Item MAR/25/810a - Ministry of Labour report

John Arthur Ransome Marriott was born on 17 August 1859 in Bowden, Cheshire, the eldest son of Francis Marriott and his wife Elizabeth. He was educated at Repton School and New College Oxford, graduating with a second class degree in modern history in 1882. He was active in the Canning Club during his undergraduate career.

In 1883 Marriott was appointed as a lecturer at New College, before taking up a position teaching modern history at Worcester College the following year. He continued at Worcester College until 1920, from 1914 onwards as a Fellow of the College, specialising in political and international history. During the course of his career he wrote over 40 books on historical and political subjects.

Marriott's major contribution to education dates from 1886, when he was recruited as an Oxford University extension lecturer by the secretary of the extension delegacy in Oxford, M. E. Sadler. Extension lecturers had been sent out by the university to give academic courses in provincial towns and cities in England since 1878. Marriott was immediately attracted to the work: he was a natural platform orator and able to hold large audiences. Marriott went on to succeed Sadler as head of the extension lectures in 1895.

Marriott had been adopted as a Conservative parliamentary candidate for East St Pancras in 1885, though he subsequently withdrew his candidacy. In the following year he was defeated in the general election as Conservative candidate for Rochdale. In 1914 he was defeated in a contest for the Conservative candidacy for the vacant Oxford University seat in parliament. But in March 1917 he was elected unopposed as Conservative MP for Oxford City, a beneficiary of the party-political truce under the wartime coalition. He was re-elected in the 'coupon' election of 1918, but defeated by the Liberal candidate in the general election of 1922. He returned to the Commons after the general election of 1923 as MP for York. There he was defeated in 1929 by a Labour candidate, and retired from active politics.

Marriott married Henrietta Robinson, daughter of the Reverend W. Percy Robinson, warden of Trinity College, Glenalmond, on 7 April 1891; they had one daughter, Elizabeth Dorothy Cicely (known as Cicely), who was born in 1892. Marriott was knighted in 1924, and he died at the Montpellier Hotel, Llandrinod Wells, on 6 June 1945.