Francis Herbert Stead

Francis Herbert Stead (1857 – 14 January 1928), commonly cited as F. H. Stead, was an English social reformer notable for the establishment of Browning Hall in London, 1895, and for his work on the National Committee of Organised Labour which waged a decade-long campaign for the introduction of a general tax-funded system of old-age pensions from 1899.

Biography Francis Herbert Stead was born in 1857 in Howdon, near Wallsend, North Tyneside, in the north-east of England, the son of a Congregational minister, the Rev William Stead, and Isabella (née Jobson), a cultivated daughter of a Yorkshire farmer. For a time Francis followed in the footsteps of his older brother William Thomas Stead, a campaigning journalist. Later he took a Master of Arts in theology at the University of Glasgow in 1881 and trained there for the ministry. He thereafter studied in Germany and travelled in Europe.

He was the Minister of Gallowtree Gate Congregational Church, Leicester, from 1884 to 1890,

Stead died at Blackheath on 14 January 1928.