Thomas Parry

Thomas Parry
Born	1818
Died	23 December 1879 (aged 60–61)

Thomas Parry has Boston Grammar School's Parry (green) house named after him.

Thomas Parry (1818 - 23 December 1879) was a British Liberal Party politician from Sleaford in Lincolnshire. He sat in the House of Commons for three short periods between 1865 and 1874.

Political life

He was elected at the 1865 general election as a Member of Parliament (MP) for the borough of Boston, but an election petition was lodged and the result was overturned on 21 March 1866 in favour of the other Liberal candidate Meaburn Staniland.

Staniland resigned from the Commons on 8 March 1867, and Parry was returned unopposed in his place at a by-election on 16 March. He did not stand at the 1868 general election, but was re-elected at the 1874 general election. That result was the subject of another election petition, which led to 353 of Parry's 1,347 votes being struck off, thereby making John Wingfield Malcolm the winner of the second seat. The bribery was so extensive that even more votes could have been struck off, but the process was stopped on 8 June 1874 when Malcolm had a nominal majority of two votes. A Royal Commission was established to enquire into the electoral process in the borough.

Gifts to Boston Grammar School

At the end of 1875 it was announced that Thomas Parry had vested a sum of £1,200 in trustees to provide a number of scholarships to the school and a gold medal, "to the value of ten guineas", to be awarded annually to the best scholar of the year. The original trustees of the Parry Scholarship and Gold Medal Trusts were the mayor (John Maltby), vicar (Blenkin) and headmaster ex officio, Alderman Charles Wright and Councillor JC Simonds; the first clerk was solicitor Benjamin Billis Dyer, who gave services.

It was, said the Boston Guardian on 11 December 1875, "a charitable act... unparalleled in the wisdom of its conception and in the admirable purposes which is has in view". The plan was to fund scholarships of the value of £8 a year each , tp be held for three years, and to be competed for annually by boys of the National and Public Schools, the Wesleyan School, Laughton's Charity School and the two Skirbeck schools. The award would pay the school fees of the successful boys and be used "for such other purposes for their benefit as the trustees may think fit".

No time was lost in putting Parry's plan into operation. Indeed, at that same month's pre-Christmas speech day the first gold medal was hended over: it had, said Major Hopkins, who made the presentation to "his old friend Fred Pattenden" been "fairly and honourably won". The Revd. George Coltman, rector of Stickney, who gave the address, referred to Parry's "truly noble and magnificent gift".

The Boston Guardian, a support of Parry wrote of his starting of the trust:

...as the richly laden barque is now fully launched we breathe out a final hope that no hidden shoals or rough weather may impede its course, but that its voyage of usefulness may be a calm and prosperous one, and we are sure we echo the feeling of every right-minded Bostonian when we wish it 'God speed'.

At the December speech day a year later, the headmaster George Edwin Pattenden, whose son had been the first winner of the gold medal, was able to report that the Parry scholars received from the primary schools of Boston and Skirbeck the previous January had made "satisfactory progress". Two of their number ( from the National and Wesleyan schools) had taken the first prizes in the first and second forms, and two others (from the Blue Coat and Public schools) had received honourable mentions in these forms.