BRITISH CONSERVATISM AND THE PRIMROSE LEAGUE ... - ideals

encompassed Ladywood.
Two Habitations were also located in Edgbaston
and one in the less affluent Eastern Division. The Roll lists 927
individuals as having participated.
A Divisional Council was formed in
1887 with J. Courtenay Lord, a local Justice of the Peace, serving as
its President.
Ladywood Habitation took its name from the Ladywood
parliamentary district, a suburban community sandwiched between the
inner city borough and the outlying countryside.
Located immediately
to the south of Ladywood and still
further removed from the urban
center was the affluent Edgbaston housing development established by
Lord Calthorpe.
The moving force behind the Habitation was Lady
Sawyer, Ruling Councillor and wife to Sir James Sawyer, a physician by
profession.
They worked, in effect, as a team promoting Conservative
politics in Birmingham.
An omnipresent force in local politics, Sawyer
served as President of the Ladywood Ward of the Conservative
Association before becoming the head of the Birmingham Conservative
Association in 1887.
He also served as President to the Midland
Counties' Union of Conservative Associations in its inaugural year
(1886). 19
Sawyer stressed the importance of the League "acting entirely
iy
Ladywood Primrose Magazine, containing an enclosed reprint
from the Birmingham Daily Gazette, 3 December 1886 entitled "Midland.
Counties' Union of Conservative Associations"; March, 1887, pp. 1, 3-5;
April, 1887, pp. 9, 12; May, 1887, pp. 18-19, 25; June, 1887, p. 35;
July, 1887, pp. 42-43, 48; August, 1887, p. 58; September, 1887, pp.
66-67, 72-73.