The sailor's friend
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7138849
Jul 6th 2006
From The Economist print edition
PLIMSOLLS, the rubber-soled, canvas shoes worn by schoolchildren and
celebrities alike are a familiar piece of footwear. But how many people
know that they are named after Samuel Plimsoll, an Englishman whose
tireless campaigning ended Victorian shipping malpractices and saved
thousands of sailors' lives?
In her scholarly biography, Nicolette Jones lifts the lid on the life
of an extraordinary man from an ordinary background. Plimsoll was born
in 1824, the son of an excise man. After working for a decade as a
brewery clerk, he made a disastrous foray into the coal trade that
bankrupted him, and at the age of 32 was arrested for assaulting the
tollkeeper on London's Waterloo Bridge. Despite this undistinguished
start, he rose to become Liberal MP for Derby, took up a cause that
stirred the nation, wrong-footed a prime minister and, for a while, was
the most popular man in the country.
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