LESTER, Benjamin Lester (1779-1838), of 65 High Street, Poole and Stone Cottage, nr. Poole, Dorset.

First elected in 1809, Lester, whose father had represented Poole from 1801-7, continued to sit for the borough until 1835 on the interest of his prosperous mercantile family, the town’s leading Newfoundland traders, whose alliances invariably gave them the upper hand in the internecine party squabbles of Poole’s nominally Tory corporation. A convert to reform, whose ‘independent’ support for the Whig ministry of Lord Grey had assisted his case for the establishment of a Newfoundland legislative assembly, at the 1832 general election he topped the poll as a Liberal, the ‘majority of the new constituency’ having ‘determined to exericse their newly acquired right in favour of those who had advocated the reform bill through all its stages’.1HP Commons 1820-32; Dorset County Chron. 5 Aug. 1830, 13 Dec. 1832.

A silent and apparently irregular attender in this period, described as ‘inclining to radical opinions’ in a parliamentary guide, Lester supported ministers on the address, 8 Feb. 1833, and the currency, 25 Apr. 1833, but was in Joseph Hume’s radical minorities for the abolition of sinecures, 15 Feb., 16 July 1833, and inquiry into the civil list, 5 May 1834.2Dod’s Parl. Companion (1834), 137. He also sided with the Irish radicals against the Irish coercion bill, 20 Mar. 1833, and tithes commutation bill, 5 Aug. 1833, against which he had presented a petition, 27 June 1833. He voted for the immediate and unfettered abolition of colonial slavery, 6, 14 May, and brought up a constituency petition against the house and window tax, 3 June 1833. He may have been more active as a committee man, being appointed to inquiries on the running of the Commons, 19 Mar., Stafford’s controverted election, 11 June, cinque port pilots, 19 June, British channel fisheries, 11 June 1833, drunkenness, 4 June 1834, and the Dungarvan election, 1 July 1834, though how regularly he turned up is unclear. As a local magistrate, he sat on the assizes inquiry into the Dorchester labourers (Tolpuddle martyrs) in March 1834.3PP 1835 (250) xlvi. 189. That December, after learning that two Tories had secured the backing of Poole’s capricious corporation, he opted to retire at the general election.4The Times, 17 Dec. 1834; D. Beamish, J. Hillier, H. Johnstone, Mansions and Merchants of Poole and Dorset (1976), 115. His Liberal colleague, for whom he voted in the ensuing contest (along with his Liberal replacement), paid tribute to his services on the hustings, saying he was ‘as independent a member as ever entered the British House of Commons’ and ‘seldom or ever absent from his duties’.5Poole Borough Pollbook, 29, 39.

It has been suggested that Lester subsequently moved abroad, and though eligible he did not vote in the highly contested Poole council election of December 1835.6HP Commons, 1820-32; PP 1836 (128) xxi. 307-563. Dying in Paris in July 1838, the French death certificate, dated 25 July, described him as a ’rentier’, resident in the Avenue de Neuilly. By his will, dated 10 May 1838, the bulk of his estate was divided between his siblings and their children. He also made provision for a Miss Jane Moore, the mistress of Parkstone boarding school near Poole, and her daughters Eliza and Mary Ann, who were probably his children. His brother John Bingley Garland (1791-1875), who appears to have assumed responsibility for at least two more illegitimate sons in Newfoundland, served as first Speaker of that colony’s legislative assembly.7Dorset County Chron. 26 July 1838; Gent. Mag. (1838), ii. 343; Dorset RO, Lester-Garland mss E4; F32-34, 38; PROB 11/1899/539; IR26/1490/487.