George Melly

George Melly (1830–1894) was an English merchant and politician from Liverpool, a member of a Swiss-descended trading family. As a young man he traveled with his parents, brother and sister up the Nile to Khartoum in 1850 and 1851, farther than ordinary tourists went, and published his journal of the trip the following year; his father died of fever on the return journey through the desert. He entered the family business, became a prominent Liberal in Liverpool and sat in Parliament for Stoke-upon-Trent from 1868 to 1875, speaking for free public libraries and popular education. The jazz singer and writer George Melly was his great-grandson.