Robertson Gladstone, (15 November 1805 – 23 September 1875) was an English merchant and politician. He was the second son, and third child of Sir John Gladstone and the brother of William Ewart Gladstone who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom four times. Robertson was a successful merchant, businessman, property developer and local politician. One of the youngest men elected Mayor of Liverpool, he was religious but increasingly tolerant of nonconformity, emphasised by a move towards semi-socialist politics. Early years Robertson, along with his siblings was brought up in Liverpool at the Gladstone home in Rodney Street and then at Seaforth House from 1813. He studied at Eton College along with his older brothers Thomas and William. However, he did not seem to have the motivation to become a politician and his father felt that Eton did not suit him, with its beatings from John Keate the headmaster. John Gladstone decided that Robertson should become a merchant, first as his assistant, and then as partner. In September 1821, sixteen-year-old Robertson was sent to attend Glasgow College, where his cousin Steuart Gladstone studied before becoming an intelligent merchant-businessman. John Gladstone's sister, Mary, and her husband, Dr John Nimmo, lived in Glasgow, and Robertson boarded there with his aunt and uncle while he studied mathematics, moral philosophy and natural philosophy at the university. He then returned to Liverpool work in the offices of his father's company. On 28 September 1827 Gladstone travelled with his brother Thomas to spend the winter in Naples. Whilst there they viewed an eruption of Vesuvius. On his return to England he proposed that he should be allowed to visit the family estates in the West Indies, and his father agreed. Leaving on 12 October 1828 he travelled to Demerara, British Guiana, arriving in November and remained for three months until March 1829. Robertson Gladstone made a record of this journey in his Journal of a Voyage & Residence in the Colony of Demerara which is held in the library of the Liverpool Athenaeum. He returned to England via the United States of America where he stopped in at Philadelphia. In 1830, Gladstone built a home at Cuckoo Lane, Woolton, Liverpool. In 1833 he joined a freemason's lodge in Liverpool. He was the first Mayor of Liverpool under the age of forty, and as he got older his politics moved to the left, as with his youngest