# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Pearson, Cyril Arthur

​PEARSON, Sir CYRIL ARTHUR, first baronet (1866–1921), newspaper proprietor, was born at Wookey, Somerset, 24 February 1866, the only son of the Rev. Arthur Cyril Pearson, rector of Springfield, Essex; his mother, Philippa Maxwell-Lyte, was a granddaughter of the hymn-writer, Henry Francis Lyte [q.v.], author of ‘Abide with Me’. Pearson went to Winchester in 1880, but the straitened circumstances of his father prevented him from staying there more than two years. He continued his education under his father till 1884, when he won a clerkship offered by (Sir) George Newnes [q.v.] as a prize for a competition in Tit-Bits, a new species of popular journal. A year later he became Newnes's manager, but his salary never exceeded £350, and in 1890, being a married man with two children, he set up in business for himself as proprietor of Pearson's Weekly. Chiefly by means of ingenious guessing competitions he won a huge circulation for this venture, and started many other popular papers. In 1900 he brought out the Daily Express at a halfpenny, four years after Alfred Harmsworth (afterwards Viscount Northcliffe) had produced the Daily Mail. He advocated a protectionist policy before Mr. Chamberlain began his crusade, and he was the founder of the tariff reform league in 1903. Mr. Chamberlain described him as ‘the greatest hustler I have ever known’. In 1904, having acquired ​several provincial newspapers, he purchased the Standard, which had fallen on evil days, and at the end of 1907 entered into abortive negotiations for the purchase of The Times. In 1908 he underwent an operation for glaucoma, and was never afterwards able to read or to write. In 1910 he sold both the Standard and Evening Standard, and in 1912 disposed of his interest in the Daily Express. A year later he learned from Professor Fuchs of Vienna that he would soon be blind. He told his wife that he would never be a blind man: ‘I am going to be the blind man’. He forthwith joined the council of the National Institute for the Blind, and carried its income from £8,010 in 1913 to £358,174 in 1921. At the outbreak of war in 1914 he directed the Prince of Wales's fund, and in less than six months collected over a million pounds.
Early in 1915 Pearson devoted himself to soldiers and sailors discharged from the hospitals as blind, first opening a hostel in Bayswater Road, and in March transferring this work to St. Dunstan's, in Regent's Park. He succeeded in teaching the blind not only to earn their own living, but to bear their deprivation with courage and cheerfulness. He became a popular figure and was known as ‘the blind leader of the blind’. In 1916 he was created a baronet, and in 1917 received the G.B.E. On 9 December 1921 he met his death in London in a tragic manner. His foot slipped on the enamel of his bath, he was stunned by striking one of the taps, and he fell face forward into the water. He was found dead an hour and a quarter after he had entered the bathroom. He was twice married: first, in 1887 to Isobel Sarah, daughter of the Rev. F. Bennett, of Maddington, near Salisbury, by whom he had three daughters who survived him; secondly, in 1897 to Ethel Maude (created D.B.E. 1920), daughter of W. J. Fraser, of Cromartie, Herne Bay. Their only child, Neville Arthur (born 1898), succeeded to the baronetcy.
Apart from its admirable philanthropic aspect, Pearson's career is perhaps more alarming than edifying. Intellectually he was unfitted to guide, much less to form, public opinion. He knew nothing of philosophy, little of history, and less of literature and art. His opinions were the caprice of his uncriticized intuitions, and he was resentful of opposition, impatient of argument. Happily for his readers, whom he sought to stampede rather than to inform, his tastes were harmless and his nature wholesome. He had a genuine feeling for country life and a real devotion to games and sports. Wealth did not corrupt him, and the loss of sight did not deject him. He will be remembered chiefly by his work for the blind, the part which he played in helping General Baden-Powell to start the boy scout movement, and his ‘fresh air fund’ (1892) which for many years has sent numbers of poor children into the country. He paid in his own person most of those penalties which nature exacts of the ‘hustler’.
[The Times, 10 December 1921; Sidney Dark, Life of Sir Arthur Pearson, 1922; personal knowledge.]
H. B-e.