Descripción
Photographie,vintage CDV albumen carte de visite, Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, 2nd Baronet PC (4 September 1843 ? 26 January 1911) was an English Liberal and Radical politician. A republican in the early 1870s, he later became a leader in the radical challenge to Whig control of the Liberal Party, making a number of important contributions, including the legislation increasing democracy in 1883-85, his support of the growing labour and feminist movements, and his prolific writings on international affairs. Touted as a future prime minister, his aspirations to higher political office were effectively terminated in 1885, after a notorious and well-publicised divorce case. His disgrace, and the alignment of Joseph Chamberlain with the Conservatives, greatly weakened the radical cause.[1] Dilke was the son of Sir Charles Dilke, 1st Baronet. He was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he was President of the Cambridge Union Society.[2] His second wife was the author, art historian, feminist and trade unionist Emily Francis Pattison née Strong (widow of the Revd Mark Pattison), subsequently known as Lady Dilke.[3] Despite being a radical, Dilke was also an imperialist, arguing for British imperial domination in his best-selling 1868 book Greater Britain.[4] Political career, 1868?1886[edit] Sir Charles Dilke. Dilke became Liberal Member of Parliament for Chelsea in 1868, a seat he held until 1886. In 1871, Dilke caused controversy when he criticised the British Monarchy and argued that the United Kingdom should adopt a republican form of government; public criticism made Dilke recant this position.[4] He was Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs from 1880 to 1882, during Gladstone's second government, and was admitted to the Privy Council in 1882. In December 1882 he entered the cabinet as President of the Local Government Board, serving until 1885. A leading and determined radical within the Liberal party, he negotiated the passage of the Third Reform Act, which the Conservatives allowed through the House of Lords in return for a redistribution calculated to be marginally favourable to themselves (the granting of the vote to agricultural labourers threatened Conservative dominance of rural seats, but in return many double-member seats were abolished and seats redistributed to suburbia, where Conservative support was growing). He also supported laws giving the municipal franchise to women, legalising labour unions, improving working conditions and limiting working hours, as well as being one of the earliest campaigners for universal schooling. The Crawford scandal[edit] Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, 2nd Baronet, by George Frederic Watts Dilke's younger brother, Ashton Wentworth Dilke, married May Eustace Smith, the eldest daughter of Liberal politician and shipowner Thomas Eustace Smith and his wife Ellen, in 1876. Sir Charles Dilke became Ellen's lover, a relationship which continued after his marriage in 1884. In July 1885, however, he was accused of seducing the Eustace Smiths' daughter Virginia in the first year of her marriage to Donald Crawford, MP. This was supposed to have occurred in 1882, when Virginia was 19, and she claimed that the affair had continued on an irregular basis for the next two and a half years. Crawford sued for divorce, and the case was heard on 12 February 1886 before The Hon. Mr Justice Butt in the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division. Virginia Crawford was not in court and the sole evidence was her husband's account of Virginia's confession. There were also some accounts by servants, which were both circumstantial and insubstantial. Dilke, aware of his vulnerability over the affair with Virginia's mother, refused to give evidence, largely on the advice of his confidant Joseph Chamberlain. Butt found ? paradoxically ? that Virginia had been guilty of adultery with Dilke, but that there was no admissible evidence to show that Dilke had been guilty of adultery with Virginia. He concluded, ". N° de ref. del artículo PD8572
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