Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham MenEdwards, Eliezer
History
Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men
Edwards, Eliezer
Birmingham (England)
In addition to these two important concerns, Mr. Geach was a partner
in a large manufactory near Dudley. He was extensively engaged as a
contractor for several railway companies. He was an active promoter
and director of the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincolnshire, and
of the Shrewsbury and Birmingham Railways. He was also one of the
_concessionnaires_ of the Western Railway of France; and to his
wonderful administrative ability and power of organisation the success
of that company is mainly due.
Although so closely connected with the railway interest, and although,
as a proprietor in most of the leading railway companies, he was
constantly called upon to attend meetings, his great energies found
other spheres of action. He was a promoter, and one of the most active
directors, of the Crystal Palace Company, at Sydenham; and he was a
director of the Great Eastern Steam-ship Company.
Busy as his commercial life was, he found time to devote to duties
of a more public character. In 1843 or 1844 he was elected one of the
Aldermen of Birmingham. Here he was very active and useful. Up to his
time, the finances of the Borough had been managed with little skill
or system. His great financial knowledge, and his clear vision of the
right and the wrong, in public book-keeping, enabled him to suggest,
and to carry into operation, great improvements in the management of
the Corporation accounts. In 1847 he was Mayor, and in that office
won the goodwill of everyone by his suavity of manner and his untiring
industry. Two or three years afterwards, the pressure of other duties
compelled him to retire from municipal office.
It is needless to tell Birmingham men that in politics Mr. Geach was
a Liberal. His public political life commenced at the time of the
agitation for the repeal of the Corn Laws. During that exciting period
he was the guiding spirit of the local Association, and transacted
the whole of the business with the central body at Manchester. He was
active in promoting the elections of his friends, Joshua and William
Scholefield, with both of whom he was on terms of intimate friendship.
His political creed was very wide and eminently practical. He had
no abstract theories to which everything must bend. His eye saw at a
glance the right thing to do, and he set to work energetically to do
it, or to get it done.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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