On 6 July 1943 the Speaker informed the House of Commons of the deaths of two of its members, Brigadier John Whiteley, MP for Buckingham, and Colonel Victor Alexander Cazalet, MP for Chippenham. They had been killed in a plane crash at Gibraltar alongside the Polish Prime Minister General Sikorski, to whom Cazalet had been acting as Britain’s political liaison officer. They were among the estimated 165 MPs who served with the forces during the Second World War. An initial flurry of enlistment among MPs in 1939 was followed by a further wave after Germany’s invasion of France in 1940.

Commenting on the deaths of Cazalet and Whiteley, Winston Churchill voiced regret that ‘the list of Members who have given their lives in this second struggle against German aggression is lengthening’. He declared that when the Commons chamber – destroyed by German incendiary bombs on the night of 10-11 May 1941 – was rebuilt after the war,

‘we shall take care to inscribe their names and titles on its panels to be an example to future generations’.

Churchill’s proposal was incorporated within the reconstructed House of Commons chamber, opened in October 1950, in the form of 23 heraldic shields commemorating the MPs who died during the Second World War. These featured each MP’s family coat of arms or initials, with their surnames inscribed above. This format emulated the 19 shields installed in 1921 to commemorate the MPs who died during the First World War, which were replicated in the rebuilt chamber.

All those commemorated were sitting MPs at the time of their death, except Roger Keyes, elevated to the Lords in 1943. While most represented English constituencies, they included the MPs for the Welsh seat of Barry and Llandaff and for County Antrim in Northern Ireland, as well as MPs with Scottish connections. Two of the group had first been returned to Westminster at the 1922 election, although the MP with the longest continuous service was Cazalet, who had represented Chippenham since 1924. After his sister Thelma was elected for Islington East in 1931, they had the distinction of being the second-ever pair of brother and sister MPs.

The wartime service of these 23 individuals reflected the wide-ranging nature of Britain’s war effort between 1939 and 1945. Many of the 165 MPs who served undertook home duties, performing valuable organisational roles while remaining engaged in parliamentary and constituency business. Those commemorated in the chamber included James Despencer-Robertson, Military Secretary at Southern Command Headquarters in his Salisbury constituency, where he died suddenly in 1942; Frank Heilgers, who was returning from his Bury St Edmunds constituency to duties as an Assistant Quartermaster General at the War Office when he was killed in the 1944 Ilford train crash; and Anthony Muirhead, who was helping to mobilise an anti-tank regiment in Oxfordshire when he died by suicide in 1939.

Not all the commemorated MPs were on active military service. James Baldwin-Webb was travelling to North America on a fundraising mission for the British Volunteer Ambulance Corps on the SS City of Benares when it was torpedoed by a German U-boat on 17 September 1940. The vessel was also transporting evacuees to Canada and Baldwin-Webb was praised for his bravery in assisting women and children into the lifeboats, while refusing a place himself. John Dermot Campbell – the most recently elected member of this cohort, having been an MP since February 1943 – was part of a delegation of six MPs visiting troops in Italy and Greece in January 1945. He and another MP, Robert Bernays, who had been serving with the Royal Engineers, were killed when the plane transporting them between Rome and Brindisi was lost in bad weather.

Bernays, a former journalist, had been a notable early critic of the Nazi government after visiting Germany in the early 1930s. This was in contrast with the position taken by another commemorated MP, Sir Arnold Wilson, who had attracted controversy because of his perceived pre-war sympathies with fascist regimes. Once the war was underway, however, Wilson trained for the dangerous role of an air gunner in the RAF, despite being in his mid-fifties. He was killed in May 1940 when the Wellington bomber in which he was a crew member crashed near Dunkirk.

Several more MPs also died in air crashes. Rupert Brabner, a flying ace with the Fleet Air Arm, had narrowly escaped the German attack on Crete in 1941 and the sinking of the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle in 1942, but was travelling to Canada to attend a ceremony as Joint Under-Secretary of State for Air when he was killed in a plane crash near the Azores in January 1945. Although he served with the army, Lord Apsley, a keen amateur pilot before the war, had used his flying experience to transport fellow officers while serving in the Middle East with the Arab Legion. He was travelling home on leave for Christmas 1942 when the RAF plane in which he was a passenger crashed in Malta. His widow Violet was elected in his place as MP for Bristol Central.

This was not the only example among these 23 MPs of a widow taking her husband’s seat. John Rathbone had a family tradition of parliamentary service, including his great-aunt Eleanor. He was serving with the RAF when he was reporting missing while piloting his crew’s first operational flight, a bombing raid on the German-occupied port of Antwerp in December 1940. After Rathbone’s death was confirmed, his widow Beatrice was elected unopposed for his Bodmin seat.

Also killed while piloting a plane was Peter Eckersley, who was training with the Fleet Air Arm in Hampshire when his aircraft crashed in August 1940. An experienced amateur pilot, before he entered the Commons Eckersley had captained the Lancashire county cricket team, 1929-35, earning nicknames such as ‘the flying cricketer’ because he often flew himself to matches.

Eckersley was not the only notable sportsperson in this group. Cazalet had been four times British amateur squash champion and competed in tennis at Wimbledon, while Patrick Munro had been an international rugby player and twice captained Scotland. Aged 58, Munro was the oldest MP to die on war service, as a member of the Home Guard. He was taking part in a major military exercise at the Palace of Westminster in May 1942 when he collapsed and died. A year earlier he had been the last MP to speak in the Commons chamber before it was destroyed by bombing.

Munro was not, however, the oldest person among the 23 commemorated. That was the 73 year old retired Admiral of the Fleet Roger Keyes, a peer at the time of his death. He had spent over half a century in the navy, serving across the globe before retiring shortly after his election as MP for Portsmouth North in 1934. In 1940-1 he served as Director of Combined Operations, organising and training the Commandos. Tragically his son Geoffrey died during a commando raid in North Africa in November 1941, posthumously receiving the Victoria Cross. Keyes was an unofficial observer with the U.S. fleet at a battle in the Philippines in October 1944 when he suffered smoke inhalation, which contributed to his death in December 1945. In contrast with the high-ranking Keyes, Dudley Joel was a lieutenant in the navy when he was among 63 crew members killed in the bombing of HMS Registan off Cape Cornwall in May 1941.

Almost half of the MPs commemorated for their Second World War service had also served during the First World War. Others had since gained military experience as members of the Territorial Army. In contrast, the youngest MP of this group, George Charles Grey, was born just after the 1914-18 conflict ended. He interrupted his university studies to serve with the Grenadier Guards after war broke out in 1939 and took part in the evacuation from Dunkirk. The ‘Baby of the House’ (and the youngest MP of the twentieth century), he was just 22 when he was elected unopposed for Berwick-on-Tweed in August 1941. He was killed by a sniper in July 1944 as his tank was advancing through Lutain Wood, Normandy.

While Grey had survived the 1940 retreat through France, two other MPs were less fortunate. The first MP killed in action during the Second World War, Richard Porritt, a captain with the Lancashire Fusiliers, died on 26 May 1940 during a German bombing raid near Seclin, France, where the British army was trying to establish a defensive line behind which troops could retreat to Dunkirk. Ronald Cartland, a major with the Worcestershire Yeomanry, was listed as missing in action during the retreat to Dunkirk, with initial reports suggesting he may have been taken prisoner. However, a few months later his family received confirmation that he had been killed by German fire near Watou, Belgium on 30 May 1940. His sister, the novelist Barbara Cartland, paid tribute to him with a memoir published in 1942.

These 23 MPs served in many different theatres of war. Somerset Maxwell initially served with the Royal Corps of Signals in France, before his duties took him to Palestine, Crete, Libya, Iraq and Syria. He became a welfare officer for forces across the Middle East in May 1942, but requested a return to combatant duties, and was placed in command of signals with an armoured division. Wounded in both knees when Allied troops were machine-gunned from the air during fighting in Libya, he died of septicaemia in a Cairo hospital in December 1942. Another casualty of the North Africa campaign was Edward Kellett, second in command of the 8th Armoured Brigade in Tunisia. He was killed during preparations for attacking the Mareth Line in March 1943, when a shell exploded beside his tank while he was standing up shaving.

Stuart Russell was serving in Sicily with the Coldstream Guards when he contracted a fever, and died in hospital in Egypt in October 1943. After spending time on home defence duties, John Macnamara, who had experience in both the regular and the territorial army, was keen for more active service. He was stationed in the Middle East before being appointed as Chief of Staff with the Land Forces Adriatic. Having been involved in operations in Crete and Yugoslavia, he was killed by a German mortar bombardment in Italy while visiting his former regiment, the London Irish Rifles, shortly before Christmas 1944. He was the last sitting MP to die as a result of enemy action.

KR

Short biographies of these 23 MPs written by the History of Parliament can be found on the UK Parliament website.

In the chamber used by the House of Commons before the catastrophic fire of October 1834, women – officially barred from the chamber itself since February 1778 – had been able to listen to debates through the ‘ventilator’ in the attic above St Stephen’s Chapel. In this cramped and uncomfortable space, a small number of women could look down into the chamber and listen to debates. An account in 1832 described

a circular shed of sixteen sides or panels … a small oblong square aperture in every panel serves to admit the heads of sixteen anxious females who creep, unseen and unheard, to see and hear. … Green baize benches surround the shed, and afford repose to the wearied forms of dowagers and damsels.

After the fire, many of the old chamber’s features were reproduced when MPs moved into their temporary home in the former House of Lords at the beginning of 1835. It was obvious, though, that the unusual means by which women had accessed debates would not be directly replicated in the temporary Commons, and initially, no provision was made for female spectators. However, MPs realised that their temporary relocation offered an opportunity for experimenting with new features, which resulted in changes such as a dedicated reporters’ gallery and the construction of a second division lobby.

In keeping with this, on 16 July 1835, George Grantley Berkeley, Whig MP for Gloucestershire West, successfully moved for a select committee to consider adapting part of the strangers’ gallery in the temporary Commons for the use of ladies and making similar provision in the new House of Commons. He dismissed the ‘erroneous opinion’ that there was ‘too great interference of ladies already in the political world’ and asked whether anyone would ‘assert that the female portion of the population does not contain a vast share of the better intellect of the country’. He noted women’s access to debates in the pre-fire Commons and urged that they be given ‘a less lofty but more comfortable accommodation’ in the temporary chamber. He also suggested that it would be beneficial if, as some predicted, women’s presence prompted ‘the language of the House’ to ‘assume a softer, a more poetical, and a more civil style’.

The committee’s report less than two weeks later recommended that not more than a quarter of the strangers’ gallery should be partitioned off before the start of the next session to accommodate 24 ladies. It also stipulated that future provision should be made for 40 ladies in the new House of Commons. Berkeley’s motion in early August 1835 that the Commons agree to the committee’s report was narrowly rejected, by 83 votes to 86. Undaunted, in May 1836 he moved that the plan for a ladies’ gallery drawn up by the architect Sir Robert Smirke should be carried out ‘as speedily as possible … at such hours as may not interfere with the business of the House’. MPs who supported Berkeley’s motion dismissed concerns that there was anything ‘improper’ about ladies listening to Commons debates. The Radical MP for Wigan, Richard Potter, noted that

during the Session of 1833 and 1834, he had repeatedly observed hon. Members take their wives and daughters into the ventilator, particularly when subjects of importance were under discussion, and he felt convinced they would not have done so had they supposed the least injurious consequences to have followed.

Among these wives and daughters was Harriet Grote, wife of the MP for London, who recorded that ‘one hears very well, but seeing is difficult, being distant from the members, and the apertures in the ventilator being small and grated’.

Less convinced about the need to provide for the ladies was the Wolverhampton MP Charles Villiers, who questioned whether there was any demand for it, as he was unaware of any petitions on the subject. He also queried how the limited number of places would be allocated. Berkeley’s motion passed by 132 votes to 90, but further progress was scuppered when the Commons voted in August 1836 against granting £400 to fund the work. Although only 70 MPs were present, 42 of whom opposed the grant, this occasion saw the fullest debate on the matter. Members of the Melbourne ministry spoke on either side of the question, with the future prime minister Viscount Palmerston among those backing Berkeley, on the grounds that ‘the ladies … took very considerable interest’ in Commons proceedings.

His ministerial colleague Sir John Hobhouse was among the opponents of a ladies’ gallery, considering it ‘a very bad joke’. Not only might ‘the peace and comfort of men’s homes’ be disturbed by women wishing to discuss the issues debated in the Commons, but women’s presence in the House would be ‘most indecent’, as ‘in the course of a debate it was impossible to prevent allusions from being made which no man could wish his mother, sister, wife, or daughter to hear’.

Such objections were ridiculed by the Sheffield MP James Silk Buckingham, for whom they confirmed the oft-repeated accusation that the Commons ‘was at least half a century behind the rest of the community’. He protested that after hearing Hobhouse’s speech,

one would think, first, that the women of England were at present wholly ignorant, and wholly indifferent to, the public affairs of their country; and next, that by the simple act of admitting some twenty or thirty ladies, chiefly, perhaps, the relatives of Members of that House, occasionally to hear the debates – the whole of the females would be converted into mere politicians – would cease to become good wives and good mothers – and be so many firebrands casting nothing but discord into every circle of society.

Berkeley tried a different approach the following year, moving for an address asking the king to give directions to carry out the select committee’s recommendations. His motion was seconded by William Chetwynd, who rebuffed the idea that ‘the presence of the ladies would lengthen the debate, and induce Members to enlarge on subjects, and cause considerable delay’, arguing that ‘hon. Members would be less likely to talk nonsense in the presence of ladies’. However, they were defeated by 92 votes to 116.

No further debates on the ladies’ gallery have been traced in Hansard, but there were evidently behind the scenes negotiations to enable its construction, and in March 1842, Berkeley was rewarded for his perseverance in securing their gallery with the presentation ‘by ladies’ of a piece of silver. The gallery appears to have been built during the parliamentary recess of October 1841 to February 1842. In late February 1842, the Court Journal recorded the ‘little known’ fact that ‘a small enclosure behind the strangers’ gallery has been erected … for the accommodation of political ladies desirous of hearing the debates’. Rather than the 24 spaces for women recommended by the 1835 committee, it had ‘not room for more than 12 or 13 of the fairer sex’, who could ‘peep totally unobserved’ through ‘a space about the breadth of a hand’. Access was controlled by written ‘orders’ signed by the serjeant-at-arms. After a seven year absence, women again had a space from which they could witness the proceedings of the Commons.

Among this gallery’s earliest occupants were the wives of one future Conservative prime minister and three future Liberal prime ministers: Lady Stanley (later Countess of Derby), Catherine Gladstone, Viscountess Palmerston and Lady Frances Russell. They attended to hear the debate on the corn laws on 14 February 1842, in which Lord John Russell and William Gladstone spoke. Catherine’s account suggested that conditions were as confined and awkward as those in the ventilator had been, recording that ‘I found myself nearly upon Lady John Russell’s lap!!’ Frances Russell told her that her heart was beating in anticipation of Russell’s speech, and ‘she was all attention’ when Russell began. The ladies’ gallery does, however, appear to have had satisfactory acoustics, as Catherine recorded that when Gladstone spoke, ‘we heard him very well – he was very rapid – without the smallest hesitation throughout’.

A later visitor to the ladies’ gallery in the temporary chamber was Charlotte Brontë, whose publisher George Smith took her there in June 1850. He recollected in his autobiography that ‘the Ladies’ Gallery of those days was behind the Strangers’ Gallery, and from it one could see the eyes of the ladies above, nothing more’. Brontë evidently found her visit to the Commons interesting, as when Smith went to find her, thinking she had indicated that she wanted to leave, she told him that ‘I made no signal. I did not wish to come away’.

Just as they had been in the ventilator, women were permitted to access debates, but kept out of sight of Members of Parliament. The grudging and uncomfortable way in which they were accommodated was encapsulated by the Birmingham Journal’s description of the ladies’ gallery of the temporary chamber as ‘the sweltering little stewpan assigned females by the gallantry of the British House of Commons’, not what Berkeley had anticipated when he lobbied for their inclusion. The nickname given to the ladies’ gallery in the new House of Commons – ‘the cage’ – showed that matters improved little after 1852.

Further reading

Sarah Richardson, ‘Parliament as Viewed Through a Woman’s Eyes: Gender and Space in the 19th-Century Commons’, Parliamentary History 38:1 (2019), 119-34

Sarah Richardson, The Political Worlds of Women: Gender and Politics in Nineteenth Century Britain (2013)

I am very grateful to Dr Mari Takayanagi for drawing to my attention the subtle differences between Catherine Gladstone’s account of her visit to the Ladies’ Gallery as published in Mary Drew, Catherine Gladstone (1919) and her original entry in her diary, held at Gladstone’s Library, GLA/GGA/4/9/1/10, and have revised this article thanks to her help.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on the Victorian Commons website on 8 March 2024, written by Dr Kathryn Rix.

The devastating fire at the Palace of Westminster on 16 October 1834 made the House of Commons chamber in the former St. Stephen’s Chapel unusable. The need to prorogue Parliament a week later – amid the still smouldering ruins – prompted makeshift arrangements for both the Commons and the Lords. The small number of MPs who attended gathered in one of the surviving Lords committee rooms, before going to meet the peers in what had been the House of Lords library. A further prorogation in the Lords library took place on 18 December 1834.

By the time Parliament reassembled in February 1835, the Commons and the Lords had both been provided with far more adequate temporary accommodation, which in the case of the Commons would be in use for the next 17 years. This was rather longer than anticipated, due to the delays which beset the building of the new Palace of Westminster designed by Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin. Some of these delays were exacerbated by the difficulties of constructing new buildings on a site still being occupied by MPs and peers in their temporary accommodation.

In the wake of the 1834 fire, the possibility of moving MPs and peers elsewhere was discussed, and several alternative locations were mooted, including St. James’s Palace, the Banqueting House in Whitehall, or Exeter Hall, a large public meeting venue on the Strand. William IV offered the recently renovated Buckingham Palace, which he apparently disliked and never moved into, as a possible solution. There were, however, strong objections to this. Its location was considered a major disadvantage: one London newspaper described it as ‘quite out of the way of all business – inconvenient of access’. In addition, it would require a substantial amount of internal remodelling to suit the requirements of parliamentarians, a process which would mean undoing much of the work recently completed at significant public expense. The government tactfully resisted the king’s attempt to foist Buckingham Palace on them.

Instead, plans to rehome MPs and peers at Westminster were rapidly drawn up by Sir Robert Smirke, an architect connected with the Office of Woods and Forests, who had been overseeing repairs to Westminster Hall when the fire took place. The House of Commons would use the building previously occupied by the House of Lords as its chamber, while the upper House was displaced into the Painted Chamber. These rooms had both been damaged by the fire and required considerable renovation work, but this began swiftly. Scaffolding was in place on the interior and exterior walls of the former House of Lords less than two weeks after the fire, in preparation for its conversion into temporary accommodation for MPs. By early November, between 300 and 400 workmen were on site roofing the two temporary chambers.

On 19 February 1835, when Parliament assembled at Westminster after a change of government – Viscount Melbourne’s Whig ministry had been replaced by Sir Robert Peel’s Conservative administration – and a general election, the temporary accommodation was ready. This speedy construction was aided by working at night, the use of prefabricated timber and iron girders, and short-cuts such as papier mâché for the ornamental mouldings. The Times gave ‘the highest credit’ to Smirke, who within the limited space allocated had provided ‘accommodation to a much greater extent than could … have been anticipated’.

The temporary Commons chamber now included the space which had been behind the throne for the king’s robing room when this building had been the House of Lords. At the opposite end of the House, space was taken out for the lobby, which was made considerably larger than that formerly used by the Lords. The strangers’ gallery was erected above this lobby, roughly where the gallery of the Lords had been, and ‘spacious galleries’ for members were erected on the two long sides of the building.

One ‘most important’ feature, according to The Times, which it had not been possible to incorporate within the confined space of the pre-1834 Commons chamber, was a dedicated reporters’ gallery above the Speaker’s chair, with its own separate entrance. In the old chamber, reporters had been allocated the back row of the strangers’ gallery, but often found themselves jostling with members of the public for seats. Their new gallery recognised the growing significance of the press in reporting on parliamentary proceedings.

Initial reactions to the temporary Commons chamber were, like that of The Times, generally positive. The Sun described it as ‘perhaps one of the most elegant specimens of taste’, noting the oak seats covered with green Spanish leather, and the ‘simple but most graceful elegance’ of the galleries. While its plainness led some later observers to compare it to ‘a railway station’, ‘a Primitive Methodist chapel’, ‘a hideous barn’ or ‘a wooden shanty’, its ‘conspicuously neat and simple’ style was widely regarded as an advantage. As one guide to London observed, the lack of ornamentation and draperies showed that this was ‘a place of business’.

The temporary chamber also had the major benefit of being able to accommodate a greater number of MPs than their previous one. According to a statement in the Commons in May 1850, it had room for 456 MPs (including in the galleries), in contrast with the 387 who could find a seat in the old chamber. John Cam Hobhouse, who as First Commissioner of Woods and Forests in the Melbourne ministry had been involved with planning the temporary accommodation, recorded in his diary on the opening day of the 1835 Parliament that he ‘was much pleased with what I had some right to call my new temporary House of Commons’. The MP for Bath, John Arthur Roebuck, declared that ‘compared with the old, ugly place, it is a beautiful and commodious room’. The diarist Charles Greville felt that MPs had got the better side of the bargain when it came to their temporary accommodation, contrasting their ‘very spacious and convenient’ chamber with the ‘wretched dog-hole’ provided for the Lords. The temporary Commons was not without its flaws, however, and there were alterations in subsequent years to improve its acoustics, ventilation and lighting.

In addition, questions were raised about the costs of the temporary accommodation. In June 1835, the Commons was asked to approve expenditure of £30,000 for the temporary buildings and £14,000 for ‘furniture and other necessary articles’. The latter was deemed ‘scandalously extravagant’ by one MP, who protested that ‘the country was called upon to pay upwards of 10,000l. for nothing but a parcel of deal tables and a few rusty old chairs’. The ‘utter absurdity’ of money being ‘squandered’ on temporarily patching up parts of the old Palace, on a site which would need to be built on as work on the new Palace progressed, was highlighted in the press. One Warwickshire newspaper drew an unfavourable comparison between the £28,000 cost of Birmingham’s new town hall, a building large enough to hold the members of both Houses, and the expenditure at Westminster. Allegations that this was ‘a job’ by Smirke were given added fuel by the fact that one of the two main contractors for the temporary accommodation, Messrs. Samuel Baker & Son, were related to Smirke by marriage.

As the temporary accommodation – not only the Commons chamber, but other facilities such as the committee rooms – continued to evolve and to require repair and maintenance over the next 17 years, the costs grew. In 1848, a select committee reported that £185,248 had so far been spent on temporary accommodation for the Lords and the Commons, ‘of which very little will be available for future service’. It argued that this ongoing expenditure was one reason to accelerate the completion of the new Palace. It would be another three years, however, before preparations were finally made in August 1851 to demolish the temporary Commons chamber.

Further reading:

C. Shenton, The Day Parliament Burned Down (2012)

J. Mordaunt Crook & M. H. Port, The History of the King’s Works. Volume VI 1782-1851 (1973)

See also this post by Rebekah Moore which discusses the temporary Commons.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on the Victorian Commons website on 28 October 2022, written by Dr Kathryn Rix.

Described by the novelist Mary Shelley as ‘a plain silentious but intelligent looking man’, Gaskell served as MP for Wakefield from 1832 until his defeat in 1837. Whilst a family inheritance enabled him to lead a comfortable life as a country gentleman, his Unitarian faith set him apart from the traditional political class. He was enthusiastically supported in his parliamentary career by his wife, and the often under-valued political role of women is another major theme to emerge in our research.

Gaskell was one of around 40 Unitarians who sat in the Commons during the 1832-68 period. His grandfather, a linen draper, and his father, a merchant, had both worshipped at Manchester’s Cross Street Unitarian Chapel. Gaskell was born in Manchester, but moved to Lupset Hall, near Wakefield, following his marriage in 1806. He and his older brother Benjamin were the major beneficiaries under the will of their cousin, James Milnes, and acquired considerable urban and rural property. Lupset Hall ‘received all the embellishment which taste and art could confer upon it’ and became ‘the seat of the most liberal hospitality’. Gaskell was acquainted with prominent figures such as the philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham, although Mary Shelley considered him and his wife to be ‘country folks in core’.

The Radicals in the newly enfranchised borough of Wakefield – which had one MP from 1832 – invited Gaskell to be their candidate. He initially accepted, but subsequently withdrew. He was, however, persuaded to reconsider. In August 1831, his nephew, James Milnes Gaskell, who had begun canvassing Wakefield as a Conservative, recorded that ‘the radicals had so effectually worked upon my uncle’s anxious and sensitive mind that he considered it a point of conscience’ to stand. Milnes Gaskell withdrew in his uncle’s favour in March 1832, finding a safe seat at Wenlock instead. Gaskell was elected unopposed in December 1832, when his political platform included retrenchment in public spending, shorter Parliaments, the secret ballot, the abolition of slavery, revision of the corn laws and reform of the Church.

Alongside local Radical pressure, Gaskell’s formidable wife, Mary, played an important part in encouraging her ‘reluctant spouse’ to stand. Although women were debarred from the parliamentary franchise, their political influence in this period should not be overlooked, whether as local voters, petitioners, electoral patrons or, in Mary Gaskell’s case, political wives. ‘Unquestionably a character’, who ‘drew upon herself a great degree of notice from the leading part she took in public matters’, she was described as ‘a sort of zealot in the patronage of ultra-Liberals’. She went to hear sermons from the Unitarian preacher, William Johnson Fox (later Radical MP for Oldham), and ‘was a kind and generous friend’ to the radical journalist and novelist William Godwin and his family, including Mary Shelley, who was his daughter. In April 1831 James Milnes Gaskell told his mother that ‘it is, in fact, my Aunt, that would be member of Parliament’.

Despite his initial reluctance to stand, Gaskell was ‘punctual in his attendance’ at Parliament. Mary Shelley marvelled that

he attends the house night after night and dull committees and likes it! – for truly after a country town and country society, the dullest portion of London seems as gay as a masked ball.

Despite her comments about Parliament’s dullness, Shelley took advantage of her friendship with Gaskell to make use of his parliamentary franking privileges, encouraging correspondents to send letters to her via Gaskell, who could receive them without payment.

Although he was assiduous in his attendance, Gaskell seldom spoke in debate. One obituary recorded that ‘the atmosphere of publicity’ was not ‘congenial to his tastes and habits’. He was, however, remembered as ‘an excellent committee-man’, highlighting the fact that contributions in the chamber were only one aspect of parliamentary engagement. While Gaskell gave general support to Whig ministers, he expressed concerns that they ‘did not proceed in the path of Reform so rapidly as was generally expected; indeed some of their early measures seemed to indicate a retrograde movement’. Reflecting his claim that ‘I have attached myself to no party’, Gaskell’s votes in the division lobbies displayed considerable independence. He often divided in the minority with Radical and Irish MPs, on issues ranging from the ballot to the introduction of a moderate fixed duty on corn. His radical leanings prompted joint Whig-Conservative efforts to find an opponent to him at the 1835 election. He survived this contest, but was defeated in 1837. His parliamentary service was rewarded with the presentation of ‘two massive pieces of silver plate’ in 1838: a vase from the ‘ladies’ of Wakefield and a soup tureen from 1,700 male subscribers.

After several years’ absence from the Commons, Gaskell reluctantly agreed in December 1845 that he would stand again for Wakefield to support the cause of free trade. With the general election delayed and the corn laws repealed, he withdrew in April 1847 on grounds of his age and health. Widowed the following year, he subsequently dedicated his energies – and up to half his annual income of £4,000 – to charitable works. He was a particularly generous benefactor to the Unitarian church, donating £1,000 in 1856 to assist poorer congregations in the north of England. He also supported educational causes, contributing £3,000 towards new premises for the Wakefield Mechanics’ Institute in 1855. He died in December 1875.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on the Victorian Commons website on 27 June 2016, written by Dr Kathryn Rix.

The history of parliamentary reporting in the 19th century has two connected strands: the history of Hansard, and the history of reporting by the newspaper press, whose accounts of Commons debates formed the basis for Hansard’s volumes for much of the nineteenth century. One interesting way to trace the growing significance of the press in reporting proceedings in the Commons is through changes to the use of space within Parliament’s buildings.

From 1771 onwards, press reporting of Commons debates had been tolerated, even though it technically remained a breach of privilege to report what was said in the chamber. However, the reporters had to compete with members of the public for space in the strangers’ gallery. On a notable occasion in May 1803, public interest in a speech by William Pitt on the war with France was so great that the reporters were unable to get seats and some could not even find standing room. In protest, the press decided not to report Pitt’s speech. This prompted the Speaker to arrange with the Serjeant at Arms that in future the reporters would be admitted to their usual seats in the back row of the gallery ahead of the public. They paid a fee of three guineas per session for this.

The old Commons chamber was notoriously cramped and the gallery was no exception, particularly as the press presence there grew. With increased public interest in reading reports of debates, there were twice as many reporters using the gallery in 1833 as in 1803. The gallery’s most famous occupant was probably the young Charles Dickens, who reported in the early 1830s for his uncle’s publication, the Mirror of Parliament, a rival to Hansard which appeared from 1828 until 1841. Dickens also wrote for the newspapers, including the True Sun and the Morning Chronicle.  He later recollected having ‘worn my knees by writing on them on the old back row of the old gallery of the House of Commons’.

Like many fellow reporters, Dickens took notes during his ‘turn’ in the gallery using shorthand. The length of turns ranged from a few minutes to an hour. It depended on the debate’s importance, the number of reporters each publication had available and how close it was to the newspaper’s printing deadline. With few facilities for them in the Commons, reporters typically walked the mile or so back to their newspaper offices to write up their reports. This provided a convenient excuse for a Times reporter accused by the Irish leader Daniel O’Connell in June 1832 of misreporting one of his speeches. As well as blaming the chamber’s poor acoustics, the reporter claimed that his notebook had been damaged by rain while he was walking back to his office. O’Connell responded that this was

‘the most extraordinary shower of rain I ever heard of, for it not only washed out the speech I made from your note-book, but washed in another and an entirely different one’.

The destruction of much of the old Palace of Westminster by fire in October 1834 provided an opportunity to remodel Parliament’s facilities. MPs temporarily moved into the chamber previously used by the House of Lords. A dedicated reporters’ gallery with its own separate entrance was created within this space in 1835. Unlike the gallery in the old chamber, which had been opposite the Speaker’s chair, the reporters’ gallery in the temporary chamber was behind the Speaker’s chair. This meant that rather than seeing MPs’ backs as they turned towards the Speaker, reporters would now see their faces, making it easier to work out who was addressing the House and what was being said. Facilities for the reporters were also enhanced by the provision of ‘a desk or a slab in front’ of them for their notebooks.

This improved accommodation for the press provided a practical demonstration of its perceived importance – particularly in the wake of the 1832 Reform Act – in communicating parliamentary proceedings beyond the confines of the Commons chamber. As one contemporary observer, Charles Greville, remarked, it was

‘a sort of public and avowed homage to opinion, and a recognition of the right of the people to know through the medium of the press all that passes within those walls’.

There were, however, some teething troubles. The position of the reporters’ gallery meant that almost the whole of the front bench on each side of the chamber below could not be seen. In addition, the presence of a screen, topped with a canopy, between their gallery and the Speaker’s chair meant that reporters sometimes found it difficult to hear the Speaker putting the question for debate. This left them struggling to work out what the ensuing discussion was about. These issues were rectified when alterations were made in 1836 to improve the temporary chamber’s ventilation and acoustics. The reporters’ gallery was lowered and brought forward, and the obstructive screen and canopy were replaced with a lower screen. This meant that the Speaker was ‘completely within the view and hearing of the reporters’.

As with other features adopted in the temporary chamber, such as the second division lobby and the ladies’ gallery, the separate reporters’ gallery also became a feature of the new Commons chamber designed by Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin. Recognising its importance, the former Conservative prime minister Sir Robert Peel and his Whig successor Lord John Russell both personally checked the acoustics in the reporters’ gallery when the new chamber had its first trial run on 30 May 1850. The ‘immense loftiness’ of the new chamber’s lavishly decorated ceiling prompted concerns from the press about the ease of hearing and reporting debates. One of the key modifications after this trial run was to insert a false ceiling under Barry’s carved and gilded roof to improve the acoustics. Thus, as one historian of the reporters’ gallery has noted, MPs ‘willingly spoiled the architectural beauty of their House so that the reporters might hear their debates’.

Although the acoustics within the chamber may have been enhanced for their benefit, the reporters only had limited facilities outside the chamber. Thomas Wemyss Reid, who became the Leeds Mercury’s London correspondent in 1867, described the

‘two wretched little cabins, ill-lit and ill-ventilated, immediately behind the Gallery, which were used for “writing out”. But one of these was occupied exclusively by the Times staff, and the other was so small that it could not accommodate a quarter of the number of reporters’.

From late afternoon onwards, reporters were also allowed to use one of the Commons committee rooms for writing up their reports.

The other facilities for the press at Westminster were somewhat lacking. Reid remembered ‘a cellar-like apartment in the yard below, where men used to resort to smoke’, and a ‘filthy’ ante-room to the reporters’ gallery, where Mr Wright provided refreshments for the reporters. Wright ‘always had a bottle of whisky on tap, a loaf or two of stale bread, and a most nauseous-looking ham’. Reid recollected with disgust the widely believed story that each night, Wright took the ham home ‘to his modest abode in Lambeth … wrapped in a large red bandana which he had been flourishing, and using, during the evening, and for greater security placed it under his bed’. Whether or not this was true, Reid avoided the ham, sticking to eggs and tea.

Reid was among the editors and reporters who gave evidence to an 1878 select committee on parliamentary reporting. Its recommendations led to a substantial expansion of the reporters’ gallery in 1881. Space was taken from the members’ gallery to provide a greater number of seats for reporters, and for the first time, representatives of the provincial press were allocated their own places within the reporters’ gallery. In addition, making use of rooms previously occupied by the Deputy Assistant Serjeant at Arms, Colonel Forester, who died in November 1881, the reporters were provided with ‘a commodious and well-lighted suite of writing, dining and smoking rooms’. These changes to the fabric of Parliament to facilitate the reporters’ work prompted Reid to reflect that ‘the status of the Press is changed indeed’.

Further reading:

Charles Gratton, The gallery: a sketch of the history of parliamentary reporting and reporters (1860)

S. J. Reid (ed.), Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 (1905)

Michael MacDonagh, The reporters’ gallery (1913)

Andrew Sparrow, Obscure scribblers: a history of parliamentary reporting (2003)

The editor of our House of Commons, 1832-1945 project, Dr Philip Salmon, appeared on this BBC documentary about Dickens in Parliament.

A quirky character, described by one contemporary as a man who ‘would resort to any wily expedient to attain his own ends’, Benjamin Rotch (1793-1854) provides a good example of the varied backgrounds and experiences of the new intake of MPs returned at the first general election after the 1832 Reform Act.

The Rotch family had emigrated from England to Massachusetts, where they rose from humble beginnings to become the most influential figures in the colonial whaling industry by 1750. However, the American revolutionary war’s adverse effects and the imposition of a punitive British tariff on whale oil in 1783 led many whalers to relocate. Rotch’s grandfather William, ‘by far the richest man on Nantucket’, transferred his activities to Dunkirk in France, where Rotch was born in 1793. Following the outbreak of war between France and England, his father moved the family to London. Later reports that Rotch and his mother had escaped from France hidden in a butter firkin and a flour barrel were refuted by his brother.

Rather than entering the family business, Rotch trained as a barrister, qualifying in 1821. He also became involved in other ventures. He took out patents, including one for a rubber horseshoe, and designed the prize-winning ‘Arcograph’, which allowed arcs of large circles to be drawn and measured. In collaboration with a Mr. Bradshaw, Rotch ended the monopoly of hackney coaches in London by acquiring licences to operate the cheaper and faster cabriolets in 1823, only to sell his interest the following year. He achieved financial success with his ‘patent lever fid’, a device to assist with striking and raising the topmast of ships. As a barrister he specialised in cases on patent rights and was an expert witness to the 1829 select committee on the patent laws.

Rotch first considered entering Parliament in 1826, when, in contrast with his later views, he canvassed Sudbury as a ‘true blue’. However, he withdrew amidst allegations that another candidate had bought him off. In 1830 he assisted the campaigns of Tory candidates at Knaresborough and Evesham. However, at the 1831 election he supported the Whig Sir James Mackintosh at Knaresborough, making a speech which Mackintosh presciently described as being ‘chiefly calculated to obtain a seat in the reformed Parliament’.

In 1832 Rotch stood as a Whig at Knaresborough, where he fought an acrimonious battle for the second seat with another Whig, Henry Rich. When Rotch emerged victorious, Rich petitioned against him on the grounds that he was an alien, having been born in France of American parents. However, Rich had to withdraw the case after difficulties obtaining documents from France. Although Rotch had, like his family, been a Quaker, he was not practising by 1832; it was therefore Joseph Pease who was the first Quaker MP to take his seat at Westminster.

An active MP, Rotch somehow managed to combine his parliamentary duties with the unpaid position of chairman of the Middlesex quarter sessions, sitting in court at Clerkenwell each day from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m., before going to the Commons after dinner. In one year alone he claimed to have tried 1,570 cases, handled 100 appeals and sat for 125 days. This prompted him to speak self-interestedly in support of proposals for Middlesex to become the only county which paid its chairman, but these did not bear fruit.

His expertise led Rotch to serve on several select committees on legal matters, such as the laws of inheritance. He assisted with drafting a bill on patents, although the measure subsequently stalled. Reflecting his earlier interests as a cab proprietor, Rotch moved without success in July 1833 for an inquiry to consider regulating the conduct of drivers of cabriolets, hackney coaches, omnibuses and stage coaches. Drawing on his experience on the bench, he took a sustained interest in crime and punishment, being particularly concerned about the poor state of prisons such as Newgate. He unsuccessfully attempted to pass legislation to confiscate the property of convicted felons in order to compensate their victims and defray imprisonment costs. His desire to pass a bill to protect workers who did not wish to join trades unions cost him support in his constituency, and he stood down in 1835.

After leaving the Commons Rotch continued his legal practice and remained chairman of the Middlesex quarter sessions. In October 1835, however, he became embroiled in a dispute which culminated in his resignation from the post. In evidence to a Lords inquiry on prisons, Rotch had condemned Newgate as ‘one of the most ill-conducted gaols in the country’ and accused London’s lord mayor and aldermen of only accepting into the gaol ‘such county prisoners as are, by the fees paid on their trial and conviction, likely to enrich the City purse’. A war of words prompted Rotch to challenge the lord mayor, Alderman Winchester, to a duel. Winchester responded by filing charges against Rotch for trying to incite a breach of the peace. Admitting that no provocation could have justified his actions, Rotch resigned as chairman in December and the charges against him were dropped after he apologised.

Despite this incident, Rotch remained active as a magistrate and took a keen interest in prison reform. In 1849, at his own cost, he sent sheep into Cold Bath Fields prison, hoping to train prisoners for new careers as shearers in Australia. This, combined with his zeal for teetotalism, on which he lectured prisoners and prison staff, led to him being mocked as ‘Drinkwater Rotch, the Sheep-shearing Magistrate’. He continued to dabble in a variety of projects, such as drafting an insurance scheme for railway passengers and taking out a patent for the manufacture of artificial saltpetre, until his death on 31 October 1854.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on the Victorian Commons website on 31 October 2015, written by Dr Kathryn Rix.

In the wake of the corruption and expense of the 1880 general election, Sir Henry James, attorney general in Gladstone’s Liberal government, oversaw a landmark piece of legislation which aimed to clean up Britain’s elections: the 1883 Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act. When this measure was first introduced in 1881, The Times remarked that

if passed in its present form, it can scarcely fail to effect something like a revolution in the mode of conducting Parliamentary elections.

Although James accepted several amendments as the bill passed through the Commons, its core principles remained intact. It restricted how much candidates could spend at elections and what they could spend it on; increased the penalties for corrupt practices, including bribery and ‘treating’ voters with food and drink; and introduced the new category of illegal practices, which including illegal employment and illegal payment.

The first English contest under these new rules, the November 1883 York by-election, suggested that the Act would indeed transform the practice of electioneering. In keeping with its limits, York’s candidates spent just over a tenth of what the 1880 contest had cost, and the number of paid election workers and rooms hired for electioneering fell dramatically. However, some small-scale bribery and treating persisted.

The Third Reform Act of 1884-5 had made major changes to the electoral system by the time the first general election under the 1883 Act’s terms was held in 1885. The extension of the franchise meant that the electorate grew from 3,152,000 in 1883 to 5,708,000 in 1885, while the redistribution of seats into largely single member constituencies completely redrew the electoral map. This major overhaul of the electoral system – particularly the removal of small boroughs and the increased electorate – made its own contribution to diminishing corruption. The 1883 Act was, however, crucial in providing the framework within which candidates – increasingly with the assistance of professional agents overseeing local constituency associations – had to cultivate the votes of this mass electorate.

Election expenditure by candidates declined significantly following the 1883 reform. Candidates’ declared expenditure in 1885 was over £700,000 less than in 1880, despite a longer period of election campaigning and a far larger electorate. The average cost per vote polled fell by three-quarters, from 18s. 9d. to 4s. 5d., and never exceeded this in the period before the First World War, as the table below shows. Assisted by the Act’s restrictions, candidates did away with unnecessary expenditure on vast numbers of election workers or decorative items such as flags and banners.

_{Source: Kathryn Rix, ‘“The elimination of corrupt practices in British elections”? Reassessing the impact of the 1883 Corrupt Practices Act’, English Historical Review, cxxxiii (2008), 77}

One of the problems revealed in 1880 had been that the total declared in candidates’ election accounts did not always reflect their true expenditure. The 1883 Act made a false declaration of expenses an illegal practice, which undoubtedly encouraged more accurate accounting. However, it remained the case that these official returns did not always present the full picture. One leading Liberal agent claimed in 1907 that

every agent has heard of cases where it has been necessary to “fake” the accounts in order to make it appear that no illegal expenditure has been allowed.

Such falsification of accounts broke the law, but there were also growing concerns about other expenditure which infringed the spirit, if not the letter, of the 1883 Act. Spending at elections by pressure groups such as the Tariff Reform League or temperance organisations – who held meetings, hired committee rooms and distributed leaflets and posters – might benefit particular candidates, but did not have to be included in their accounts.

At the 1892 election the Liberals were particularly concerned about the £100,000 allegedly spent by members of the drink trade in support of Conservative candidates, while in the early years of the twentieth century it was the greater spending power of the pro-Conservative Tariff Reform League in comparison with the pro-Liberal Free Trade Union which sparked most anxiety. The matter was raised in the Commons in February 1908 when 133 Liberal and Labour MPs (and one Liberal Unionist) backed an amendment regretting ‘the way in which large sums, derived from the secret funds of the Tariff Reform League and other similar societies, are spent in electoral contests without being returned in the candidates’ expenses’. A few months later the 1883 Act’s author Henry James corresponded with the lord chancellor about possible legislation to restrict such spending.

These were not the only ways in which the 1883 Act’s aim of curbing the electoral influence of wealth was apparently being evaded. James raised concerns about spending between elections by local party organisations and associated bodies such as the Primrose League on social activities and entertainments. This would have been classed as treating if undertaken in support of the candidate during the election. Yet James argued that

the corruption which causes a man to profess a political faith is as injurious as that which induces him to fulfil it by recording his vote.

In 1892 Conservative MPs at Hexham and Rochester were unseated by petitions because they had subsidised entertainments provided by the local Conservative association or Primrose League, raising hopes that such social activities might be curtailed. These were dashed by the 1895 Lancaster petition, which saw the Conservative MP retain his seat, despite the local party’s extensive programme of ‘politics and pleasure’, from dances to potato pie suppers. Crucially though, the MP had not subsidised these events.

Another continued source of spending to secure political influence was the ‘nursing’ of constituencies by candidates and MPs, who made charitable donations and subscribed to local clubs and institutions, in the hope of winning favour. The Conservative MP Frederick Milner complained in 1897 that

no pig, or cow, or horse dies in the constituency without the member being … asked to contribute towards another. He is expected to assist in the building or repair of each church and chapel … , to subscribe to all the cricket and football clubs, friendly societies, clubs, agricultural shows, and various worthy charities.

Some MPs spent hundreds of pounds annually in this way and the future Liberal prime minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman warned in 1901 that ‘the spending of money for the purposes of electoral influence’ was ‘one of the great dangers now affecting our political system’. It raised the spectre of wealthy ‘carpet-baggers’ effectively buying their way into seats where they had no local connections. It also had implications for the electoral chances of labour candidates, who could not afford such expenditure. However, suggestions that ‘nursing’ should be prohibited came up against the belief that, as MPs were often prominent local employers or landowners, philanthropy was a natural part of their social duties, irrespective of any political ambitions. Private members’ bills on the question in 1911 and 1912 failed to progress beyond their first reading.

The 1883 Act had clearly done much to curb election spending, but had not eradicated the electoral influence of wealth. A similar pattern emerges when assessing its impact on corruption. The number of MPs unseated by election petitions fell dramatically. Eighteen MPs lost their seats because of bribery and other corrupt practices at the 1880 election. In contrast, despite the law’s increased stringency, there was no election after 1885 which saw more than five MPs unseated. In total, 25 MPs were unseated for corrupt or illegal practices between 1885 and 1911. Cases such as the 1906 Worcester election petition, where around 500 individuals were involved in corruption, demonstrated that the 1883 Act had not been entirely successful.

Moreover, as with election accounts, the fall in petitions indicated a relative decline in corruption, but did not tell the full story. The significant costs and uncertain outcome of petitions deterred petitioners. So too did the unpopularity of petitions among voters, which might prove damaging to future election prospects. Petitioners also had to be sure that the election had been pure on their own side, or risk recriminatory charges. Where both parties had been involved with corruption, it might be better to collude to cover matters up, avoiding the potential threat of the constituency being disfranchised.

There continued to be rumours of corruption in constituencies which escaped petitions. The Liberal election agent for Thanet published a detailed account of the electoral misdeeds of Harry Marks, who won the seat for the Conservatives in 1906. He alleged that Marks had exceeded the 1883 Act’s limits, falsified his election accounts and funded treating and other forms of corruption. Marks had only narrowly survived an election petition against him in another constituency in 1895 and his involvement in commercial fraud was notorious. Thanet’s Liberals did not, however, petition against him, deterred by the expense and the difficulty of securing reliable witnesses who would not be ‘got at’ by Marks.

The complicity of both parties in corruption at Penryn and Falmouth, where it was alleged that ‘every man in the place was bought’, apparently prevented a petition after the 1900 election. Electoral malpractice continued: John Barker, Liberal MP from 1906 until his January 1910 defeat, later admitted to having spent thousands of pounds more than the Corrupt Practices Act’s limits during his two contests.

Yet while corrupt practices were not eliminated, The Times’s forecast of a revolution in electioneering remained accurate. Electoral contests after the 1883 Act were far purer and less costly than before this landmark reform. Sir Harry Verney, a veteran MP who first entered the Commons in 1832, and sat intermittently until 1885, summarised the transformation in 1892 when he reflected on

the great improvements I have lived to see in elections, when I remember the bribery, the drunkenness, and the extravagance of the old political contests.

Further reading:

For the first two articles in this series, see here and here.

In March 1833 the cartoonist ‘H.B.’ (John Doyle) chose three newly elected MPs to represent the ‘March of Reform’, depicting them entering the House of Commons under the suspicious glances of four former Tory MPs. These three were the noted radical journalist William Cobbett, returned for Oldham at the 1832 general election; the Quaker industrialist and railway entrepreneur Joseph Pease, elected for Durham South; and perhaps the most unlikely parliamentarian of all, John Gully (1783-1863), ‘an advanced reformer’, who served as MP for Pontefract for five years from 1832.

In a parliamentary sketch, Charles Dickens described this

quiet gentlemanly-looking man in the blue surtout, grey trousers, white neckerchief, and gloves, whose closely-buttoned coat displays his manly figure and broad chest to great advantage.

Gully’s gentlemanly demeanour in the Commons gave little hint of his extraordinary background. The son of a Gloucestershire innkeeper, he had been in turn a butcher, imprisoned debtor, champion pugilist, pub landlord, professional betting man and racehorse owner, and fathered 24 children (by two wives). Indeed his return to Parliament seemed so incongruous that it was rumoured that he had only sought election to win a bet.

Gully was born in his father’s pub near Bristol in 1783. When his father opened a butcher’s shop in Bristol, he trained Gully in this trade. Subsequent financial difficulties saw Gully imprisoned for debt in London’s King’s Bench prison. However, he secured his release in 1805 after his debts were paid by prize-fight promoters. They had noted Gully’s prowess in a brief fight against his Bristol acquaintance, Henry Pearce, a champion prize-fighter, and were keen for the pair to fight a proper match. Six feet tall, with an ‘athletic and prepossessing’ frame, Gully lost their bout at Hailsham, Sussex, at which the future William IV was among the numerous spectators. When Pearce retired later that year, Gully was regarded as his successor as ‘champion of England’, and won notable fights in 1807 and 1808, before quitting to become landlord of a London pub.

Described as ‘second to none’ as a judge of racehorses, Gully became a professional betting man on the Turf, making his own wagers and taking commissions for others. He acquired his own racehorses in 1812, and in 1827 moved to Newmarket to pursue this more seriously. He won (and lost) huge sums through gambling: he and his business partner were said to have made £90,000 when their horse won the 1832 Derby. Although one contemporary claimed that Gully was ‘a regular blackleg’, the general consensus was that, in contrast with most of those involved with betting on the Turf, Gully was notably honourable and straightforward.

Continuing his upward social trajectory, Gully bought Ackworth Park, near Pontefract, in 1832, and invested in coal mines in northern England, which brought him ‘immense profits’. (He left a fortune of £70,000 on his death in 1863.) The Reformers of Pontefract invited their new neighbour to stand as their candidate at the general election in December 1832. Visiting the town to decline their invitation, Gully was so angered by comments by their Tory opponents that he changed his mind and decided to stand. He was elected unopposed as one of Pontefract’s two MPs.

The diarist Charles Greville, while listing him among the ‘very bad characters’ returned to the first Reformed Commons, conceded that despite being ‘totally without education’, Gully had ‘strong sense, discretion, reserve, and a species of good taste’ and had ‘acquired gentility’. When Gully was presented at court by Lord Morpeth in 1836, another contemporary described this as ‘an instance of the levelling system now established in England’.

Although Gully rarely spoke in the Commons, he was a diligent attender who served on several select committees. He was often found in the minorities voting with Radical and Irish MPs in support of reforms such as the ballot, the removal of bishops from the House of Lords, the abolition of flogging as a punishment in the army and reform of the corn laws. He was re-elected in 1835, but retired in 1837 as the ‘late hours’ sitting in the Commons had damaged his health. He stood again at Pontefract in 1841, when he declared himself ‘the enemy of all monopolies, and the friend of the poor’, but retired early from the poll.

Despite this defeat, Gully remained politically active. Given his humble origins, it was perhaps unsurprising that he was sympathetic to the demands of the Chartists for parliamentary reform, although he disliked their violent tactics. He was also a keen supporter of the Anti-Corn Law League. He continued to enjoy considerable success as a racehorse owner, and the Manchester Times recorded in 1846 that ‘few men are more popular on the English race course, or more approved of by the aristocracy of the land’. The parliamentary career of this sporting celebrity demonstrates the ways in which those from non-elite backgrounds could find their way into the post-1832 House of Commons.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on the Victorian Commons website on 23 November 2016, written by Dr Kathryn Rix.

The name Josiah Wedgwood is commonly associated with pottery. However, the Wedgwood family were not only a family of potters, but were also involved in politics. Josiah Clement Wedgwood (1872-1943) was a particularly prominent politician who founded the History of Parliament Trust. Between 1906 and 1942 he was a Liberal and then a Labour MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme.

He was not, however, the first member of his family to enter the Commons. His great-grandfather and namesake, Josiah Wedgwood, is among the 2,591 MPs we are researching as part of the House of Commons, 1832-68 project. Like his great-grandson this MP sat for a Staffordshire constituency, representing Stoke-on-Trent from 1832, after failing to get elected for Newcastle-under-Lyme the previous year. However, his parliamentary career was much shorter than his great-grandson’s: he only sat in one Parliament before standing down at the 1835 election.

Josiah Wedgwood (1769-1843) was the second son and namesake of the famous potter and inventor, Josiah Wedgwood (1730-95). He followed his father as head of the family’s pottery manufacturing firm, based at Etruria near Stoke-on-Trent. Although he was the second son and had lived as a country gentleman in Dorset before his father’s death, taking little interest in the business, its management fell to him because of his older brother’s ‘chronic incompetence’ and his younger brother’s death.

Wedgwood has been depicted as a ‘plodding’ and unimaginative man, who lacked his father’s genius, but he proved effective at cutting the company’s costs in the face of foreign competition and the loss of European markets during the wars with France. In 1828 he closed the firm’s famous London showroom and – in the words of his great-grandson, Josiah Clement – ‘committed the unpardonable vandalism of selling off the stock, patterns, and moulds there stored’.

Standing as a Reformer at Stoke-on-Trent in 1832, Wedgwood declared his strong support for the ‘immediate abolition of slavery’. He was keen to remove the monopolies held by the East India Company and the Bank of England, and wanted to alter the corn laws. Although he was an Anglican – not sharing the Unitarian faith of his father – Wedgwood advocated reform of the Church of England. He did not, however, support further electoral reform, voicing his opposition to the secret ballot and triennial parliaments. He topped the poll, almost 200 votes ahead of his fellow potter, John Davenport, also a Reformer, who won the second seat.

While Hansard records more than 12,000 contributions in Parliament from Josiah Clement Wedgwood, his great-grandfather was a silent member. He was, however, a regular presence in the division lobbies, where his votes included support for a low fixed duty on corn, the shortening of slave apprenticeships and the replacement of church rates with an alternative source of funding. His youngest daughter Emma was among the women who witnessed debates in the Commons from the ‘ventilator’ – the space in the attic from where women could peer into the Commons chamber below through holes designed for drawing out foul air. In a letter to a friend in August 1833 she recorded a notable incident, when Daniel O’Connell accused the press of not reporting him fairly or accurately.

Harriet [Gifford] and I went to the Ventilator to hear O’Connell’s quarrel with the Reporters, whom he accuses of reporting his speeches falsely, whereupon they say now they will not report a word more of his; so now he declares they shall not report at all, and he had the gallery cleared of all the strangers and the reporters amongst them yesterday.

Despite his success at the poll in 1832, Wedgwood was told that he was unlikely to retain his seat at the 1835 general election, and retired from politics. In his later years he was affected by a form of ‘palsy’ or Parkinson’s disease. He retired from the family business in 1841, two years before his death. Seven of his children survived him, including Emma, who had married her cousin (and Wedgwood’s nephew), the natural scientist Charles Darwin in 1839. Wedgwood’s second son Francis (Frank), the grandfather of Josiah Clement Wedgwood, continued the management of the family’s pottery firm.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on the Victorian Commons website on 5 September 2018, written by Dr Kathryn Rix. It is based on the biography of Wedgwood written for the House of Commons, 1832-68 project by Dr Henry Miller.

Trading heavily on his family name, William Wilberforce (1798-1879), eldest son and namesake of the noted anti-slave trade campaigner, was elected in 1837 as Conservative MP for Kingston-upon-Hull, which his father had represented from 1780 until 1784. During one election meeting he was overcome with emotion when referring to his father (who had died four years earlier), declaring that he wished to ‘follow his example, and endeavour to diffuse among all nations, light, liberty, and civilization’. On his canvass of the electors, he noted that ‘I find the name of my father, your own townsman, a passport to the hearts of all around me’.

Despite his family background, Wilberforce’s career before entering Parliament had been distinctly unpromising, and he had been a considerable source of anxiety to his parents. In 1816 his father noted his ‘sad qualities’ and ‘selfishness’, and the following year bemoaned that ‘I fear he has no energy of character or solid principle of action’. In 1820 Wilberforce senior described his son as ‘in many respects extremely amiable; & his talents are certainly of a superior order, but he sadly wants diligence’. Wilberforce junior disappointed his parents with his idle habits and extravagant spending as an undergraduate at Cambridge, where his misdemeanours including getting drunk on a Sunday. They consequently removed him from the university.

Although Wilberforce qualified as a barrister in 1825, he quickly decided that the legal profession was not for him. Instead, with financial support from his father, he invested in a dairy farm at St John’s Wood, which aimed to supply London’s residents with cheap and pure milk. However, this venture failed in 1830 due to an unreliable business partner and a severe drought, running up a debt of £50,000. Bailing out his son proved financially crippling for Wilberforce senior, who rented out his house in order to economise. Wilberforce junior spent time in Switzerland and Italy in order to escape his creditors. Meeting him at Naples in April 1833, John Henry Newman found him ‘certainly graver – I cannot exactly say, wiser’.

Wilberforce’s election in 1837 for his father’s former constituency offered the potential for a new start. Proud to follow in his father’s footsteps, he argued at a celebratory election dinner that his victory showed the importance of the ‘hereditary principle’ in Parliament, in contrast with the ‘reckless change and innovation’ urged by the Liberal party. His father had earlier advised that should he ever enter the Commons, he should choose ‘some specific object, some line of usefulness’. Yet while Wilberforce senior’s election for Hull had marked the beginning of a 45 year career in the Commons – he subsequently sat for Yorkshire, 1784-1812, and Bramber, 1812-25 – his son’s time at Westminster was brief and unremarkable. He managed to make only three speeches in the chamber before he was unseated on petition in March 1838.

The reason for his unseating was that Wilberforce did not possess the property qualification then required of MPs. The election committee agreed that his Yorkshire estates – inherited from his father – were of sufficient value to qualify him. However, rather ironically, given Wilberforce senior’s hopes that his son might follow him into Parliament, the complex terms under which Wilberforce junior was granted these properties by his father’s will – notably that trustees had the power to sell the estates within 21 years of Wilberforce senior’s death – meant that he lacked the ‘absolute and indefeasible interest’ in these properties which the law demanded.

Undeterred by this setback, Wilberforce stood again, seeking election at Taunton at the 1841 general election. He finished third in the poll behind the sitting Liberal MPs, despite resorting to bribery in his efforts to win the seat. His brother Samuel complained that ‘had his hands been clean’, Wilberforce might have been able to petition successfully against his opponents, who had apparently also resorted to corrupt practices.

In September 1841 Wilberforce made his final attempt to enter the Commons, at a by-election at Bradford, where he was proposed as ‘the son of one of the best men who ever adorned the country’. Despite being an outside candidate, while his opponent was a former MP for the borough, Wilberforce came within four votes of victory. He subsequently faded from public view, leading what one obituary described as an ‘unsympathetic, aimless, objectless life’.

He spent much time abroad in the late 1850s and early 1860s, residing at St. Germain en Laye, near Paris. An American visitor who met him there in 1857 found him ‘rather dull, with nothing of his father but the name’. In common with his brothers Henry and Robert – both of whom were Anglican clergymen – he converted to Roman Catholicism. Their fourth brother, Samuel, the most prominent of Wilberforce senior’s sons, remained an Anglican, serving as Bishop of Oxford, 1845-69, and Winchester, 1869-73. Nicknamed ‘Soapy Sam’, he was involved in a famous debate on evolution with Thomas Huxley and others at Oxford in June 1860. William Wilberforce returned to live in England in the 1870s and died in 1879.

KR

Further reading:

A. Stott, Wilberforce. Family and friends (2012)

W. Hague, William Wilberforce (2008)

This is an updated version of an article originally published on the Victorian Commons website on 27 February 2017, written by Dr Kathryn Rix.