Rise of Neville Chamberlain his eighteenth birthday. In later years, as Chamberlain rose to the heights of British politics, he seldom visited the school, did not enrol his own son, and rarely spoke of his time there. Joseph Chamberlain then sent Neville to Mason College (which later developed into the University of Birmingham), which both emphasised the politician's connection to Birmingham and catered to the interest in science which Neville had shown at Rugby. Neville Chamberlain studied metallurgy and engineering for two years, but had little interest in the subjects. In 1889 his father apprenticed him to a firm of accountants. Within six months,
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