WALMSLEY, Sir Joshua (1794-1871), of 101 Westbourne Terrace, Hyde Park, London and Snibston, Leics.

A serious, sometimes courageous, Radical, Walmsley used his ‘extraordinary energy’ to keep parliamentary reform on the political agenda between the late 1840s and the outbreak of the Crimean War.1Liverpool Mercury, 22 Nov. 1871. A native of Liverpool, his father, a builder, left ‘no fortune’ on his death in 1807, forcing Walmsley to teach at his old school in Westmorland, where his proficiency with a gun meant that his duties included shooting game.2H.M. Walmsley, The life of Sir Joshua Walmsley (1879), 1-14 (at 9). He returned to Liverpool in 1811, teaching until 1814, when he was taken on as a merchant’s clerk.3Ibid., 23-6. His lowly position incurred the disapproval of his prospective father-in-law, a rich wine merchant, but the couple married regardless.4Ibid., 28-9, 31-5. His later prosperity and formidable reputation earned his father-in-law’s retrospective endorsement. After educating himself about the grain trade, Walmsley bought and sold commodities in his spare time, and subsequently became a partner in, and eventually head of, a corn brokerage firm in the 1820s.5Ibid., 29-31, 36-47, 56-8, 62.

Once he was well-established in business by the late 1820s, Walmsley became active in the local anti-slavery and parliamentary reform campaigns, and from 1837 was president of the Tradesmen’s Reform Association, the main organisation of Liverpool’s Liberals.6Illustrated London News (1849), xiv. 331; Liverpool Mercury, 13 July 1838, 21 Dec. 1838; Walmsley, Life, 59, 95-6. From the early 1830s, he was a powerful local critic of the corn laws.7Ibid., 61, 102-15; Liverpool Mercury, 25 Jan. 1839; Leeds Mercury, 9 Mar. 1839. In addition, he held numerous civic and public positions, and was president of the Mechanics’ Institute, the Literary and Scientific Institution, the Shipmasters’ Association, the Northern Hospital, and the Orphan Asylum.8Illustrated London News (1849), xiv. 331; Walmsley, Life, 60.

He was elected to Liverpool’s town council in the inaugural elections in 1835.9Ibid., 79-80. His administrative talents were shown by his creation of the Liverpool police, modelled on Peel’s metropolitan force.10Illustrated London News (1849), xiv. 331; Walmsley, Life, 80-6, 99. Described in 1839 as ‘an excellent practical merchant of considerable wealth’, he was elected as mayor that November.11Morn. Chro., 17 May 1839, 11 Nov. 1839; Walmsley, Life, 115. A popular incumbent, on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s marriage in 1840, Walmsley held, ‘at his own expense’, a ball for 1,200 people, and was knighted the following year.12Illustrated London News (1849), xiv. 331-2; Morn. Chro., 11 Nov. 1839, Leeds Mercury, 14 Dec. 1839; Walmsley, Life, 117-18, 123-4.

In March 1840, Walmsley agreed to be the Liverpool Liberals’ prospective parliamentary candidate, and he maintained a high profile in the run up to the 1841 general election through his involvement in the anti-corn law campaign.13Morn. Chro., 25 Mar. 1840, 14 Apr. 1841, 10 May 1841; Liverpool Mercury, 28 May 1841. Forswearing bribery, and standing as a free trader, Walmsley attacked the monopolies which propped up a ‘bloated aristocracy’.14Morn. Chro., 1 June 1841; Liverpool Mercury, 11, 18 June 1841, 2 July 1841; Walmsley, Life, 128-32. During his nomination speech, when he was interrupted and pelted with stones by opponents, he paused to calmly chastise the mob: ‘I wonder that you are not ashamed of yourselves. You are a disgrace to the town’.15Liverpool Mercury, 2 July 1841. The Conservative incumbents, whose ‘church in danger’ cry was effective despite Walmsley’s Anglicanism, were returned by a crushing majority of over 1,000 votes.16W. Duncombe Pink, The parliamentary representation of Lancashire, 1258-1885 (1889), 210; McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 181; Walmsley, Life, 133, 135. Whilst his followers blamed the corrupt freemen, Walmsley, who finished third, felt that he had received inadequate support from local Whigs, and the absence of viscount Palmerston, the other Liberal candidate, was a further handicap.17Liverpool Mercury, 2 July 1841. Palmerston allowed himself to be nominated, but took no part in the campaign.

The result was a bitter disappointment for Walmsley, who quit his native town, and settled at Ranton Abbey, Staffordshire.18Freemen’s Journal, 16 Sept. 1841; Walmsley, Life, 136-40. Moreover, the Conservatives’ dominance of Liverpool’s parliamentary representation and council from 1841 meant that, like other local Liberals, he would have to seek political opportunities elsewhere.19N. Collins, Politics and elections in nineteenth-century Liverpool (1994), 26-41; Liverpool Mercury, 2 July 1852. Walmsley disposed of his corn merchant business in 1845, but retained interests in a number of west Leicestershire collieries, and accepted the invitation of local Reformers to stand for one of the Leicester seats at the 1847 general election.20Daily News, 22 Feb. 1847; London Gazette, 28 Mar. 1845; Walmsley, Life, 73, 160. After speaking in favour of a national system of secular education and extending the suffrage, he topped the poll.21Leicester poll book 1847 election (1848), 82; Liverpool Mercury, 3 Aug. 1847; Morn. Chro., 26 July 1847; VCH Leics., iv. 215.

Although his administrative abilities were of a ‘high order’, Walmsley was not a natural speaker.22Illustrated London News (1849), xiv. 332. By the time he entered Parliament he was in his middle fifties, and, as he later recalled:

I could not at that late period acquire the facility of quick debate – so important to a public man, and which can be successfully cultivated only in the flexible years of youth – but I was up to the toil and drudgery such a life imposes on whoever conscientiously enters into it. Whenever I addressed the House, I invariably obtained a patient hearing, for I was careful always to master the subject upon which I spoke.23Walmsley, Life, 350.

Before the new session opened, Walmsley spent much time listening to the grievances of the framework knitters, and became a consistent supporter of efforts to improve their lot, beginning with Sir Henry Halford’s unsuccessful attempt to establish an inquiry.24Hansard, 29 Mar. 1848, vol. 97, cc. 1107-8; Walmsley, Life, 160-5. He endorsed further Roman Catholic relief and Jewish emancipation, but was unseated on petition after a committee found his supporters guilty of bribery at the 1847 election, 1 June 1848.25House of Commons Division Lists, 1847-48 session, 8, 17 Dec. 1847, 11 Feb. 1848, 4 May 1848; CJ, ciii. 584; PP 1847-48 (381), xiii. 241, 256, 275-6, 397.

Walmsley’s return to Parliament, after filling a vacancy at Bolton, 9 Feb. 1849, ‘seemed to infuse new vigour into the Reform movement’, which had been founded the previous year by Joseph Hume to campaign for the ‘little Charter’ of the ballot, household suffrage, triennial parliaments, and more equal electoral districts.26McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, 27; Reformers’ almanack and political year-book (1850), 35. Sitting alongside Hume in the chamber, Walmsley seconded his friend’s 1850 and 1852 motions for the ‘little Charter’, and became the leading figure in the extra-parliamentary campaign.27Hansard, 28 Feb. 1850, vol. 109, cc. 157-64; ibid., 25 Mar. 1852, vol. 120, cc. 96-106; J. Spellen, The inner life of the House of Commons (1854), 33. As president of the National Parliamentary and Financial Reform Association, the body he and Hume founded in 1849 to drum up popular support, Walmsley dealt with all correspondence, finance, and was ‘present at every meeting held’, which in 1850 alone was above 220.28M. Taylor, The decline of British radicalism, 1847-1860 (1995), 167; Walmsley, Life, 215, 217, 221, 233. Unlike Hume, who viewed the programme of reforms as a means to greater retrenchment, or Cobden, who increasingly argued that the ballot was of paramount importance, Walmsley believed that ‘the unenfranchised masses of this country are worthy of the political rights they claim’.29Hansard, 28 Feb. 1850, vol. 109, cc. 157-8; G. Searle, Entrepreneurial radicalism in mid-Victorian Britain (1993), 207-09; R. Cobden to Walmsley, 25 Sept. 1852, 2, 16 Oct. 1852, qu. by Walmsley, Life, 274-5, 277-81. Since 1832 the political system had not kept pace with the economic, social, and educational progress of the nation, he argued.30Hansard, 28 Feb. 1850, vol. 109, cc. 157-8; ibid., 25 Mar. 1852, vol. 120, cc. 98-9. The proposed reforms would diminish aristocratic influence by giving increased weight to the wealth and numbers of urban Britain.31Ibid., cc. 100-3. The campaign, however, has been judged as a failure, and Walmsley himself later expressed disappointment with the feeble support of Cobden, commenting of the Manchester school that ‘although they voted with us in the House of Commons, they did little more’. 32N. Edsall, ‘A failed national movement: The Parliamentary and Financial Reform Association, 1848-1854’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 49 (1976), 108-31. Cf. Taylor, Decline of British radicalism, 167-73; Walmsley, Life, 212. Privately Cobden felt that the provincial middle classes had little appetite for Walmsley’s advanced programme: Searle, Entrepreneurial radicalism, 215.

Despite his support for political reform, on other issues such as financial and foreign policy Walmsley gave general support to the Aberdeen and Palmerston administrations.33House of Commons Division Lists, 1852-53 session, 27 Nov. 1852, 16 Dec. 1852, 2 May 1853; ibid., 1854-55 session, 25 May 1855, 19 July 1855; ibid., 1857 session 1, 3 Mar. 1857. Walmsley believed that Britain’s constitutional arrangements compared unfavourably with those of her white settler colonies, as well as the United States.34Hansard, 28 Feb. 1850, vol. 109, cc. 160-1. His interest in colonial affairs extended to serving on the 1849 inquiry which recommended that the constitution and representative system of British Guiana be reformed after a stand off between that colony and the British government over fiscal policy.35PP 1849 (297), xi. 2; M. Taylor, ‘The 1848 revolutions and the British Empire’, Past & Present, 166 (2000), 146-80 (at 161-2). He was also a member of the committee which, over three sessions, studied the repression of the 1848 Ceylon uprising and called for a commission to investigate the actions of the governor, Lord Torrington.36PP 1849 (573), xi. 468-9; 1849 (591), xi. 473-4; 1850 (66), xii. 2-3; 1850 (106), xii. 36; 1850 (605), xii. 656-7; 1851 (36), viii., pt. I, p.2; Taylor, ‘1848 revolutions’, 164-5, 175.

Walmsley secured an easy victory over two Whigs at Leicester at the 1852 general election, finishing with the same number of votes as his Radical colleague.37Daily News, 1 July 1852; VCH Leics., iv. 219. In the chamber and in committee, he gave unstinting support to Halford’s attempts to regulate the hosiery industry for the benefit of the framework knitters, responding to Hume’s laissez-faire objections by arguing that ‘political economy was not a one-sided science’, and should benefit workers as well as masters.38Hansard, 4 May 1853, vol. 126, cc. 1101-7; ibid., 1, 15, 22 Mar. 1854, vol. 131, cc. 169, 824-5, 1220-2; ibid., 8 Mar. 1855, vol. 137, cc. 254-6; PP 1854 (382), xvi. 3; PP 1854-55 (421), xiv. 5, 15; Walmsley, Life, 289-90 (at 289).

The popular movement for parliamentary reform having petered out, Walmsley lowered his sights. Having dismissed the Whig government’s 1852 reform bill as ‘a small measure’, he was more welcoming to Russell’s 1854 proposal, whilst maintaining that it did not go far enough.39Hansard, 9 Feb. 1852, vol. 119, c. 296; Walmsley, Life, 285-6. He continued to divide in favour of the ballot, and sought to toughen legislation on bribery, which, Walmsley argued, would only be extinguished if the expensive and lengthy process of petitioning was replaced by local courts.40Hansard, 10 Feb. 1854, vol. 130, cc. 438-9; ibid., 10 July 1854, vol. 134, cc. 1448, 1466, 1476, 1478; House of Commons Division Lists, 1852-53 session, 14 June 1853; ibid., 1854 session, 13 June 1854; ibid., 1854-55 session, 22 May 1855; ibid., 1856 session, 20 May 1856.

On the death of Hume in 1855, Walmsley took up what was to have been his friend’s next campaign, and made the first in a series of motions in favour of Sunday opening of the British Museum and the National Gallery.41Walmsley, Life, 313. He also founded the National Sunday League to organise support for the cause. Allowing working people to have access to these important national collections on their only day of leisure, he argued, would promote moral and cultural improvement.42Hansard, 20 Mar. 1855, vol. 137, cc. 915-19; ibid., 21 Feb. 1856, vol. 140, cc. 1053-60, 1116-18. Despite his protests that the proposal was not motivated by anti-religious feeling, Walmsley received many letters denouncing him as an ‘agent of Satan’, and the motions were defeated by huge majorities.43In 1855 by 235 votes to 48 and by 376 votes to 48 the following year: Hansard, 20 Mar. 1855, vol. 137, c.940; ibid., 21 Feb. 1856, vol. 140, cc. 1118-21; Walmsley, Life, 316.

Walmsley’s opposition to the 1856 police (counties and boroughs) bill, which he believed strengthened central government at the expense of local control, contributed to its revision into something less objectionable to many Liberals.44Hansard, 10 Mar. 1856, vol. 140, cc. 2158-60; ibid., 2 May 1856, vol. 141, c. 1932; ibid., 9, 23 May, vol. 142, cc. 306-7, 611-12. The following year he opposed Cobden’s motion of censure over Canton, partly out of his personal respect for Bowring, the British consul.45House of Commons Division Lists, 1857 session 1, 3 Mar. 1857; Walmsley, Life, 324. The last major act of Walmsley’s parliamentary career was to attempt to revive the reform issue by proposing an inquiry on inequalities in the representative system, 24 Feb. 1857. Although he reprised themes from earlier speeches, he now believed that household suffrage was really the minimum extension needed.46Hansard, 24 Feb. 1857, vol. 144, cc. 1249-55, 1265-6. However, both Palmerston, and indeed other Radicals, thought a committee was undesirable, and the motion was defeated.47Ibid., cc. 1261-3, 1264, 1266.

At the 1857 general election he failed to secure re-election, losing out to a local Liberal backed by Dissenters who objected to Walmsley’s stance on Sunday opening.48Derby Mercury, 25 Mar. 1857, 1 Apr. 1857. During the campaign he bluntly told critics that his opinions had not altered ‘one iota’ on the issue, and his support for the framework knitters also alienated some local hosiers.49Walmsley, Life, 331-3 (at 333). Although he complained of the ‘wicked calumnies’ of his opponents, the deep affection in which Walmsley was held by many of Leicester’s inhabitants was shown by the presentation, after his defeat, of a ‘massive silver’ testimonial and two addresses, one signed by 6,750 women and another by 5,665 electors and non-electors.50North Wales Chronicle, 4 Apr. 1857; Walmsley, Life, 339.

Although he received many invitations, Walmsley did not seek a return to Parliament, instead retiring from public life.51Ibid., 341, 350-1. He moved to Wolverton Park, Hampshire, and then to Bournemouth, where he built a house he named Hume Towers. He remained president of the National Sunday League until shortly before his death in 1871.52Ibid., 350-2. Walmsley was succeeded by his eldest son Joshua (b. 1819), who pursued a military career in southern Africa. His younger brother Hugh (b. 1822), became a travel writer after leaving the army, and in 1879 published a life of his father that emphasised his reputation as a reformer and remains the standard work.53IGI; http://www.researchers.plus.com/walmsley4.htm.