Early Life
Born to William and Ann Forster, Quaker parents at Bradpole, near Bridport in Dorset, he was educated at the Quaker school at Tottenham, where his father's family had long been settled, and on leaving school he was put into business. He declined to enter a brewery and became involved in woollen manufacture in a large way in Bradford, Yorkshire. In 1850 he married Jane Martha, eldest daughter of Dr Thomas Arnold. She was not a Quaker, and her husband was formally excommunicated for marrying her, but the Friends who were commissioned to announce the sentence "shook hands and stayed to luncheon". Forster thereafter ranked himself as a member of the Church of England.
The Forsters had no natural children, but when Mrs Forster's brother, William Arnold, died in 1859, leaving four orphans, the Forsters adopted them as their own. One of these children was H. O. Arnold-Forster, a Liberal Unionist member of parliament, who eventually became a member of Balfour's cabinet. Forster became known as a practical philanthropist early. In 1846–47, he accompanied his father to Ireland as distributor of the Friends' relief fund for the famine in Connemara, and the state of the country made a deep impression on him. He gradually began to take an active part in public affairs by speaking and lecturing.
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