Frederick Chance
Sir Frederick William Chance was a British Liberal Party politician from Carlisle. He sat in the House of Commons from 1905 to 1910.Background
Chance was from a long-established family of businessmen and politicians in Carlisle. He ran the family's cotton-manufacturing firm in the town, Ferguson Brothers, and served as Mayor of Carlisle in 1904, before becoming a member of Cumberland County Council. Both his grandfather Joseph Ferguson and his uncle Robert Ferguson had been Members of Parliament for the borough of Carlisle and he was a brother-in-law of Sir Henry Seton-Karr, the MP for St Helens.
Carlisle's MP since 1886 was William Court Gully, who served as Speaker of the House of Commons from 1895 to 1905. Ill-health forced Gully to resign as Speaker in May 1905, and at the by-election in July 1905 Chance was elected as the Member of Parliament for Carlisle. He was re-elected unopposed in 1906, and held the seat until the January 1910 general election, when he did not stand again.
He was High Sheriff of Cumberland in 1915.
