)
• All the Russias (1902)
• Will No Man Understand? a play, (1934)
• Bodyke : A Chapter in the History of Irish Landlordism (1887)

• Leigh Rayment's list of baronets
• Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs
• Obituary, The Times, 5 June 1939
• Patrick French, The Life of Henry Norman. Unicorn Press 1995
• Who was Who, OUP 2007

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sir Henry Norman, 1st Baronet.

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Henry Norman
• Works by Sir Henry Norman, 1st Baronet at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Henry Norman at Library of Congress, with 21 library catalogue records