SCHOLEFIELD, Joshua (1775-1844), of The Grove, Edgbaston, Warws.

A banker, merchant and manufacturer, Scholefield has been described as ‘the wealthiest and among the least talented’ of the leaders of the Birmingham Political Union (BPU), of which he was vice-president.1C. Flick, The Birmingham Political Union and the movements for reform in Britain, 1830-1839 (1976), 19. A similar verdict was recorded by Disraeli, who, on meeting Scholefield in May 1832, described him as ‘quite devoid of talent’.2B. Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, 26 May 1832, qu. in Lord Beaconsfield’s letters, ed. R. Disraeli (1887), 76. However, although he lacked the charisma of the Union’s chief, Thomas Attwood, Scholefield was no less radical, and his more mundane virtues perhaps better equipped him for parliamentary life, which soon disillusioned his colleague.

Born in Yorkshire, Scholefield’s business career flourished in Birmingham, where he was an iron manufacturer and ‘merchant of longstanding, great weight, and respectability’, and served as high bailiff in 1819.3R.W. Davis, ‘Scholefield, Joshua (1774/5-1844)’, www.oxforddnb.com; Morn. Chro., 8 July 1844. Although he was a leading member of the BPU, founded 25 Jan. 1830, Scholefield did not excel at public speaking, but possessed other valuable attributes, notably his links to local Whigs, who generally held aloof from an organisation dominated by Radicals and ultra-Tories.4N. LoPatin-Lummis, ‘Birmingham Political Union (act. 1829-1839)’, www.oxforddnb.com; Flick, Birmingham Political Union, 23-4; D. Moss, Thomas Attwood: the biography of a radical (1990), 156. With Joseph Parkes and William Redfern, both Whigs, he acquired the Birmingham Journal in 1832.5E. Edwards, Personal recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham men (1877), 7. Scholefield’s respectability reassured nervous Whig ministers, as instanced by Lord Althorp’s letter to Lord Grey, 20 Nov. 1831, which approvingly reported Parkes’ comments that ‘the union is quite out of the control of Attwood but … Scholefield’s influence is very great and that he is a man of much greater ability than Attwood and being a man of very large property and high character is very much considered here’.6Althorp to Grey, 20 Nov. 1831, Althorp MSS. 3rd earl Spencer, box 6. Apart from the comparison with Attwood, whom Parkes seldom missed an opportunity to denigrate, the letter provides a fair estimate of Scholefield’s qualities, which contributed to his selection as part of the deputation which saw Grey in London after the Whigs’ dismissal from office in May 1832.7Flick, Birmingham Political Union, 83-5.

The enormous popularity of the Union after the passing of the Reform Act lingered long enough to secure the unopposed return of Attwood and Scholefield as Birmingham’s first MPs in December 1832, with both men promising to resign if constituents were dissatisfied with their conduct.8The Times, 15, 19 Dec. 1832. However, by this time Scholefield had resigned from the Union’s political council due to an earlier dispute over who should partner Attwood.9Scholefield had been endorsed by the political council ahead of the Radical George Edmonds, but when his wife fell ill, Edmonds asserted his right to the nomination. Attwood intervened to settle the dispute in favour of Scholefield, but the latter resigned in any case: Flick, Birmingham Political Union, 98; D. Moss, Thomas Attwood: the biography of a radical (1990), 229. Elected in second place at the 1835 and 1837 general elections, (he rejoined the Union in the latter year), Scholefield contemplated retirement after his near defeat by a Conservative at the 1841 contest, so disappointed was he with the result.10Ibid.; McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 23-4; The Times, 5 July 1841.

Scholefield has been fairly categorised as a ‘popular radical’ by the historian David Nicholls on the basis of his voting behaviour.11D. Nicholls, ‘Friends of the people: parliamentary supporters of popular radicalism, 1832-1849’, Labour History Review, 62 (1997), 127-46 (at 134, 140). Although he could usually be counted upon to back the Whig government in key divisions, generally Scholefield followed a similar pattern to other early Victorian Birmingham MPs, such as Attwood and George Frederick Muntz, in consistently supporting radical political reform and factory regulation while opposing the new poor law, which he regarded with ‘abhorrence’.12A Full and accurate report of the proceedings at the grand public dinner given to Thomas Attwood, Esq. and Joshua Scholefield, Esq., members for the Borough of Birmingham, at Mr. Beardsworth’s repository on...Sept. 15, 1834 (1834), 4. At the end of the 1834 session, Scholefield drily remarked to constituents that he and Attwood had voted in ‘many a small minority’, and said that he ‘should feel proud, so long as he lived, of having voted against’ the Irish coercion bill.13Ibid., 3. Like Attwood and Muntz, Scholefield was an Anglican who supported the Whigs on religious issues, such as Irish church reform, if on little else.

Described as ‘currency mad’ by Parkes, Scholefield tended to emphasise the necessity of a property tax to relieve distress, although he shared Attwood’s zeal for non-convertible paper money.14Joseph Parkes to E.J. Stanley, 30 Nov. 1839, MS at Kingsland; Hansard, 21 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, cc. 944-5; ibid., 5 July 1839, vol. 48, c. 1413. Supporting the hearing of the first Chartist petition, 12 July 1839, Scholefield argued that the ‘Chartists wished for nothing but justice’, which he interpreted as the belief that ‘they should not pay more than a fair share of taxation’.15Hansard, 12 July 1839, vol. 49, c. 274. It was a theme Scholefield reprised when he unsuccessfully proposed a property tax, 23 Mar., 15 June 1841.16Hansard, 23 Mar. 1841, vol. 57, cc. 557-8; ibid., 15 June 1841, vol. 58, cc. 1520-5. Fully aware of his slim prospects of success, Scholefield argued that just proposing the measure would ‘do some good’ by giving hope to the ‘afflicted’ masses if nothing else.17Ibid., 1525.

Although he was opposed to much of the key legislation passed after 1832, and saw his preferred remedies for distress rejected, unlike Attwood, Scholefield does not seem to have launched any tirades against the reformed Commons. He served on many committees, including the 1836 inquiry on arts and manufactures, but he was an infrequent attender and on more than one occasion seems to have missed the vote on committee reports.18PP 1836 (568), ix. 2; PP 1837-38 (257), xvi. 342. On his death in 1844 he was succeeded by his eldest son from his first marriage, Clement Cotterill (d. 1853), whose brother William (1809-67), was the first mayor of Birmingham and followed in his father’s footsteps as a Radical MP for the town, 1847-67.19DNB (1897), l. 421-2.