He was the Member of Parliament for Kingston upon Hull East for 13 years, and served the city as a Justice of the Peace and as High Steward.

He helped establish Reckitt and Sons, a manufacturer of household goods, as one of Kingston upon Hull's foremost businesses.

But never a great orator, and by nature a retiring man, much of his work at Westminster was completed in the committee rooms, away from the limelight.

Ferens was born on 4 May 1847 in East Thickley, a village close to the market town of Bishop Auckland, County Durham.

After attending Bishop Auckland private school until the age of 13, he found employment as a clerk in the Shildon office of the mineral department of the Stockton and Darlington Railway.

Six years later, he left home for Stockton, where he worked as a clerk to Head Wrightson & Co.[2][3] A committed autodidact, he taught himself grammar, arithmetic, mechanics, and shorthand.

While teaching at the Brunswick Sunday School he met Ester Ellen (Ettie) Field, a fellow teacher and a wealthy merchant's daughter of "rather masculine appearance.

He entered parliament as Liberal member for Kingston upon Hull East in 1906 after an unsuccessful bid for the same seat six years earlier.

He noted that "Many labourers' families have now to be content, owing to the high price of the necessaries of life, with one meal of meat in the week."

[18] On 10 August 1916, after a fatal raid by a Zeppelin in the early of the previous morning, against which the city had been able to muster only a single searchlight and one gun, he asked that adequate defences be provided and brought to action where necessary.

In reporting on the four contested Hull seats, The Times spoke of "Slashing attacks, covert insults, challenges, defiances and the incessant chatter of other weapons...

In a survey of the personalities of Free Church leaders, the Times noted that "among the most respected counsellors of Nonconformity are men who seldom figure on platforms", and went on to list Ferens among their number.

[21] In 1924 Ferens attempted to intervene on behalf William George Smith, a ship's painter who had been sentenced to death for murder at York Assizes.

A telegram addressed to the King was sent in the early hours of 9 December appealing for the exercise of the Royal Prerogative of Mercy.

[8] His personal wealth increased quickly, in line with the growth of Reckitt and Sons, affording him the opportunity to make ever more generous donations.

In his letter, which was read out at a council meeting, Ferens explained that the shares and the land were to be used to build an art gallery.

[28] A year later, the Queen opened an extension to Farringtons Girls School, Chislehurst, Kent, which Ferens had made possible with a donation of a similar amount.

He wrote to the lord mayor of Kingston upon Hull to inform him that he intended to donate £250,000 towards the foundation of a university college in the city.

[32] The college would be built in the west of city on an eighteen and a half acre site, which Ferens had previously donated.

Ferens remained a modest man; he saw giving as a moral duty and repeatedly declined offers of ennoblement.

[8] In replying to the headmaster's speech when he visited Kingswood school in 1926, the King said: The headmaster is right in assuming that I am already well acquainted with Mr Ferens’s benefactions in other parts of the country; this is not the first time I have been associated with him in this manner, and though I know the last thing that he would want would be a public expression of thanks on my part, I would like to be allowed to share in the debt of gratitude which the Kingswood School owes him today.

In his will he bequeathed the house and its grounds, together with an endowment of £50,000, to be used as a rest home for poor gentlewomen and to be preserved as an open space for East Hull.

[39] The year after his death, a pageant was held to mark the opening of Ferensway, a major new thoroughfare in the centre of the city.

Alumni include the politicians John Prescott, Frank Field and Roy Hattersley, and the poet Roger McGough.

Ferens Art Gallery now houses an internationally renowned permanent collection which includes works by Antonio Canaletto, David Hockney, Stanley Spencer and Henry Moore.

Generations of Hull's children have enjoyed summers on the boating lake and drenching, perilous trips aboard its Wicksteed Splashboat.