Thomson Hankey

Thomson Hankey (15 June 1805 – 13 January 1893) was a British merchant, a banker and a Liberal Party politician. Hankey was the son of Thomson Hankey from Portland Place in London, and his wife Martha, the daughter of Benjamin Harrison from Clapham Common. He became a merchant in the City of London and a director the Bank of England, serving first as its Deputy Governor and then as its Governor from 1851 to 1853. In June 2020 the Bank of England issued a public apology for the involvement of Hankey, amongst other employees, in the slave trade following the investigation by the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership at UCL. At the 1852 general election, Hankey unsuccessfully contested the borough of Boston in Lincolnshire. He then contested the by-election in June 1853 for the City of Peterborough, where he lost by a margin of 21 votes (out of a total 451) to the Liberal George Hammond Whalley. Whalley had been returned for Peterborough at a by-election in December 1852, but an election petition was lodged and his election was subsequently declared void on 8 June 1853 on the grounds that Whalley had been complicit in the "treating" of voters. After his second by-election win, a further petition was lodged, and a committee of the House of Commons found that Whalley's election was invalid, because he had been disqualified as a result of the previous void election. The seat was therefore awarded to Hankey, who was declared duly elected on 14 August 1853. Hankey was re-elected in 1857, 1859 and 1865, but was defeated at the 1868 general election by the Liberal William Wells. He was re-elected in 1874, but was defeated in 1880. His name was discussed in early 1882 as a possible candidate for any future vacancy in Peterborough, but when Hampden Whalley resigned in June 1883, Hankey did not contest the resulting by-election, and did not stand again thereafter.