A Whig barrister who briefly represented Knaresborough, Rotch was described by one contemporary as ‘a man, who... would resort to any wily expedient to attain his own ends’. His career ‘was strangely chequered by the multiplicity of his projects’ and ‘his public life was marked by an unusual amount of contention’.G.L. Chesterton, Revelations of prison life (2 vols., 1856), ii. 191. Although written by an unsympathetic observer, this provides a fair summary of an individual whose occupations included being an inventor, a cab proprietor and the owner of a lunatic asylum, and whose chairmanship of the Middlesex quarter sessions ended when he challenged London’s lord mayor to a duel.
Rotch’s family came from Massachusetts, where they had risen from humble beginnings to become ‘the most influential family in colonial whaling’ by 1750.J.L. McDevitt, The House of Rotch. Massachusetts whaling merchants 1734-1828 (1986), pg. vii. It is unclear when the family had emigrated from England, but it appears that Rotch’s great-grandfather, Joseph (1704-84), the son of William (d. 1705), a weaver, was born in Salem, Massachusetts.Earlier sources which suggest that Joseph was born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, are corrected by a later family history: L.S. Hinchman, Early settlers of Nantucket (1896), 106n.; Vital Records of Nantucket, Massachusetts to the Year 1850 (1925), 339, cf. J. M. Bullard, The Rotches (1947), 6. See also McDevitt, House of Rotch, 29. A cordwainer, Joseph moved to Nantucket and subsequently became a merchant.Bullard, The Rotches, 5-8. He joined the Quakers in 1733, shortly before his marriage into the Macy family, which brought him connections with Nantucket’s leading whale-oil merchants.McDevitt, House of Rotch, 42-3. By the time of the American Revolution his oldest son William (1734-1828), Rotch’s grandfather, had expanded the business to become ‘by far the richest man on Nantucket’.Bullard, The Rotches, 31. 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, and after negotiations to settle in Britain failed, William Rotch accepted the French government’s invitation to transfer his activities to Dunkirk, where they were managed by Rotch’s father, Benjamin (1764-1839).E.A. Stackpole, Whales & destiny. The rivalry between America, France and Britain for control of the southern whale fishery, 1785-1825 (1972), 13, 37, 66, 70, 84, 97; J. Clayton, ‘Nantucket whalers in Milford Haven, Wales’, Historic Nantucket, 56: 1 (2007), 4-7 [http://www.nha.org/history/hn/HNwinter2007-clayton.htm]; G.R. Taylor, ‘Nantucket oil merchants and the American Revolution’, Massachusetts Review, 18 (1977), 602-3. For a detailed account of these negotiations, see McDevitt, House of Rotch, 338-59. Rotch, who was ‘physically very big’, with ‘a tendency in later years to put on much weight’, was born there in 1793.Bullard, The Rotches, 114. The outbreak of war between France and England forced Rotch’s father to move in 1795 to London, where he continued his mercantile operations, trading in tobacco and salt.Clayton, ‘Nantucket whalers’; McDevitt, House of Rotch, 385. Rotch’s grandfather William had already returned via London to Massachusetts, where he helped to develop the town of New Bedford: Bullard, The Rotches, 36; McDevitt, House of Rotch, 385, 405. Later reports that Rotch and his mother had fled France hidden in a butter firkin and a flour barrel were refuted by his brother.Leeds Mercury, 23 Feb. 1833, 2 Mar. 1833. A few years later the family joined other Nantucket whalers at Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, which Rotch’s father helped to develop as a whaling port. However, his business suffered a serious financial setback in 1814, and he sold most of his ships and returned to London.Clayton, ‘Nantucket whalers’; Bullard, The Rotches, 115-16, 120-1; Stackpole, Whales & destiny, 245-6; McDevitt, House of Rotch, 401, 513. Rotch’s father lost heavily when his plan to corner the market by amassing large stocks of whale-oil ended badly after his agent failed to sell at the right time.
This failure led Rotch’s father to abandon his ‘Quaker prejudices’ and allow his son to become a lawyer, being called to the bar in 1821.Bullard, The Rotches, 131. Alongside his legal interests, Rotch was involved with numerous other ventures. As secretary to the fund for a monument to the late Princess Charlotte, he rebutted charges in 1819 that its promoters were lining their own pockets.Morning Chronicle, 24 Dec. 1817; The Times, 30 July 1819; Caledonian Mercury, 7 Aug. 1819. The memorial (in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor) was not unveiled until 1824, prompting complaints from the sculptor, Matthew Cotes Wyatt: Morning Chronicle, 18 Mar. 1824. Of ‘an inventive turn of mind’,Ibid., 121. His early experiments included a ‘flying machine’: Ibid., 131. he took out a patent in 1816 for a rubber horseshoe,The repertory of arts, manufactures and agriculture (1817), xxx. 78-9. He revised this patent in 1831: Journal of the Franklin Institute (1831), viii. 259-60. and in 1821 received the Society of Arts’ Vulcan Silver Medal for his ‘Arcograph’, which allowed arcs of large circles to be drawn and measured.T. Gill (ed.), The technical repository (1822), i. 260. In association with a Mr. Bradshaw, Rotch has been credited with ending the monopoly of hackney coaches in London by acquiring licences to operate the cheaper and faster cabriolets in 1823,PP 1830 (515), x. 308; W.H. Pyne (ed.), The world in miniature; England, Scotland, and Ireland (1827), iii. 259; H. Mayhew, London labour and the London poor (1861), iii. 350. Other sources confirm that it was Rotch and not his father who was involved with this business: Littell’s living age (1845), vi. 510; Gent. Mag. (1857), ii. 663. though he sold out the following year.PP 1830 (515), x. 357. He received £240 for his seven cabriolets and their horses. The success of his ‘patent lever fid’, a device to assist with striking and raising the topmast of ships, enabled Rotch to purchase a property at Lowlands, near Harrow.The kaleidoscope; or, literary and scientific mirror, 7 Aug. 1827; Bullard, The Rotches, 121, 132. Rotch had taken out this patent in 1823: The repertory of patent inventions (1825), i. 69. He was the standing counsel of the British and Foreign Patent Association,Morning Post, 24 June 1825. and in 1830 was praised as ‘a barrister, equally eminent for his scientific knowledge, and his acquaintance with the laws and practice of Courts respecting patent rights’.The register of arts, and journal of patent inventions (1830), iv. 129. The previous year he had been an expert witness before the select committee on patent laws.PP 1829 (332), iii. 520-33, 540-1; Morning Post, 14, 15, 17 Oct. 1829.
Rotch’s name was linked to several constituencies before 1832. In contrast with his later views, he initially leaned towards the Tories. In 1826 he canvassed Sudbury as a ‘true blue’, but withdrew amidst allegations that another candidate had bought him off.HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 62-3. Declining to contest Evesham himself at the 1830 general election, he introduced and campaigned for the Tory Lord Kennedy, with whose family he was ‘in intimate habits’.HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 231; PP 1830-31 (73), iii. 61, 155. That December Rotch considered offering for a vacancy at Knaresborough, but instead endorsed the Tory John Entwisle’s challenge to the duke of Devonshire’s control of the borough.HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 271; Morning Post, 4 Dec. 1830. At the nomination Rotch decried pocket boroughs and lauded parliamentary reform as ‘the greatest blessing that can come to this country’.York Herald, 4 Dec. 1830. He became ‘a favourite’ with ‘the populace’,Daily News, 29 Mar. 1849. and was chaired alongside the defeated Entwisle.York Herald, 4 Dec. 1830. He maintained his connection with Knaresborough, speaking there in support of reform in March 1831.Ibid., 19 Mar. 1831. After Entwisle decided not to offer at that year’s general election, Rotch proposed the Whig Sir James Mackintosh, in a speech which Mackintosh presciently felt was ‘chiefly calculated to obtain a seat in the reformed Parliament’.HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 272. Rotch was mooted for a vacancy at Poole that September, but did not stand,Ibid., i. 334. and abandoned his candidature for a vacancy at Knaresborough in May 1832.Ibid., ii. 272.
After some initial uncertainty as to whether he was canvassing on his own behalf or testing the ground for another candidate, Rotch offered for Knaresborough at the 1832 general election.Daily News, 29 Mar. 1849. Those backing one of his opponents, the Whig Henry Rich, with whom Rotch fought an acrimonious battle for the second seat, accused Rotch ‘of having been for years a trafficker in elections; of seeking out candidates, irrespective of politics... and of personally profiting by these proceedings’, as well as being involved with bribery at Evesham. However, with Rotch regarded as ‘the man of the people’, while Rich was attacked as Devonshire’s nominee, it was Rotch who triumphed.Ibid. Rich petitioned against Rotch’s return, 18 Feb. 1833, on the grounds that he was an alien, having been born in France of an American father,CJ, lxxxviiii. 50-1. Benjamin Rotch’s father had obtained American passports for his family in 1793, but in 1803 and 1805 he applied as a British subject when registering some of his ships: McDevitt, House of Rotch, 408-9. but withdrew this after difficulties in obtaining documents from France.CJ, lxxxviiii. 153; The Standard, 12 Mar. 1833; Leeds Mercury, 23 Mar. 1833. Although Rotch had been described in 1816 as a Quaker,The repertory of arts, manufactures and agriculture (1817), xxx. 78-9. he was not practising by the time he entered Parliament.A list of MPs returned at the 1832 general election identified Joseph Pease of Durham South as a Quaker but did not do the same for Rotch: Bristol Mercury, 12 Jan. 1833.
Rotch’s involvement in the 1830 Evesham contest was again scrutinised in March 1833 when he was nominated as chairman of the Middlesex quarter sessions, a role he had undertaken pro tem since February.The Times, 12 Feb. 1833, 8 Mar. 1833. Questioning Rotch’s credentials, another magistrate, Mr. Easthope, noted the criticism there had been of him for acting as both witness and counsel for Kennedy when the Evesham contest was scrutinised by an election committee, and accused Rotch of giving false testimony to that committee, which Rotch denied.The Times, 27 Mar. 1833. Easthope subsequently disproved Rotch’s claim that he had been responsible for placards against him at Knaresborough, producing a letter which showed that these had emanated from Rich: J. Easthope, A letter to the magistrates of the county of Middlesex (1833), 14-15. His fellow magistrates concluded that Easthope’s allegations rested ‘on very slight grounds’,Morning Post, 27 Mar. 1833. and elected Rotch as chairman in April.Morning Post, 19 Apr. 1833. He combined this unpaid position with his parliamentary duties, sitting at court at Clerkenwell from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. before going to the Commons after dinner.Bullard, The Rotches, 133-4. He also continued to go the circuit.He was granted leaves of absence for this purpose, 1 Mar. 1833, 10 July 1834: CJ, lxxxviii. 133; lxxxix. 479.
Rotch was nonetheless an active parliamentarian. His mother wrote in March 1834 that ‘Ben is a Reformer, not a Radical; he is truly independent and will not truckle to the Ministers’.Bullard, The Rotches, 133. Although he supported ministers on questions such as the Irish church temporalities bill, 11 Mar. 1833, Rotch was not afraid to take an independent line. He was in minorities for an inquiry into taxation, 26 Mar. 1833; the abolition of military flogging, 2 Apr. 1833, 14 Mar. 1834; amendment of the game laws, 17 Apr. 1833; the Sabbath observance bill, 16 May 1833, which he backed ‘in spite of ridicule’; and repeal of house and window tax, 21 May 1833. While these votes often saw him enter the lobby with Radicals, he divided against them in opposition to currency reform, 24 Apr. 1833, the ballot, 25 Apr. 1833, and a low fixed duty on corn, 7 Mar. 1834. However, he backed proposals to take the votes of Hertford’s freemen by ballot, 21 Apr. 1834, endorsed shorter parliaments, 15 May 1834, and paired in support of Ward’s motion on Irish church appropriation, 2 June 1834.The Times, 22 Apr. 1834.
‘Gifted with rare natural eloquence’, Rotch lost little time in making his maiden speech, in the debate on the address, bemoaning the focus on Irish questions and advocating ‘careful and anxious’ reform of the Church of England, 8 Feb. 1833.Chesterton, Revelations of prison life, ii. 193. His legal expertise led him to serve on several committees, including those on bills relating to fines and recoveries, limitation of actions, the laws of dower and inheritance, and property transfer.CJ, lxxxviii. 226-7; lxxxix. 381. He also served on inquiries into victualling-house licences in Holborn,PP 1833 (585), xv. 262. Rotch had been involved in granting licences as a magistrate. Daniel Whittle Harvey’s rejected application to be called to the bar,PP 1834 (503), xxviii. 328; PP 1834 (555), xxviii. 332; C. Elmsley, ‘Harvey, Daniel Whittle’, Oxf. DNB [www.oxforddnb.com]. Despite the committee’s ruling in Harvey’s favour, the benchers continued to reject him. and the dramatic performances bill, although his opposition did not impede its third reading, 24 July 1833.The Times, 7 June 1833. Having assisted Richard Godson in drafting a bill on patents, Rotch was appointed to the committee on this measure, 23 Apr. 1833.CJ, lxxxviiii. 297. He defended the clause defining what could be the subject of a patent, 9 July 1833, although the bill subsequently stalled.H.I. Dutton, The patent system and inventive activity during the industrial revolution, 1750-1852 (1984), 45-6. Reflecting his earlier interests as a cab proprietor, Rotch moved unsuccessfully for a committee to consider regulating the conduct of drivers of cabriolets, hackney coaches, omnibuses and stage coaches, 5 July 1833. Attacked for his ‘prurient itch for legislation’, Rotch retorted that ‘he did itch to see business done in that house properly. All the business which had been done in that house during the present session might have been got through in a month’.The Times, 6 July 1833. This speech was not reported in Hansard. When another member introduced a bill on this subject, Rotch was appointed to the committee, 12 June 1834, but it failed to progress.CJ, lxxxix. 382. The House voted against continuing with the bill due to the lateness of the session, 31 July 1834.
Drawing on experience on the bench, Rotch took a sustained interest in crime and punishment. He complained of the poor state of prisons, particularly Newgate, 26 Feb. 1833, and argued that solitary confinement was more effective than flogging, 2 Apr. 1833. He endorsed enabling magistrates to prosecute those involved with bear-baiting, dog-fighting and similar sports, 8 May, and backed the dwelling-house robbery bill, 12 June 1833. In July 1833 Rotch’s conduct as chairman of the Middlesex quarter sessions came under scrutiny in the House. Doubts about whether some witnesses had been sworn in properly before magistrates at Clerkenwell had provoked a protracted dispute between the magistrates, led by Rotch, who insisted that their procedures were correct, and the judges, who decided that any convictions arising from trials at the Old Bailey involving these witnesses were null and void.The matter was first raised in the Commons, 12 July 1833, when William Hughes Hughes, a fellow magistrate, defended their conduct in Rotch’s absence. On ‘the mistake’, see also Morning Post, 9 July 1833; Morning Chronicle, 12 July 1833, 26 July 1833; The Standard, 12 July 1833; The Examiner, 14 July 1833. The dispute centred on whether the Clerkenwell court had actually been sitting when the witnesses were sworn. Rotch’s clumsy efforts to defend the magistrates prompted the solicitor-general, Sir John Campbell, to revise his view that they were guilty of ‘forgivable’ blunders, instead charging them with ‘gross misconduct’, 31 July 1833. Yet despite some press criticism of his involvement in ‘the mistake’,Morning Chronicle, 10 Sept. 1833. Rotch was reappointed as chairman that September.The Standard, 13 Sept. 1833. He subsequently oversaw an inquiry by magistrates into the arrangement of business between Clerkenwell and the Old Bailey, and corresponded with ministers on the subject.The Standard, 10 Jan. 1834, 8 Apr. 1834; The Times, 4 Jan. 1834. In the House he self-interestedly defended proposals – which did not come to fruition – for Middlesex to become the only county which paid its chairman, stressing that he had ‘sacrificed his profession’ to undertake the onerous duties. In a year he claimed to have tried 1,570 cases, handled 100 appeals and sat for 125 days in court, 25 Mar. 1834.The salary proposed was £1,200. His mother wrote that he intended to resign if he did not receive a ‘handsome remuneration’, but this threat was not carried out: Bullard, The Rotches, 134.
Rotch was ‘called to account’ by his constituents for his absence from Harvey’s motion for a scrutiny of the pension list, 18 Feb. 1834, but made amends by attacking this ‘odious burthen’ and voting with Harvey, 5 May 1834.Rotch was absent from the February vote due to illness, but stated in May that he would have voted against Harvey on that occasion. He made two unsuccessful attempts at legislation in the 1834 session. His bill on the forfeiture of felons’ property – which would be used to compensate victims and defray the costs of prosecution and imprisonmentHansard, 26 Feb. 1834, vol. 21, c. 861. – reached its second reading, 26 Mar. 1834.Rotch was given leave to bring in the bill, 4 Mar., and it received its first reading, 15 Mar. 1834: CJ, lxxxix. 83, 126. He gave notice in August that he would re-introduce the measure the following session: The Times, 16 Aug. 1834. On the same day he condemned the ‘popular phrenzy’ surrounding the imprisonment of the Dorchester labourers, and stated his intention to promote a bill against trades unions. However, the House was inquorate when he moved for his bill to protect those workers who did not wish to join from ‘the domineering and often cruel interference of trades’ unions’, 29 July 1834.The Times, 28 July 1834. This stance lost him support at Knaresborough, and he did not seek re-election in 1835.Daily News, 29 Mar. 1849. Rumours that he would offer for Middlesex came to nothing.The Times, 6 Jan. 1835.
Thereafter Rotch continued his legal practice, with patent cases his specialty.He appeared on patent cases before the judicial committee of the privy council, in the vice-chancellor’s court and in the courts of exchequer and chancery, among others: The Times, 7 Mar. 1836, 16 Mar., 21 Dec. 1837, 5 July 1838. He was also the standing counsel for the Kent railway company and the Universal Cement company: Ibid., 30 May, 15 Sept. 1836. In April 1835 he joined an admiralty inquiry into John Howard Kyan’s patent for preventing dry rot, on which he had spoken favourably in the House, 28 July 1834.Copy of the report from the committee appointed by the lords commissioner of the Admiralty to investigate Mr. Kyan’s patent for prevention of dry rot in timber (1837), 12; PP 1835 (367), xlviii. 91-116. He remained chairman of quarter sessions, but in October 1835 became embroiled in a dispute which culminated in his resignation. Reporting 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 taking ‘such county prisoners as are, by the fees paid on their trial and conviction, likely to enrich the City purse’. When Alderman Wood protested about these ‘wilful and deliberate falsehoods’, the lord mayor, Alderman Winchester, thanked him for raising ‘this scandalous matter’.Morning Post, 28 Oct. 1835. Rotch demanded an apology from Winchester, and when Winchester refused to reply, challenged him to a duel. Winchester responded by filing a criminal information against Rotch in the court of king’s bench, 2 Nov. 1835, for trying to incite a breach of the peace.The Times, 2, 3 Nov. 1835; Morning Post, 3 Nov. 1835. Efforts to reach an ‘amicable adjustment’ floundered,The Times, 11 Nov. 1835; Morning Post, 25 Dec. 1835. but in December Rotch admitted that no provocation could have justified his ‘hostile message’ and resigned as chairman, amid general sympathy from fellow magistrates.The Times, 25 Dec. 1835; Morning Post, 25 Dec. 1835. Criminal proceedings were dropped in January 1836 after Rotch apologised to Winchester.The Times, 23 Jan. 1836. Winchester had by this time ended his tenure as lord mayor. Prior to the case being dropped Rotch had tried to scupper it by claiming that Winchester had wilfully concealed some relevant facts: Ibid., 17 Nov. 1835. Despite the hopes of ‘injudicious friends’ that Rotch might return as chairman, his resignation was final.The Times, 15 Feb. 1836. Mr. Barlow, who proposed Rotch as chairman (without his knowledge) in February 1836, found no seconder: The Times, 19 Feb. 1836.
He nonetheless remained active as a magistrate and maintained his interest in prison reform. His ‘persevering exertions’ prompted magistrates to investigate ‘the extremely disgraceful state of the New Prison’ at Clerkenwell in 1836, following which they decided to replace it in 1844.J. Adshead, Our present gaol system deeply depraving to the prisoner and a positive evil to the community (1847), 81n.; The Times, 8 July, 11 Nov. 1836, 3 Nov. 1837, 16 Aug. 1844; The Standard, 23 Dec. 1836. In 1849, ‘at his own cost’, Rotch sent sheep into Cold Bath Fields prison, hoping to train prisoners in shearing and send them to Australia.The Times, 2, 6, 12 Mar. 1849. A ‘teetotaller of 30 years’ standing’,Leicester Chronicle, 26 May 1849. he was prominent in several temperance bodies,He chaired the first meeting of the National Temperance Society in 1843, and was patron of the Temperance Provident Institution and patron and standing counsel of the United Kingdom Total Abstinence Life Association: The Times, 24 Jan. 1843; National Temperance Chronicle, 16 (Oct. 1844), 263; Belfast News-Letter, 5 Mar. 1841. and in evidence to an 1849 Lords’ inquiry bemoaned the link between ‘tippling in beer-houses’ and criminality.PP 1850 (398), xviii. 540-4. Rotch favoured making it easier to buy beer to consume off rather than on the premises, echoing comments he had made in the Commons, 23 Apr. 1834. He lectured at Cold Bath Fields prison on the evils of drink, but his preferential treatment of prisoners and staff who took the pledge provoked ‘internal broils’.Chesterton, Revelations of prison life, ii. 192, 197. A memoir by the prison’s governor derided Rotch’s fanaticism and noted the press mockery of ‘Drinkwater Rotch, the Sheep-shearing Magistrate’.Ibid., 192, 199. Fellow magistrates eventually took the opportunity not to re-appoint him as a visiting magistrate at the prison: Ibid., 200. Rotch also had a long-standing interest in juvenile delinquency.He had attended the annual meeting of the Society for the Suppression of Juvenile Delinquency in 1834: The Times, 5 May 1834. He published his Suggestions for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency in 1846, joined fellow magistrates to lobby ministers on the question in 1847, and welcomed the introduction of a bill by Richard Monckton Milnes in 1849.Y. Levin, ‘The treatment of juvenile delinquency in England during the early nineteenth century’, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 31 (1940), 40; The Standard, 13 Mar. 1847; B. Rotch, ‘Mr. R. Moncton [sic] Milnes’ bill’, Ragged School Union Magazine (1849), i. 181-91. He was involved with the Philanthropic Society’s reformatory school,Philanthropic Society’s model farm school (1848), 1. but faced opposition on cost grounds to his proposals that Middlesex magistrates build an industrial school.The Times, 13 Nov. 1848. He did, however, secure the construction of a new county lunatic asylum, and presided over its opening at Colney Hatch in 1851.The Times, 18 Nov. 1848, 9 May 1849, 2 July 1851. Rotch’s teetotalism meant that no wine was provided when Prince Albert came to lay the asylum’s foundation stone: Leicester Chronicle, 26 May 1849. Rotch had earlier been the owner of a private asylum at Denham Park, Buckinghamshire,Freeman’s Journal, 19 Mar. 1840. but left this partnership in 1842.London Gazette, 14 Feb. 1843.
In 1843 a visiting relative reported that Rotch had ‘changed a good deal, is monstrously fat, and entirely bald’. He suffered badly from arthritis, and was a keen proponent of hydropathy, extolling its benefits in the Lancet.Bullard, The Rotches, 135-6; The Lancet (1843-4), i. 354-7. He continued to dabble in an eclectic range of projects, assisting with preparations for the Great Exhibition, drafting an insurance scheme for railway passengers in 1849, and taking out a patent for the manufacture of artificial saltpetre in 1851.The Times, 18 Oct. 1849; B. Rotch, The Railway Passengers Assurance Company (1849); The Artizan (1851), ix. 96. He died at his Harrow residence in 1854, and was buried at Kensal Green cemetery.Liverpool Mercury, 7 Nov. 1854; http://www.kensalgreen.co.uk/documents/KG_notables.html He was childless, and his property passed to his widow, who died in 1909.The Times, 26 Apr. 1909. His younger brother Thomas Dickason Rotch married the sister of Peter Rigby Wason, MP for Ipswich.Burke’s landed gentry (1847), ii. 1149.
