PEASE, Joseph Whitwell (1828-1903), of 44 Grosvenor Gardens, London, Mdx. and Hutton Hall, Guisborough, Yorks.

Pease was born at Darlington into a Quaker dynasty whose members owned extensive industrial and commercial enterprises in the north-east of England. His grandfather, Edward Pease, had been the driving force behind the Stockton and Darlington railway company.1A.F. Pollard and C. Fell-Smith, ‘Pease, Edward (1767-1858)’, rev. M.W. Kirby, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com. His father, Joseph, owner of extensive collieries and iron foundries in Teesside, and MP for Durham South, 1832-41, was the first Quaker to sit in the House of Commons.2Joseph Pease: a memoir (1872), reprinted from the Northern Echo, 9 Feb. 1872. At the age of seventeen, Pease entered the family banking partnership at Darlington as a book-keeper, and thereafter became engaged in the projection of railway enterprises, beginning with the Middlesbrough and Guisborough Railway which opened in 1852. 3M.W. Kirby, Men of business and politics: the rise and fall of the Quaker Pease dynasty of north-east England, 1700-1943 (1984), 46; J. Wall, First in the world: the Stockton and Darlington railway (2001), 141. In 1863 he joined the board of the North-Eastern Railway. 4Kirby, Men of business and politics, 46. He also took part in the management of the family’s woollen mills, collieries and iron foundries in south Durham and Teesside.5C. Fell-Smith, ‘Pease, Sir Joseph Whitwell, first baronet (1828-1903)’, rev. M.W. Kirby, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com. Closely involved with his family’s parliamentary campaigns, he was instrumental in securing the election of his uncle, Henry Pease, for Durham South in 1857.6‘Henry Pease: a memoir’, Northern Echo, 31 May 1881; Cassell’s family magazine (1885), viii. 619-20.

At the 1865 general election Pease offered as a Liberal for Durham South, following his uncle’s decision to retire at the dissolution. He declared his support for the abolition of church rates and religious tests, and called for the opening of universities to dissenters.7York Herald, 22 July 1865. Backed by the votes from his family’s vast commercial estates, he was returned at the head of the poll, and assured his supporters that he ‘would always be found on the right side of the House’.8Leeds Mercury, 26 July 1865. A regular attender and ‘steady-going Liberal whose votes [were] for the most part Radical’, he supported the short-lived Russell ministry’s reform bill, 27 Apr. 1866, and endorsed Gladstone’s proposal to introduce a £14 franchise for the counties, believing that it would ‘introduce ... the upper crust of the working classes’, 7 June 1866.9The Durham thirteen: biographical sketches of the members of parliament returned for the city, boroughs, and county of Durham (1874), 150. He was in the ministerial minority on the vote of no confidence, 18 June 1866, and during Derby’s subsequent ministry, followed Gladstone into the division lobby on most major issues, including his resolutions on the Irish church, 3 Apr. 1868.

Pease frequently intervened in the debates on the representation of the people bill, particularly to press for the enfranchisement of Darlington, Stockton-on-Tees and Hartlepool, 23 May, 28 June, 2 July 1867, though his proposal for ‘Hartlepool’ being replaced in the bill’s schedules by ‘The Hartlepools’ was rejected by Disraeli, 9 July 1867. The three boroughs were subsequently created by the 1867 Reform Act. He divided with Gladstone on all the major clauses of the bill in committee, and was a teller for the successful amendment to reduce the copyhold franchise to £5, 20 May 1867, a measure he consistently advocated, 17 May, 24 June 1867. He voted against the enfranchisement of women, 20 May 1867.

As a Quaker industrialist, Pease also addressed matters directly affecting his commercial interests. He strenuously opposed the London coal and wine duties continuance bill, explaining that ‘the tax was opposed to the interests of the coal-producing districts, because the increase of price was a great bar to their industry’, 24 Mar. 1868, and called for the rating of mines, 19 Feb. 1867, though he equivocated on the issue the following year, 6 May 1868. As an employer of over 4,000 men across his 10 collieries, self-interest was evident in his opposition to the master and servant bill when he argued that the threat of imprisonment for strikes should remain, as it protected workmen from each other, 4 June 1867.10The Durham thirteen, 152-3. A zealous advocate of temperance, particularly among his own workforce, he pressed ministers on the introduction of stricter licences for the sale of alcohol, 4 Mar., 28 Nov. 1867.11Kirby, Men of business and politics, 46.

At the 1868 general election Pease was re-elected for Durham South, and held the seat until its abolition in 1885, whereupon he was returned for the Barnard Castle division of Durham county, which he represented until his death. He continued to speak regularly on the coal and iron industries and remained loyal to Gladstone on all major issues.12The Durham thirteen, 150. In May 1882 he was created a baronet, the first time a Quaker, who traditionally eschewed honorary titles, had accepted such a distinction.13Fell-Smith, ‘Pease, Sir Joseph Whitwell’, rev. M.W. Kirby. He also remained a committed activist, becoming president of the Anti-Opium Society and succeeding his uncle, Henry, as president of the Peace Society.14Ibid.

Following the death of his father in 1872, Pease assumed the leading role in the family’s business affairs.15Wall, First in the world, 141. He became director of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, the Owners of the Middlesbrough Estate, Robert Stephenson and Co., Pease and Partners, and J. and J.W. Pease, bankers.16Fell-Smith, ‘Pease, Sir Joseph Whitwell’, rev. M.W. Kirby. However, in marked contrast to his forebears, he was ‘lacking in business acumen’.17Kirby, Men of business and politics, 84-5. In 1902 following a court settlement against Pease in the matter of the administration of the estate of his niece, the countess of Portsmouth, the family banking partnership became insolvent, and, dependent on loans to meet the dividend payments of the family’s industrial concerns, the bank was absorbed by Barclay and Co. on disadvantageous terms.18Fell-Smith, ‘Pease, Sir Joseph Whitwell’, rev. M.W. Kirby. So dramatic was the collapse of the Pease family’s commercial interests that the settlement with Barclay and Co. entailed the forfeiture of the bulk of their estates.19M. Kirby, ‘The failure of a Quaker business dynasty: the Peases of Darlington, 1830-1902’, Business and religion in Britain, ed. D.J. Jeremy (1988), 142-63.

Pease died of heart failure at his Falmouth residence in Cornwall in June 1903, leaving estate valued at only £2866 18s.20The Times, 24 June 1903; England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index of wills and administration, 1861-1941, 14 July 1903. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Alfred Edward, MP for York, 1885-1892, and Cleveland, 1897-1902. His younger son, Joseph Albert, was MP for Tyneside, 1892-1900, Saffron Walden, 1901-1910 and Rotherham, 1910-1917, and was Liberal chief whip, 1908-10. He was created Baron Gainford in 1917, and was chairman of the BBC, 1922-1926. Pease’s papers and correspondence are located at Nuffield College, Oxford.21Papers of J.A. Pease (and family), MSS. Gainford.