Jesse Collings
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Jesse Collings PC (2 December 1831 – 20 November 1920) was a British Liberal and Conservative politician.
The son of Thomas Collings, Littleham-cum-Exmouth, Devon, he was head of Collings and Wallis, merchants in Birmingham until 1879. He was Mayor of Birmingham in 1878-1879. He was prominently associated with Joseph Chamberlain's programme of municipal reform.
He was Liberal Member of Parliament for Ipswich from 1880 until he was unseated on petition in April 1886, and then for Birmingham Bordesley from 1886 until 1918 (until 1912 as a Liberal Unionist, thereafter as a Conservative).
He associated with Joseph Arch and programme of land reform, promoting small holdings and land allocations. In connection with this he employed the phrase "three acres and a cow", and as a result became known derisively as "Three Acres and a Cow Collings."
He moved and carried the "small holdings" amendment to the Queen's speech which caused the resignation of Lord Salisbury's Government in January 1886. He served in Gladstone's administration as Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board in 1886, then in Salisbury's government as Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department from 1895-1902.
He was appointed a Privy Counsellor in 1892.
[edit] Sources
- Concise Dictionary of National Biography, 1932
- The life of Jesse Collings (2 vols), J. Collings and J. L. Green, (1920)
