R. A. Cross, 1st Viscount Cross
Richard Assheton Cross, 1st Viscount Cross, GCB, GCSI, PC, FRS, DL (30 May 1823 – 8 January 1914), known before his elevation to the peerage as R. A. Cross, was a British Conservative politician. He was Home Secretary from 1874 to 1880, and from 1885 to 1886.
The Viscount Cross
Constituency created
Constituency created
Constituency abolished
30 May 1823
Red Scar, Lancashire
8 January 1914 (aged 90)
British
Georgiana Lyon (d. 1907)
Background and education[edit]
Cross was born in Red Scar, near Preston, Lancashire, the fifth child and third son of William Cross JP (1771–1827), Deputy Prothonotary for the Court of Common Pleas at Lancaster and landed proprietor, and his wife Ellen, daughter of Edward Chaffers. He was educated at Rugby School, matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1842 where he graduated B.A. in 1846, and was the President of the Cambridge Union in 1845. He was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1844, and was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1849, attaching himself to the Northern Circuit.[1][2]
Business interests[edit]
After the death of his father-in-law Thomas Lyon (the younger) in 1859, Cross was involved in the affairs of Parr's Bank, of which Thomas Lyon the elder, uncle of the younger Thomas Lyon, was a founder.[2][6][7] He became a partner, and dropped out of Parliament for six years. He was one of the group who changed the bank into a joint stock company in 1865, of which he acted as deputy chairman. He became its chairman in 1870.[2][7]
In 1884, Cross was elected to the Board of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway,[8] and he remained a Director of that company, and of its successor the Great Central Railway (GCR), until his death.[9] During Board meetings, he would occasionally murmur "Where is the money to come from?"[10] In June 1909, when he was senior Director of the GCR, that railway named one of its class 8D express passenger locomotives The Rt. Hon. Viscount Cross G.C.B., G.C.S.I. in his honour.[11][12]