page_title: Thomas Charles Scanlen
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Charles Scanlen / Later life
caption_attribution_description: English: Thomas Charles Scanlen in later life - Rhodesia
context_page_description: Sir Thomas Charles Scanlen KCMG was a politician and administrator of the Cape Colony.
  He was briefly Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, from 1881 to 1884, during an especially turbulent period in the Cape's history, dominated by conflicts such as the Basuto Gun War. He was also the Cape's first locally-born Prime Minister.
context_section_description: In describing him, the Dictionary of National Biography states:
  Scanlen was not an outstanding politician. He had a good legal brain, was a conscientious worker and a good back bencher, but he was neither a good orator nor a leader. It was his misfortune that, in assuming the Premiership, he also inherited Sprigg's legacy of intractable problems. In private life, Scanlen was modest and retiring. He was a difficult conversationalist, having virtually no small talk, but he possessed a dry sense of humour and was a shrewd judge of character.
  Scanlen continued to serve as leader of the parliamentary opposition until 1889 but his personal life suffered. He underwent considerable financial losses due to a series of bad investments. His first wife had died in 1856. The couple had only had two surviving children: a libertine, Charles (whom Scanlen dubbed "the prodigal Charlie") and an invalid, Kate). In 1888 his second wife, his cousin Sarah Ann Dennison, left him and moved to England with their child. Of the ten children he fathered in both his marriages, only four survived to adulthood.
  In 1895, he moved to Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) where he started a legal practice. He went on to become legal adviser to Cecil Rhodes's Chartered Company, for which he acted as Administrator on several occasions, and acting Public Prosecutor. In 1896 he became senior member of the Rhodesian Executive Council, and in 1899 he became a member of the Rhodesian Legislative Council (of which he became the Chairman in 1902).
  Scanlen retired on pension in 1908 and died on 15 December 1912 in Salisbury, Rhodesia.
caption: Scanlen in later life in Rhodesia
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