SINCE retiring as one of the country's leading safety consultants, Tony Holden, great grandson of 19th century industrialist Sir Isaac Holden and radical Liberal MP, has compiled and written Sir Isaac's biography.

Here, Mr Holden provides a sketch of Sir Isaac's life and times.

"At the end of a life spanning almost the whole of the 19th century Isaac Holden was described as ‘one at the most notable examples of a self-made man’.

"Radicalised by his early experience of being brought up in dire poverty, he found his home in the radical wing of the Liberal Party. Isaac had been dismissed as a young teacher in Slaithwaite when the vicar threatened to inform the school’s patron, the Earl of Dartmouth, unless the head teacher got rid of “that Methodist”.

"Overcoming the stigma of an early business failure making Paisley Shawl ‘middles’ at Pit Lane in Bradford and struggling with the loss of his first wife, he set out to make his fortune by starting a wool combing business in revolutionary France in 1848 in what was to prove to be a rancorous partnership with Samuel Cunliffe Lister.

"He had collaborated with Lister on the development of the Square Motion combing machine, the original idea of which was to be the source of a bitter life long dispute between them.

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"When Lister’s business interests in Halifax were affected by the collapse of the Western Bank in 1857 Isaac seized the opportunity to buy Lister’s share of the French concern for £74,000 (equivalent to £6 million today).

"Profits at the Croix and Reims were to reach £10,000 per month in the 1860s and 1870s (£771,000 today). By perfecting the square motion comb and buying up the patent rights to opposing machines Isaac Holden became the largest wool comber in the world.

"He expanded into Bradford in the 1860s, firstly with his experimental works in Pit Lane and then by building the Alston Works at Thornton Road.

"In contrast to the huge company profits wages were low; for a 60-hour week men were paid 16 shillings a week (80p) and women nine shillings (45p) in 1864. Many of the casual male night workers, known locally as ‘Holden’s Ghosts’, had to attend each evening even if there was no work that night.

"Lauded in his obituaries as Bradford’s 'Grand Old Man', he was depicted in the press as a frugal man who lived a simple life. However his old partner Lister, who had become Lord Masham, wrote a vituperative letter to the Editor of The Engineer responding to its obituary:-

"'At last that wonderful man, Sir Isaac Holden, has joined the great majority and the story of his life is now before the public and it seems a pity to spoil so pleasant and entertaining story as that given to us by the public press… But biography to be worth anything should give us facts, and not fiction, although it might not be so amusing.'

"In writing his biography I worked my way through Isaac’s papers in the Special Collections at the libraries at Bradford and Leeds universities. I discovered that Isaac, like many of the eminent Victorians with whom he was associated, was a man of contradictions and conflicts in his personal, business and political life.

"Although campaigning for radical causes including electoral and education reform, as a capitalist he was opposed to most factory reform. His entry into politics was informed by his Nonconformist convictions. He had long shared alongside other Nonconformists a strong sense of injustice and resentment at the sway the Established Church held over national affairs.

"In 1865 Isaac stood against the Tory, “Noisy” Tom Collins, “a jovial Yorkshire man of the horsey type”. He won the seat by three votes. He later represented the North West Riding from 1882 to 1885 and Keighley from 1885 to 1895.

"Personally brave, when France declared war on Prussia in July 1870, Isaac hurried to Reims to check on the welfare of his workforce. When the Prussians subsequently occupied Reims his nephew, Jonathan Holden, had German troops billeted at his house and had to print his own currency to pay his employees.

"Purporting to avow equality of treatment between sons and daughters, he was deeply patriarchal. Nevertheless shortly before he died Isaac made a dramatic alteration to his will, bequeathing to each of his daughters, Mary and Margaret, double what he left to his sons.

"Margaret used her inheritance to support the suffragette cause and became the president of Bradford’s Women’s Suffrage Society, and the vice president of both the National Women’s Suffrage Societies and the London Society for Women’s Suffrage.

"His sons and nephews played key roles in his business life, but his less than partial treatment of them led to a rivalry for his approval. The rancorous exchange of letters between the two nephews is reminiscent of Isaac’s own conflict with Lister.

"Isaac marked his rise to wealth by building an elegant Italianate villa at Oakworth. This at a time in which the majority of Bradford’s working class families lived in one room deep, back to back housing with one room upstairs and one downstairs with a windowless cellar.

"Health-obsessed and a supporter of the temperance movement, he nevertheless laid in a fine wine cellar at his mansion and was an inveterate cigar smoker. He installed air conditioning so that fresh air could be circulated every half hour.

"Gregarious with a wry sense of humour, loyal and generous to family and friends, his large-scale philanthropy was nevertheless guided, not only by moral principle, but enlightened self-interest.

"His philanthropy was mainly dedicated to the Wesleyan cause. By 1871 he had subscribed around £300,000 in today’s terms to the Metropolitan Chapel Fund in London. He also funded the Keighley Mechanics Institute.

"Letters reveal not only the contortions and manipulations he was prepared to go through to secure the hand of his second wife Sarah Sugden, but also her quiet self-assertiveness and calm assurance in seeking a marriage of equals.

"In 1894 in his last speech in the House of Commons Budget debate he spoke strongly in favour of the introduction of Death Duties. He died three years later aged 90 on August 13 1897.

"The mile long funeral cortege progressed through Keighley and Bingley to Bradford, where the Mayor and a thousand employees of Isaac’s firm met it on the Queen’s Road. His coffin was interned in Undercliffe Cemetery."

Copies of Holden's Ghosts, Sir Isaac Holden’s biography, price £10 plus £2 postage, can be ordered by emailing the author at arnholden@gmail.com