Francis Schnadhorst was a Birmingham draper and English Liberal Party politician. He briefly held elected office on Birmingham Council, and was offered the chance to stand for Parliament in winnable seats, but he found his true metier was in political organisation and administration both in his home town as secretary of the highly successful Birmingham Liberal Association from 1867 to 1884, and nationally as secretary of the newly formed National Liberal Federation from 1877 to 1893. He was famously described as "the spectacled, sallow, sombre" Birmingham draper who within a short period of time was to establish himself through the Birmingham Liberal caucus as one of the most brilliant organisers in the country.

The National Liberal Federation (1877–1936) was the union of all English and Welsh Liberal Associations. It held an annual conference which was regarded as being representative of the opinion of the party's rank and file and was broadly the equivalent of a present-day party conference.