Lord Suffeld [leisure trust, arts heritage, sports centres, fitness health, rochdale, link4life, entertainment, Rochdale Boroughwide Cultural Trust, museum, middleton arena, gallery, touchstones, local studies, central, bowlee, springhill, marland, heywood, littleborough,]
Lord Suffeld
Edward Harbord, the third Baron Suffeld, was born in 1781, the third and youngest son of Sir Harbord Harbord, the first lord, and his lady, Mary, daughter of Sir Ralph Assheton, Bart. He was M.P. for Great Yarmouth from 1806 to 1812, and Shaftesbury 1820-1.
Shortly after Peterloo in 1819 he visited his mother's ancestral home at Middleton Hall and had a long interview with the weaver Amos Ogden. He appears to have been converted to the Reform cause by Ogden's eloquence and later that year he declared himself a Liberal at a public meeting held in Norwich to petition for an inquiry into the Peterloo massacre. He had been struck by the earnestness and sincerity of the contingent led to Peterloo by Samuel Bamford.
His brother's early death in 1821 raised Harbord to the Lords where, as Lord Suffeld, he continued to support Liberal measures. He framed a Bill for better discipline of prisons, the chief clauses of which went into the law on the subject passed in 1824. From 1822 onwards he vigorously advocated the abolition of the slave trade.
He died, from the effects of a fall from his horse on Constitution Hill, at his London home on July 6th, 1835. It is worth noting the coincidence that Lord Suffeld, of Middleton, and Sir Robert Peel, of Bury, both died as a consequence of falling from horses on Constitution Hill (Peel died in June, 1850).
