NOBLE, Joseph William (1799-1861), of Dannett’s Hall, nr. Leicester, Leics.

A ‘distinguished physician’ and mayor of Leicester, Noble’s political opinions were expressed through the division lobby during his brief parliamentary career.2Morn. Chro., 11 July 1853. He came from a Leicestershire family, and, unlike his father and brothers, pursued a medical career instead of going into the church.3Two of his three brothers, John (b. 1804) and Robert Turlington (b. 1810) were ordained as Anglican priests. The former held a succession of clerical appointments, including in Leicestershire, while the latter went to India as a missionary. Al. Cant., pt. II, iv. 555-56. He became a Licenciate of the Society of Apothecaries in 1819 and a member of the Royal College of Surgeons the following year.4F. Boase, Modern English Biography (1897), ii. 1157. After completing his medical degree at Cambridge, he became a member of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association in 1844 and was elected as a physician to Leicester General Infirmary four years later.5Ibid.; Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal (1844), p.313; London Medical Gazette (1848), vii. 688. His wife’s aunt was married to Edward Alexander, who purchased Dannett’s6As spelt in the returns, but spelt Danet’s in VCH Leics. iv. 379, and Danett’s in M. Stenton (ed.) Who’s Who of British Members of Parliament (1976), i. 286. Hall, near Leicester in 1804, on whose death in 1825 it passed to her mother and then to her.7Burke’s landed gentry (1847), ii. 1531; VCH Leics., iv. 381-82. A ‘Reformer’ in politics, Noble was elected to Leicester town council at its first elections in 1835, became a magistrate in 1839 and an alderman in 1841.8Dod’s parliamentary companion (1860), 256; H. Hartopp, Roll of the mayors and lord mayors of Leicester, 1209 to 1935 ([1936]), 205. He was also vice-president of the town’s Literary and Philosophical Society.9W. White, History, gazetteer and directory of Leicestershire and Rutland (1846), 97. After 1848, Noble accommodated many European political refugees, and the Hungarian patriot Kossuth was apparently among the visitors to Dannett’s Hall in the early 1850s.10I. Ellis, Records of nineteenth-century Leicester (1935), 193, 328.

In 1852 Noble presided over the public meeting which adopted the two Liberal candidates for Leicester.11Daily News, 1 July 1852. While serving as mayor in 1859, he was persuaded to come forward as a second candidate by local radicals, who shrewdly calculated that his popularity and public position would be electoral assets, and he narrowly beat a Conservative to second place, finishing behind another radical.12Leeds Mercury, 14 Apr. 1859; Birmingham Daily Post, 19 Apr. 1859.

Noble is not known to have spoken in the chamber and it appears that he did not serve on any committees, leaving his political activity and opinions to be inferred from his voting record. A lax attender, who when present generally supported the Liberals, Noble, surprisingly perhaps, appears to have been absent from many of the divisions on public health and medicine during his brief stint in Parliament. He voted twice for the abolition of church rates, and also supported the repeal of paper duties.13House of Commons Division Lists, 1859 session 2 June 1859, 13 July 1859; ibid., 1860 session, 8 Feb. 1860, 12 Mar. 1860.

While recuperating at Malaga, Spain, Noble contracted cholera, from which he died, 6 January 1861.14Gent. Mag. (1861), ccx. 232; Hartopp, Mayors of Leicester, 205. His personal effects were sworn under £16,000 and he was succeeded by his only child, Mark Noble (b. 1834).15Ibid. The information on Mark Noble is taken from Al. Cant. pt. II, iv. 556 which says he attended Brighton College, was admitted to Gonville and Caius College, Camb. 3 Feb. 1852, but matric. 30 Mar. 1855, Magdalen, Oxf., BA 1858, MA 1860, and was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, 3 Nov. 1870. Soon after his death, however, Dannett’s Hall was sold to the Leicester Freehold Land Society.16VCH Leics., iv. 381-82.