PILKINGTON, James (1804-1890), of Park Place House, Blackburn, Lancs. and Swinithwaite Hall, N. Riding Yorks.

John Bright said of Pilkington, who sat for almost two decades for his native borough of Blackburn, that ‘there has not been a man in the House who has more intelligently and faithfully fulfilled his duty to his constituents’.1The Times, 1 Dec. 1865. One of the Commons’ most assiduous attenders, albeit a silent one, Pilkington ‘zealously voted with the advanced guard of the Liberal party’, leading Dod to amend his description of him from ‘Liberal’ to ‘decided Reformer’ in the late 1850s.2Dod’s parliamentary companion (1854), 255, cf. Dod’s parliamentary companion (1857), 265. In the 1853 session, Pilkington was the 29th most assiduous attender in the House, voting in 174 out of 257 divisions: Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853. Yet despite his voting record, ‘he was no blazing enthusiast for Radical changes’, being ‘too cold and cautious in temperament and action for the political plungers’.3Blackburn Standard, 22 Feb. 1890.

Related to the Pilkingtons of Rivington, Lancashire, Pilkington’s father settled in Blackburn, rising from a position as a bookkeeper to become a partner in Messrs. Lister and Pilkington, cotton merchants.4Blackburn Standard, 28 Oct. 1857, 22 Feb. 1890; G. Miller, Blackburn: the evolution of a cotton town (1951), 382. Pilkington and his brother William continued the business after their father’s death in 1837, and purchased Park Place Mill. They erected another mill in 1845, and a third in 1858.5Miller, Blackburn, 382. Pilkington Brothers & Co. became one of Blackburn’s leading employers, with 1,450 hands in 1847, undertaking both spinning and weaving6Miller, Blackburn, 382; Macmillan’s Magazine (1862), vi. 457., and Pilkington acquired a reputation as ‘a spirited tradesman’.7P.A. Whittle, Blackburn as it is (1852), 292n. In 1849 he purchased Swinithwaite Hall in the Yorkshire Dales.8T. Whellan, History and topography of the city of York and the North Riding of Yorkshire (1859), ii. 461. Swinithwaite was also referred to as Swinethwaite. He also invested in railways (to the tune of £7,000 in 18469PP 1846 (473), xxxviii. 229.), having been appointed in 1840 to a local committee seeking to bring the railway to Blackburn.10Blackburn Standard, 9 Dec. 1840. He was a director of the Blackburn and Preston railway, and subsequently of the East Lancashire railway (1846-59) and the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway (1859-86).11The railway directory for 1845 (1844), 43; Leeds Mercury, 4 Feb. 1886. He also held several other directorships of local and national companies.12These included the Blackburn Waterworks Company, the General Life and Fire Assurance Company, the United Kingdom Electric Telegraph Company and the Great Indian Submarine Telegraph Company: Blackburn Standard, 17 Feb. 1847; The Times, 28 Sept. 1852, 17 Apr. 1890; Morning Post, 2 May 1853; Caledonian Mercury, 1 Oct. 1858.

Pilkington joined his father, ‘a stirring man in local politics’,13Preston Guardian, 19 Jan. 1878. in agitating against the corn laws in 1826, and also participated in the campaign for parliamentary reform.14Blackburn Standard, 22 Feb. 1890. He assisted his father’s efforts to return the Radical John Bowring for Blackburn in 1832 and 1835, and named his eldest son, James Bowring Pilkington (1834-6).15Blackburn Standard, 22 Feb. 1890; W.A. Abram, A history of Blackburn (1877), 402. Pilkington’s father nominated Bowring in 1832 and 1835: Preston Guardian, 5 Aug. 1865; Morning Post, 10 Jan. 1835. The Pilkingtons also backed the candidature of John Benjamin Smith, the future chairman of the Anti-Corn Law League, in 1837.16Pilkington’s father nominated Smith: Preston Chronicle, 29 July 1837. Pilkington later became one of the League’s major local supporters, chairing a meeting addressed by Richard Cobden and Bright in 1845,17Blackburn Standard, 15 Jan. 1845, 22 Feb. 1890. and also joined fellow manufacturers to lobby for reductions in the duties on sugar, raw cotton and tea.18PP 1845 (168), xliv. 571-4; Blackburn Standard, 19 Feb. 1845, 2 Dec. 1846.

After initially hesitating due to his business commitments, Pilkington offered as a second Liberal at Blackburn in 1847, declaring his support for free trade, retrenchment, reduction of tax burdens on the industrial classes, sanitary reform and the assimilation of Irish legislation to that of England. A Congregationalist, he favoured the voluntary principle in education and opposed any further religious endowments.19Preston Guardian, 17 July 1847; D. Bebbington, Congregational members of Parliament in the nineteenth century (2007), 60. For Pilkington’s interest in Congregational education, see Leeds Mercury, 23 Oct. 1852. On the hustings he endorsed the ballot and franchise extension. Attacked for his hostility to the Ten Hours Act – his firm had signed a memorial to Russell against the measure20PP 1847 (348), xlvi. 632. Pilkington had also been part of a manufacturers’ deputation to Graham on factory hours in 1844: The Standard, 23 Mar. 1844. – he declared himself ‘opposed on principle, to any legislative interference between master and men’, but argued that he did not oppose shorter factory hours, although there must be accompanying legislation to protect wages.21Blackburn Standard, 29 July 1847. He secured the second seat behind the lone Conservative, his local credentials helping to put him well ahead of his fellow Liberal and a Chartist.

The Radical MP George Hadfield believed that no Member was ‘a steadier friend of progress and reform’ than Pilkington, and his votes reflected this.22Preston Guardian, 2 Dec. 1865. He consistently divided for the removal of religious disabilities and abolition of church rates. In April 1848 he attended a meeting of reform-minded MPs (led by Joseph Hume, Cobden and Joshua Walmsley), which sought to co-ordinate their activities in support of franchise extension, reform of taxation and retrenchment.23The Examiner, 15 Apr. 1848. Unsurprisingly he voted for Hume’s ‘Little Charter’, 6 July 1848, and the ballot, 8 Aug. 1848, and routinely thereafter. Castigated by the local Conservative press as ‘a helpless, hopeless, follower of Cobden, and all the Manchester School’, he was in the minority for Cobden’s motion that public spending should be scaled back to the level of 1835, 26 Feb. 1849.24Blackburn Standard, 23 June 1852. However, his zeal for free trade, supporting Milner Gibson’s motion to repeal the 1845 Brazilian Treaty Act, led to him being accused of encouraging slavery, as this Act also contained provisions for capturing Brazilian vessels engaged in the slave trade, 24 Apr. 1849.25Blackburn Standard, 16 May 1849. He was in the minority with Milner Gibson for repeal of the paper duty, 16 Apr. 1850, and divided for the repeal of advertising duty, 7 May 1850, and the ‘taxes on knowledge’, 12 May 1852. He rallied to Palmerston in the confidence motion on the Don Pacifico affair, 28 June 185026Pilkington was among 90 MPs who had presented Lady Palmerston with a portrait of her husband earlier that month: Manchester Times, 26 June 1850., but supported Russell rather than Palmerston in the crucial vote on the militia bill, 20 Feb. 1852.27Russell had presented Palmerston at court in 1850: The Standard, 7 Mar. 1850. The factory question continued to be problematic for Pilkington.28See Blackburn Standard, 13 June 1849, 27 June 1849, which reported on Pilkington’s refutation of claims that he had accompanied an employers’ deputation in support of relays. His belief in the ‘impolicy’ of the Ten Hours Act meant that he declined to support a Blackburn petition in favour of the 1850 factory bill, but in deference to his constituents’ opinions, he abstained on the measure.29Blackburn Standard, 24 Apr. 1850. Later that year his former Chartist opponent accused Pilkington’s firm of ‘villainous’ conduct in violating the law by starting the mill engine too early.30Blackburn Standard, 16 Oct. 1850.

Pilkington attended over two-thirds of divisions in almost every session of his first Parliament.31Manchester Times, 16 Sept. 1848; Preston Guardian, 11 Aug. 1849, 19 Oct. 1850, 20 Sept. 1851; Liverpool Mercury, 2 July 1852. Although he never contributed to debate, and undertook only a limited amount of select committee service – he was a member of the 1851 committee on the law of partnership32PP 1851 (509), xviii. 2. This committee put forward proposals to make it less expensive and cumbersome to set up a limited liability company, and also to provide protection against fraud by dishonest partners. – he regularly presented petitions and accompanied deputations to ministers, with commercial matters, particularly those relating to the cotton trade, being the main focus of his activity.33For examples of Pilkington’s activity, see Preston Guardian, 4 Sept. 1847; Blackburn Standard, 29 Dec. 1847; The Times, 6 Apr. 1848; Morning Post, 30 Nov. 1848; Daily News, 18 Jan. 1850; Liverpool Mercury, 15 Nov. 1850. In 1850 he sought Palmerston’s backing for an expedition to explore the possibilities of cultivating cotton in West Africa, towards which he contributed financially.34Blackburn Standard, 18 Feb. 1857. His backing for this expedition may be the reason why Pilkington was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1855: Morning Chronicle, 14 Mar. 1855. He offered £1,000 towards the mooted revival of the Anti-Corn Law League in 1852.35Freeman’s Journal, 10 Mar. 1852. He was also a generous benefactor in Blackburn: his firm financed the construction of Park Place schools in 1850, and he donated £500 towards the construction of Park Road Congregational Chapel in 1858.36Abram, Blackburn, 371; Blackburn Standard, 24 Feb. 1858. This new Congregationalist congregation (which included Pilkington among its members) had seceded from the Chapel Street Congregational Chapel in 1852 at its minister’s request, and met at Park Place schools until the new chapel was constructed: Blackburn Standard, 24 Feb. 1858, 21 Oct. 1863. He supported Mechanics’ Institutes, not only in Blackburn, but also in neighbouring towns such as Burnley and Darwen.37B. Lewis, The middlemost and the milltowns. Bourgeois culture and politics in early industrial England (2001), 259; Manchester Times, 11 Nov. 1848; Blackburn Standard, 26 Jan. 1848. He donated numerous volumes to the Blackburn Mechanics’ Institute library: Blackburn Standard, 3 May 1848; Preston Guardian, 5 May 1849. His local speeches often demonstrated his concern that Blackburn should develop its civic amenities, and he took an active interest in the construction of the new town hall in 1852.38Blackburn Standard, 2 Feb. 1848, 8 Sept. 1852, 10 Jan. 1855.

Hopes that Blackburn would not be disturbed by a contest in 1852 were dashed by the intervention of a Peelite, William Eccles, against whom the usually conciliatory Pilkington allegedly launched ‘a tirade of abuse’ during the contest, but to whom he was reconciled after both men were returned.39Blackburn Standard, 14 Sept. 1853. Having offered as a Peelite, Eccles transferred his loyalties to the Liberals soon after his return: Blackburn Standard, 15 Sept. 1852. His committee service was again limited, serving on the Taunton election petition committee and the inquiry into London’s transport network, but he continued to be attentive in the division lobbies and in accompanying deputations.40PP 1852-53 (355), xix. 2; PP 1854-55 (415), x. 6. Among the subjects raised by deputations that Pilkington accompanied in this Parliament were customs reform, colonial postage, education and fencing off factory machinery: Daily News, 14 Mar. 1853, 18 Apr. 1853; The Times, 2 June 1853; Bradford Observer, 9 Mar. 1854. He incurred criticism for his vote against Hume’s motion to repeal the remaining import duties on agricultural and manufactured goods, 3 Mar. 1853, but explained that he had rallied to the Aberdeen ministry after Disraeli tried to exploit this opportunity to put them in a minority.41Blackburn Standard, 23 Mar. 1853. He also supported ministers on Roebuck and Disraeli’s critical motions on army management and the conduct of the Crimean war, 29 Jan., 25 May and 19 July 1855. He was, however, unafraid of appearing in the minority, notably on A.H. Layard’s motion on administrative reform, 18 June 1855, and for Edward Miall’s motion to consider Irish church temporalities, 27 May 1856, and was by no means an unthinking party loyalist, as his vote against Palmerston on Cobden’s censure motion on the Canton question indicated, 3 Mar. 1857.

Seeking re-election in 1857, Pilkington, who described himself as ‘a progressive reformer… a man who would not stand still’, emphasised the need for a new reform bill.42Preston Guardian, 28 Mar. 1857; Blackburn Standard, 1 Apr. 1857. He was returned unopposed alongside a Conservative, William Henry Hornby. The local Conservative newspaper recalled that Pilkington ‘though a very sincere Liberal, was the exact opposite of a firebrand Radical. The Conservatives liked him personally, and could trust him to look well after Blackburn’s interests. He and Mr. Hornby were the best of friends’, although they were generally found in opposite lobbies.43Blackburn Standard, 22 Feb. 1890. Pilkington was again an attentive member, voting in 93 out of 162 divisions in 1857 and 112 out of 185 in 1858: Preston Guardian, 24 Oct. 1857, 8 Jan. 1859. Pilkington mooted retirement in 1859, as ‘he was requiring rather more relaxation’, with his brother’s retirement from the business in 1857 having increased his other burdens.44Preston Guardian, 23 Apr. 1859; London Gazette, 19 June 1857. John Baynes remained as a partner until 1862, and Edward Eccles (Pilkington’s brother-in-law) until his death in 1873: London Gazette, 21 Mar. 1862, 15 Aug. 1873. However, he eventually agreed to offer again, on condition that there would be no contest. In the event, he and Hornby were denied a walkover by the intervention of a second Liberal, brought out by the Radical section of the party who were unhappy about the Liberals’ willingness to share the representation with their opponents, but both were re-elected.45Preston Guardian, 23 Apr. 1859. Once again, electoral reform was the key issue for Pilkington, who declared himself ‘miserably disappointed’ by the Derby ministry’s reform bill, which he had divided against, 31 Mar. 1859. He had little good to say about Palmerston, whose commanding majority in 1857 had ‘turned his brain giddy’, and condemned his 1858 conspiracy to murder bill.46Preston Guardian, 23 Apr. 1859; The Times, 30 Apr. 1859.

Pilkington’s votes in his final Parliament continued his previous pattern, consistently backing abolition of church rates and university tests, the ballot, and franchise extension. In 1860 he joined members of the Lancashire Reformers’ Union to press Russell to increase Lancashire’s representation as part of his reform proposals.47The Times, 5 Mar. 1860. He was among the Liberal MPs who signed a memorial to Palmerston advocating retrenchment, and voted in the minority with James Stansfeld on this subject, 3 June 1862.48Blackburn Standard, 16 Jan. 1861. That year he inadvertently contributed to legislation as the most high-profile victim of a garotting panic.49On the garotting panic, see R. Sindall, ‘The London garotting panics of 1856 and 1862’, Social History (1987), 351-9; J. Davis, ‘The London garotting panic of 1862: a moral panic and the creation of a criminal class in mid-Victorian England’, in V. Gatrell, B. Lenman & G. Parker (ed.), Crime and the law. The social history of crime in Western Europe since 1500 (1980), 190-213. Having left the House at 1 a.m. on 15 July 1862, he was attacked in Waterloo Place, robbed of his watch and ‘almost strangled to death’, coming round ‘covered in blood, with contusions on his head and a severe gash in his jaw’.50C. Emsley, Hard men: the English and violence since 1750 (2005), 15; Blackburn Standard, 22 Feb. 1890. Two men charged with the attack on Pilkington were acquitted, but were subsequently found guilty of other attacks: Emsley, Hard men, 188-9n. His case, fictionalised by Anthony Trollope in Phineas Finn (1867-9), was raised in the Commons, 17 July 1862, and the press campaign prompted by this and other attacks was instrumental in the passage of the 1863 Security against Violence Act, which provided that garotters could be flogged.51Emsley, Hard men, 15, 17. In 1864 Pilkington observed that ‘he had busied himself very little in local politics, because since he had entered the House of Commons he found his time so fully occupied for something like six months in the year away from his business and his family that when he came home he thought it only a duty to himself to attend to his business matters and take a little recreation’.52Blackburn Standard, 16 Nov. 1864. Nonetheless, he found time to support a range of local causes, donating over £1,000 towards the construction of Blackburn infirmary.53Preston Guardian, 17 Dec. 1859; Blackburn Standard, 12 Nov. 1862. He took a keen interest in the establishment in 1860 of Blackburn free library, donating a complete run of Hansard and an endowment to purchase subsequent volumes.54Manchester Times, 25 Aug. 1860; Preston Guardian, 22 Sept. 1860. Pilkington made a further substantial donation of books in 1877: Blackburn Standard, 10 Nov. 1877. In the same year he was chairman when the Congregational Union of England and Wales met at Blackburn.55Blackburn Standard, 3 Oct. 1860.

Despite concerns about his health, Pilkington sought re-election in 1865, when he declared himself to be ‘a reformer and not a conformer’. He denied that the last Parliament had been a ‘do nothing Parliament’, noting his own role in pressing for relief measures during the cotton famine.56The Times, 1 Dec. 1865; Blackburn Standard, 12 July 1865. (He had also made a £1,000 donation to the relief fund in 1862.57Daily News, 24 Oct. 1862. Pilkington contributed a further £130 for the relief of unemployed overlookers: Blackburn Standard, 29 Oct. 1862.) Pilkington again faced the unwelcome presence of a second Liberal candidate, with whom he declined to join forces, sharing his supporters’ view that ‘it is impossible to carry two’.58Blackburn Standard, 12 July 1865. This proved correct, and the Conservatives secured both seats, ousting Pilkington.

Pilkington’s endeavours were recognised with the presentation of a silver centrepiece that November, when Bright and Bowring were among those who paid tribute to him (in his absence, as his wife was on her deathbed).59The Times, 1 Dec. 1865; Preston Guardian, 2 Dec. 1865. He remained a presence in Blackburn politics, serving as president when the Blackburn Reform Club opened its new building in 1866, and nominating one of the Liberal candidates in 1868, when he declared his support for Gladstone’s Irish church proposals.60Blackburn Standard, 4 July 1866, 18 Nov. 1868. However, he declined to offer himself for the new North East Lancashire seat in 1868.61Blackburn Standard, 10 June 1868. He was ‘completely overcome’ by the death of his daughter and companion, Ann Jane, in a carriage accident in June 1875, but nominated the Liberal candidate for a vacancy at Blackburn that autumn.62Blackburn Standard, 22 Feb. 1890; Liverpool Mercury, 9 June 1875; Pall Mall Gazette, 28 Sept. 1875. Thereafter his public appearances in Blackburn were increasingly rare, although until he sold Park Place mills a few years before his death he could still be seen in the counting-house there.63Blackburn Standard, 22 Feb. 1890; Miller, Blackburn, 385. Pilkington succeeded his brother as president of Blackburn infirmary in 1878, and subscribed £500 towards a new technical school at Blackburn in 1887: Blackburn Standard, 12 Oct. 1878, 12 Feb. 1887. He spent more time in Yorkshire, where he took great pride in estate improvements, and bred prize-winning Wensleydale sheep.64Liverpool Mercury, 19 Feb. 1890; The Times, 19 July 1883. It was ‘inferred that he followed Mr. Bright’ in opposing home rule.65Liverpool Mercury, 19 Feb. 1890.

Confined to a wheelchair and ‘in failing health’ by 1890, Pilkington died that February at Swinithwaite Hall from ‘a general breaking up of the system and congestion of the lungs’, and was buried at nearby West Witton.66Blackburn Standard, 11 Jan. 1890, 22 Feb. 1890; The Times, 20 Feb. 1890; Leeds Mercury, 21 Feb. 1890. As his only son to survive to adulthood, Edward, had predeceased him, dying in 1882 in Vienna where he had been ‘leading on the whole a somewhat eccentric life’67Preston Guardian, 18 Feb. 1882., the bulk of Pilkington’s estate, valued at over £144,000, passed to his only surviving daughter Mary Elizabeth and her husband, George Augustus Pilkington (formerly Coombe), who had taken his father-in-law’s name after Edward’s death, and who was Liberal MP for Southport, 1885-6 and 1899-1900.68Morning Post, 21 Mar. 1890; W.B. Tracy and W.T. Pike, Lancashire at the opening of the twentieth century: contemporary biographies (1903), 155. His daughter and son-in-law honoured his intention to donate a further £1,000 to Blackburn infirmary, even though this had not been included in his will: Blackburn Standard, 8 Mar. 1890.