Edwin Cornwall

Who was Edwin Cornwall?

Sir Edwin Andrew Cornwall, 1st Baronet, PC, DL was an English politician and coal merchant.

Cornwall was born in Lapford, Devon. At the age of thirteen he became a clerk in a coal merchant's in Hammersmith, London, and by seventeen was manager of the company's depot at Kensington. A few years later he set up his own business. In 1900 he became the first mayor of the new Metropolitan Borough of Fulham, having long served on the predecessor vestry. In 1892 he was elected to the London County Council, sitting for the Progressive Party, for which he was for eight years chief whip. In 1904 he was elected chairman of the LCC and as chairman of the Parliamentary Committee of the council led efforts to clear the slums between Holborn and the Strand on the site of which were built Aldwych and Kingsway.

Having unsuccessfully contested the Fulham constituency in 1895 and 1900, in 1906 Cornwall was elected to Parliament as a Liberal for Bethnal Green North East. He was appointed a deputy lieutenant of the County of London at the end of March 1906.