Leonard Harper
Leonard Harper was a 19th-century Member of Parliament in Canterbury, New Zealand.
Harper was born in 1832. His father was Henry Harper, who became the first bishop of Christchurch.
He represented the Cheviot electorate from 1876 to 1878, when he resigned. He then represented the Avon electorate from 1884 to 1887, when he again resigned. He bought Ilam homestead, once the largest residential building in Christchurch, and was for some years co-owner of Risingholme, which was bought from the estate of William Reeves.
Harper left New Zealand on 25 July 1891. Three days later, he was voted in absentia the inaugural chair of the New Zealand Alpine Club. It only emerged later that his law firm was bankrupt, and that NZ£200,000 had been embezzled. He later lived on Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands, where he died in 1915. Arthur Paul Harper was his son.
