CARTER, Samuel (II) (1805-1878), of Battle , Sussex; 3 Clifton Place, London

Carter has been conflated in previous accounts with his namesake, Samuel Carter (1814-1903), a former Chartist who sat for Tavistock between April 1852 and February 1853.1M. Stenton, Who’s Who of British Members of Parliament, vol. I, 1832-1885 (1976), i. 68; J. Vincent & M. Stenton (eds.), McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book (1971), 356. Carter, a solicitor to some of the great Victorian railway companies, briefly represented Coventry, his native city, as a Liberal. Although he sat for barely eight months, he told local supporters that ‘I cannot boast of the length of my services, but they were at least faithful … with the exception of one morning meeting, I never missed a single sitting of the House from the day that I entered it to the day that I left’.2Coventry Herald, 4 Dec. 1874. He was described as ‘a very worthy man, courteous and gentlemanly in his manners’.3T.W. Whitley, The parliamentary representation of the city of Coventry (1894), 361.

Carter’s uncle John Carter was for many years the town clerk of the Coventry corporation and his father and namesake also held municipal office. Carter was educated in West Bromwich at a school headed by his uncle John Corrie, a Unitarian minister. He began his legal career as a clerk for another uncle, Josiah Corrie, and later became a partner in the practice. The firm became solicitors to the London and Birmingham Railway in 1831, and to the Birmingham and Derby Railway (which later became the Midland Railway), in 1835. Carter moved to London in 1850. For many years he occupied ‘the remarkable position of being solicitor to both the London and North-Western and Midland companies’, although he gave up the former position in 1860.4F.S. Williams, The Midland Railway: its rise and progress (1877), 663. He also acted as solicitor to the Buckinghamshire Railway and the Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Stour Valley Railway Company.5H. Glynn, Reference book to the incorporated railway companies of England and Wales (1847), 10, 26.

Carter’s services were highly esteemed by the companies. One historian of the Midland Railway described him as an ‘excellent legal adviser’, while another noted that although Carter ‘for many years had charge of all the Midland bills in Parliament ... he never lost a bill’.6Williams, Midland Railway, 266; C.E. The history of the Midland Railway (1901), 216. The Solicitor’s Journal considered him ‘a man of uncommon shrewdness and ability; a tactician of renown in parliamentary committee’.7Solicitors’ Journal, xxii (1878), 278. However, given the shortness of his career Carter had little opportunity to display his expertise in drafting bills, private bill procedure and the legislative process.

A Liberal in politics, Carter declared that he had been ‘a warm supporter of the Reform Bill of 1832’ and had apparently been a member of the Birmingham Political Union.8Birmingham Daily Post, 23 Mar. 1868; Coventry Herald, 4 Dec. 1874. In March 1868 the Liberal MP for Coventry Henry Mather Jackson was unseated on petition because of his agents’ bribery, and local partisans pushed Carter to stand. Carter accepted, retiring from business in order to do so.9Birmingham Daily Post, 23 Mar. 1868. He made his candidature conditional on his party observing electoral purity and forswearing illegal payments to voters.10Coventry Herald, 4 Dec. 1874. Conservatives jeered that Carter was ‘Jackson’s warming pan’, put up to keep Jackson’s seat warm until the next election.11Whitley, Parliamentary representation of Coventry, 360. Having secured the endorsement of the local branch of the Reform League, Carter declared support for the ballot, establishing boards of arbitration for labour disputes and repealing the rate-paying clauses of the 1867 Representation of the People Act. He advocated the disestablishment of the Irish church and ‘complete religious equality’, especially with regard to university admissions.12Birmingham Daily Post, 17 Mar. 1868. He was returned at the by-election by 300 votes.

Taking his seat in time to participate in the great debates on Gladstone’s Irish church resolutions, Carter’s only recorded speech was on this issue, 31 Mar. 1868. He declared that his recent election was a bellwether for public opinion on the Irish church. Carter commented that he had been returned by electors who were ‘plain men’ who could not understand why an injustice which few bothered to defend should be left in place. This was why he, a ‘humble individual’, had been returned rather than his eloquent barrister opponent.

Aside from this intervention, Carter’s parliamentary activity seems to have been confined to the division lobby. He supported Hugh Childers’s amendment to reduce the marines’ wages by £60,000, and William Ewart’s bill to legalise the metric system for weights and measures, 11, 13 May 1868. In the votes on the representation of the people (Scotland) bill, he backed proposals to boost the number of Scottish MPs at the expense of the smallest English boroughs, and to give extra seats to the most populous Scottish cities and counties, 18, 25, 28 May 1868. He opposed the married women’s property bill, 10 June 1868, but backed John Bright’s campaign on behalf of Nova Scotians dissatisfied with their incorporation into Canada, 16 June 1868.

Carter was defeated at the 1868 general election and his petition against his opponent was rejected. He was equally unsuccessful at the 1874 general election. In winter 1874 Coventry Liberals demonstrated their esteem for Carter by presented him with a massive silver centrepiece as well as a ‘valuable gold watch’.13Coventry Herald, 6 Nov. 1874, 4 Dec. 1874. On his death in 1878, his personal estate of £90,000 was sworn by two of his sons.14Calendar of Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration (1878), 59. He had purchased an estate in Battle, Sussex, in the late 1850s but had disposed of this by the mid-1870s. He also inherited a small property in Kenilworth from his mother’s family.15A. Rowley, ‘Carter, Samuel (1805-78)’, www.oxforddnb.com. His second son, Hugh (1837-1903), was a noted watercolourist.16M. Hardie, rev. S. Fagence Cooper, ‘Carter, Hugh (1837-1903)’, www.oxforddnb.com. His third son, John Corrie Carter (1840-1927) was a revising barrister and editor of Rogers on Elections, which passed through numerous editions in the late nineteenth century, and The Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act, 1883, with notes and index, published in 1883. He was a director of the Midland Railway, 1896-1910, chairman of Radnorshire quarter sessions 1895-1913, and recorder of Stamford, 1881-1912.