Feather, Alderman Smith

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Watercolour portrait of Alderman Smith Feather, Mayor of Bradford, 1889-90

from John Sowden's notebooks:

"Mr Smith Feather was a well known figure in the staple trade of the city. He was like many other Bradfordians the architect of his own fortune. He was born in 1837 at Vale Mill near Oxenhope. His father was in humble circumstances and came to Bradford in the forties as a waste dealer.

His son had the schooling common to children of his position in those days and as soon as he was old enough to handle a trowel was apprentice to the trade of a mason. Until he had reached manhood he continued to work as a mason, and it was to him in later life no small pride to recall to his friends, the fact that he had worked at the direction of Saltaire Mills in 1852-3 and of Hallfield Chapel, Bradford.

Mr Smith Feather joined his father’s business and soon found that the wool business promised more congenial as well as more lucrative employment. Eventually a branch of the business which he established in foreign wools became the most important interest of Messrs John Feather & Son. Mr Smith Feather will be remembered as probably the first man to introduce and utilise camels’ hair. He took a most adventurous journey into the wild country of remote Turkestan which included hundreds of miles on camel back, extended across the Kurghiz(?) Steppes and included Bukhara and Khiva. He visited Bakha and often visited the fair at Nizhny Novgorod, also the eastern and western shores of the Caspian Sea.

In 1880 he was elected to the Bradford Town Council for the West Ward and afterwards sat for Allerton. In 1889 he was made Alderman. He never had to fight a contested election, being invariably returned unopposed. In the year 1899 he was elected Mayor.

Mr Feather was elected a member of the Bradford Chamber of Commerce in 1892 and in 1903 retired from the City Council Chambers. He died in 1907 in his seventieth year, survived by his wife and daughters."

Year

1888

Creator

John Sowden

Image filename

sowden-63