Mr J Buckingham Pope dies in Tangier
Head of great concern
A strong, silent man
News is to hand of the death of Mr J Buckingham Pope, chairman of Denaby and Cadeby Collieries Ltd, which occurred on Monday, in Tangier, at the age of 75, from bronchial pneumonia.
It is only recently that Mr Pope, for a man so advanced in years, enjoyed splendidly robust health, showed signs of breaking up, and he left England for a voyage with a view to recruiting. When he went Tangier, a fortnight ago, his state of health was not sufficiently serious to excite the alarm of his friends, and the ending came quite suddenly and unexpectedly on Whit Monday.
The news of Mr Pope’s death, received at the London offices of the Denaby and Cadeby Company, created considerable surprise and widespread regret.
Mr Pope has been connected with the huge concern at Denaby and Cadeby fore close upon half a century. He was identified with it indeed many years before it could properly be termed a huge concern at all; in the days when it was a modest, even a struggling enterprise.
Apart from this connection with these collieries, he has never enjoyed any definite association with Yorkshire or the North, since he was in practice as a barrister on circuit, though, through his chairmanship of the Denaby and Cadeby company, he has for a long been looked upon as one of the leading magnates of the British coal industry, and his name has for many years been one to conjure with. He was not as been stated by a contemporary an original director of the Denaby enterprise.
He was accessible to very few people. He was reserved almost to the point of shyness. Though he rarely appeared as a personal factor in the management and control of this big concern, he was the author of most of the splendid systems on which the collieries are run.
He was a Justice of the Peace. His only venture into the public limelight was made some 30 years ago, when he was a barrister in the north-east circuit. He stood for one of the Hull divisions in the Conservative interest, in association with Mr Henry John Atkinson, when they were defeated by Mr Charles Henry Wilson and Mr Charles M Norwood.
He has made only one public appearance in Denaby of late years, and that was some five years ago, on the occasion of the public presentation, in the large Hall, of wedding gifts from the colliery workpeople and officials to his nephew, Captain M.E.W. Pope and Mrs Morris Pope.
On the occasion of the terrible disaster at Cadeby last July he visited the scene of the calamity on the following day, and made himself thoroughly acquainted with the details of the explosion and also of the distress in the place. His donation to the relief fund was £1000.
His benefactions to Denaby and district have been many. The workpeople and their families are scarcely likely to realise it, because of his avoidance of public attention; but they have lost a good friend in the chairman of the company.
Mr Chambers himself does not know the full extent of the generosity. His good works were usually negotiated through the company, but often he gave personally. He had a morbid dread of being thought a philanthropist.
It was his habit to do good by stealth, and he cordially disliked any reference been made to his beneficient conduct.
He last visited Denaby about a fortnight ago, immediately prior to his recent visit to North Africa, when he attended a meeting of the board of directors, apparently in a fairly good state of health.