John Throgmorton Middlemore, 1st Baronet was born on June 9, 1844, in Edgbaston, Warwickshire, England.
He was a social reformer and Liberal Unionist politician, who served as Member of Parliament for Birmingham North. In 1899 he was elected to the House of Commons and he held the seat until the constituency was abolished at the 1918 General Election. He also served as a Justice of Peace for Birmingham and Worcestershire.
In the 1860s he spent some time in North America where he obtained a medical degree in Brunswick, Maine.
In 1872 he opened the Middlemore Children's Emigration Home in Birmingham, England and took his first group of children to Canada in 1873. By 1875, he had established his own receiving home in London, Ontario called the Guthrie Home. Middlemore brought children to Canada from workhouses, industrial schools, reformatories, and private sponsors in England. Starting in 1885, he settled small parties of children in New Brunswick. In 1893, he began bringing children to Halifax and settling them in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. He managed the Children's Emigration Homes for the training of destitute children in agriculture in Canada. Approximately 5,200 children came to Canada through the Middlemore Homes between 1873 and 1932.
In 1919 he was made a Baronet of Selly Oak, Worcestershire. He died on October 17, 1924, in Worcester, Worcestershire, England.