He was one of seven children of Joseph Firbank (1819–1886), who had begun work at the age of seven in a Durham coal-mine but had become a prosperous railway contractor in South Wales and elsewhere.
[1] He was knighted in the 1902 Coronation Honours,[2] receiving the accolade from King Edward VII at Buckingham Palace on 24 October that year.
[3] Firbank lived in South Wales, at St Julians, Newport, but also in London at Clarges Street and from 1886 at the Coopers, Chislehurst.
[4] They had four children: Joseph Sydney (1884–1904), Arthur Annesley Ronald (1886–1926, who became celebrated as the novelist Ronald Firbank), Hubert Somerset (1887–1913, the father of the author Thomas Joseph Firbank, who wrote I Bought a Mountain, I Bought a Star and other books) and Heather (1888–1954).
This article about a Conservative Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom representing an English constituency and born in the 1850s is a stub.