Nathaniel Eckersley

Nathaniel Eckersley (1815 – 15 February 1892) was an English mill-owner, banker and Conservative Party politician from Standish Hall, in Lancashire. He sat in the House of Commons for three years in the 1860s, and two years in the 1880s.

Career His uncle was Colonel Nathaniel Eckersley, from Laurel House in Hindley, who served with the Duke of Wellington and at the military station established in Manchester after the Peterloo Massacre. Eckersley was a partner of the Wigan Old Bank, formerly Thomas Woodock's, Sons and Eckersley, which amalgamated in 1874 with Parr's Banking Company in Warrington. and in 1873, and was appointed as a Deputy Lieutenant of Lancashire in September 1863.

He was chairman of the Wigan Junction Railways Company.

In January 1860 he raised the 21st (Wigan) Lancashire Rifle Volunteer Corps, drawn mainly from artisans employed by the local collieries and engineering works, officered by local professional men. He commanded the unit as a captain, and was later promoted to major after it joined the 4th Administrative Battalion, Lancashire Rifle Volunteers.

In June 1873 Eckersley led Wigan's welcome for the Prince and Princess of Wales, who opened a new hospital in the town,

Parliament He was elected as one of the two Members of Parliament (MPs) for Wigan at a by-election in March 1866, following the resignation of the Conservative MP Hon. James Lindsay. The candidates then addressed the voters in the town hall. Eckersley offered himself as a "free and independent candidate", and said that until then he had never considered himself to be a politician.

He was High Sheriff of Lancashire in 1878, and in that capacity helped to organise a fund for the dependants of the victims of the explosion on 7 June 1878 at the Wood Pit Colliery in Haydock, where more than 200 miners were killed.

When Wigan's Conservative MP Lord Lindsay succeeded to his father's peerage in 1880, and Eckersley was asked to stand at the by-election in January 1881, but refused. Following the death in December 1883 of Wigan's other Conservative MP Thomas Knowles, Eckersley was returned unopposed He held the seat until when Wigan's parliamentary representation was reduced from two seats to one by the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885, and did not contest the 1885 general election.