SIDNEY, Thomas (1805-1889), of 8 Ludgate Hill, London; Bowes Manor, Southgate, Middlesex

A London tea dealer and merchant, Sidney represented his native town of Stafford on two separate occasions, on both occasions aided by his considerable wealth. He declared that he was ‘no party man – no political partisan’ in 1847.1Staffordshire Advertiser, 3 July 1847. Although regarded by historians as a ‘Conservative Peelite’ or Derbyite in the following parliament, Sidney is better understood as representing London Corporation’s distinctive political culture.2W.D. Jones and A.B. Erickson, The Peelites, 1846-1857 (1972), 136; J.B. Conacher, The Peelites and the party system, 1846-1852 (1972), 224, 228, 232. His chief concerns were defending the privileges of the metropolis’s traditional institutions, above all the City of London Corporation, from government centralisation, opposing the income tax and championing the interests of ratepayers generally. In this respect, although Sidney is not mentioned in Benjamin Weinstein’s study of London radicalism, he held many of the same principles dear.3B. Weinstein, Liberalism and local government in early Victorian London (2011). Sidney reprised these themes in his second spell in Parliament, and increasingly pressed for a revision of the poor laws to ease the burden on ratepayers.

Sidney was born in Stafford, the son of a woollen draper.4F. Boase, Modern English biography (1901), iii. 569. He left the town when he was twelve or thirteen for a commercial career in London, and established his tea dealing business at 8 Ludgate Hill in 1838.5Staffordshire Advertiser, 31 July 1847. In 1844 Sidney was elected an alderman for the Billingsgate Ward of the City of London, a position he held until 1880, and was sheriff of London in 1844.6Boase, Modern English biography, iii. 569. He was returned for his native town of Stafford in second place at the 1847 general election but refused to pledge to any party, other than to say that he would go to Parliament ‘as the decided opponent of Lord G. Bentinck’.7Staffordshire Advertiser, 31 July 1847.

Despite his hustings protestations Sidney generally voted with the Derbyites on the key financial divisions between 1847-52, opposing the repeal of the navigation laws, 23 Apr. 1849, and backing Disraeli’s motions on agricultural distress, 21 Feb. 1850, 13 Feb. 1851. Indeed, Sidney was one of the vice-presidents of the National Association for the Protection of British Industry and Capital, and also sat on its general committee.8National Association for the Protection of British Industry and Capital, Report of the proceedings and speeches at the great public meeting … 26th June 1849 (1849), 45, 49. However, few of his party would have agreed with his backing for Locke King’s 1851 county franchise bill, or his description of it as a ‘Protectionist and Conservative measure’.9Hansard, 2 Apr. 1851, vol. 115, c. 928.

Throughout his first parliament, Sidney was active in the largely successful rear-guard defence of the City Corporation from various centralising schemes that threatened its autonomy.10On the Corporation’s avoidance of reform see D. Owen, The government of Victorian London, 1855-1889: the Metropolitan Board of Works, the Vestries, and the City Corporation (1982), 234. He opposed the 1848 public health bill, saying that he would ‘give his hearty support to any general measure of sanitary reform’, but only if the details were controlled by local ratepayers rather than a government board, 10 Feb. 1848.11Hansard, 10 Feb. 1848, vol. 96, c. 419. He objected to government attempts to close and move Smithfield Market on public health grounds as an unwarranted interference with the ‘prescriptive rights, public and private, of the citizens of London’.12Hansard, 17 July 1849, vol. 107, cc. 503-5; 9 Apr. 1851, vol. 115, cc. 1317-22 (at 1319). He introduced a bill to abolish the admission fees and stamp duties paid by City freemen, 5 Mar. 1850, which he hoped would increase the municipal electorate.13Hansard, 5 Mar. 1850, vol. 109, cc. 382-5. The attorney-general Sir John Jervis informed him that his bill had ‘no probability’ of passing, and it was accordingly defeated.14Ibid., 385, 389. However, Sidney was praised for his stand by Joshua Toulmin Smith, the leading theoretical opponent of centralisation, for showing ‘his determination to discharge faithfully his duties as a citizen, and to maintain the true dignity, character, and integrity of the Corporation’.15J.T. Smith, What is the corporation of London? and who are the freemen? (1850), p. iv. Sidney repeatedly attacked income tax, and the burden of taxation generally, especially for its impact on shopkeepers, ‘a most important class’.16Hansard, 13 Mar. 1848, vol. 97, c. 466. He offered his ‘most uncompromising opposition’ to the renewal of the tax in 1851.17Hansard, 4 Apr. 1851, vol. 115, cc. 1087. He also complained of the increase in poor rates and pressed Matthew Talbot Baines, president of the poor law board, for a revision of the poor laws to create a more equal distribution of the rates, especially in London, 1 May 1850.18Hansard, 1 May 1850, vol. 110, cc. 1060-1. Sidney’s resolutions to make debtors’ prisons subject to the same discipline as criminal prisons were not accepted by the 1850 select committee on which he served.19PP 1850 (632), xvii. 2, 19.

Sidney retired at the 1852 general election, fearing the risk of being unseated for his venal borough.20Staffordshire Advertiser, 13 Mar. 1852. He was linked with the City of London and canvassed Banbury, but did not contest either.21The Standard, 2 July 1852; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 21 Mar. 1857. He was, however, nominated without his knowledge as a Liberal Conservative for Leeds, where he had established the Tradesmen’s Benevolent Institution with a donation of 500 guineas in 1845.22H. Schroeder, The annals of Yorkshire (1852), ii. 21-2. Despite his absence and finishing last, he polled a creditable 1,087 votes.23McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 165; T. Sidney, letter, Leeds Mercury, 31 July 1860. Although a zealous defender of the London Corporation in Parliament, Sidney ‘was generally supposed to be a corporate reformer’.24Evidence of James Acland to Report of commissioners into state of the Corporation of the City of London (1854), 35. It seems that only the report, but not the evidence, was published in the parliamentary papers: PP 1854 [1772], xxvi. 1. A pamphleteer had exempted Sidney from the ‘sweeping censure’ heaped on the rest of the City Corporation and magistrates, as he had persistently pressed for the rebuilding of London’s prisons.25W. Carpenter, The Corporation of London as it is, and as it should be (1847), 79-80. For these reasons, there was an abortive attempt to prevent Sidney’s election as lord mayor in 1854.26Report of commissioners on Corporation of London, 35.

In 1855 a ‘number of respectable Whig and Conservative electors’ invited Sidney to contest Worcester at the next opportunity.27Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 14 Mar. 1857. Accordingly he offered at the 1857 general election. Described locally as a ‘Liberal Conservative’, Sidney’s party allegiance was hazy and he styled himself as ‘an Independent Representative’ and a ‘constitutionalist’.28Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 14, 21 Mar. 1857. Others dismissed him as a ‘rejected bread-taxer’.29Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 21 Mar. 1857. However, he certainly offered an extensive explanation of his political views, pledging to vote for the ‘complete extinction’ of income tax and proposing a national poor rate of 1s. 6d. in the pound to ‘relieve the poor with proper humanity and relieve the ratepayers of the enormous burden’.30Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 21 Mar. 1857. He advocated administrative reform, was not against enfranchising £8 or even £3 householders, and backed the abolition of church rates.31Ibid. He later complained that Parliament had been dominated by factionalism and contained too few MPs representing manufacturing and commercial interests.32Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 28 Mar. 1857. Sidney was decisively beaten by the two Liberal incumbents.33McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, 326. He was defeated again at the 1859 general election, when he returned to his former borough of Stafford. During the campaign he called for the enfranchisement of compound ratepayers and promised to support the ballot if Stafford’s electors demanded it.34The Times, 19 Apr. 1859; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 16 Apr. 1859. His conduct led the Whig Lord Hatherton to describe Sidney and another candidate as ‘adventurers dealing with principles as counters’.35Hatherton Journal, 29 Apr. 1859, Staffs. RO, D260/M/F/5/26/81. However, he came in for Stafford at a by-election in August 1860, again advocating a national poor rate.36Birmingham Daily Post, 3 Aug. 1860.

The poor laws were the paramount issue for Sidney in his second spell in Parliament. He argued that there was ‘great dissatisfaction’ in parts of London due to the ‘unequal pressure of the poor rates’, with much of the burden falling heavily on the poor, 8 Feb. 1861.37Hansard, 8 Feb. 1861, vol. 161, cc. 240-2 (at 240). See also ibid., 16 July 1861, vol. 164, cc. 974-5; 19 Feb. 1863, vol. 169, cc. 533-4; 11 May 1865, vol. 179, cc. 123-4. He was an inquisitive member of the select committee on poor relief, appointed in 1861 and chaired by the president of the poor law board, Charles Pelham Villiers, which sat over four sessions before reporting in 1864.38PP 1861 (180), ix. 21; 1861 (323), ix. 200; 1861 (474), ix. 406; 1861 (474-I), ix. 608; 1861 (474-II), ix. 732; 1861 (474-III), ix. 832; 1862 (181), x. 2; 1862 (321), x. 184; 1862 (468), x. 418; 1863 (383), vii. 460. The 1861 Irremovable Poor Act and 1862 Union Assessment Act, which were supposed to have reduced inequalities between parishes within the same poor law union, had not worked effectively in London.39PP 1864 (349), ix. 229-30. The committee tentatively suggested spreading the cost of poor relief equally within metropolitan unions and also relieving the casual poor out of a common rate based on the whole of the capital.40Ibid., 226-7, 230. Sidney’s resolution, to employ police constables to suppress vagrancy, was accepted.41Ibid., 246. He later claimed that he was ‘not an advocate for a national rate’, but called for the further ‘equalisation of burdens’, 22 May 1865.42Hansard, 22 May 1865, vol. 179, cc. 666-7.

Sidney reluctantly accepted the permanence of the income tax, 3 Apr. 1862, while urging the reform of its assessment and collection.43Hansard, 3 Apr. 1862, vol. 166, cc. 502-3. Unsurprisingly, he was among the ‘most prominent’ of the ‘representatives of the Corporation’ who ‘warmly opposed’ the amalgamation of the City of London police with the Metropolitan force in 1863.44Annual register for 1863 (1863), 163-4. The proposed measure, Sidney declared hyperbolically, ‘could strike more deeply at the independence of the middle classes of the country than any measure which had been introduced or passed into law in modern times.’45Hansard, 21 Apr. 1863, vol. 170, cc. 495-501 (at 501). He also opposed the attempt to established government-backed savings banks, as ‘it was not the province of the Government to do everything for the people of this country. It was their duty rather to encourage feelings of self-dependence and self-reliance’, 7 Mar. 1864.46Hansard, 7 Mar. 1864, vol. 173, cc. 1595-6.

Sidney retired at the 1865 general election. On his death in 1889 he left a personal estate sworn under £129,000 and was succeeded by his eldest son from his second marriage, Thomas Stafford Sidney (1863-1917), a barrister who held legal office in India, Africa and the West Indies.47Calendar of Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration (1889), 83; Al. Cant. Pt. II, v. 507.