Newmarch , William , 1820-1882 , economist and statistician

William Newmarch was born in Thirsk, Yorkshire, on 28 January, 1820, and was a self-educated man. He began employment as a clerk with a distributor of stamps but then moved to the Yorkshire Fire and Life Office and thence to Messrs. Leathams' banking house. Following his early marriage, in 1846 he moved to London and worked on the Morning Chronicle as well as in the management of Agra Bank. Here his knowledge of banking and business brought him into contact with the leading economists and businessmen in the City including Thomas Tooke who supported Newmarch's successful application to become a Fellow of the Statistical Society in 1847. Four years later, in 1851, he became Secretary to the Globe Insurance Company and began work with Tooke on preparing volumes 5 and 6 of the History of Prices. These were published in 1857 and quickly became classics, generally acknowledged as a continuation and development of Tooke's work rather than a simple collaboration. In 1857 he gave evidence in committee on the Bank Acts and in 1861he received the unusual honour for a businessman of being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in recognition of his achievements. The following year he became the first manager of Glyn, Mills & Co. bank where he remained until his retirement in 1881 following a stroke. Glynn, Mills & Co. provided banking facilities for more than 200 of the new railway companies as well as handling the important Canadian financial agency and Newmarch became a director of the Grand Trunk Railway Company of Canada. Throughout his career Newmarch was a journalist contributing articles to magazines and newspapers including the Economist, the Statist, and the Times, especially on prices, the gold supply and the movement of money. With the RSS he was Secretary from 1854 to 1861, Editor of the Journal, 1852-1862, Vice-President in 1863, and from 1871 to 1881, as well as President between 1869 and 1871 and a contributor of numerous articles to the Society's Journal. He was also a member and Secretary of the Political Economy Club, founder of the Adam Smith Club and a prime mover in establishing the Tooke Professorship at King's College London. He died at Torquay, Devon, on 23 March, 1882, and was commemorated by the establishment of the Society's Newmarch Memorial Essay and by the Newmarch Professorship of Economic Science at University College London. Publications: The New Supplies of Gold (1853); Pitt's Financial Operations (1855); A History of Prices and of the State of the Circulation during the Nine Years 1848-56 (1857).