WHITBREAD, William Henry (1795-1867), of Southill, nr. Biggleswade, Beds.

‘God knows they had too many of them in the House of Commons’, Whitbread declared of parliamentary orators in 1835.1Huntingdon, Bedford and Peterborough Gazette, 10 Jan. 1835. He did not trouble his fellow MPs with a single speech during his sixteen years in the Commons representing Bedford, where he was first elected in 1818. Presenting himself on the hustings as ‘a plain country gentleman … (who) had served them honestly’,2Ibid. Whitbread ‘invariably’ voted with the Whigs, though he preferred not to stay late in the chamber.3Huntingdon, Bedford and Peterborough Gazette, 30 June 1832. One obituary contended that ‘a more earnest, untiring partisan the Whig cause never had in any part of the kingdom’.4Bedfordshire Times, 29 June 1867. His most notable achievement, however, came long after he left the Commons, playing a key part in the construction of the Bedford to Cambridge railway in the early 1860s.

On his father’s death in 1815 Whitbread had succeeded to the family estates, centred on Southill Park, seven miles from Bedford, which extended to over 15,000 acres with more than 500 tenants. Whitbread also had a stake, worth £50,000, in the family brewing business.5HP Commons, 1820-32, vii. 734-7. Three years later he followed in the footsteps of both his father and grandfather when he became MP for Bedford, a position to which he felt entitled as the county’s second largest landowner.6HP Commons, 1790-1820, v. 527-45. He was returned unopposed three times before he faced his first contest in 1830, when he topped the poll.

Whitbread voted with the Whig ministers in 1831-2, believing that the opposition to parliamentary reform was ‘nonsensical’.7Huntingdon, Bedford and Peterborough Gazette, 30 June 1832. Their canvass returns left Whitbread and his fellow Whig Samuel Crawley ‘most fully convinced that the glorious cause of reform must prevail in Bedford’ and in December 1832 they were duly returned for the borough, with Whitbread comfortably topping the poll.8Huntingdon, Bedford and Peterborough Gazette, 15 Sept. 1832. Crawley, however, was only narrowly ahead of the Tory Captain Frederick Polhill, and a petition alleging malpractices was presented to the House of Commons. Whitbread himself faced accusations that, though he lived seven miles away at Southill Park, he had voted for Crawley and encouraged non-residents ‘to come in and throw away the rights of electors’. The petition was, however, rejected.9Huntingdon, Bedford and Peterborough Gazette, 17 Jan. 1835.

Whitbread is not known to have served on any select committees and was often absent from the Commons: in fifteen divisions between February and July 1833 he voted in five, and in ten divisions between February and May 1834 he voted in three. Like Lord John Russell, whom he knew well, Whitbread regarded himself as being on the reforming wing of the Whig party. His commitment to reform, however, did not extend to Joseph Hume’s motions for reducing military sinecures and pensions and the abolition of flogging in the army or to shorter parliaments, all of which he voted against.

Seeking re-election in 1835, Whitbread advocated retrenchment and modest reforms in church and state, ‘true Whig reformers … (being) true conservatives’.10Huntingdon, Bedford and Peterborough Gazette, 10 Jan. 1835. Despite the support of the Bedford Union, which claimed the support of 300 electors, Whitbread finished bottom of the poll. This caused a good deal of bitter recrimination, with accusations and counter-accusations flying between the supporters of Whitbread and Crawley.11Huntingdon, Bedford and Peterborough Gazette, 21 Mar. 1835; Huntingdon, Bedford and Peterborough Gazette, 19 Aug. 1837 for a claim by Crawley’s agent William Rogers that Whitbread had not spent enough money. In this ill-feeling probably lies the reason for Whitbread’s refusal to offer himself in 1837. Under pressure from his friends, however, he agreed, in April 1841, to come forward once more in the Whig interest. He had deliberately spurned banners and a band six years earlier, but this time marched to the hustings at the head of ‘a procession of the most splendid and striking appearance – the eye could not reach the full extent of it as it wound its way through the streets’. Pledging his support to ‘a liberal and enlightened ministry who have nobly supported the rights of the people’, he was barely audible amidst the hubbub as he made clear his opposition to the corn laws. Turning down an opportunity to return ‘this tried friend of the people’ to Parliament, the electors placed Whitbread at the bottom of the poll. There were immediate accusations of betrayal.12Cambridge Independent Press, 3 July 1841. Whitbread was not to again appear as a parliamentary candidate.

By the time of his death Whitbread’s undistinguished parliamentary career was almost forgotten. Yet he was remembered as a man of ‘indomitable perseverance … (and) enterprising disposition … he had not only the ability but also the will to do good’.13Bedfordshire Times, 29 June 1867. Whitbread made his mark in his other contributions to public life. He was appointed as high sheriff of Bedfordshire in 1837.14Morning Post, 1 Feb. 1837. For many years he served as a JP and as the perpetual president of Bedford General Infirmary, established by his grandfather. Whitbread was probably best remembered by the local populace, however, as the driving force behind the Bedford to Cambridge Railway. This opened in July 1862, but it can fairly be said that it would have been several years later had it not been for Whitbread’s energy. Undeterred by the rejection of the necessary parliamentary bill in 1859, after objections from other railway companies, he pressed ahead, contributing £10,000 himself to the project (the second largest personal investment after £12,000 from the duke of Bedford), persuading the London and North Railway Company to put up £70,000 of the £200,000 costs and testifying before a committee of the House of Lords. Whitbread became chairman of the new company which, in its first year, paid its shareholders a dividend of three-and-a-half percent.15Cambridge Chronicle and Journal, 19 Feb. 1859; Bedfordshire Times, 14 Feb., 28 July 1860, 7 May 1861, 10 Mar. 1863, 12 Jan. 1864, 3 Apr. 1866. In the year before his death Whitbread became the chairman of a company which built a school in Bedfordshire for ‘the sons of farmers and other middle class inhabitants’. The school was intended to take in 300 boys, and Whitbread put up £2,000 of the cost, estimated to be £18,000.16Bedfordshire Times, 13 July 1867.

The interests of agriculture were always important to Whitbread. In securing parliamentary support for the new railway, he had argued that it would be an efficient means of transporting cattle as well enabling potatoes and other vegetables to be delivered more speedily to Birmingham. Whitbread strongly supported the Bedfordshire Agricultural Society, providing prizes at its annual shows for the best livestock and the best demonstrations of such rural skills as stacking and thatching, and the Bedfordshire Agricultural Benevolent Society. He permitted the grounds of Southill Park to be used for archery contests, croquet matches, fetes held by the Bedford Working Men’s Institute and for drilling by the Bedford volunteer rifles, providing the latter with a marquee ‘which contained an unlimited supply of beef and ham sandwiches, cheese and beer’.17Bedfordshire Times, 11 Oct. 1859, 26 July, 7 Oct. 1862. A keen angler, Whitbread was one of the founders of the Thames Angling Preservation Society which sought to make that river ‘one of the finest fisheries in the world’.18Bedfordshire Times, 28 June 1862; West Sussex Record Office, Add. Mss 1716/3 for letters to his first wife Judith about a fishing expedition in Wales; Add. Mss 1716.

When Whitbread died at Southill Park in June 1867, after seeking to restore his health in Torquay, the house and estate passed to his brother Samuel Charles (1796-1879) and his stake of £50,000 in the family brewing business passed to his nephew Samuel, who sat as Liberal MP for Bedford, 1852-95. His second wife received £2,000 and an annuity of £4,000, together with a furnished house in Purfleet, Essex. There were also legacies to his stepdaughter, his stepson, his first wife’s niece, his steward, the daughter of his gamekeeper, whose husband had been murdered many years before (£60), and the nurse (£52) who had cared for him when he was ill in 1861.19Luton Times, 17 Aug. 1867. The value of his personal estate was under £250,000.20National Probate Calendar, 20 July 1867. Whitbread was interred in the family vault in the church at Cardington, where five years later a stained glass window in his memory was unveiled.21Bedfordshire Times, 3 Dec. 1872.