GASKELL, Daniel (1782-1875), of Lupset Hall, nr. Wakefield, Yorks.

Described by the novelist Mary Shelley as ‘a plain silentious but intelligent looking man’, Gaskell was ‘of the soundest and most conscientious liberal opinions’.1M.W. Shelley to M. Gisborne, Nov. 1835, in F.L. Jones (ed.), The letters of Mary W. Shelley (1944), ii. 458; Daily News, 16 Apr. 1849. Acquainted with the Gaskells since 1832, Shelley encouraged her correspondents to send letters to her via Gaskell, in order to take advantage of his parliamentary franking privileges: Ibid., 448. From ‘an old Manchester family of high local standing’, who had owned Clifton Hall since 1652, his grandfather was a linen draper, while his father was a merchant, both of whom worshipped at Manchester’s Cross Street Unitarian chapel.2T. Baker, Memorials of a Dissenting chapel (1884), 69, 86, 89; D.W. Bebbington, ‘Unitarian Members of Parliament in the nineteenth century. A catalogue’, Trans. of the Unitarian Historical Society, 24 (2009), supplement. Born in Manchester, Gaskell and his older brother Benjamin (MP for Maldon prior to 1826) were the heirs to their childless cousin, James Milnes, of Thornes House, near Wakefield.3J. Seed, ‘Theologies of power: Unitarianism and the social relations of religious discourse, 1800-50’, in R.J. Morris (ed.), Class, power and social structure in British nineteenth-century towns (1986), 127. On his death in 1805, Benjamin took up residence at Thornes, while the trustees under Milnes’s will purchased nearby Lupset Hall for Daniel when he married the following year.4HP Commons, 1820-32, v. 266; J. Hunter, Antiquarian notices of Lupset, The Heath, Sharlston, and Ackton, in the county of York (1851), 41. Both brothers became ‘wealthy landed gentlemen, rentiers with considerable landholdings in various parts of the country, both urban and rural’, and Lupset was said to have ‘received all the embellishment which taste and art could confer upon it’, becoming ‘the seat of the most liberal hospitality’.5Seed, ‘Theologies of power’, 127; Hunter, Antiquarian notices of Lupset, 44-5. Yet although Gaskell was acquainted with figures such as Jeremy Bentham, Shelley considered him and his wife to be ‘country folks in core’.6Jones, Letters of Mary W. Shelley, ii. 458. He was a prominent Unitarian, serving as president of Manchester New College, 1829-34, and worshipping at Wakefield’s Westgate Chapel.7The report of Manchester New College (1861), 21; Seed, ‘Theologies of power’, 127. By 1861 Gaskell had donated £276 to Manchester New College: The report of Manchester New College (1861), 22.

Gaskell does not appear to have been particularly politically active before seeking election for Wakefield in 1832, although he was among those who signed the requisition for a county meeting in 1819 following the Peterloo massacre, and he attended a local pro-reform meeting in February 1831.8The Times, 9 Oct. 1819, 19 Feb. 1831. Gaskell initially accepted an invitation from local radicals to stand, but then withdrew, whereupon his nephew, James Milnes Gaskell, began canvassing in the Conservative interest. Milnes Gaskell had told his mother in April 1831 that he would be ‘very sorry’ to see his uncle elected, not because he did not support him, but because ‘it is, in fact, my Aunt, that would be member of Parliament and I do not quite like the notoriety in which she would bring the name of Gaskell’.9C.M. Gaskell (ed.), An Eton Boy (1939), 184. However, that August he learned that ‘the radicals had so effectually worked upon my uncle’s anxious and sensitive mind that he considered it a point of conscience to allow them to use his name for the furtherance of their purposes’.10J. Kolb (ed.), The letters of Arthur Henry Hallam (1981), 481. The formidable Mrs. Gaskell – of whom it was recorded in 1839 that ‘she drew upon herself a great degree of notice from the leading part she took in public matters. She was unquestionably a character’11T. Sadler (ed.), Diary, reminiscences and correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson (2nd edn, 1869), iii. 176. Robinson also noted that Mrs. Gaskell was ‘a well-bred woman and yet a sort of zealot in the patronage of ultra-Liberals. She hears Mr. Fox [the Unitarian preacher and later MP for Oldham], receives Mrs. Shelley and visits her, and was a kind and generous friend to the Godwins’: E.J. Morley (ed.), Henry Crabb Robinson on books and their writers (1938), ii. 574. – also played a key part in persuading ‘her reluctant spouse’ to re-enter the fray.12Arthur Henry Hallam to Ellen Hallam, 22 Sept. 1831, Kolb, Letters of Arthur Henry Hallam, 480. With neither uncle nor nephew personally involved in the ensuing ‘warfare’ between the two parties, Milnes Gaskell withdrew in his uncle’s favour in March 1832 – finding a safe berth at Wenlock instead, where he sat until 1868 – as did a subsequent Conservative opponent, leaving Gaskell to walk over at the 1832 election.13Cited in Kolb, Letters of Arthur Henry Hallam, 481. He advocated economy and retrenchment, the ballot, shorter parliaments, the abolition of slavery and the East India and banking monopolies, revision of the corn laws, and the reform of abuses in church and state, and promised to support any measure for moving the West Riding assizes from York to Wakefield.14Report of the proceedings before a committee of the House of Commons, on the Wakefield election petition. April 1842 (1842), 5-6.

Reviewing his parliamentary conduct on the hustings in 1835, Gaskell assured his constituents that he had been ‘punctual in his attendance’, a claim confirmed by Shelley, who marvelled that ‘he attends the house night after night and dull committees and likes it! – for truly after a country town and country society, the dullest portion of London seems as gay as a masked ball’.15Leeds Mercury, 10 Jan. 1835; M.W. Shelley to M. Gisborne, Nov. 1835, Jones, Letters of Mary W. Shelley, ii. 458. He served on the committee on the Carrickfergus election petition in 1833, and it appears that he, rather than his nephew, was the ‘Mr. Gaskell’ who served on the 1834 inquiry into drunkenness.16PP 1833 (527), vii. 104; PP 1834 (559), viii. 316; J.S. Buckingham, History and progress of the temperance reformation (1854), 67. It was later recalled that he was ‘an excellent committee-man, a sensible though not a frequent speaker’, but his only known utterance in the chamber was to support the prayer of a petition from Wakefield against the Irish coercion bill, 27 Mar. 1833, a measure which he consistently opposed.17One obituary recalled that Gaskell ‘but seldom spoke in the House of Commons, nor, indeed, was the atmosphere of publicity congenial to his tastes and habits’: Inquirer, 1 Jan. 1876, cited in Bebbington, ‘Unitarian Members of Parliament in the nineteenth century’. Outside the House, Gaskell at least spoke enough to merit the publication of a collected volume of his speeches in 1839, although one hostile press report of a Liberal gathering in Leeds in 1837 mocked that he ‘extemporised luminously – from a written speech which he drew from his pocket when memory failed’.18D. Gaskell, Speeches of Daniel Gaskell, Esq. the first representative of the borough of Wakefield, during the years 1833-4-5-6-and 7 (1839); Blackburn Standard, 25 Jan. 1837.

Although generally Liberal in his sympathies, his voting patterns displayed considerable independence, reflecting Gaskell’s claim that ‘I have attached myself to no party’, and he prided himself on his political consistency, even when this necessitated the painful duty of opposing ministers.19Leeds Mercury, 18 Jan. 1834, 10 Jan. 1835. The Monthly Repository praised his ‘impartial intellect and moral courage’.20Monthly repository (1834), viii. 4. While he had entered Parliament hoping generally to be able to support ministers, and believed that they were entitled to some credit, he found that they ‘did not proceed in the path of Reform so rapidly as was generally expected; indeed some of their early measures seemed to indicate a retrograde movement’.21Leeds Mercury, 18 Jan. 1834. Gaskell was often found voting in the minority with radical and Irish MPs, dividing with Joseph Hume for the appointment of Edward Littleton as speaker, 29 Jan. 1833. Although he did not support O’Connell’s amendment on the address, 8 Feb. 1833, he backed a less strongly worded motion by Tennyson, which called for coercion in Ireland to be accompanied by remedial legislation, defending this action to his constituents on the basis that the address ‘was not conciliating enough’.22Leeds Mercury, 18 Jan. 1834. Gaskell was a consistent supporter of measures aimed at economy and retrenchment, such as the abolition of naval and military sinecures, 14 Feb. 1833, and inquiries into the pension list, 18 Feb. and 5 May 1834. He voted for reductions in the malt duty, 26 Apr. 1833, telling his constituents that this was ‘the most objectionable tax the people have to complain of’, and for the repeal of the house and window taxes, 30 Apr. 1833.23Leeds Mercury, 10 Jan. 1835. He regularly divided for the ballot and shorter parliaments, and supported Colonel Evans’s motion for the repeal of such clauses of the Reform Act ‘as have been found to have an unexpected restrictive operation, particularly those regarding the payment of Rates and Taxes’, 19 June 1834. Despite his own reliance on land as a source of income, he favoured repeal of the corn laws, and divided for a moderate fixed duty on corn, 17 May 1833, 7 Mar. 1834.24Leeds Mercury, 18 Jan. 1834. He also divided against ministers to support Lord Ashley’s efforts to secure a ten hour factory day, 18 July 1833. As a Dissenter ‘by descent, by education, and from conviction’, he supported the appropriation clause of the Irish church bill, 21 June 1833, and the admission of Dissenters to universities, 17 Apr. 1834, but opposed ministerial plans to replace church rates with a £250,000 grant from the land tax, 21 Apr. 1834.25Leeds Mercury, 10 Jan. 1835. This Parliament also saw him divide against what he saw as some of the harsher clauses of the poor law, against flogging in the army, and for an inquiry into forcible impressment in the navy.26Leeds Mercury, 10 Jan. 1835. He promised at the hustings in 1835 to vote for repeal of the new poor law if it was found ‘to diminish the comforts of the poor’. Outside Parliament he fulfilled his promise to promote the transfer of the assizes to Wakefield, backing a memorial from Wakefield to this end at a special meeting of West Riding magistrates in September 1834, but without success.27Bradford Observer, 18 Sept. 1834.

Gaskell’s radical leanings prompted concern among some of his constituents, and a joint Whig-Conservative committee began searching for an opponent in November 1834.28Hull Packet, 28 Nov. 1834. At the general election he warned that ‘the object of the present administration will be to check the progress of reform’, and he emerged victorious over his Conservative opponent, William Lascelles.29York Courant, 8 Jan. 1835, cited in The Parliamentary Test Book for 1835 (1835), 65. Reviewing the 1835 session, he observed that life was becoming easier for the friends of reform, for while in 1833 he had usually found himself in the minority, he was now usually in the majority, and he praised ministers in particular for their efforts in municipal reform. This Parliament saw him consistently rallying to ministers on the Irish church and Irish municipal corporations, and he also backed them on the abolition of church rates, 15 Mar. and 23 May 1837. He was, however, in the minority on questions ranging from the admission of ladies to the gallery to the abolition of the property qualification, 14 Feb. 1837, and maintained his support for shorter parliaments and the ballot. Speaking at a Liberal gathering in Leeds in January 1837, he highlighted the latter as the most pressing current issue.30Freeman’s Journal, 23 Jan. 1837. He divided for the repeal of the malt duty, 26 Feb. 1835, and was also in the minority for granting a charter to London university, 26 Mar. 1835. His support of the latter cause was rewarded in 1836-7 with a place on the newly-created university’s council.31University of London. Proceedings at annual meeting. Report and appendix. 24th February, 1836 (1836), 4. Gaskell was a benefactor to University College Hospital: The Times, 9 June 1836. He served on select committees on railway subscription lists and the king’s printers’ patent in Scotland.32PP 1837 (226), xviii. 2; PP 1837 (511), xiii. 2.

At the 1837 election Conservative organisational efforts at Wakefield paid off, and Gaskell, whose address voiced his desire to see ‘salutary Reforms… peaceably effected’, was defeated.33Leeds Mercury, 1 July 1837. His parliamentary service was honoured with the presentation of ‘two massive pieces of silver plate’ in 1838: a vase from the ladies of Wakefield, and a soup tureen from 1,700 male subscribers.34Leeds Mercury, 20 Jan. 1838. Described by Henry Crabb Robinson, who met him in 1840, as ‘an insignificant but very amiable man’, he played a far less prominent part in politics thereafter.35Morley, Henry Crabb Robinson, ii. 584. Gaskell undertook a European tour in 1840, and, inspired by what he had seen on the Continent, wrote from Venice to offer £1,000 if a fund was got up for a public baths at Wakefield: The Times, 16 Oct. 1840. He was, however, among those who attended a lunch for Lords Morpeth and Milton following their nomination for the West Riding in 1841, and was also present at a dinner to celebrate the Liberal victory at Wakefield that year.36Leeds Mercury, 10 July 1841, 31 July 1841. In 1843 he represented Wakefield at the presentation of a testimonial to Morpeth from his former West Riding constituents.37Leeds Mercury, 3 June 1843. Although it was reported that he would preside over a local Anti-Corn Law League meeting in 1844, he did not attend, but made a donation of £50, with a further £100 contribution in 1846. 38Bradford Observer, 25 Jan. 1844, 1 Feb. 1844; The Times, 25 Feb. 1846. It was the free trade cause which prompted his reluctant agreement in December 1845 that he would offer again for Wakefield ‘in the event of a speedy dissolution’.39Leeds Mercury, 27 Dec. 1845. However, with the election delayed and the corn laws repealed, he withdrew in April 1847, explaining that his earlier objections regarding his age and health were now stronger still. W.H. Leatham (later Liberal MP for Wakefield), however, suggested that Gaskell’s principal reason for not standing was the disunion likely to be caused among his supporters by the government’s education proposals.40Leeds Mercury, 22 May 1847. Russell’s increased state aid for education was opposed by many Dissenters who were strongly committed to voluntaryism.

Following this abortive candidature, Gaskell withdrew into private life.41While Gaskell was among those present on the hustings at the 1847 West Riding election, he took no active part in proceedings: Leeds Mercury, 14 Aug. 1847. In addition to his withdrawal from politics, he also gave up his position as a magistrate, because he disliked inflicting punishment: Bebbington, ‘Unitarian Members of Parliament in the nineteenth century’. His wife died in 1848, and, being childless, Gaskell dedicated his energies – and reportedly up to half his estimated annual income of £4,000 – ‘to the exercise of the most complete and unostentatious charity’.42Bradford Observer, 21 Dec. 1875; Seed, ‘Theologies of power’, 127; Bebbington, ‘Unitarian Members of Parliament in the nineteenth century’. This estimate of his income was made by a Unitarian minister at mid-century. He was a particularly generous benefactor to the Unitarian church – in 1850 he gave land for a burial ground at Westgate chapel, and in 1856 donated £1,000 to assist poorer Unitarian congregations in the north of England – and education, donating £3,000 towards the purchase of new premises for the Wakefield Mechanics’ Institute in 1855.43J.W. Walker, Wakefield: its history and people (1934), 310, 481; Liverpool Mercury, 17 Sept. 1856. A portrait of him was presented to the Mechanics’ Institute in 1856: Daily News, 4 Nov. 1856. The other educational causes he supported included the non-denominational Lancasterian schools at Wakefield, of which he was one of the original trustees: Walker, Wakefield, 330. He and his wife took a leading role in raising a testimonial to Samuel Wilderspin, a pioneer of infant education: P. McCann & F.A. Young, Samuel Wilderspin and the infant school movement (1982), 285. However, he also contributed to a range of other causes, including the restoration of Wakefield parish church, Wakefield’s Clayton hospital and the purchase of new uniforms for Wakefield rifle corps.44Liverpool Mercury, 20 Apr. 1857; Leeds Mercury, 14 Aug. 1858, 3 Nov. 1871. His generosity was taken advantage of in 1860 when he was defrauded of £5 by tricksters who claimed to be raising funds for a Unitarian minister’s widow.45Leeds Mercury, 3 July 1860.

Gaskell remained in good health until the spring of 1873, when, despite a gloomy prognosis, he overcame a serious illness. He succumbed to bronchitis and died at Lupset Hall after a short illness in December 1875. At his request, his interment beside his wife at Wakefield’s Unitarian burial ground was private.46Bradford Observer, 21 Dec. 1875. He left numerous benefactions to local charities, including funds for the school which he and his wife had built at Horbury and for Westgate Chapel, whose former and present ministers received legacies, as did several of Gaskell’s servants. The chief beneficiaries of his will were the sons and daughters of his nephew, James Milnes Gaskell, whose second son, Gerald Milnes Gaskell, took up residence at Lupset.47Leeds Mercury, 26 Jan. 1876. The estate remained in family hands until 1927, when it was sold to Wakefield Corporation, and is now the location of the municipal golf course: Walker, Wakefield, 531; http://www.parksandgardens.ac.uk/component/option,com_parksandgardens/task,site/id,2169/Itemid,292/ Gerald’s older brother, Charles George Milnes Gaskell, followed his great-uncle into the Liberal party, and served as MP for the Morley division of the West Riding, 1886-1892.48M. Stenton & S. Lees, Who’s Who of British Members of Parliament (1978), ii. 132. Estate papers relating to Lupset Hall, which include material on the Gaskell family, are held in the John Goodchild collection, Wakefield.49http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/A2A/records.aspx?cat=2494-thornes&cid=-1&Gsm=2008-06-18#-1