Mitchell Henry

Who was Mitchell Henry?

Mitchell Henry was an English financier, politician and Member of Parliament in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. He was MP for Galway County from 1871 to 1885, and for Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown from 1885 to 1886.

Mitchell Henry was the second son of Alexander Henry of Woodlands, near Manchester, England, a very affluent cotton merchant, founder of A & S Henry & Co Ltd and Member of Parliament for South Lancashire from 1847 to 1852, who was married to Elizabeth, daughter of George Brush of Willowbrook, Killinchy, County Down, and a supporter of the Anti-Corn Law League. He was educated in London and at University College London where he read for a degree in medicine, eventually becoming a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. He become a senior consultant at the Middlesex Hospital in London by the time he was 30.

After the death of his father in 1862 Mitchell Henry abandoned his career in medicine and returned to his native Manchester to run the family business.