Joshua Scholefield
Joshua Scholefield was a British businessman and Radical politician. He was elected as one of Birmingham's two first members of parliament when the town was enfranchised as a result of the Reform Act 1832.
Born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, by 1800 he had established himself as an iron manufacturer, merchant and banker at Birmingham. He subsequently became a director of the National Provincial Bank, the London Joint Stock Bank and the Metropolitan Assurance Company.
Birmingham Political Union
The growing industrial centre of Birmingham had neither local government nor parliamentary representation at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Scholefield became an advocate for municipal and parliamentary reform. In 1819, he was elected to the largely-ceremonial position of high bailiff of Birmingham's Court Leet. In that capacity, Scholefield chaired a meeting of Birmingham's businessmen in January 1820 that resolved to petition Parliament to hold an inquiry into the "deplorable situation of the Manufacturing and Labouring classes of the Community and of this Town in particular; and the distressing situation to which Manufactures and Commerce are reduced".In 1830, he was a founding member of the Birmingham Political Union, along with his close friend Thomas Attwood. Scholefield became the deputy chairman of the organisation, which campaigned for parliamentary reform. Its aims were achieved with the passing of the Reform Act 1832.