Thomas Salt

Who was Thomas Salt?

Sir Thomas Salt, 1st Baronet, was a British banker and Conservative politician.

His grandfather John Stevenson Salt, married Sarah Stevenson, the granddaughter of John Stevenson, founder in 1737 of a banking company in Stafford. Salt became a partner in the firm of Stevenson Salt & Co which had opened in Cheapside, London in 1788 and which in 1867 merged with Bosanquet & Co and later with Lloyds Banking Company. Salt went on to be a director, and later Chairman, of Lloyds from 1884 to 1896. He was also Chairman, from 1883 to 1904, of the North Staffordshire Railway. He was also chair of the New Zealand Midland Railway Company in 1889.

He was returned to Parliament for Stafford in 1859, a seat he held until 1865, and again from 1869 to 1880, 1881 to 1885 and 1886 to 1892. From January 1876 to April 1880, he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board, a junior post, in the second ministry of Benjamin Disraeli’s government. In 1899 he was created a Baronet, of Standon, and of Weeping Cross in the County of Stafford. His estates included Baswich House built by his father in 1850 and Standon Hall which his son later rebuilt in 1901. He died in April 1904, aged 73.