Thomas Firbank (politician)

Joseph Thomas Firbank was born in Britain in 1850. He was one of seven children of Joseph Firbank (1819–1886), who had begun work at the age of seven in a Durham coal-mine but had become a prosperous railway contractor in South Wales and elsewhere.

In 1885, Thomas Firbank's father Joseph became High Sheriff of Monmouthshire.

Thomas Firbank became High Sheriff of Monmouthshire in 1891. At the general election in July 1895, he was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Kingston upon Hull East. He was re-elected in 1900 but left the Commons before the 1906 general election.[1]

He was knighted in the 1902 Coronation Honours,[2] receiving the accolade from King Edward VII at Buckingham Palace on 24 October that year.[3]

Firbank lived in South Wales, at St Julians, Newport, but also in London at Clarges Street and from 1886 at the Coopers, Chislehurst.

In 1883, Firbank married Jane Harriette Garrett (1851–1924).[4] They had four children: Joseph Sydney (1884–1904), Arthur Annesley Ronald (1886–1926, who became celebrated as the novelist Ronald Firbank), Hubert Somerset (1887–1913, the father of the author Thomas Joseph Firbank, who wrote I Bought a Mountain, I Bought a Star and other books) and Heather (1888–1954).

In Who's Who he described himself as "keen on all outdoor sports and athletics, music and objects of art."[5]

He died of heart failure in Tunbridge Wells in 1910.[6] His widow died in 1924.

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Thomas Firbank