Wilfred Byng Kenrick

Alderman Wilfred Byng Kenrick (4 December 1872 – 7 August 1962) was an English industrialist, politician and educationalist, who served as Lord Mayor of Birmingham.

Family

Kenrick was born on 4 December 1872. He was the son of another Birmingham civic leader, William Kenrick and, through his mother Mary Chamberlain, was a nephew of a third, her younger brother Joseph Chamberlain, as well as being a cousin to Austen and Neville Chamberlain.

He was educated at Rugby School and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1908, the family were resident at Metchley House in Edgbaston. One of Wilfred's sisters, Cicely (1869–1950), married Ernest Debenham, head of the retail chain Debenhams, in 1892. Wilfred had another sister, Millicent Mary Kenrick (1871–1932), the mother of the actor Alan Napier, and a younger brother, Gerald William Kenrick (1876–1953).

Byng Kenrick was involved in managing the family firm, Archibald Kenrick & Sons Ltd, whose origins date back to 1791, from whose day-to-day activities he stood down in 1945, retiring fully in 1953. He was, like his father before him, a governor of King Edward's School there from 1916 until his death. He was awarded the Birmingham Civic Society gold medal in 1948 and an honorary Doctor of law degree (LL.D.) by the University of Birmingham in 1959. John Everett Millais' The Ransom, which was part of the inheritance, was sold after Byng's death, and having been resold, is now in the J. Paul Getty Museum.

The Lantern Maker's Courtship, A Street Scene in Cairo by William Holman Hunt was donated by his family, to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 1962, as was Head of a Boy by Joseph Southall in 1964.

Legacy

Kenrick died on 7 August 1962. by William Bloye was commissioned anonymously in his honour in 1960 He is commemorated by a blue plaque at Grove Park, on Mill Farm Road, Harborne in Birmingham, outside a care home named The Kenrick Centre, in honour of his wider family.

A pair of flannel tennis trousers believed to have belonged to him is in the collection of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

The silver and enamel casket made by Muriel Meats to house Kenrick's Freedom of the City document was rediscovered in a storeroom at Aston University in 2001. It was subsequently placed in the care of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.