Obituary

1927, November 24th

We regret to announce that Sir Arthur Francis Pease, of Middleton Tyas, near Darlington, was seized with illness while attending a meeting of Horden Collieries at Darlington yesterday, and died soon after being taken home. He was 61.

Arthur Francis Pease was the eldest son of the later Mr. Arthur Pease, M.P. for Darlington, and elder brother of Lord Daryngton (Mr. H. Pike Pease) and cousin of Lord Gainford (Mr. J. A. Pease) and of Sir Alfred Edward Pease. He was born at Hummersknott, Darlington, on March 11, 1866, and was educated at Brighton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in honours in the History Tripos in 1888. After leaving Cambridge he received a thorough business training in the head office of Pease and Partners, Limited, at Darlington, shortly afterwards joining the board and ultimately becoming managing director, and, on the death of Sir David Dale in 1906, chairman and managing director. Latterly, however, owing to failing health he had given up the chairmanship to Lord Gainford. He was chairman of the Middlesbrough Estate, Limited, the North-Eastern Improved Dwellings Company, William Whitwell and Co., and the Durham and North Yorkshire Public House Trust, and a director of Lloyds Bank, the Horden Collieries, Limited, the Forth Bridge Railway Company, the National Benzole Company, and other concerns. On the death of Sir David Dale he was elected a director of the North-Eastern Railway, retaining his seat after its amalgamation into the London and North-Eastern Railway Company.

An intimate knowledge of all questions connected with the coal trade made Arthur Pease a valuable member of the Durham Coal Trade Association, and he was a member of the owners' side of the Durham Reconciliation Board. He was prominently before the public during the protracted negotiations arising out of the minimum wage agitation, and was one of the three members representing the Durham owners on the Coalowners' committee appointed to meet the Government and the Miners' Federation's representatives. On the formation of the Joint District Board for Durham in April, 1912, under the Minimum Wage Act, he was appointed to state the case of the coalowners. He was also a vice-chairman of the Cleveland Mineowners' Association. He held office as Second Civil Lord of the Admiralty in 1918-19, and was created a baronet in 1920. He was elected chairman of the Durham County Council in 1922, and had done good work on that body as the chairman of the Higher Education Committee. He was a J.P. and D.L. for the county of Durham, and was High Sheriff in 1920.

Always a keen lover of sport, he was regularly to be seen with the Zetland Hounds, and on occasions with the other packs hunting North Yorkshire and South Durham. In politics he was an ardent Unionist, and had been president of the Darlington Unionist Association from its formation in 1910. Sir Arthur Pease married, in 1889, Laura Matilda Ethelwyn, daughter of Mr. Charles Peter Allix, of Swaffham Prior House, Cambridgeshire. She survives him, with one son and three daughters. His son, Captain Richard Arthur Pease, who succeeds him in the title, was born in 1890, served in the Great War, married Jeanette Thorn, daughter of the late Gustav Edward Kissel, of New York, and has two sons and one daughter.

Source: The Times