1936
(479)
(Incorporated Insurance Broker).
Was born in Leicester on the 16th January, 1880, the son of the late James Christopher Swain, who was a pioneer of the Boot and Shoe Industry.
He was elected to the City Council in November, 1919, to represent St. Martin's Ward. He has continued to represent that Ward without a break ever since, only once having to contest the seat.
We find him attending St. Saviour's Church School as an infant. The family then moved to Narborough, where he attended first one and then another private school and later the National School at Huncote. He finished his schooling at the age of fifteen at Holy Trinity, Leicester, when he entered the employment of the late John Storey, Solicitor, who had been Town Clerk of Leicester for twenty years.
Although originally intended for the law, at the age of twenty two he found more scope in the insurance world and commenced business on his own account in 1906. He founded and is now Governing Director of the firm of A. H. Swain and Co. Ltd.
Always deeply interested in politics he has been a very active leader of the Conservative party for many years. For seven or eight years he acted as Chairman of the Electricity Committee during a period of great development. He was also Vice, Chairman of the East Midlands Electricity Advisory Board. Considerable sensation was caused through the publication by him of "The Economic Effects of Monopoly on British Power Stations". This was a reply to the attacks of combined manufacturers of heavy plant upon those municipal corporations who felt compelled to purchase plant from Switzerland, of which Leicester was one.
He is also the author of Commercial Credit Risks"-a highly specialised subject of insurance in connection with which he was decorated by the French Government with the Palm d' Academy.
The City Council elected him as Alderman during his Lord Mayoralty, his name having been added to the Commission for the Peace some years earlier.
A widower with no family,-his wife (Mary Aitken Tarbet, of Largs, Ayrshire) died in November 1933. His sister, Miss Nellie Ada Swain, acted as Lady Mayoress.
Residence 1933: "Darvel", Leicester.
