Sir George Young, 3rd Baronet

George Young, 3rd Baronet (1837–1930) was born at Cookham on 15 September 1837, the oldest of the five sons of Sir George Young, 2nd Baronet and Susan Praed,^[1] the sister of Winthrop Mackworth Praed.^[2][3] Mackworth Young was one of his younger brothers.^[4]

Young succeeded his father to the baronetcy in February 1848 at the age of ten.^[5] He attended Eton and then studied at Trinity College, Cambridge where he was elected president of the Cambridge Union in 1860.^[5] He went on to study Law, qualified as a Barrister and was called to the bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1864 but he never practised at law.^[1][5]

He stood for parliament, as a Liberal candidate for Chippenham in the general election of November 1868. In the 1874 general election he was Liberal candidate for Plymouth.^[6] He stood again for Plymouth in the general election of April 1880 and in the bye-election held there in June 1880 (after the conservative Edward Bates had been unseated on the grounds of illegal payments by his agents).^[5] He was unsuccessful on each occasion.^[5]

The 1868 election was held soon after the passage of the Reform Act 1867 which enfranchised many male householders, that greatly increased the number of men who could vote in elections in the United Kingdom and William Gladstone's Liberals increased their majority. Although Young wasn't elected, he was given a role within the Gladstone administration and was one of the three Royal Commissioners on Coolie Immigration who were appointed by the Colonial Office in 1870 to investigate the conditions of Chinese and Indian labourers in British Guiana (now known as Guyana) who had been brought there to work the sugar plantations after the abolition of slavery.^[6][1][7][8]

The commission's work involved spending several months in British Guiana, whilst there he joined a small group, led by Charles Barrington Brown, exploring the Kaieteur Waterfall on the River Potaro.^[1][9]

After his return from British Guiana he married and began work as the secretary to the Bessborough commission on the working of the 1870 Irish Land Act. He drafted the commission's report, which made radical proposals for increasing the rights of tenants in Ireland.^[10] The report was published in 1881 and the year after its publication he accepted an invitation to become private secretary to Lord Frederick Cavendish, the newly installed chief secretary for Ireland; Young's telegram of acceptance was in Cavendish's pocket when he and Burke were murdered in Phoenix Park, Dublin.^[5][11]

In the summer of 1871 he became one of six assistant commissioners appointed to a Royal Commission to inquire into the working of friendly societies and charged with making a report with recommendations for further consolidation and amendment of the Friendly Societies Acts.^[5][12][1] The commission's report led to the Friendly Societies Act 1875.

In 1874 Gladstone's incumbent Liberals lost decisively, even though their party won a majority of the votes cast^[13] but Young's work on various government commissions continued, these included an appointment in 1875 as secretary to the Royal Commission, led by Sir James Fergusson, inquiring into the operation of the Factory and Workshop Acts.^[14] and later a permanent position with the Charity Commission.^[1]

He was appointed as Chief Charity Commissioner (1903–06).^[1][15]

Young was a member of the Council of University College, London from 1875 and appointed President of the Senate (1881–86).^[5][16]

In 1882 he was appointed Charity Commissioner under the Endowed Schools Acts^[1] and in that role he gave evidence to the Royal Commission on Secondary Education (1895) led by Viscount Bryce. The Commission's report described him as "one of our most important witnesses",^[17] in his evidence he maintained that the numerous entrance scholarships offered for open competition at Oxford and Cambridge are having "an injurious effect on the Secondary Education of the middle classes". In his judgment such competitions, because they involve examinations imposed by authorities outside the schools, fetter the best teaching; they drag many schools into a curriculum little suited to the needs of their scholars.^[17]