Henry Stanley 1861-1941

Henry Stanley was born in 1861 in Bulwell, the son of Samuel Stanley, born 1821 in Kent, a trimmer at a bleach works and Elizabeth, a seamstress. He moved to Eastwood and was found boarding there in 1881, working as a grocer’s assistant, probably in a branch of the Co-op. In 1884 he moved to Ripley, and by 1887 was manager of the grocery department, and then in 1906 became General Manager, a post he held for 27 years until his retirement in 1933. He had worked for the Co-op for 49 years.

There were moments of dissent : in 1904 the Co-op published a notice that legal proceedings would be taken against anyone circulating slanderous “and totally unfounded” reports about Stanley. What the reports were we don’t know, but they seemed, from the notice, to be questioning his honesty, something that is stressed in most other comments about him.

He married miner’s daughter Eliza Purdy from Ripley at All Saints church in 1881 and they had one daughter, Florence, born in 1883. She eventually married Herbert Cecil Brittain, the son of G. C. Brittain, printer and stationer.

He was a Baptist and Chair of the Missionary Society, as well as teaching at the Sunday School. He was a Liberal in politics and an Urban District Councilllor from about 1899 to 1937. His work as Chair of the Finance Committee was praised by the government auditor in 1908.

He seemed to be “strongly in favour of the Council doing their own work with their own teams and men”, as he said in his re-election address in 1901, using his financial expertise to prove that this was cheaper in the long run than employing contractors.

He was also on the School Board (and its successor the Council School Committee), was a  Guardian of the Poor, chairman of the Belper Joint Hospital, a Governor of Heanor Secondary School, Chairman of the Old Age Pension Committee and a member of the Public Assistance Committee.

He was appointed a magistrate in 1915 and was for many years Chairman of the Ripley bench. During WW1 he was chairman of the local military tribunal.