# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/West, Algernon Edward

​WEST, Sir ALGERNON EDWARD (1832–1921), chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue, born in London 4 April 1832, was the third son of Martin John West, recorder of King's Lynn, by his wife, Lady Maria Walpole, third daughter of Horatio, second Earl of Orford, of the second creation, and great-granddaughter of the prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole. He was sent to Eton in 1843, where he made his mark as an oar, but experienced ‘an almost total neglect of any kind of education beyond a very superficial smattering of Latin and Greek’ [Recollections, i, 50]. After two years of travel and study, he matriculated in 1850 at Christ Church, Oxford, intending to take orders. The next year, having kept only two terms, he changed his plans and accepted a clerkship in the Inland Revenue department, but was transferred to the Admiralty a year later. At the end of 1854 official business took him to the seat of war in the Crimea, where he was disgusted by the ‘gross mismanagement’.
Tall, handsome, and a favourite in society, West earned advancement by tact, ability, and hard work. After service as private secretary in the India Office (1860–1866) to Sir Charles Wood (afterwards Viscount Halifax) and the Earl of Ripon, his great opportunity came in 1868, when Gladstone, then prime minister, appointed him to be his private secretary. ‘After nearly four years of delightful and confidential intercourse’ [Recollections, ii, 17], Gladstone rewarded him with a commissionership of inland revenue (1872), a post in which for twenty years he served in succession eight chancellors of the exchequer from Robert Lowe (afterwards Viscount Sherbrooke) to (Viscount) Goschen. His financial capacity endeared him to Gladstone, and the two men became devoted friends. It was on West's suggestion that Gladstone abolished the malt tax in 1880. In 1883 West cruised in the Pembroke Castle with Gladstone and Tennyson, and was entrusted with the negotiations which ended in Tennyson's acceptance of a peerage.
West, who had been chairman of the Inland Revenue Board since 1881, was created K.C.B. in 1886. In 1892 he retired from the civil service and offered his services as private secretary to Gladstone, who was forming his last administration. His Private Diaries (posthumously edited) provide a lively account of Gladstone's difficulties with his colleagues. In March 1894 West retired with his chief from party politics and was made a privy councillor. He was promoted G.C.B. in 1902. Almost ​to the last ‘Algy’ West was a conspicuous figure in Brooks's Club, on the London County Council, and, as director of several companies in the City. He died at his London house in Manchester Square 21 March 1921.
West married in 1858 Mary (died 1894), daughter of Captain the Hon. George Barrington, granddaughter of Charles, second Earl Grey, and was survived by three sons and one daughter. He was the author of Recollections (1899), Memoir of Sir Henry Keppel (1905), One City and Many Men (1908), Contemporary Portraits (1920). His Private Diaries were edited by H. G. Hutchinson in 1922.
[The Times, 22 March 1921; West's Recollections and Private Diaries; private information.]
F. W. H.