go.

Later Plimsoll claimed that he and Eliza had an epiphany on a beach at Redcar, when after a great storm in which other ships went down; Samuel was on a ship that came through the storm. But then on the beach surrounded by widows of men who hadn’t made it, in their gratitude for his survival he and his wife pledged themselves to the protection of sailors for the rest of their lives.

[shows image on projection screen] By this point Plimsoll was a millionaire and he decided to stand for parliament, partly he claimed for the protection of sailors. He had rather extreme sideburns. That’s him, bowling “underhand” to the Tory opposition in a cartoon in the satirical Derby Ram. They were opposed to Plimsoll â€“ they wereFo Fum, I smell the votes of a working man. Be he alive or be he dead, I’ll climb into Parliament over his head’.

He was not elected in 1865, but he stood again in 1868, after the 1867 Reform Act had increased the franchise in a way that favoured the Liberals. He entered Gladstone’s government with other self-made men, like this chap, [shows image on projection screen] Anthony Mundella, who was a half-Italian hosier from Nottingham who was also known as a social reformer later, whom Plimsoll regarded as a friend. Interestingly, behind his back, Mundella never had a good word to say about Plimsoll. In his writings he says of Plimsoll’s maiden speech in the House, which was a defence of trade unions, that ‘he talked rot’.