Researching John Bowes

He was born in Clones, County Monaghan, Ireland around 1812 and came to Upper Canada in 1833. He worked for his brother-in-law in York, Upper Canada (later Toronto), then opened a dry goods business with another brother-in-law in 1838.

He was president of the Toronto and Guelph Railway and also served on the board of directors of several other companies. In 1850, he was elected to city council and council selected him as mayor in 1851, 1852 and 1853.

His mayoralty of Toronto was clouded by claims of corruption. In 1853 George Taylor Denison II, and several other alderman, resigned mid-term to protest what they described as Bowes corruption. Bowes and Francis Hincks had benefitted from a bailout of the Toronto, Simcoe & Lake Huron Union Railroad (later the Northern Railway. Hincks, in his capacity as the Province of Canada's Inspector General (effectively Finance Minister), had sponsored legislation to issue bonds to pay back the railway's investors, without revealing that he and Bowes had bought out a large block of the stock, at a discounted value. The pair netted a quick gain of 10,000 pounds - a fortune in those days.

Although he was cleared of any charges, Bowes was forced to pay the profit that he had made to the city. In 1854, he was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada representing Toronto. He was elected to city council again in 1856 and served as mayor from 1861 to 1863. He died in Toronto in 1864.

Bowes was a tail-end batsman and a right-arm medium-paced seam bowler. His single first-class game before the Second World War came in 1938 against Northamptonshire, and Wisden Cricketers' Almanack noted that he "used his exceptional height for making the ball lift and when seven Lancashire batsmen were out for 49 he hit so well that 67 runs were added". In the match he took only one wicket but the 39 he made in his only innings of the game would prove to be his highest first-class score.

Bowes returned to Lancashire after the war and played regularly in 1947: most of his games were for the second eleven in the Minor Counties Championship, but in August he had a run of seven matches in the first team. His best bowling came in the game against the South Africans, when he took four wickets for 103 runs in 41 overs, all of them top-order batsmen. After a single match in 1948 he did not play for Lancashire again.

Bowes qualified as an umpire and stood in Minor Counties matches from 1955 and then in first-class domestic matches in England in 1958 and 1959.

He was born in Parramatta to baker John Bowes (later a Wesleyan clergyman) and Euphemia Allen, a temperance reformer and suffragette. He was a commercial agent around Morpeth and Tamworth and from 1885 was principal promoter of the Hunter River Farmers' and Consumers' Cooperative Company. He served a period as mayor of Morpeth. On 23 January 1874 he married Emma Jane Young at Kurrajong. In 1887 he was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly as the Protectionist member for Morpeth. Defeated in 1889, he was re-elected in 1891. His seat was abolished in 1894 and he was defeated running for the urban seat of Newtown-St Peters. Bowes died in Sydney in 1897.