HOBS - Official Receivers through history - some notable characters including the first knighted professional accountant

Bankruptcy lawyers (judges, barristers and solicitors) have been well represented in the HOBS to date on this blog. It is about time we had some characters from other parts of the insolvency world, i.e accountants, civil servants and such like. So here follows a run down of some early and notable Official Receivers (and their families):
  • Sir (John) Charles Clegg (1850–1937 - pictured) was a football administrator as sometime chairman and president of the Football Association. He was a solicitor by training, and was also a "widely respected official receiver in bankruptcy for Sheffield."
  • Joyce Mary Daniel (1890–1985) was an early campaigner for birth control.  She married Archibald Daniel (b. 1874/5), the son of William Lewes Daniel, an Official Receiver in bankruptcy.
  • Sir Robert Palmer Harding (1821–1893), was an accountant by training and the first professional accountant to be dubbed a knight. His ODNB entry notes: "In 1883, on retiring from Harding, Whinney & Co. and the ICAEW, where he simultaneously resigned his seat on the council and also his membership, Harding accepted appointment as chief official receiver in the bankruptcy department of the Board of Trade. Appointed because of his ‘large experience in the administration of estates’ (The Accountant, 9, 1883, 4), he served in the role of chief official receiver until his retirement in 1890, when he received a knighthood—the first awarded to a professional accountant—in recognition of his contribution to the department."
  • Lord Alness GBE (Robert Munro, Baron Alness (1868–1955), was the Lord Advocate in Scotland. Before these heady heights he worked as an Official Receiver. Following University Munro became an Official Receiver in bankruptcy under the Board of Trade, which apparently, "gave him an awareness of commercial law."
Picture Credit:  http://www.iffhs-media.de/1-C/1-C-1.jpg

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