Researching Samuel Perry

Born in Stockport, Cheshire, Sam Perry began his education with a scholarship at the Stockport Grammar School but was forced to give up school at the age of ten when his father died, becoming a cotton spinner like his father. He became involved in the local co-operative movement with the Stockport Co-operative Society then Birkenhead and on the creation of the Co-operative Party in 1917 was appointed its first national secretary.

Appointment as the senior official in the Party brought Perry to London with nine-year-old Fred. The family lived on the co-operatively run Brentham Estate in Ealing, where Fred was able to use the tennis courts and cricket pitch. Sam Perry unsuccessfully contested the 2-member Stockport constituency at a by-election in 1920 and again at the subsequent 1922 general election.

Perry was elected at the 1923 general election as Member of Parliament for Kettering in Northamptonshire, defeating the Conservative MP Owen Parker. He lost the seat at the 1924 election to the Conservative Sir Mervyn Manningham-Buller, and won it back at the 1929 election, but was defeated again at the 1931 general election by the Conservative John Eastwood.

Perry continued as national secretary of the Co-operative Party until 1942. He died in Willesden aged 77.

After schooling in Southport Perry took a biochemistry degree at the University of Liverpool. His academic career was then interrupted by war service in the Royal Artillery, though he spent much of the Second World War in Italian and German prisoner-of-war camps after being captured during the Western Desert Campaign. After his liberation and demobilisation, he undertook doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge. This was followed by a period of post-doctoral study in the United States, before returning to Cambridge as a lecturer. In 1959 he moved to the University of Birmingham as head of its new biochemistry department.

Perry's later career saw him serve on several of the British research councils, and working with the charities the British Heart Foundation and the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974.

Perry, who was referred to in the press as S. M. Perry, was born in Venango County, Pennsylvania, on May 12, 1836, and lived in Piqua, Ohio, before coming to Marysville, California, in 1860, where he was in the hardware business, which he left in favor of a gold rush to the John Day River country in Oregon. After returning to the East for several years, he went back to Los Angeles in 1875.

A Republican, he was elected to the City Council in 1878 and reelected in 1886. He was elected to the Board of Supervisers from the Second District in 1888.

The son of John Perry of Venango County, Maine, Perry was married to Hattie Sargent in Coles County, Illinois, on December 25, 1868.

Perry, owner of a plumbing business at 80 South Main Street, went into insolvency in July 1891.

He died at his home, 1952 Lovelace Avenue, Los Angeles, on July 21, 1898, leaving his widow, three sons, and a daughter. He is buried in Evergreen Cemetery.