Joseph Diggle

At the 1885 general election Diggle decided to test the law which prohibited anyone in holy orders in the Church of England from election to the House of Commons. He offered himself as an Independent candidate for the Marylebone East division, declaring that he would not be able to take his seat but urging electors to challenge such "antiquated and unjust restrictions". After a request locally he switched to Marylebone West. His nomination was accepted but he won only 101 votes.[1]

During the 1888 elections, Diggle was involved in a spat with Liberal politician A.J. Mundella who claimed that the Board was much more efficient over the three years previous to Diggle's chairmanship. A firm of accountants were engaged by Mundella in an attempt to prove the point; Diggle and Mundella agreed that they would arbitrate on who was telling the truth but fell out over the detailed questions to be submitted. Diggle quickly obtained an accountants' opinion substantiating his approach which was published on the morning of the election, in which Diggle maintained his majority.

Diggle had the pleasure in 1889 of seeing the Clerical Disabilities Act pass into law, which allowed clergyman who resigned their holy orders to stand for Parliament and take their seats. In 1891 there was a bad-tempered dispute between Diggle and the Charity Organisation Society over the provision of cheap or free meals to children in elementary schools. The School Board under Diggle had amalgamated several different societies to form the London Schools Dinner Association; the Charity Organisation Society investigated five unidentified schools and reported the Association's assistance was almost nonexistent. Diggle hit back and questioned the charity Organisation Society's founding principles. Diggle was condemned in a Leader column of The Times (7 April 1891) for his "methods of controversy".

This denunciation did not seem to affect Diggle's popularity for he was re-elected along with his administration, in the election of November 1891. In 1893 he publicly confronted Arthur Dyke Acland, President of the Board of Education in William Ewart Gladstone's government, who had supported parents in Pimlico who were petitioning the Board to build a new school; on this occasion The Times was with Diggle in regarding the Minister's attack as partisan. In his annual report that October, Diggle attacked the Board of Education for costly interference with the School Board's work, singling out Circular No. 391 which prescribed onerous standards for structural and sanitary conditions in schools.

It was the subject of religious education which provoked one of the fiercest controversies within the Board during Diggle's chairmanship. When the Progressive group put down amendments to a board circular, Diggle quickly accepted a motion to close all debate on the subject. Going into the 1894 elections, the opposition pointedly opposed the motion that the chairman's annual address be printed and distributed, which had previously gone through without opposition. At the last meeting of the old board, the Progressives also divided against a vote of thanks to the chairman. The 1894 school board election saw the Progressive Party make large gains at the expense of the Moderates who however retained a narrow majority of 3. Diggle retained his seat in the seven-member Marylebone division, but slipped from first to fourth place, with the Progressive leader, Lyulph Stanley topping the poll.[2] The election had been a bitter and hard fought, even sectarian campaign. It was clear that Diggle, who had been a highly partisan chairman and campaigner, was too divisive a figure to head the finely balanced board. Accordingly, he stood aside at the new board's first meeting on 4 December, instead nominating the less controversial Lord George Hamilton to the post.[1][3]

Diggle had moved to St Michael's Grange, Tenterden in Kent, of which he was mayor in 1895–1896 and 1901–1902.[5][6] In 1898 he was elected to Kent County Council, and was appointed chairman of the county council's Elementary Schools Education Committee in 1908.[1]

At the 1900 general election he was the Conservative candidate for Camberwell North, opposing Thomas Macnamara who had been a teacher in a Board School and later served on the Board together with Diggle; Diggle lost by 1,335 votes a seat where the Conservatives had won the previous election by 693.[1]

Diggle had lived largely on his wife's earnings since 1878, and lived beyond his means including spending considerable sums on repairing his homes in Regents Park and Kent. After 1904 he was forced to go to moneylenders to borrow money at high rates of interest. In October 1905 he was given a certificate for 1,000 Metropolitan Three per Cent. Consolidated stock in order that he might trace the owner; instead, Diggle gave it to his banker as a security for his overdraft.[7] On 23 November 1909 he was adjudicated bankrupt with debts of £12,763 3s 7d;[8] two years later his creditors had received 1s 3d in the pound.[7]

In addition to his educational interests Diggle became an honorary Fellow of the British Institute of Public Health. He had attended many international conferences on public health while at the School Board and was a corresponding member of the Belgian Société Royale de Médecine Publique de Belgique from 1891. He served as President of Section V of the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography at London in 1892 and of Section VI at Budapest in 1894.

He served as Chairman of the Council of the Royal Botanic Society in 1907, and was Chairman of the Council of the Ragged School Union and Shaftesbury Society from 1906 to 1908.[1]

In 1910 Diggle moved to Oxford, where he died aged 69 in January 1917.[1]