FOX, William Johnson (1786-1864), of 4 Charlotte Street, Bedford Square, London; later of 3 Sussex Place, Regent’s Park, London.

An ‘able representative of advanced liberalism on its more thoughtful, and cultivated side’, Fox entered the Commons aged 61, and although he served as Oldham’s MP for 15 years, he undoubtedly made less impact in Parliament than he would have done as a younger (and healthier) man.1Daily News, 6 June 1864. Miles Taylor has described him as ‘an exemplary figure in the history of English radicalism’, but one whose political life was ‘a series of contradictions’ and who cannot be ‘pigeon-hole[d]... as representing this or that particular shade of radicalism’.2M. Taylor, ‘The political radicalism of W.J. Fox – Part I’, Ethical Record, 93:5 (May 1988), 11-12. See also idem., ‘The political radicalism of W.J. Fox – Part II’, Ethical Record, 93:6 (June 1988), 13-18. Fox does, however, fit among the radical MPs classed by David Nicholls as the ‘friends of the people’,3D. Nicholls, ‘Friends of the people: parliamentary supporters of popular radicalism, 1832-1849’, Labour History Review, 62 (1997), 135. and his 1847 election address played up his humble origins: ‘Trained to labour in early life, my strongest sympathies ever have been, and will be, with the Industrial classes. I am one of the million. I belong to the people’.4B. Grime, Memory sketches (1887), 54.

The son of a Suffolk farmer (and grandson to the village barber), Fox moved around 1788 to Norwich, where his father worked in turn as a shopkeeper, handloom weaver (assisted by Fox, who was also an errand boy) and teacher at St. George’s chapel school, where Fox received a ‘limited and imperfect education’.5J. Bowring, ‘Review of Memorial edition of collected works of W.J. Fox’, Theological Review (1866), iii. 414; R.K. Webb, ‘Fox, William Johnson’, Oxf. DNB [www.oxforddnb.com]. Unless otherwise indicated, what follows here and in the next paragraph is based on the DNB. Largely self-taught, Fox studied in his spare time while employed as a bank clerk in Norwich from 1799. In 1806 he began training for the Congregational ministry at Homerton Academy, London. His first position was as a Congregational minister in Fareham, Hampshire, but his theological opinions were shifting, and by 1812 he had become a Unitarian, taking up a post in Chichester, where he met his wife. His ‘growing reputation as a controversialist and a spell-binding preacher’ led to his appointment in 1817 to the Unitarian chapel at Parliament Court, Bishopsgate, London, which moved to South Place in 1824, and he became active in London’s Unitarian community. As well as publishing his sermons, he contributed to periodicals, notably the Westminster Review, and in 1827 became editor (and from 1831-6 owner) of the Monthly Repository, a Unitarian publication, which he converted into a literary magazine and ‘campaigning journal’, enlisting new contributors such as Harriet Martineau and John Stuart Mill.6L. Blake & M. Demoor (ed.), Dictionary of nineteenth-century journalism in Great Britain and Ireland (2009), 228. On the Monthly Repository, see also F.E. Mineka, The dissidence of Dissent: the Monthly Repository, 1806-1838 (1944). His house ‘became an important gathering place for intellectuals’, and he was an early promoter of the talents of Robert Browning – who considered Fox ‘a man of genius’7M.D. Conway, Autobiography: Memories and experiences of Moncure D. Conway (1904), ii. 27. – and Alfred Tennyson. He was also a key figure in the early feminist movement, although he did not pursue this cause at Westminster.8K. Gleadle, The early feminists. Radical Unitarians and the emergence of the women’s rights movement, 1831-51 (1995), 5, 33-5; R. Garnett, The life of W.J. Fox (1910), 110.

Fox became estranged from his wife in 1834, setting up home with Eliza Flower (daughter of the radical printer, Benjamin Flower), ‘though Fox maintained that the relationship was never more than platonic’. This scandal – compounded by Fox’s pronouncements on marriage and divorce9Among Fox’s published views was an argument for divorce on grounds of incompatibility. – led to his expulsion from the Unitarian church in 1835, although he continued to preach at South Place until 1852.10Fox, however, dropped the title Reverend, and a minority of his congregation seceded. He carried on his journalistic endeavours as a leader writer for the True Sun, the Morning Chronicle and the Daily News. However, he was relieved from his dependence on his journalistic income by the generosity of the silk manufacturer, Samuel Courtauld, who gave him a £400 annuity, enabling Fox to devote more time to politics, although he still contributed regularly to the Weekly Despatch.11He had met members of Courtauld’s firm while in Chichester.

Having championed full civil rights for Dissenters and participated in the reform agitation, Fox joined the London Working Men’s Association, but he repudiated ‘physical force’ Chartism, and his sympathies waned when the Chartists began to disrupt Anti-Corn Law League meetings.12Webb, ‘Fox, William Johnson’; Garnett, Life of Fox, 256. He became the League’s paid writer and lecturer in 1843.13Garnett, Life of Fox, 258-62. Fox had first been commissioned to write an address for the League in 1840. Although acknowledging his effectiveness, Norman McCord’s history of the League describes Fox’s style as ‘highly pretentious’ and ‘unutterably sanctimonious and glib’.14N. McCord, The Anti-Corn Law League (1958), 185. Recent work views him more favourably, regarding his letters to The League, 1844-6, under the soubriquet ‘A Norwich Weaver-Boy’ as ‘models of the polemicist’s forensic skill’, and praising his oratory.15P. Pickering & A. Tyrrell, The people’s bread: a history of the Anti-Corn Law League (2000), 104-5. See also the positive assessment in M. Taylor, The decline of British Radicalism, 1847-1860 (1995), 55. John Bright praised Fox’s efforts for the League, telling his son that ‘Your father was the “orator” of the League, his speeches as compositions were far better than mine – but he did not speak often’ (cited in Garnett, Life of Fox, 263), but relations between Fox and Cobden were far less cordial: McCord, Anti-Corn Law League, 185; Garnett, Life of Fox, 268. It was not, however, his efforts for the League, but his lectures to the working classes at Holborn, 1844-6, which led to his invitation to stand at Oldham: ‘The first persons who thought of introducing me there were operatives’.16Garnett, Life of Fox, 270, 289; Manchester Times and Gazette, 25 Sept. 1847. Taylor has noted the ‘geographical’ contradiction in Fox, very much rooted in metropolitan radicalism, representing a northern industrial town.17Taylor, ‘Political radicalism – Part I’, 13-16.

Divisions among Oldham’s radicals meant that Fox was among three potential running-mates for John Feilden under discussion in 1846,18Manchester Times and Gazette, 21 Feb. 1846. and he considered withdrawing, as ‘the botheration of a long contest is not at all tempting, even if successful’.19Fox to Eliza Flower, cited in Garnett, Life of Fox, 286-7. However, he offered as one of three Liberal candidates in 1847, when he advocated annual parliaments, universal male suffrage, disestablishment and disendowment of the Church, and education which was ‘neither governmental nor sectarian, but national’. He warned free traders not to ‘sleep at their posts’, and voiced opposition to the poor law.20Grime, Memory sketches, 54. After a violent contest, Fox topped the poll, with a Conservative second, ousting Feilden.21Manchester Times and Gazette, 3 Aug. 1847; Garnett, Life of Fox, 290; J. Vernon, Politics and the people: a study in English political culture, c. 1815-1867 (1993), 170. Fox and the Conservative candidate John Duncuft were burnt in effigy during the contest. He was proud that he ‘never spent one shilling… never asked for a vote’, something true of all his contests.22Hansard, 24 May 1849, vol. 105, c. 925.

His fellow Unitarian MP John Bowring recalled that

much curiosity was exhibited in the House... when William Johnson Fox first took his place – a place which he ever after occupied – on one of the back seats of the House… The first impression made was not fascinating. He looked a short, fat, jolly, country bumpkin, with black hair hanging over his shoulders – it grew white from age – and with a somewhat ungainly gait; but if you caught his eye, it was full of intellectual fire, and his countenance was marked with the impress of philosophic thought.23Bowring, ‘Review’, 444-6.

A less kind observer described Fox as ‘very short, very fat, and quite round… The character of his locomotion… is a sort of compromise between a waddle and a roll’.24Reynolds’s Newspaper, 23 July 1854. For other physical descriptions of Fox, see Daily News, 6 June 1864; J. Evans, Lancashire authors and orators: a series of literary sketches of some of the principal authors, divines, members of Parliament, etc. connected with the county of Lancaster (1850), 94-5. Fox’s public speaking was much praised by contemporaries – ‘what a beautifully regulated voice… how silvery his cadences! … we have felt electrified at some of [his] perorations’ – but his style was less well-suited to the Commons, with Bowring observing that ‘his oratory… was never quite relieved from its pulpit and polemic character; yet, as he spoke seldom and always to the purpose, he was listened to with respect’.25Evans, Lancashire authors and orators, 95-6; Bowring, ‘Review of Collected works’, 446. For other descriptions of Fox’s speaking abilities, see Gent. Mag. (1864), ii. 249; Reynolds’s Newspaper, 23 July 1854; Birmingham Daily Post, 29 Apr. 1862; Daily News, 6 June 1864.

Fox’s attendance in his first Parliament fluctuated according to his health. In the 1848 session he voted in 57% of divisions, making him the sixth most assiduous Lancashire MP.26Manchester Times, 16 Sept. 1848. In 1849, when he was ‘imperatively forbidden by my medical advisers to attend public meetings, or to attempt speaking in public’, his attendance still ranked at 44% of divisions, and he managed a similar level the following year, despite having broken his arm on the way to the House that May.27Daily News, 8 Dec. 1849; Preston Guardian, 11 Aug. 1849, 31 Aug. 1850; The Examiner, 18 May 1850. He voted more often in 1851 and 1852, being present for 60% of divisions in the latter session.28Preston Guardian, 20 Sept. 1851; Liverpool Mercury, 2 July 1852. His maiden speech, 16 Dec. 1847, was in support of the removal of Jewish disabilities. He consistently divided for this reform, although he criticised Russell for proposing ‘some peddling little measure’ which extended only to Jews, telling his constituents that ‘if the people choose to trust Jew, Turk, or infidel, – worshipper of Buddha, or of Mumbo Jumbo, – with their rights… the House of Commons has no business to interfere’.29Manchester Times, 15 Feb. 1851. Although he contributed to debate on a variety of issues, it was on religious questions that Fox intervened most often, opposing the use of public money for the benefit of any particular religious group. He spoke regularly against the Regium Donum in England and Ireland, opposed the Maynooth grant and supported the abolition of church rates.30See Hansard, 23 Aug. 1848, vol. 101, c. 444; 4 June 1849, vol. 105, cc. 1113-14; 18 July 1851, vol. 118, c. 989; 10 June 1852, vol. 122, cc. 422-3.

In keeping with his views on the separation of church and state, Fox brought in a bill for secular education in England and Wales, 26 Feb. 1850, which proposed to establish secular schools funded from local rates, with separate religious instruction as parents wished.31Despite his contact with the Lancashire Public School Association (later the National Public School Association) – see for example his speech to that body, Manchester Times, 15 Dec. 1849 – Fox did not consult it before introducing his measure: Ibid., 25 Jan. 1851. He denied that he ‘proposed to exclude religion from education’, but contended that education’s purpose should be ‘to make good citizens, and not saints’.32Hansard, 5 June 1850, vol. 11, cc. 783, 786. The second reading was defeated, 58-227, 5 June 1850, as was a similar motion, 22 May 1851, by 49 votes to 131.33He was, however, heartened by the reduced majority against him on this occasion, and by the government’s concession on the principle of rating: Manchester Times, 29 Oct. 1851. In January 1852 Fox joined a deputation to Russell pressing for secular education.34Daily News, 7 Jan. 1852. He made two measured speeches, 11 Feb., 17 Mar. 1852, objecting to a rival measure, the Manchester and Salford education bill, which proposed rate funding only for schools which ‘made religion an essential part of their curriculum’, and served diligently on the ensuing select committee.35S. Maccoby, English radicalism 1832-1852 (1935), 330; PP 1852 (499), xi. 1ff. He supported other efforts to improve working-class education, backing the public libraries and museums bill, 10 Apr. 1850, and urging that the British Museum’s reading room be opened in the evenings, 11 July 1851.36Fox again spoke in support of evening openings at the British Museum: Hansard, 3 July 1854, vol. 134, cc. 1055-6; 21 Apr. 1856, vol. 141, c. 1364. He spoke on several occasions against measures for the prevention of Sunday trading, believing that they were designed for the benefit of shopkeepers rather than the masses.37Hansard, 24 July 1850, vol. 113, cc. 200-2; 18 June 1851, vol. 117, cc. 963-5; 13 June 1855, vol. 138, cc. 1920-1.

A supporter of advocated extensive parliamentary reform, Fox spoke at length in support of Joseph Hume’s ‘Little Charter’, 20 June 1848, and routinely divided for the ballot, franchise extension and shorter parliaments. He was one of only 13 MPs to support Feargus O’Connor’s motion on the Charter, 3 July 1849. He joined the National Parliamentary Reform Association later that year.38Taylor, ‘Political radicalism – Part II’, 16. He also entered the lobbies in support of free trade and retrenchment. In his first speech at Oldham, in April 1846, Fox had pledged to support Lord Ashley’s efforts to shorten the hours of labour, and although reluctant to place restrictions on the moving power – ‘it would be well to keep government out of their houses and buildings as much as they could’ – he agreed to endorse it if necessary.39Manchester Times and Gazette, 17 Apr. 1846. The sincerity of these promises had been questioned by opponents who saw him as the employers’ candidate, but he lobbied the prime minister and backed Ashley in the chamber with several speeches.40Manchester Times, 15 Feb. 1851; Daily News, 13 Mar. 1850. Although Fox ‘essentially identified himself with the “Manchester school” of political feelings and ideas’, unlike many of its leading members he supported Palmerston over the Don Pacifico question, 28 June 1850.41Evans, Lancashire authors and orators, 92. On Fox’s stance on foreign policy, see Taylor, ‘Political radicalism – Part I’, 11-12. In a speech at Manchester criticised by The Times for its intemperance, he declared that ‘there is too much sympathy with the despots of the continent… it would be no unpleasant sight to see a gibbet of two arms, with the Czar dangling at one end and the Catholic King [of the Two Sicilies] at the other’.42The Times, 26, 27 Sept. 1851. Fox’s support for the extension of citizenship was reflected in the proviso which he moved to the militia bill, that no one should be subjected to compulsory enlistment unless registered as a voter, but he withdrew this, 17 May 1852.43Fox also argued that this would afford conscientious objectors a means of opting out of military service, by taking themselves off the register.

Fox failed to secure re-election in 1852, when Oldham experienced another disorderly contest.44Fox was prevented from holding public meetings, and subsequently complained that he had been beaten by ‘brute force’: Manchester Times, 7 Apr. 1852, 3 July 1852; Garnett, Life of Fox, 293-4. He was blamed for Feilden’s 1847 defeat, and attacked as an infidel and an atheist due to his secular education proposals and the contents of his book Religious Ideas.45Garnett, Life of Fox, 292; Grime, Memory sketches, 96-7. However, he came in for a vacancy that December, although after the violence and vitriol of his two previous contests, he stood only on condition that he would be absent throughout, and never again appeared at Oldham during an election.46Garnett, Life of Fox, 291. Pleading illness on Fox’s part, his friend, Sir Joshua Walmsley, deputised for him during another violent campaign: The Times, 2 Dec. 1852. He received several presentations in calmer conditions in February 1853, including one from Oldham’s ladies, who gave him 112 sovereigns, commemorating the size of his majority, and a ring inscribed ‘Education the birthright of all’, which he wore proudly thereafter.47W.B. Hodgson & H.B. Slack, Memorial edition of the collected works of W.J. Fox (1866), iv. 332; The Times, 24 Sept. 1856.

Fox returned to the Commons in time to vote in the division which brought down Derby’s ministry, 16 Dec. 1852, and attended fairly regularly for the rest of the session.48Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853; Hodgson & Slack, Fox memorial edition, iv. 340. He was present for 63 out of 198 divisions in the 1856 session: J.P. Gassiot, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck: with a full analysis of the divisions in the House of Commons during the last session of Parliament (1857), 10. He did not renew his attempts to legislate for secular education, but argued its merits when alternative proposals were before the House, 21 Feb. 1854, 16 Mar. 1855.49Fox again served on the select committee on education in Manchester and Salford: PP 1852-53 (571), xxiv. 301ff. He was also appointed to, but did not attend, the committee on the Thames embankment bill: PP 1852-53 (946), lxxxiii. 64. Speaking at Oldham in 1856, he emphasised his opposition to the government’s insistence on denominational schools.50The Times, 24 Sept. 1856. Fox continued to divide for the removal of Jewish disabilities, and to oppose – both in debate and in the division lobbies – church rates, religious tests, the Maynooth grant and other endowments. He spoke in support of Edward Miall’s motion to consider Irish church temporalities, 27 May 1856, and attended his first meeting of the Liberation Society in 1857.51Leeds Mercury, 9 May 1857. He remained committed to electoral reform, arguing in support of Sir Joshua Walmsley’s motion for a select committee on the subject, 24 Feb. 1857. Although he expressed doubts about the details, he backed his Oldham colleague John Morgan Cobbett’s attempts to pass a measure strictly enforcing the Ten Hours Act, 5 July 1853, 15 Mar. 1855. He consistently opposed the 1856 police bill for ‘extending a system of centralization throughout the country’.52The Times, 26 Sept. 1856.

Fox’s views on foreign policy changed substantially during this Parliament. In 1855 he advised his constituents that while he had previously decried the miseries of war, he supported the Crimean conflict as ‘a defensive war against aggression’, and attacked the peace party.53The Times, 26 Nov. 1855. On his disputes with Cobden and Bright during the Crimean war, see Taylor, Decline of British Radicalism, 280. However, by 1856 he was hostile to Palmerston, criticising his failure to punish the ‘Crimean criminals’ who had mismanaged the army, and bemoaning the lack of a clear domestic policy.54The Times, 26 Sept. 1856. In contrast with his vote on Don Pacifico, Fox, after much soul-searching, not least because of his ‘lifelong friendship’ with Bowring (then governor of Hong Kong), divided against Palmerston on the Canton question, 3 Mar. 1857.55Hansard, 5 Mar. 1857, vol. 144, cc. 1929-31.

This vote was seen as one reason for Fox’s defeat at the 1857 election, when Oldham’s Liberals were again divided.56Gent. Mag. (1864), ii. 249. However, he came in unopposed for a vacancy that October. Less active in Parliament thereafter, he spoke and voted against Palmerston on the conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858, later rejoicing that he had been thrown from his ‘elevated pinnacle of power’.57Morning Chronicle, 9 Aug. 1858. Fox attended a meeting alongside Cobden and Bright at Freemason’s Hall protesting at the conspiracy to murder bill: M. Finn, After Chartism. Class and nation in English radical politics, 1848-1874 (1993), 181. Returning to his favourite topic of education, Fox backed Pakington’s calls for an inquiry, describing current provision as ‘a mongrel system of State interference and voluntary subscription’, 11 Feb. 1858. Given his advanced views on marriage, it is unsurprising that he endorsed the marriage with a deceased wife’s sister bill, 23 Feb. 1858. When the 1859 municipal elections bill was debated, Fox moved to abolish the property qualification for municipal office, but was defeated, 108-181, 10 Mar. 1859. He opposed the Conservative ministry’s reform bill, not wishing ‘to enfranchise the working classes by driblets’, 24 Mar. 1859. Sir John Trelawny noted of this contribution that ‘the matter of his speech was so good that one was provoked that he spoke in so low a voice. Still, he was listened to with the respectful attention he deserves. He always says something worth hearing’.58T.A. Jenkins (ed.), The parliamentary diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 1858-1865 (1990), 75.

Fox topped the poll at the 1859 election, and subsequently told his constituents that he considered Russell’s reform bill an acceptable instalment on the way to the Charter, unlike Derby’s ‘late sham bill’.59Manchester Times, 28 May 1859. Ever anxious to keep the state out of religion, he was among those MPs who lobbied Palmerston against proposals to collect information on religious affiliation for the census.60Daily News, 2 July 1860. He rarely spoke in his final Parliament, making a brief interjection on the mines regulation and inspection bill, 22 June 1860, and in his last known intervention, asking whether rowing boats would be permitted in Regent’s Park (near where he lived) on Sundays, 6 June 1861. Failing health – heart problems and paralysis of the optic nerve – meant that he was often absent, and in April 1862 he was forced to abandon his hopes of sitting until the dissolution, and resigned his seat.61Birmingham Daily Post, 29 Apr. 1862; Liverpool Mercury, 8 Jan. 1861; Reynolds’s Newspaper, 3 Nov. 1861; The Times, 22 Apr. 1862.

Reconciled to his wife some time after Eliza Flower’s death in 1846, Fox died of inflammation of the bladder in June 1864, after a short illness, and was buried at Brompton cemetery, with Cobden among those attending his funeral.62Liverpool Mercury, 7 June 1864; Webb, ‘Fox, William Johnson’; Daily News, 10 June 1864. He left under £600 in his will.63Webb, ‘Fox, William Johnson’. Encouraged by her father, who lent his library for life-drawing classes for female artists, his daughter, Eliza Bridell-Fox, became ‘a portrait and figure painter of considerable power’.64B. Colloms, ‘Fox, Eliza Florance Bridell-’, Oxf. DNB [www.oxforddnb.com]; Liverpool Mercury, 7 June 1864. His son Florance, a deaf mute, worked at the registrar general’s office, while Franklin was a master mariner who dabbled in literary pursuits.65Webb, ‘Fox, William Johnson’. Among Franklin’s literary efforts were How to send a boy to sea (1886). In 1892 Franklin wrote to the Daily News bemoaning the fact that his father, once recognised as ‘co-equal with Cobden and Bright’, had been omitted from a popular history of the Anti-Corn Law League.66Daily News, 6 Jan. 1892. While particular aspects of Fox’s career – such as his editorship of the Monthly Repository and his radical Unitarianism – have been explored, he has not been the subject of a major study since Garnett’s 1910 biography, although Taylor’s articles in the Ethical Record go some way towards redressing this neglect.67M.R. Parnaby, ‘William Johnson Fox and the Monthly Repository circle of 1832 to 1836’, PhD, Australian National Univ., Canberra, 1979; Gleadle, Early feminists, 33-5; A. Dyer, ‘John Stuart Mill and male support for the Victorian women’s movement’, PhD, Univ. of Sussex, 1996; Garnett, Life of Fox. A posthumous edition of Fox’s collected works ran to twelve volumes.68W.B. Hodgson & H.B. Slack, Memorial edition of collected works of W J.Fox (12 vols., 1865-8). His diary for 1812-15 is held by the PRONI, and the South Place Ethical Society holds other personal papers. Surviving correspondence can also be found in the British Library, the National Co-operative Archive, and Dr. Williams’s Library.