FAITHFULL, George (c.1790-1863), of Hurst Villa and 34 Buckingham Place, Brighton, Suss.

Faithfull’s election for Brighton in 1832 ‘under the very nose of the court’ sent shock waves through high society.1Raikes Jnl. i. 123. ‘Some very bad characters have been returned, among the worst Faithfull here’, noted the Whig diarist Greville, who was in Brighton at the time.2Greville Mems. ed. H. Reeve (1879), ii. 335. An extreme radical, during his brief tenure Faithfull was extremely active in the division lobbies and one of only three MPs who voted for all six of the major ‘popular radical causes’ identified in a recent study of popular radicalism between 1833-35.3D. Nicholls, ‘Friends of the People: parliamentary supporters of popular radicalism, 1832-1849’, Labour History Review (1997), lxii. 132, 134. His lengthy career as a local political leader, however, was more varied. After losing his seat in 1835, he dallied with Tory-Radicalism and Chartism, abandoned ‘his ancient friends the Democrats’ to oppose municipal reform, and eventually found himself pilloried for the very ‘Toryism which it used to be his delight to condemn’.4Brighton Gazette, 15 June 1853.

Faithfull’s early life is obscure. The fourth son of a Winchester attorney, who had acted for the Whigs in the notoriously venal Hampshire election of 1790, by the 1820s he and his brother Henry were partners in one of Brighton’s leading firms of solicitors, with offices at 15 Ship Street.5http://users.eastlink.ca/~dfaith/brian.html; W. Faithfull, Winchester. Mr Printer (1790). Faithfull’s most important client was his ‘friend’ Thomas Read Kemp MP, the town’s ‘leading citizen’, whose fashionable Dissenting sect he had joined in 1816. On Kemp’s reversion to orthodoxy in 1823 Faithfull took over his ministry at Trinity chapel in Ship Street, where he evidently became a far better preacher, and on its sale two years later built himself a new chapel in Church Street. Faithfull, a town commissioner, also acted professionally for Kemp in his construction and management of Kemptown, a Nash-inspired suburb of 100 magnificent houses to the east of Brighton begun in 1823, where Faithfull acquired a house in 1828.6A. Dale, Fashionable Brighton 1820-60 (1987), 52, 110.

Faithfull took a leading role in the agitation for parliamentary reform got up by the Brighton Political Union.7N. LoPatin, Political Unions, Popular Politics and the Great Reform Act of 1832 (1999), 82-3. At the 1832 general election he offered with their backing for the newly created borough as an ‘ultra radical’, amidst speculation that his ‘very debilitated state of health’ made him ‘unfit to undertake the arduous duties of an MP’. After a tumultuous and unruly contest, in which he was accused of playing to the mob, he was returned in second place behind another radical.8Morning Post, 11, 12, 13 Dec. 1832.

In the first of six known spoken interventions, Faithfull demanded reform of the legislation governing the Speaker’s pension, arguing that it was unsatisfactory for his entitlements to be left to his own discretion, and was in the radical minority of 31 for his replacement by E. J. Littleton, 29 Jan. 1833. Recalling the debate a few days later, Denis Le Marchant observed that ‘Mr Faithful, of Brighton, was the only one of the debutantes who promised fairly. He has a lean, hungry aspect with a quick eye and a pointed and argumentative style’.9A. Aspinall, Three Nineteenth-Century Diaries (1952), 292-3. Faithfull’s support for the advanced radicals in the lobbies included minority votes against the address, 15 Feb., the Irish coercion bill, 12 Mar., for army reductions, 25 Mar., against the newspaper duties, 3 May 1833, 22 May 1834, for inquiry into the corn laws, 8 Mar. 1834, and against the poor law amendment bill, 9 May, 1 July 1834. He had been initially listed by Dod as an ‘advocate for the immediate abolition of slavery’, but this was subsequently altered to ‘advocate for the immediate abolition of all unmerited pensions’ and he was described as a ‘West India proprietor’, though no trace of any slave holding has been identified. He condemned the tithe system, 15 Feb., attributed the increase of crime to the taxation system, 1 Mar., and warned that without tax cuts ‘the people would be driven to desperation’ and revolt, 6 Mar. 1833. He presented petitions against the Irish coercion bill, 11 Mar. 1833, and the Edinburgh annuity tax, 6 May 1833.

At the 1835 general election Faithfull offered again, declaring his support for shorter parliaments, vote by ballot, household suffrage, the repeal of the malt tax and corn laws, the expulsion of bishops from the House of Lords, the separation of Church and state, and severe laws against bribery and treating.10Morning Chron. 15 Dec. 1834. Following a split between Brighton’s Liberals and working-class radicals over his colleague’s behaviour, and the intervention of the crown in favour of a Whig courtier, he was beaten into fourth place.11The Times, 9 Jan.; Morning Post, 26 Jan. 1835. Incensed and feeling betrayed by his former radical colleague, whom he accused of coalescing with the successful Whig and exploiting connections with The Times, he gave vent to his fury by founding his own newspaper, The Brighton Patriot and Lewes Free Press, 24 Feb. 1835. Its vicious character assassinations of his opponents, Liberal, Whig and Tory, under the heading ‘political recreancy detected and exposed’, did little to assist Faithfull in his declared aim of restoring relations between the town’s Liberal and radical elements, however.12Brighton Patriot, 17 Mar., 14 Apr., 14, 21 July, 25 Aug. 1835 At the 1837 election he launched a vitriolic campaign against his former colleague and backed Freeman Eliot, ‘a warm-hearted friend to the working man’, who talked of forming a Tory-radical alliance against the new poor law. Following Eliot’s last minute withdrawal, Faithfull took up his reins, explaining, somewhat elusively, that ‘the tories he hated from the bottom of his heart, but as for the whigs, he liked open better than disguised enemies’.13The Times, 26 July 1837. Though he was again defeated in fourth place, he hailed the replacement of his former colleague by a Tory and the destruction of the ‘base coalition’ of Whigs as a ‘great victory’.14Brighton Patriot, 21, 26 Mar., 11, 18 July 1837.

Thereafter Faithfull flirted with Brighton’s emerging Chartist movement, lending its leaders, notably the former hairdresser John Good, the grudging support of his paper until it ceased publication in 1839, asa result of a libel suit and mounting debts.15Brighton Patriot, 22 Jan. 1839; http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs/BrightonPatriot.htm. He was conspicuously absent from the contest of 1841, when Good declined to stand and Faithfull failed to vote, and around this time was engaged professionally on behalf of the London and Brighton railway following a series of fatal accidents.161841 Brighton Pollbook, 18; The Standard, 5 Oct. 1841. He had abandoned the Chartists by 1842, when he campaigned actively against their candidate in support of Summers Harford, an advanced Liberal who had just been unseated for bribery at Lewes.17Morning Post, 9 Apr. 1842.

By now Faithfull had acquired a power of attorney from Kemp, and in January 1842 arranged the ‘great sale’ of all his Brighton estates in order to try and settle his debts, which was a complete failure, although Faithfull himself was able to acquire Chichester House. It was on Faithfull’s watch that Kemp was declared an outlaw in 1844, for failing to respond to an suit by Sir William Pilkington, for which Faithfull has been accused of neglecting his client’s affairs.18Dale, Fashionable Brighton, 67-8, 110.

Faithfull took a leading part in the successful campaign against the imposition of the 1848 Public Health Act on Brighton, which he believed was ‘part of an abominable centralization system’, but broke with his former supporters over the replacement of the town commissioners with a municipal town council, elected on a broader (male) franchise.19Brighton Guardian, 16 Feb. 1853. Denouncing the ‘preponderance of numbers over property’ and ‘noisy agitation’ that would result, 14 June 1854, he pointed to ‘the disfranchising of 1200 women’, many of whom possessed multiple votes under the commissioners’ plural voting system, insisting that ‘it was absurd to say the property of women should not be represented’. Ridiculed as the ‘ladies’ friend’, and accused of ‘joining issue with his ancient foes’ and advocating a ‘species of Toryism’, he assumed the lead in the ultimately unsuccessful campaign against incorporation, delivering a speech ‘of five hours duration’ in the final inquiry, 3 Sept. 1853, much to the consternation of the investigating commissioner.20Brighton Guardian, 15 June, 7 Sept. 1853. The following year he was again active on behalf of the railway after another collision.21Morning Post, 23 Aug. 1854.

Faithfull died in 1863 at his Brighton home in Buckingham Place, where he lived with two grandchildren, ‘after a few hours illness’ and was succeeded by his eldest son and namesake, who had followed him into practice.22Jackson’s Oxford Jnl. 21 Mar. 1863.