Rise of Neville Chamberlain a half years as Chancellor, directing Britain's financial policies as the nation emerged from the Depression. When Baldwin (who had replaced MacDonald as Prime Minister in 1935) retired in 1937, Chamberlain succeeded him. Chamberlain was born in a house called Southbourne, in the Edgbaston district of Birmingham, England, as the only son of the second marriage of Joseph Chamberlain, who later became Mayor of Birmingham, and who also served as a Cabinet minister. Joseph Chamberlain had fathered two children by his first marriage, Beatrice and Austen. Joseph's first wife, Harriet, died giving birth to Austen; Neville's mother, the former Florence
Rise of Neville Chamberlain in which Austen was Foreign Secretary and Neville Chamberlain declined to serve again as Chancellor, preferring his former position as Minister of Health. Within two weeks of his appointment as Minister of Health, Chamberlain presented the Cabinet with an agenda containing 25 pieces of legislation he hoped to see enacted. Before he left office in 1929, 21 of the 25 had passed into law. An early, very popular piece of legislation was the Widows', Orphans' and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act 1925, passed after the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, had agreed to find whatever money was needed to