Arthur Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Baron Stanmore


Arthur Charles Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Baron Stanmore was a British Liberal Party politician and colonial administrator. He had extensive contact with Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone.

Career

Gordon was born in London in 1829. He was the youngest son of George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen and his second wife, Harriet Douglas. His mother was the widow of Viscount Hamilton.
Gordon was educated privately and then at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was President of the Cambridge Union Society in 1849.
After graduating in 1851, he worked as Assistant Private Secretary to the British Prime Minister between 1852 and 1855, and was a Member of Parliament for Beverley from 1854 to 1857. In 1875, the Fiji Islands were created a separate Colony, and Sir Arthur Gordon was appointed the first Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Fiji, until 1880. In connection with this he also received the appointment of Consul-General, and High Commissioner of the Western Pacific, but that gave little additional power. He held a number of colonial governorships:
He was created Baron Stanmore, of Great Stanmore, in the County of Middlesex on 21 August 1893.
In 1897 Lord Stanmore became the chairman of the Pacific Islands Company Ltd, which was a company formed by John T. Arundel that was based in London with its trading activities in the Pacific that involved mining phosphate rock on Banaba and Nauru. John T. Arundel and Lord Stanmore were responsible for financing the new opportunities and negotiating with the German company that controlled the licences to mine in Nauru. In 1902 the interests of PIC were merged with Jaluit Gesellschaft of Hamburg, to form the Pacific Phosphate Company, to engage in phosphate mining in Nauru and Banaba.
Gordon's ethnographic collection from Fiji, which was assembled during his Governorship, was donated to the British Museum in 1878.
He was appointed a member of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts in March 1900.

Works

On 20 September 1865, Arthur Hamilton-Gordon, wed Rachel Emily Shaw-Lefevre in London. The couple had a daughter and a son.
Arthur Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Baron Stanmore died on 30 January 1912 in Chelsea, London.

Arms