PEASE, Joseph (1799-1872), of 4 Park Street, Westminster, Mdx. and Southend, Darlington, co. Durham.

The first Quaker to sit in the Commons, Pease was described by a contemporary as ‘one of the most useful, though not one of the most shining, members in the house’.1Joseph Pease: a memoir (1872), reprinted from the Northern Echo, 9 Feb. 1872; J. Grant, Random recollections of the House of Commons (1837), 301. Born at Darlington, he was the second son of Edward Pease, a woollen manufacturer who, alongside George and Robert Stephenson, was the driving force behind the Stockton and Darlington railway company.2A.F. Pollard and C. Fell-Smith, ‘Pease, Edward (1767-1858)’, rev. M.W. Kirby, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com. At the age of nineteen, Pease aided his father by drawing up the company’s first prospectus, and thereafter became an influential voice in the construction of Britain’s first railway.3J. Wall, First in the world: the Stockton and Darlington railway (2001), 6-17, 90. A visionary entrepreneur driven by a desire to open up the mineral wealth of the region, in 1828 he extended the railway line from Stockton to the hamlet of Middlesbrough on the Tees estuary, which laid the foundations for his vast commercial network of collieries and iron foundries.4M.W. Kirby, Men of business and politics: the rise and fall of the Quaker Pease dynasty of north-east England, 1700-1943 (1984), 20-46.

At the 1832 general election Pease offered as a Liberal for Durham South. Although his decision to stand was partly a response to the difficulties his family had faced in forcing the Stockton and Darlington railway bill through parliament, his father was initially opposed to his candidature, though once he had been assured of ‘the absolute purity and sincerity’ of his son’s motives, he reluctantly acquiesced.5The diaries of Edward Pease: the father of English railways, ed. A.E. Pease (1907), 64-6. The campaign was fractious, and Pease had to doggedly defend his support for agricultural protection, but backed by the influence secured by his extensive industrial interests, he was returned at the top of the poll.6Newcastle Courant, 15 Dec. 1832. The matter of whether, as a Quaker, he would take the oath, though, remained disputed, and Pease, who admitted to his constituents that ‘he should not be surprised if the sergeant-at-arms be ordered to take him into custody’, refused to petition the Commons to dispense with the oath, declaring that ‘it shall never be said that South Durham in my person was brought down upon its knees to beg for its rights’.7Niles’ weekly register, 13 Mar. 1833; Joseph Pease: a memoir, 18-19. On entering Parliament, he insisted that he ‘pray be allowed to make my solemn affirmation’, whereupon the speaker asked him to retire and appointed a select committee to report on legal precedents.8Hansard, 8 Feb. 1833, vol. 15, cc. 387-90. Unsurprisingly, given that the issue had been foreseen, the decision was swift, and on 14 February he was allowed to affirm.9The Times, 12 Feb., 18 Feb., 1833; E. Isichei, Victorian Quakers (1970), 195-6.

An assiduous attender, Pease was described by the parliamentary reporter James Grant in 1837 as:

the most punctual and close of any man I ever saw. He even beats Mr Hume himself. From the beginning of the business till the adjournment, no matter how late the hour, there he is, not indeed in any particular seat, but in some part or other of the house, all attention to what is going on.10Grant, Random recollections, 301-2.

He generally divided with Grey’s ministry on most major issues, but ‘he was not so uniformly in the same lobby as the government, for instance in divisions on minor questions’.11Joseph Pease: a memoir, 19. He was in minorities for Thomas Attwood’s motion for a committee on distress, 21 Mar. 1833, for Matthias Attwood’s motion on currency reform, 24 Apr. 1833, for the ballot, 25 Apr. 1833, and for scrutiny of the pension list, 18 Feb. 1834. He also voted against the ministerial motion to replace church rates with a land tax, 21 Apr. 1834. He did, however, back the ministry’s Irish disturbance bill, and, in a public letter, accused Irish members of deliberately opposing the government out of ‘shameless’ self-interest, which prompted a swift rebuke from Daniel O’Connell, who accused him of ‘the grossest fabrications and falsehood that ever yet disgraced a public man’.12The Times, 21 Dec. 1833, 1 Jan. 1834.

Pease spoke frequently in the Commons, and, in accordance with his faith, did not use honorary titles when addressing his fellow members. His style was described as:

... correct, but plain. In his manner there is no action whatever. ... His voice is weak, which, with his great rapidity of utterance, often renders him inaudible.13Grant, Random recollections, 302.

Although he rarely spoke on ‘major subjects’, his early speeches reflected his continuing support for agricultural protection.14Joseph Pease: a memoir, 21. Convinced that ‘if the Corn-laws were to be repealed, it would not be one part only of the land which would go out of cultivation, but the whole’, 18 June 1833, he insisted that ‘no amount of duty would serve as an adequate protection to the agriculturalists’, 21 Mar. 1834. As parliamentary spokesman for the newly-founded Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, he also proposed measures to tackle the mistreatment of animals.15E.G. Fairholme and W. Pain, A century of work for animals: the history of the R.S.P.C.A., 1824-1924 (1934), 71-4. He moved for the insertion of a clause into the metropolitan police-offices bill to give magistrates the power of punishing ‘persons who kept places for bear-baiting, dog-fighting, and other cruel sports of that kind’, but it was defeated by four votes, 8 May 1833.

At the 1835 general election Pease was re-elected without opposition. He divided with the opposition majority on the speakership, 19 Feb. 1835, and for the amendment to the address, 24 Feb. 1835. He voted for Irish church appropriation, 2 Apr. 1835, the issue which forced the collapse of Peel’s short-lived ministry, and thereafter consistently supported the attempts of the Melbourne ministry to reform the Irish church. He also loyally backed the government’s foreign policy, opposing the critical motion on the ministry’s handling of the Canadian rebellion, 7 Mar. 1838, and, surprisingly given his pacifist beliefs, voting for war with China, 9 Apr. 1840.

His interventions in debate continued to reflect personal interests. He successfully carried the animal cruelty bill (5 & 6 Will. 4, c. 49) which outlawed cock-fighting and bear-baiting, 14 July 1835, a piece of legislation that was ‘symptomatic of a broad consensus on questions of moral reform’ among evangelical Dissenters and liberal Anglicans.16J. Parry, The rise and fall of Liberal government in Victorian Britain (1993), 102. A proponent of church rate abolition, he stated that ‘the Society of Friends did feel it to be a hardship that they were called on to contribute towards the repair of the edifices appertaining to the established church’, 25 May. 1835, one of the few occasions he referred to his faith in debate. His select committee service mirrored his business interests. He chaired the 1835 inquiry into accidents in mines and, as a member of the 1836 select committee on the state of the coal trade, his assiduous questioning of witnesses underlined his extensive knowledge of the north-east’s mineral resources.17PP 1835 (603), v. 2; PP 1836 (522), xi. 169.

Returned without a contest at the 1837 general election, Pease appeared ‘much thinner, and much more sallow in his complexion, than when he entered the house’.18Grant, Random recollections, 301. However, although the frequency of his contributions declined, the length and intensity of his speeches increased as he focused his energies on a smaller number of issues. Following his service on two select committees, he strenuously advocated a reform of the law relating to church leases, 3 May 1838, and, although he remained committed to agricultural protection, he pressed for the removal of dues on the shipping of coal, believing that ‘all parties’ in the coal industry should ‘stand fair’, 12 July 1838.19PP 1837 (538), vi. 626; PP 1837-38 (692), ix. 2. Pease also sat on the select committee on the coal trade (port of London bill): PP 1837-38 (475), xv. 2. His most striking intervention was his impassioned defence of the slavery abolition amendment bill, 29 Mar. 1838. After admitting ‘the inadequacy of his powers in pleading’ the cause ‘of their poor brethren of colour’, he was overcome with emotion and was unable to continue, whereupon the House responded with ‘much cheering’.20Hansard, 29 Mar. 1838, vol. 42, cc. 55-66.

The continued assiduity of his attendance, alongside the demands of his commercial interests, ‘had a marked effect upon [Pease’s] health and spirits’ and there was little surprise when he retired at the dissolution in 1841, stressing the ‘fatigues and responsibilities of my present position’.21Joseph Pease: a memoir, 26. He returned, however, to public office in 1850 when he was elected to Darlington’s first board of health, although as a leading shareholder in the Darlington Gas and Water Company, he was frequently attacked by the local ratepayers’ association for alleged abuses of his position.22Kirby, Men of business and politics, 60-4.

Pease’s vast commercial network, which employed nearly ten thousand men in collieries, quarries and ironstone mines in south Durham and north Yorkshire, and his concerns in the Middlesbrough estate, remained the main focus of his energies, though he was an active philanthropist, and acted as president of the Peace Society from 1860.23The Times, 9 Feb. 1872. By 1865 he had become totally blind, but, with the aid of his secretary, he produced and distributed religious texts among his workforce, particularly ones advocating temperance.24Kirby, Men of business and politics, 62-3. In 1870 he translated Jonathan Dymond’s Essays on the principles of morality into Spanish, for which the government of Spain awarded him the grand cross of Charles II.25Pollard and Fell-Smith, ‘Pease, Edward’, rev. M.W. Kirby.

Pease died at his Darlington home, Southend, from heart disease in February 1872, leaving estate valued at under £350,000.26England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index of wills and administration, 1861-1941, 9 Mar. 1872. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Joseph Whitwell Pease, Liberal member for Durham South, 1865-1885, and Barnard Castle, 1885-1903. Pease’s papers and correspondence are located at Hull City Archives, and a small number of letters to Gladstone are held at the British Library, London.27Hull City Archives, DFP/3223-3278; BL Add MSS. 44356, ff. 34, 44, 70.