Major Sir William Eden Evans Gordon (8 August 1857 – 31 October 1913) was a British politician, military officer, and diplomat. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) who had served as a military diplomat in India.
As a political officer on secondment from the British Indian Army from 1876 to 1897 during the British Raj, he was attached to the Foreign Department of the Indian Government. His career in India was a mixture of military administrative business on the volatile North-West Frontier, and of diplomacy and foreign policy in advising maharajas or accompanying the viceroy in the princely states.
After leaving the army, Evans Gordon returned to Britain and in 1900 was elected as Conservative MP for Stepney on an "anti-alien platform". As a result of the pogroms in Eastern Europe, Jews were arriving in increasing numbers in Britain to stay or en route for America. Evans Gordon, as a "restrictionist", was heavily and actively involved in the passing of the Aliens Act 1905, which sought to limit the number of people allowed to enter Britain even temporarily. He held Stepney from 1900 to 1907.
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Early life
William Eden Evans Gordon was born in Chatham, Kent, the youngest son of Major-General Charles Spalding Evans Gordon (19 September 1813 – 18 January 1901) and his first wife, Catherine Rose (23 July 1815 – 1858), daughter of Rev. Dr. Alexander Rose, D.D., a Presbyterian minister of Inverness. William was the youngest of seven children. See also Family life below.
His mother died in 1858, soon after he was born. He was educated at Cheltenham College and entered in October 1870, at the same time as his older brother Charles [Jr.]), and at the Royal Military College, where he was an unattached Sub-Lieutenant on 15 July 1876.
Political career in India
Evans-Gordon was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the 67th Foot on 15 January 1877. He transferred on 3 July to the Madras Staff Corps of the Indian Army, attached to the 41st Madras Native Infantry in 1880 as Wing Officer and Quartermaster. From November 1881 to December 1883 he was extra ADC to the Governor of Madras, M. E. Grant Duff, serving as Wing Officer and Quartermaster in 1883 with the 8th Madras Native Infantry. In 1884, Evans Gordon served under the Foreign Department attached to 1st Regt. Central India Horse (Mayne's Horse) in Guna.
During the joint Russo-British Afghan Boundary Commission 1885–1887 under Colonel Joseph West Ridgeway, he was busy working as Boundary Settlement Officer and Assistant in charge of Banswara State and Pratapgarh. As an Attaché of the Indian Foreign Department, he worked on translating documents into French and German, apparently for the uniformed but "unofficial" military observers from those countries. He had charge of the Frontier Branch of the Foreign Department and collated the Boundary Commission's documentation.
From 1884 to 1888, he was Assistant Secretary during the greater part of the Viceroy Lord Dufferin's tenure by accompanying the Viceroy on his tours and translating at his interviews with Indian princely rulers. In 1885, Evans-Gordon was back with the 8th Madras Regiment in Saugor as Officiating 3rd Class Political Assistant, and the following year, he was attached to the Foreign Department of the Indian Government.
In September 1886, he accompanied the Foreign Secretary of the Indian Government (Sir Mortimer Durand) up the military road being built through the Khyber Pass by Colonel Robert Warburton to the new fort at Landi Kotal. The Durand Line remains the international boundary between Afghanistan and modern-day Pakistan.
On 15 July 1887, Evans-Gordon was promoted to Captain in the Indian Staff Corps, as Assistant Secretary at the Foreign Department from 1888 to 1892. As political officer in 1888, he was prominently connected with negotiations for the surrender of Ghazi Ayub Khan, who eight years earlier had defeated a British army at the Battle of Maiwand during the Second Anglo-Afghan War and had laid siege to Khandahar. He sought refuge in Iran, where he entered into negotiations with Sir Mortimer Durand, now ambassador at Teheran. Evans-Gordon took charge of him on his arrival in India and escorted him and his entourage from Karachi to Rawalpindi.
Indian attitudes to Jews
Unlike in many other parts of the world, Jews have historically lived in India without any instances of anti-Semitism from the local majority populace, the Hindus, but Jews were persecuted by the Portuguese during their control of Goa.
Political career in Britain
Background
The Stepney constituency, one of the poorest districts of London, saw in a rise in immigration during the late 19th century and early 20th century, partially as a result of the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire As far back as 1889, a House of Commons Committee had concluded that there had been an increase in pauperism in the East End of London by the crowding out of English labour from foreign immigrants.
In July 1894, Lord Rosebery proposed a Bill in the House of Lords designed to reform the current legislation on aliens although it was withdrawn in August 1894 after its second reading. Restrictionism came to be a notable canvassing topic in the 1892 and 1895 general elections, and the recently succeeded Earl of Hardwicke proposed a similar Aliens Bill in 1898. That year, a year after Evans-Gordon had left the Army, a by-election was held in Stepney after the sudden death of the Tory MP Frederick W. Isaacson. Evans-Gordon stood as the Conservative candidate but lost to the Liberal journalist William Charles Steadman by 20 votes.
MP for Stepney
Evans-Gordon was elected as MP for Stepney on an anti-alien platform in the 1900 general election and held the seat until 1907. Along with the somewhat older Howard Vincent, he was among the first MPs to arouse public opposition to immigration. Although the growing sense of anti-alien feeling found expression in certain localised quarters of the franchised electorate, the primary issues in the 1900 poll were a desire to end the Second Boer War (hence the nickname (khaki election) and the vexed question of home rule for Ireland.
After his election, Evans-Gordon became the brains and driving force behind the British Brothers' League (BBL), an anti-alien pressure group formed in Stepney in May 1901, but he took care to front the League with one William Stanley Shaw, an unimportant City clerk who was its first president. Howard Vincent (MP for Sheffield Central since 1885) and several East End Conservative MPs (Murray Guthrie, Spencer Charrington and Thomas Dewar) became members of the League.
Evans-Gordon became known as one of the most vocal critics of aliens at the time and commented that "a storm is brewing which, if it is allowed to burst, will have deplorable results". Once elected he continued his theme of anti-immigrant rhetoric. He claimed in 1902 that "not a day passes but English families are ruthlessly turned out to make room for foreign invaders. The rates are burdened with the education of thousands of foreign children".
Evans-Gordon and the BBL were instrumental in setting up a Royal Commission on immigration of which he was a member.
Over a two-month period, Evans-Gordon travelled extensively in Eastern Europe, found out at first hand about the highly-restrictive conditions imposed on Jews in the Pale of Settlement and in Rumania His book (with map) about his fact-finding mission, The Alien Immigrant, (Evans-Gordon 1903) is an even-handed account of his research. In the first chapter, it highlights the apparent concern of the British Board of Deputies for and sometimes its antipathy toward the refugees from foreign shores. Although it contains some gratuitous low-level antisemitism, the book in general disinterestedly records the situation of the Jews and at one point favourably compares conditions of the poor of Libau to the "horrors of the East End." On the other hand, the conditions of hand-loom workers in Łódź moved him to this description: The industry is carried on under appalling conditions. I shall never forget the places in which I saw this work being done. It would need the pen of a Zola to describe them. Three or four looms were crammed into one room with as many families. I have never, even in Vilna or the East of London, seen human beings condemned to live in such surroundings. They had the appearance of half-starved consumptives.
Other parliamentary business
Evans-Gordon was one of the sponsors of the Pilotage Bill 1903, which dealt with Pilotage Certificates. Although the bill was read a second time in May 1906, it was withdrawn.
During the Anglo-French Festival 1904 to celebrate the Entente Cordiale, Evans-Gordon apparently proposed an unprecedented multiple joint gathering in Westminster Hall, London, in August.
Later life
On 1 May 1907, Evans Gordon resigned from the Commons and retired from politics by becoming a steward of the Chiltern Hundreds.
He died suddenly on 31 October 1913(1913-10-31) (aged 56) at his home at 4 Chelsea Embankment, London. A notice of his memorial service appeared in The Times.
He was the owner of a 24 hp Thornycroft Phaeton, delivered on 1 June 1906.
He was a member of several clubs: Carlton, Boodle's, Naval & Military and Orleans.
Family life
In 1892 Captain William Evans Gordon married Julia Charlotte Sophia Stewart (b. 21 June 1846) (Julia, Marchioness of Tweeddale), daughter of Lt.-Colonel Keith William Stewart Mackenzie (9 May 1818 – ? June 1881) and of Hannah Charlotte Hope Vere.
Julia was previously twice married: firstly (as his second wife, on 8 October 1873) to the Right Hon. Arthur Hay, 9th Marquess of Tweeddale, d. 1878; without issue. Secondly, in 1887 she married (as his second wife), the Right Hon. Sir John Rose, 1st Baronet, GCMG, of Queensgate, London, who died in 1888; without issue. Her third marriage to William Evans Gordon was also without issue.
Julia was the sister of James Stewart-Mackenzie, 1st Baron Seaforth, who fought with the 9th Lancers during the Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878–1880 (later Colonel of the regiment), and was later military secretary to M. E. Grant Duff. He married the daughter of Edward Steinkopff, owner of the St James's Gazette and dedicatee of Evans-Gordon's The Alien Immigrant. Julia and James had one further sibling, Mary Jeune, Baroness St Helier, society hostess and politician.
Evans-Gordon's siblings included:
Henry (1842–1909), a stockbroker in London; married to Mary Sartoris, daughter of Edward Sartoris MP.
Jessica (1852–1887), who married Thomas Gibson Bowles MP, founder of Vanity Fair and The Lady.
Evans-Gordon's paternal grandfather was Col. George Evans (d.1819), whose principal service in the Napoleonic wars was with the Royal African Corps.