[1] Despite this plea of poor health, Pease actually lived for another 37 years and spent much of the rest of his life in British East Africa hunting game and entertaining travellers who came for the safaris.

At the previous election, he had won comfortably; The Liberals had a large number of potential candidates to choose from, including officials from the local Miners' Association.

[8] Samuel was supported at the meeting by the retiring Liberal MP, Alfred Pease and emerged the victor by a majority of about three-to-one.

[4] On 23 September, ILP Leader Keir Hardie made a speech at Marske-by-the-Sea and urged the miners and other trade unionists to bring forward their own candidate.

[10] The miners resolved to stand their own man and called on the Labour Representation Committee to hold a conference on 11 October to discuss the matter.

The decision not to put forward a distinctively labour candidate and, in effect to maintain the traditional collaboration with the Liberals upset Keir Hardie and other ILP leaders.

He claimed it would make the system of education more complicated, weaken the control of the people over the Board Schools, deprive women of their right of election to the educational authorities and throw the whole of the cost of the Church and other denominational schools onto the rates and taxes while leaving the local control including the appointment of teachers in the hands of sectarian managers.

Samuel was a prominent member of the Rainbow Circle, a grouping of Liberals, Fabians and Socialists in favour of working together for the cause of political, industrial and social reform.

He supported the extension of the compensation a worker could recover from an employer in case of accident and the introduction a Bill which would limit the time a miner could be forced to work to eight hours a day.

[18] At one point he announced he would stand as a 'Liberal and Labour' candidate but this backfired as he was attacked by Glasier of the ILP who denounced it a 'vulgar piece of electioneering which ought to be strongly resented by all respectable working men.'

The Liberals were said to have expected to hold on but by a reduced majority and Samuel himself recorded that there was considerable local nervousness about the result given that the former member had been well-established and he was an outsider.

The deciding factor was thought to be the Education Bill and the opposition from nonconformist voters to the idea of Church and Roman Catholic schools financed by the rates.