BOWES, John (1811-1885), of 54 Conduit Street, London, Mdx. and Streatlam Castle, co. Durham.

John Bowes, ‘a name familiar as a household word in the county of Durham’, was the illegitimate son of John Bowes, tenth earl of Strathmore.1Northern Echo, 12 Oct. 1885. The earl married Bowes’s mother, Mary, on his deathbed to legitimise their son by Scots law, but Bowes’s claim to the title was rejected in 1821, and he remained sensitive about his pedigree thereafter.2A. Arnold, The unhappy countess and her grandson John Bowes (1957), 174-77; S.M. Linsley, ‘Bowes, John (1811-1885)’, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com. He did, however, succeed to the earl’s coal-rich estates of Streatlam, near Barnard Castle in county Durham, and Gibside, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and was ‘meticulous’ in their management.3Arnold, The unhappy countess, 177. In 1828 he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where his tutor was William Hutt, MP for Kingston-upon-Hull, 1832-41 and Gateshead, 1841-74. Hutt married Bowes’s mother in 1831. Whilst at Cambridge, Bowes took a continental tour and thereafter became an avid Francophile with a particular interest in French theatre.4C.E. Hardy, John Bowes and the Bowes Museum (1970), 27-36. Having also inherited his father’s stud at Streatlam, he was an enthusiastic breeder, and won the Derby four times, earning him a reputation as ‘the luckiest man on the turf and one of the best judges of yearlings’.5F. Boase, Mod. Eng. Biog. (1892), i. 358-9.

At the 1832 general election Bowes offered for Durham South. Although he stressed his ‘freedom from party connexions’, his address, which strongly advocated popular education, freedom of religious faith, and the abolition of slavery, confirmed his credentials as a Reformer.6Newcastle Courant, 22 Dec. 1832. He was a nervous speaker who ‘in his desire to be meticulously accurate ... became long-winded’, and his outspoken criticism of the abuses of the established church drew the ire of the local Conservative press, but backed by his interest and the influence of the duke of Cleveland, he was elected in second place.7Hardy, John Bowes, 37-40.

Bowes attended frequently but is not known to have ever spoken in the Commons. His known select committee service was also limited.8Bowes is known to have sat on inquiries into: Accidents in mines, PP 1835 (603), v. 2; Highways Act, PP 1837-38 (663), xxiii. 253; Lighthouses, PP 1845 (607), ix. 196. Cf. Hardy, John Bowes, 70. He ‘understood the value of lobbying’, however, and promised to ‘exert’ himself ‘to the utmost’ when representing the interests of the Great North of England railway company, in which he held £1,000 of shares.9Hardy, John Bowes, 50. In his first Parliament, his votes reflected to a degree his stated desire to be free from party. He opposed Grey’s ministry on Irish coercion, 11 Mar. 1833, believing it to be a ‘measure which ... handed over a destitute and desperate peasantry to the tender mercies of a military tribunal’, and he voted against Lord Althorp’s motion to replace church rates with a land tax, 21 Apr. 1834.10Parliamentary test book (1835), 22-3. He was also in minorities for the abolition of army and navy pensions, 14 Feb. 1833, for scrutiny of the pension list, 18 Feb. 1834, and for the repeal of the septennial act, 15 May 1834. On most other major issues, however, he supported the Whig government, and, returned unopposed at the 1835 general election, 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, and was a reliable supporter of Melbourne’s second ministry thereafter. Re-elected without a contest at the 1837 general election, he remained loyal to the government in the division lobby, and voted for the Maynooth grant, 23 June 1840. He was in the ministerial minority against Peel’s motion of no confidence, 4 June 1841.

At the 1841 general election Bowes’s advocacy of a sliding scale on corn duty, rather than a fixed one, was strongly criticised by a group of Darlington’s leading Liberals, who urged him, unsuccessfully, to modify his stance.11Strathmore MSS, Dur. RO, D/St/C1/16/292-93; Hardy, John Bowes, 56. The campaign was hostile, and his speeches were frequently interrupted by ‘mercenary howlers’, but aided in his canvass by an efficient election committee of eighteen agents, he was re-elected in second place.12Strathmore MSS, Dur. RO, D/St/C1/16/271. Bowes’s 1841 general election campaign was subsequently dramatised by William Thackeray, who had resided with Bowes during in the contest, in his Notes on the north what-d’ye-callem election. Being the personal narrative of Napoleon Putnam Wiggins, of Passimaquoddy, which was published in Fraser’s Magazine (1841), xxiv. 352-8, 413-27. Before the new Parliament sat, however, Bowes had already decided that he would not again stand for election. Having previously stated that he was ‘willing to sacrifice time and health, but not spend his own money’ on parliamentary politics, he informed his agent that he had been allowed to carry the financial burden of the constituency party and would no longer be ‘hooked in to make up any deficiency’.13Quoted in Hardy, John Bowes, 48, 66.

Bowes attended steadily during his fourth Parliament, following Lord John Russell into the division lobby on most major issues, including his motion against the reintroduction of income tax, 13 Apr. 1842, and his motion to consider the state of Ireland, 23 Feb. 1844. On the factories bill, however, he generally divided with Peel’s ministry, 18 Mar. 1844, 22 Mar. 1844. In November 1843, after successfully backing his own horse in the Derby, which earned him £22,000, he was the subject of a ‘qui tam’ legal action for ‘excessive or deceitful gaming’, brought forward under the obsolete statute of 9 Anne, c. 14.14Ibid., 67-70. On his solicitor’s advice, he remained abroad until Lord Bentinck, who had also been served with notices of action, organised a hasty repeal of the statute.15Hansard, 14 Feb. 1844, vol. 72, cc. 789-808. Thereafter he continued to lobby on behalf of the Great North of England railway company, and, unsurprisingly, voted against the Peel ministry’s railway bill, 11 July 1844, which proposed greater regulation. Although he had hitherto opposed repeal of the corn laws, in February 1846 he issued an address to his constituents, stating that it was now his ‘conviction’ that the country was ‘united in a desire to enforce the principles of free trade’, and he subsequently voted for repeal, 15 May 1846.16Morning Post, 14 Feb. 1846.

Following his retirement at the dissolution in 1847, Bowes wrote to his agent that ‘the town is full of electioneering. What a luxury it is to see all this and know one has not to pay for it!’17Quoted in Hardy, John Bowes, 72. Certainly, ‘neither his heart nor his pocket’ had been in politics, and he lamented how, given his expenditure, he should have taken his solicitor’s advice and kept out of Parliament, ‘although my luck on the turf will have about squared the matter’.18T.J. Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms in reformed England: case studies from the North-east, 1832-74 (1975), 52; Arnold, The unhappy countess, 190. His fortune was finally secured in 1847 when, with Charles Mark Palmer, he founded John Bowes Esq. & Partners, which operated twelve collieries in county Durham and Northumberland, and soon became one of the largest coal companies in the world.19Linsley, ‘Bowes, John’; Northern Echo, 12 Oct. 1885; Arnold, The unhappy countess, 176. Their first vessel, the John Bowes, a screw steamer of 465 tons designed to carry coal between Newcastle and London, was launched in 1852.20Arnold, The unhappy countess, 176.

In 1847 Bowes settled in Paris, where he met Josephine Benoîte Coffin-Chevallier, an actress and painter, whom he married in 1852. Thereafter the couple became prodigious art collectors, and in 1869 the Bowes Museum, designed to house their collections, was begun at Barnard Castle, county Durham.21Linsley, ‘Bowes, John’; Hardy, John Bowes, 138-44. Josephine died in February 1874, and three years later, Bowes married Alphonsine, comtesse de Courten, who was also French, but the marriage was troubled.22Linsley, ‘Bowes, John’ Following a period of ill health, he died without issue at Streatlam Castle in October 1885. His estate of £147,847 19s. 3d. was insufficient to meet the bequests of his will, but after a period of financial uncertainty, the Bowes Museum opened in 1892, and remains a major collection of French art.23England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index of wills and administration, 1861-1941, 28 Nov. 1885. Bowes’s correspondence and papers are located at Durham County Record Office.24Dur. Co. RO, D/Bo.