Business and Political Career
Born in Kennington, to a working class family but educated privately, Norris left school at 14 to join a solicitor's firm, leaving 18 years later to pursue a career in property development trade, partnering W.G. Allen in the firm Allen & Norris. He made his fortune building houses in south and west London — Fulham in particular. He was commissioned into the 2nd Tower Hamlets Rifle Volunteers in 1896, but resigned the following year. He was later Mayor of the Metropolitan Borough of Fulham from 1909 to 1919, a member of the London County Council from 1916 to 1919, and served as Conservative MP for Fulham East from 1918 to 1922, retiring after falling out with his party on the issue of tariff reform.
During World War I Norris had worked heavily as a military recruitment officer for the British Army. He served in the 3rd Middlesex Artillery Volunteers and in 1917 he was knighted and given the honorary rank of colonel for services to his country. He was also a prominent Freemason, rising to become Grand Deacon of the United Grand Lodge of England, and a well-known local philanthropist with close connections to the Church of England; he counted the Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Thomas Davidson as a personal friend.
Read more about this topic: Henry Norris (businessman)
Famous quotes containing the words business and, business, political and/or career:
“The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“There is something in this native land business and you cannot get away from it, in peace time you do not seem to notice it much particularly when you live in foreign parts but when there is a war and you are all alone and completely cut off from knowing about your country well then there it is, your native land is your native land, it certainly is.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity, quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace.”
—Benito Mussolini (1883–1945)
“The 19-year-old Diana ... decided to make her career that of wife. Today that can be a very, very iffy line of work.... And what sometimes happens to the women who pursue it is the best argument imaginable for teaching girls that they should always be able to take care of themselves.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)