LASLETT, William Emerson (1801-1884), of Abberton Hall, Pershore, Worcs.

Laslett was born in Worcester, the eldest son of a successful banker with the firm of Berwick, Wall and Isaac. Having worked as a boy clerk and assistant cashier at the bank, he served all the terms necessary to be called to the bar, but was instead articled to William Wall, a solicitor and banker of the town, to whose business he succeeded. He practised successfully as a solicitor from 1831 until his retirement in 1846.2Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1854), 219; F. Boase, Modern English Biography, ii (1897), 310. In the 1830s he resided at Thorngrove House, Grimley (once the residence of Prince Lucien Bonaparte), before purchasing and rebuilding the Elizabethan manor house of Abberton Hall, Pershore, around 1840. He was described as ‘a wide-a-wake specimen of the successful legal practitioner – one who never allowed golden opportunities to occur without taking a wise advantage of them’, and engaged in speculative land deals which made him the largest landowning commoner in Worcestershire and Herefordshire.3Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 25 Mar. 1852, 2 Feb. 1884, 16 May 1865. At his death he owned land at Bishampton, Flyford Flavel, Naunton, Beauchamp, Kington, Dormstone, Grafton Flyford, Hanbury, Welland, Broughton Hacket, Claines, and Chipping Norton, in Worcestershire, and Bacton Abbey Dore, St. Margaret’s, Newtown, and elsewhere in Herefordshire: Birmingham Daily Post, 1 Feb. 1884.

‘Eccentric in many things’ (he was ‘not an ordinary man’), Laslett made a stormy and controversial marriage with the daughter of the recently deceased, and so it was rumoured, heavily indebted bishop of Worcester in 1842.4Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 21 Nov. 1868, 10 Feb. 1842. They remained together for only a short time, the marriage being dramatised by Ellen Price in her novel East Lynne (1861). Laslett’s late father-in-law had been an intimate of George IV, to whom he owed his advancement. After his death he was rumoured to have had debts of £100,000, a portion of which Laslett agreed to pay: A.C. Bickley, rev. H.C.G. Matthew, ‘Carr, Robert’, Oxford DNB, x. 273-4; ‘Laslett family history’. Renowned for his parsimony, he was seen to walk ‘the streets of Worcester in a top hat and clothes that a ragman would not want’, and his daily lunch whilst attending parliament consisted of a penny ‘twist’ and a glass of ale.5‘Laslett family history’. He did his own cooking at home and was known to have performed manual labour in order to save the cost of workmen.

Regarded as a Tory squire, Laslett took little part in politics until June 1851 when, claiming to have been ‘ill-used by his party’, he announced to the Worcester Parliamentary and Financial Reform Association that he now wished to join the effort to promote ‘the comfort and good of the working classes’.6Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 25 Mar. 1852. He is said to have complained that local Conservatives ‘would not let a man of plebeian race like himself … come into close communication with them’. Speaking as chairman of the association in January 1852, he endorsed the reform proposals of Richard Cobden and John Bright, decrying the capacity of ‘little boroughs’ to neutralise the representation of much larger ones,7He later suggested a lower population limit of 20,000, with the voters of the disenfranchised boroughs being ‘thrown into the counties’: Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 23 Jan. 1858. and arguing that ‘unless a strong demonstration of public feeling were made on the subject’, the prime minister, Lord John Russell, might ‘be swayed by his aristocratic leanings and bring forward a little Bill like himself’.8Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 15 Jan. 1852. Laslett was shortly afterwards spoken of as a replacement for the then bankrupt Conservative member for Worcester, and was returned unopposed as a Liberal at a by-election in April 1852. In spite of the Conservatives’ hostility to a ‘hybrid candidate’, who in ‘a fit of spleen’ and with ‘unblushing effrontery’ had transformed himself from ‘an utter Tory’ into ‘an utter Radical’, Laslett headed the poll at the following general election.9Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 25 Mar., 22 Apr., 8 July 1852. His hustings speech attacked the ‘feudal rights’ of the aristocracy and inequities in the representation and advocated the ballot and parliamentary reform but, although dubbed ‘an ultra-democrat’ by his opponents, he declined to endorse universal suffrage until ‘the people were better prepared by education to enjoy the privilege’. He also denounced the militia bill and flogging in the army, and promised to reform ‘abuses in the Church’ and revise taxation in favour of industry.10Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 25 Mar., 8 July 1852. He argued somewhat eccentrically that acts of parliament were not constitutionally valid ‘unless they had received the assent of the Community of the realm’.

Laslett regarded himself as ‘more the representative of principles than the adherent of party’.11Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 22 Apr. 1852. He supported Charles Villiers’s free trade motion, 26 Nov. 1852, and divided in favour of removing the remaining protective duties on imports, 3 Mar. 1853. That year he seconded a motion for a return of petitions against the Public Health Act of 1848, which had proved deeply controversial in his constituency, and argued for discretionary powers to be given to local boards.12Hansard, 9 Mar. 1853, vol. 124, cc. 1352-3; T.C. Turberville, Worcestershire in the Nineteenth Century (1852), 188-96. He backed the removal of Jewish disabilities, supported Gladstone’s budget, 2 May, and the subsequent income tax bill, 6 June, and divided in favour of the ballot, 14 June. He served on only one select committee during his time in the Commons, on the Newry election petition in 1853, and did not introduce any bills.13Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1854), 219; PP 1852-3 (346) xvi. 359. That session he took part in 78 of the 257 divisions, and the following year he opposed the medical practitioners bill, which aimed to impose registration fees, and supported the abolition of church rates, 21 June.14Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853. That August he objected to the episcopal and capitular estates management bill which, by making arrangements to compensate lessees, would, he argued, ‘fritter away the property of the Church’.15Hansard, 10 May 1854, vol. 133, c. 115; 3 Aug. 1854, vol. 135, cc. 1216-7. In 1855 he sided with the Aberdeen ministry to oppose John Roebuck’s motion for an inquiry into the conduct of the Crimean War, 29 Jan., but was absent for the critical motion on the issue, 25 May, and for the subsequent vote of censure, 19 July. He supported the abolition of newspaper stamp duty, 26 Mar. 1855, voted for William Brown’s motion on the decimalisation of the coinage, 12 June, and Austen Layard’s motion on administrative reform, 18 June, and backed George Muntz’s motion on currency reform, 28 Feb. 1856. That month he addressed the justices of the peace qualification bill, arguing for the inclusion of solicitors on the magistrates’ bench, and claiming that ‘if clergymen were disfranchised, there would be no magistrates at all’.16Hansard, 27 Feb. 1856, vol. 140, c. 1444. He also spoke on ecclesiastical issues, arguing for ‘a better arrangement and distribution of the revenues of the cathedral churches throughout the kingdom’, and attended 64 of the 198 divisions in that session.17Hansard, 18 June 1855, vol. 138, c. 2148; 15 Feb. 1856, vol. 140, c. 896-7; J.P. Gassiot & J.A. Roebuck, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck: with a full analysis of the divisions in the House of Commons during the last session of parliament (1857), 22.

In 1856 Laslett was finally called to the bar, despite having suggested in 1852 that ‘the greatest nuisance in the House of Commons was the number of barristers in it’.18Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 8 July 1852. He supported the equalisation of the borough and county franchises, 19 Feb. 1857, and opposed Disraeli’s motion to abolish income tax, 23 Feb. Having become increasingly critical of the government’s conduct of the Crimean war,19Having once credited the ministry for its services in the war, he later accused officials of ‘the most glaring and disastrous mismanagement’, condemning ‘the deplorable loss … and that contemptible peace’: Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 14 Mar. 1857, 23 Jan. 1858. he voted against the ministry on the Canton affair, 3 Mar. 1857, arguing that the military bombardment was something of which the country ‘ought to be ashamed’, being ‘unwarranted by the law of Nations or treaty stipulations, and inconsistent with a due regard to the rights of humanity’.20Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 14, 21 Mar. 1857. In 1859, he presented a petition against the opium trade: Ibid., 2 Apr. 1859. Having forcefully told his constituents that he would not ‘consent to the carrying on a war, 16,000 miles from our shores, against a defenceless people, without any reasonable ground or pretence, save for the purpose of maintaining a Ministry in power’, he was again returned at the top of the poll for Worcester at the 1857 general election. As ‘a somewhat advanced Liberal’, he promised to promote secular education and the welfare of the ‘humble and indigent classes’, and seek both ‘a properly regulated property-tax’ and a reduction of national expenditure, particularly on the building of new government offices. He remained openly critical of Palmerston who, he claimed, had never carried ‘any important measure … without the aid of the Conservative party’, and denounced the prime minister’s belligerence abroad and ‘back-sliding’ on domestic reforms.21Illustrated London News, 5 June 1858; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 14, 21 Mar. 1857. On the question of retrenchment, he was outspoken in his criticism of patronage in the armed forces, and the government’s ‘extravagance’ in granting a dowry of £40,000 to the Princess Royal.22Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 23 Jan. 1858. Having insisted upon his freedom of action regarding his votes in parliament, he opposed the ministry again over the conspiracy to murder bill in February 1858.

Laslett was returned for Worcester again in 1859, when he demonstrated some sympathy for Lord Derby’s reform bill, in spite of having voted against the measure.23Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 23 Apr. 1859. Though committed to the enfranchisement of ‘the industrial classes’, he argued that those who sought parliamentary reform ‘must be content to get it piecemeal’, and supported Lord John Russell’s resolution on the issue in April.24Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 19 Mar., 2, 30 Apr. 1859. Having advocated the sale of church livings (of which, he claimed, Palmerston held 150) to obviate the need for church rates, he again voted for the abolition of the latter, 13 July 1859.25Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 19 Mar. 1859. Laslett was himself the patron of four church livings: Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1857), 230. On 6 March 1860 he unexpectedly took the Chiltern Hundreds, citing ill health, although it was known that he differed from his party upon ecclesiastical and other questions and, opponents suggested, ‘would not be tied neck and heels by the officers of any Reform Association’.26Birmingham Daily Post, 28 Feb. 1860; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 2 Feb. 1884, 8 July 1865, 2 June 1861.

Thereafter, Laslett changed his political views and entered the contest at Worcester in 1865 as a ‘Conservative Liberal’ acting on ‘independent principles’ before retiring from the field.27Daily News, 5 June 1865; Standard, 10 June 1865; Morning Post, 8 July 1865. He unsuccessfully contested East Worcestershire in the agricultural interest in June 1868, standing against Gladstone’s nephew, Charles Lyttleton, in order to oppose the disestablishment of the Irish Church, but was returned by a large majority at Worcester at the 1868 general election, offering as ‘a moderate Conservative’, and professing deep concern for the preservation of the nation’s ‘glorious Constitution’.28Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 9, 16, 23, 30 May, 9 June, 3 Oct., 21 Nov. 1868. Having been soundly defeated by two Liberals at Worcester in 1874, he entered a second contest at East Worcestershire without success and retired from political life.

During the last stage of his life Laslett expended a large portion of his fortune on charitable works. He was a great benefactor to the city of his birth, contributing to the establishment of the Royal Albert Orphans Asylum, restoring two local parish churches at his own expense in 1861-3, and donating 25 acres of land for a burial ground at Worcester. In 1868 he financed the conversion of the old city prison into the almshouses which still bear his name, and funded the city’s music hall in 1878.29 Birmingham Daily Post, 28 Jan. 1884; Leeds Mercury, 29 Jan. 1884; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 2 Feb. 1884. He made over a 2,000 acre estate in Gloucestershire, valued at £35,000, for charitable and religious purposes. He died at his residence in Pershore after catching a chill in January 1884, and was buried at Abberton Church in a private funeral. Having no near relatives, he bequeathed the great bulk of his property to the Rev. R. J. Baker, vicar of Langteglos, Cornwall, and Colonel R. B. Bellers, of Worcester.30Birmingham Daily Post, 1 Feb. 1884. Baker was the son of Laslett’s brother-in-law, the rector of Hartlebury, who is thought to have taken on Bishop Carr’s debts in 1842. Laslett’s widow was provided with a £500 annuity charged on the Abberton estate: ‘Laslett family history’.