Joseph Diggle

The Reverend Joseph Robert Diggle JP (12 May 1849 – 16 June 1917) was a British Anglican clergyman, politician and public servant. He is notable for his campaign to change the law to allow clergymen to take seats in the House of Commons (although he was unable to win a seat himself), and for his chairmanship of the London School Board. His combative approach to political debate was the key to his career, helping him to run the Board for nine years but denying him any higher office.

Diggle was born in Pendleton, Lancashire, the youngest son of William Diggle, a warehouseman and his wife Nancy Ann née Chadderton. His elder brother, John William Diggle (1847–1920) was to become Bishop of Carlisle.

Joseph was educated at Manchester Grammar School and Wadham College, Oxford, where he read Modern History and obtained first class honours. Diggle then trained for the clergy and took holy orders. He was ordained in 1874, and was appointed curate at St Mark's Liverpool. Two years later he became curate of St Mary's Church, Bryanston Square, where William Henry Fremantle was rector.

In 1878 he married Jane Wilkinson Macrae, from Aigburth, Liverpool. They had two sons and two daughters.

In 1879 he resigned his living "to devote himself to public work". On 1 July 1879 he sent a petition to Parliament to prohibit the sale of intoxicating liquors on Sunday. In November of the same year he was stood as a "Moderate" candidate for the London School Board, the elected body responsible for education in the capital. Board elections were largely run on a religious basis but Diggle was referred to as "a Churchman of Liberal views" who had campaigned to improve the condition of the masses on a social, moral and religious basis. With seven seats in the Marylebone Division, Diggle came second in the poll and was comfortably elected.

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