HORNBY, William Henry (1805-1884), of King Street, Blackburn, Lancs; Shrewbridge Hall, Nantwich, Ches; Mains Hall, nr. Preston, Lancs; 3 Spring Gardens, London.

Described by a contemporary as ‘short, thick-set, with very much the similitude of a country squire… a neck like a bullock, and a general expression in which pride is mingled with irascibility, scorn, and dauntless indomitable pluck’, Hornby’s fighting spirit earned him the nickname ‘th’ owd Gam’ Cock’.1Cited in P. Joyce, ‘The factory politics of Lancashire in the later nineteenth century’, HJ, 18 (1975), 552. A later account depicted him as ‘of sanguine complexion, above medium stature and latterly… somewhat stout. He wore an old-fashioned blue waistcoat with brass buttons’: G. Miller, Blackburn: the evolution of a cotton town (1951), 374. However, his decade at Westminster representing his native borough proved an uneventful contrast with the central role he occupied in Blackburn’s Conservative politics for four decades.

From a local gentry family in the Fylde area of Lancashire, Hornby’s father John (1763-1841) moved from Kirkham to Blackburn in 1779 to train as a cotton merchant.2D. Beattie, A history of Blackburn (2007), 68; M. Edwards, The growth of the British cotton trade, 1780-1815 (1967), 255. Hawkins incorrectly identifies William Hornby as Stanley’s cousin, close companion and comptroller of the Knowsley estate, but this was in fact Sir William Wyndham Hornby (1812-99): A. Hawkins, The forgotten prime minister: the 14th earl of Derby (2007), 331, 390, cf. J.R. Vincent (ed.), Disraeli, Derby, and the Conservative Party: journals and memoirs of Edward Henry, Lord Stanley, 1849-1869 (1978), 375n. In partnership with members of the Birley family, with whom the Hornbys had intermarried, he subsequently invested part of the £10,000 inheritance from his father in a spinning mill, and acted as a putter-out to handloom weavers. He and his partners built a new mill at Brookhouse, Blackburn in 1828, by which time Hornby had joined the business.3Edwards, British cotton trade, 255; J.G. Timmins, ‘Hornby, William Henry’, Oxf. DNB [www.oxforddnb.com]. By the time another mill was added in 1832, Hornby had taken control, and his father had retired to Raikes Hall, Blackpool, having accrued a considerable fortune.4Edwards, British cotton trade, 255; B. Lewis, The middlemost and the milltowns: bourgeois culture and politics in early industrial England (2001), 364. John Hornby’s oldest surviving son Daniel was set to inherit the Raikes Hall estate, while his second son Robert entered the church. (His estate was valued at £200,000 on his death.5Edwards, British cotton trade, 255.) With his partners, notably the inventive William Kenworthy (d. 1856), Hornby developed the firm into one of Lancashire’s largest, employing 1,500 hands by 1842.6Timmins, ‘Hornby, William Henry’; W. Abram, A history of Blackburn (1877), 410; The Times, 20 Aug. 1842. Hornby’s other partner John Newsham left the partnership in 1839: London Gazette, 19 July 1839. A ‘man of great energy and mechanical skill, and truly a master of decision in all he undertakes’,7P.A. Whittle, Blackburn as it is (1852), 154. Hornby ‘very liberally supplied’ Kenworthy with funds for technical improvements, resulting in several patents on cotton machinery.8J. Baynes, The cotton trade: two lectures (1857), 28-9; Timmins, ‘Hornby, William Henry’. They exhibited at the Great Exhibition, and were credited with having put Blackburn ‘in advance of all other towns’ in the cotton industry.9Blackburn Standard, 5 Mar. 1851, 4 May 1859. Hornby also constructed a school (1839-40) and gymnasium (1841) and owned a considerable amount of workers’ housing.10Beattie, Blackburn, 107, 224; Abram, Blackburn, 371. The expansion of Brookhouse included the construction of a new mill with 800 looms in 1852: Manchester Times, 16 June 1852. He acquired a reputation as a benevolent employer, not least because of his ‘sincere, consistent, and persevering advocacy of the Short-time movement’, on which Kenworthy published an influential pamphlet in 1842,11Blackburn Standard, 2 Mar. 1853; Lewis, The middlemost and the milltowns, 301-2. As early as 1834 Hornby had strongly recommended restrictions on the moving power in factories as the best means of securing obedience to any restrictions on working hours: PP 1834 (167), xx. 610. and Lord Shaftesbury acknowledged the firm’s assistance in this cause.12The Times, 20 Oct. 1868. On Hornby as a paternalistic employer, see H.I. Dutton & J.E. King, ‘The limits of paternalism: the cotton tyrants of North Lancashire, 1836-54’, Social History, 7 (1982), 70. Responding to a testimonial from his workpeople in 1852, Hornby regretted that they had not secured a 10 hour day rather than the 10½ hour compromise.13Blackburn Standard, 1 Sept. 1852, but cf. Blackburn Standard, 27 Mar. 1850. Up to 15,000 people saw him receive a testimonial from Blackburn’s operatives the following year, which praised him as ‘the well-tried, faithful, and constant friend of the working classes’.14Blackburn Standard, 14 Sept. 1853.

The ‘chief promoter’ of bringing the railway to Blackburn, in 1845 Hornby had railway investments totalling £35,500.15H.J. Hanham, Elections and party management. Politics in the time of Disraeli and Gladstone (1959), 72; PP 1845 (317), xl. 68. He was chairman of the Blackburn, Darwen and Bolton railway, and of the Blackburn, Clitheroe and North Western Junction railway, but reportedly ‘lost heavily’ by the latter.16Morning Post, 30 Sept. 1845; Blackburn Standard, 26 Aug. 1846; Preston Guardian, 2 Mar. 1878. Hornby was also a director of several other railway companies: Preston Guardian, 27 Feb. 1847; PP 1846 (504), xlii. 168. His dual position facilitated the union of these companies, and in 1857 he oversaw their amalgamation with the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway, of which he subsequently became a director.17Preston Guardian, 17 July 1847; Morning Post, 5 Sept. 1857; Bradshaw’s railway manual (1867), 164. Away from business, Hornby in his younger days had been ‘something of an athlete’,18Miller, Blackburn, 373. possessing ‘great abilities as an equestrian’.19Preston Guardian, 2 Mar. 1878. In his racing colours of blue and orange, he won the 1838 Blackburn and Preston steeplechase, ‘skimming over the fences in gallant style’.20Blackburn Standard, 23 Mar. 1889; The Sportsman (1838), iv. 362-3; W. Ruff, Guide to the turf (1849), 171. He came third in the Clitheroe steeplechase the same year: Preston Guardian, 2 Mar. 1878. His passion for racing – he owned a stud of horses – was such that political opponents later claimed that he had a latch key for Tattersall’s: Blackburn Standard, 16 Mar. 1853. He enjoyed hunting, and was president of Blackburn cricket club.21Blackburn Standard, 18 Mar. 1835, 17 May 1848. A patron of many local charities, particularly those connected with the Anglican church, he was the chief benefactor of the Blackburn Strangers’ Friend Society, which assisted the poor, and made generous contributions towards Blackburn infirmary in 1858 and the relief fund during the cotton famine.22Blackburn Standard, 4 Dec. 1861, 25 Nov. 1882; Abram, Blackburn, 351; Preston Guardian, 17 Dec. 1859; Daily News, 24 Oct. 1862. For his involvement with Anglican causes, see Blackburn Standard, 31 Aug. 1836, 18 Aug. 1858, 5 Feb. 1862, 10 Jan. 1866. He was also a long-serving vice-president of the Blackburn Mechanics’ Institute.23Preston Guardian, 22 May 1849.

Hornby was the leading figure in Blackburn Conservatism following the borough’s enfranchisement in 1832, so much so that ‘Hornbyism’ and ‘Conservatism’ were sometimes used interchangeably.24Blackburn Standard, 18 Dec. 1880. In addition to his involvement with the Blackburn Conservative Association, Hornby supported the Blackburn Operative Conservative Association from its inception in 1836: Blackburn Standard, 12 Oct. 1836. Although the Conservative candidate withdrew before the poll in 1832, Hornby received a testimonial of silver plate in tribute to his ‘firm and manly conduct’ as chairman of the campaign.25Blackburn Standard, 18 Dec. 1880; W.A. Abram, Members of the Hornby family who have represented Blackburn in Parliament (1892), 6; Hanham, Elections and party management, 72. Thereafter the Conservatives enjoyed greater electoral success, although Hornby was ‘much ruffled in temper’ when their candidate, William Feilden, father-in-law to Hornby’s older brother Robert, was denied a hearing at the hustings in 1835.26Morning Post, 10 Jan. 1835. Feilden had been returned as a Whig in 1832, but had transferred his allegiance to the Conservatives not long thereafter. However, he apparently took it ‘very complacently’ when he was thrown by the mob from a bridge into the river Blakewater later in the contest.27Miller, Blackburn, 375. Another later account claimed that he was thrown into the river three times on the same day: Blackburn Standard, 2 Oct. 1875, but cf. Preston Guardian, 29 Dec. 1877, which suggested that it was during the 1832 contest that he was twice ducked in the river. During the 1841 contest, when the Conservatives secured both seats – one for Feilden and the second for Hornby’s younger brother John – he was again targeted by the mob, and discharged a pistol when they attacked his house.28Miller, Blackburn, 375. The following year he was among the local magistrates who endeavoured to counter the Plug Riots, and was later praised for his ‘sterling, thorough, fearless and impartial’ conduct as a magistrate.29Preston Guardian, 19 Jan. 1878; Blackburn Standard, 18 Dec. 1880. He only narrowly avoided being struck off the bench in 1850, however, when he was sentenced to seven days’ imprisonment for assaulting a police officer while intoxicated, following a scuffle outside a gaming-house in Mayfair. As Hornby was led to the cells, a friend interceded, pleading that Hornby was ‘a highly respectable gentleman’ and that the incident was merely a Derby day ‘frolic’. The presiding magistrate relented, substituting a £5 fine.30Daily News, 31 May 1850.

Following Blackburn’s incorporation in 1851 – which Hornby had initially opposed, concerned that rates would be doubled31Blackburn Standard, 4 Dec. 1850. – he was chosen in turn as a councillor, alderman and then as the borough’s first mayor.32Preston Guardian, 15 Nov. 1851. Blackburn’s coat of arms included a bugle horn to symbolise the Hornby connection.33Blackburn Standard, 18 Feb. 1852. Hornby failed to keep his pledge to act in ‘a calm, cool, and deliberate manner’ during his mayoralty,34Preston Guardian, 15 Nov. 1851. for in August 1852 he was fined and bound over to keep the peace after assaulting Thomas Dugdale, chairman of the rival East Lancashire railway company (and also a political opponent), in a row over railway dividends,35Manchester Times, 14 Aug. 1852; The Examiner, 14 Aug. 1852; The Times, 20 Aug. 1852. For a later (verbal) attack by Hornby on Dugdale, see Blackburn Standard, 25 Mar. 1857. and before his mayoral year was out he described Nonconformists as ‘a damnable society of dissenting fellows’.36Manchester Times, 5 Mar. 1853. He apologised for this remark following his election in 1857: Preston Guardian, 28 Mar. 1857. He presided over the 1852 election, when his brother John was ousted by a Liberal-leaning Peelite, William Eccles.37Blackburn Standard, 8 July 1852. A later account suggested that this defeat was partly explained by the fact that as mayor, Hornby’s ‘hands and lips were tied’.38Blackburn Standard, 18 Dec. 1880. However, while Hornby maintained his impartiality on the hustings, he was active beforehand, and even challenged Montague Feilden, who had mooted offering as a second Liberal, to ‘a political match... over the Blackburn ground, for not less a sum than One Thousand Pounds a-side, play or pay’.39Blackburn Standard, 21 Apr. 1852.

In March 1853 Hornby, noting that this was not the first time he had been asked to stand, offered for the vacancy created by Eccles’ unseating for bribery, and was opposed by Feilden.40Blackburn Standard, 9 Mar. 1853. He emphasised his contribution to the borough as an employer and ‘the poor man’s friend’, while denigrating Feilden’s record on the same.41Blackburn Standard, 2 Mar. 1853, 9 Mar. 1853. In a rancorous campaign, both parties descended to personal insults, and while Hornby could hardly deny his hasty temper, he retorted that ‘the little follies of a man have nothing to do with his commercial and public career’.42Blackburn Standard, 16 Mar. 1853. Hornby also accused Feilden of similar faults. Declaring that ‘measures, not men, shall be my motto. I shall be no party to a factious opposition’, he asserted his admiration of Peel and his support for free trade.43Manchester Times, 5 Mar. 1853. In contrast with Hornby’s professed admiration of Peel, opponents alleged that he had spoken disparagingly of the late premier and refused to subscribe to the local memorial fund for him: Manchester Times, 5 Mar. 1853. For Hornby’s response, see Blackburn Standard, 23 Mar. 1853. He wished to ‘repair and improve’ established institutions ‘with the aim of preservation’, and would support better use of church revenues and a measure to tackle electoral corruption. He highlighted his commitment to the Ten Hours Act, promising to back efforts to preserve its integrity.44Blackburn Standard, 2 Mar. 1853. On the hustings he affirmed that he had no objection to gradually extending the franchise.45Blackburn Standard, 23 Mar. 1853. Hornby’s defeat was said to owe much to the reaction caused by Eccles’ unseating.46Blackburn Standard, 2 Oct. 1875.

Undeterred, Hornby stood again in 1857, asserting that if returned he would ‘act and vote free from party prejudices’.47Blackburn Standard, 25 Mar. 1857. He reiterated his support for free trade and retrenchment, and wished to see income tax repealed as soon as practicable.48Blackburn Standard, 25 Mar. 1857; Preston Guardian, 28 Mar. 1857. He reassured those concerned that he had ‘radical’ views on the Church that he desired ‘a safe and comprehensive measure’ of Church reform, and would not allow ‘one farthing of church revenue’ to be appropriated for other purposes.49Preston Guardian, 28 Mar. 1857. Opposed to universal suffrage, he favoured equalisation of the county and borough franchise and ‘a well-digested plan of Electoral Districts’, and declared himself ‘open to conviction’ on the ballot, which he would support if introduced by ministers.50Blackburn Standard, 25 Mar. 1857; Preston Guardian, 28 Mar. 1857. Hornby, who was elected unopposed alongside the Liberal James Pilkington, characteristically boasted that had the second Liberal, Jonathan Peel, not withdrawn, ‘I had the game in my own hands… I could have said to them “Which P. would you like to send?”’.51Preston Guardian, 28 Mar. 1857. He and Pilkington were re-elected in 1859, when Hornby declared that although he did not approve of the Conservative ministry’s reform bill as a whole, there was some good in it, and that a £6 borough franchise could have been secured in committee. He wished to see greater redistribution of seats, and was ‘not decidedly against the ballot’.52Preston Guardian, 23 Apr. 1859, 30 Apr. 1859; The Times, 30 Apr. 1859; Blackburn Standard, 4 May 1859.

A lacklustre attender, when present Hornby generally voted with his party, although on the hustings in 1859 he claimed that he had supported Palmerston ‘when he thought he was acting for the benefit of this country’.53Preston Guardian, 23 Apr. 1859. Hornby voted in 49 out of 162 divisions in the 1857 session and in 71 out of 185 in 1858: Preston Guardian, 24 Oct. 1857, 8 Jan. 1859. He consistently opposed abolition of church rates and efforts to remove the Maynooth grant. Having divided for the Derby ministry’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859, he opposed subsequent efforts to widen the borough franchise, 10 Apr. 1861, 11 May 1864, 8 May 1865, but abstained on the ballot.54Hornby was, however, unable to attend the debates on the 1859 bill due to a serious accident: The Times, 30 Apr. 1859. Usually in the opposite lobby from Pilkington, who nonetheless found him ‘an agreeable fellow worker’, they were both in the minority for James Stansfeld’s motion on reducing national expenditure, 3 June 1862.55Blackburn Standard, 16 Nov. 1864. Hornby’s committee service was limited to private bills, although he was more active in accompanying deputations to ministers, particularly on matters concerning the cotton trade.56PP 1860 (0.122), lvi. 30; Morning Post, 1 Aug. 1857; The Times, 22 Feb. 1862. His only known contribution to debate was to refute William Ferrand’s ‘offensive’ claims that Lancashire’s cotton manufacturers were unwilling to encourage emigration during the cotton famine, 14 July 1863.

Hornby sought re-election in 1865, when he was described by a leading local Conservative as ‘rather milder in his language than he used to be’.57Blackburn Standard, 5 July 1865. Hornby himself also felt that he had become less hasty-tempered as time went on, stating in 1864 that ‘years have passed away since I first began my public career, and had I been blessed with my present experience at the outset, I might, perhaps, have acted a cooler and more generous part than I have in my youthful days’: Blackburn Standard, 16 Nov. 1864. Stressing that he was ‘not a bigot’ in either religion or politics, he hoped to see the reform and church rates questions settled. On the latter, he would support any plan which would ‘satisfy the scruples of conscientious Dissenters’, but opposed total abolition.58Preston Guardian, 8 July 1865. Despite his qualms that the ballot was unEnglish, he maintained that he would vote for if introduced as a government measure. While he felt that ‘we should hesitate before we admit changes in a downward tendency in the value of the franchise’, he wished to enlarge Blackburn’s electorate by extending the constituency boundaries.59Blackburn Standard, 12 July 1865. Hornby topped the poll, with his fellow Conservative securing the second seat, aided by Liberal divisions. Unsurprisingly he opposed the Liberal reform bill, 7 Mar. 1866, and generally voted with his party on the Conservatives’ 1867 measure. He divided against Gladstone’s Irish church proposals, 3 Apr. 1868. He again topped the poll at that year’s general election, but he and his Conservative colleague were unseated on petition in March 1869 on grounds of intimidation after it was proved that workers had been dismissed from Blackburn’s cotton mills because of their political allegiance.60Blackburn Times, 16 Mar. 1869.

Thereafter Hornby retired into private life at Poole Hall, near Nantwich, Cheshire, and gave a discouraging response in 1873 when it was mooted that he might offer again at Blackburn.61Miller, Blackburn, 375; The Standard, 19 Aug. 1873. Notwithstanding his manufacturing background, he took a practical interest in his estates, recommending ‘bran mashes with best treacle’ as a remedy for cattle plague in 1865.62Blackburn Standard, 27 Sept. 1865. In addition to his own properties, Hornby had inherited the manor of Staining, near Blackpool, from his father-in-law: VCH Lancs., vii. 238-9. He died at Poole Hall in September 1884, leaving an estate valued at £250,638 17s. 5d., and was buried at St. John’s church, Blackburn.63Morning Post, 8 Sept. 1884; Timmins, ‘Hornby, William Henry’. In 1912 he was commemorated with a statue in Blackburn, erected after a former employee left £3,000 for this purpose.64Beattie, Blackburn, 64. Hornby had ceded control of the business to his second and third surviving sons, Edward Kenworthy Hornby (1839-1887) and William Henry Hornby (1841-1928) in 1870.65London Gazette, 28 Oct. 1870. His oldest son John (1832-1901) was a barrister: Venn, Alum. Cantab., iii. 443. Edward filled his father’s place at the by-election which followed the petition in 1869, and sat until 1874. William Henry also entered politics, serving as Blackburn’s mayor in 1876 and 1901, and as its MP from 1886 to 1910.66On William Henry Hornby junior, see P.F. Clarke, ‘British politics and Blackburn politics, 1900-1910’, HJ, 12 (1978), 304-5. Several of Hornby’s sons were keen sportsmen, notably Albert Neilson (‘Monkey’) Hornby (1847-1925), who represented England at cricket and rugby, and played football for Blackburn Rovers.67E. Midwinter, ‘Hornby, Albert Neilson’, Oxf. DNB [www.oxforddnb.com]. The Hornby family’s central role in establishing ‘a formidable Tory electoral interest’ in Blackburn in the latter half of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century has caught the attention of a number of historians, particularly as a response to Patrick Joyce’s work on the factory politics of Lancashire.68N. Kirk, Change, continuity and class: labour in British society, 1850-1920 (1998), 105; Joyce, ‘Factory politics of Lancashire’; idem., Work, society and politics: the culture of the factory in later Victorian England (1980). See also G.N. Trodd, ‘Political change and the working class in Blackburn and Burnley, 1880-1914’ (PhD thesis, University of Lancaster, 1978). While much of this relates to the period after 1868, when Blackburn’s factory workers dominated the extended electorate, the ‘muscular Christian populism’, ‘squirearchical bonhomie’ and employer paternalism which underpinned Blackburn Conservatism were all clearly embodied by Hornby prior to the Second Reform Act.69Lewis, The middlemost and the milltowns, 294.