CHARLESWORTH, John Charlesworth Dodgson (1815-1880), of Chapelthorpe Hall, Wakefield, Yorks.; Hatfield Hall, Wakefield, Yorks and 14 Clarges Street, London.

Charlesworth, a wealthy colliery proprietor, had a perfunctory career as Conservative MP for Wakefield. His family had lived near the town since the seventeenth century. Charlesworth’s great-grandfather was a gardener, whose father was probably a shoemaker. His grandfather, Joseph (1749-1822), entered the coal business in the late 1760s, and by 1809 was operating seven pits ‘through collective agreements with mining gangs’.2J. Goodchild, The coal kings of Yorkshire (1978), 93-4; J.T. Ward, ‘West Riding landowners and mining in the nineteenth century’, Yorks. Bulletin of Economic Research, 15 (1963), 70. Having himself taken up residence at Kettlethorpe Hall, in 1814 he purchased Chapelthorpe Hall for Charlesworth’s father, John Dodgson Charlesworth (1777-1850), where Charlesworth was born the following year.3Goodchild, Coal kings, 95. This acquisition, together with Charlesworth’s education at Sedbergh and Cambridge, cemented the family’s upward social trajectory. After Joseph’s death, Charlesworth’s father and his younger brother (also Joseph) ran the business as J. & J. Charlesworth, undertaking considerable expansion in the 1820s and 1830s, with collieries in West and South Yorkshire.4Goodchild, Coal kings, 95, 97.

In 1847 Charlesworth married the daughter of Walker Featherstonhaugh, who operated the Wear Glass Bottle Company, near Sunderland.5http://members.cox.net/ggthomp01/walkerfeather.html. One of his wife’s sisters married the 4th baron Hawke: J. Goodchild, ‘Charlesworth, John Charlesworth Dodgson’, in D.J. Jeremy (ed.), Dictionary of business biography (1984), i. 663. He inherited his father’s half-share of the business, together with Chapelthorpe Hall, in 1850 when his father was trampled to death by cattle.6Gent. Mag. (1850), ii. 107; Goodchild, ‘Charlesworth, John Charlesworth Dodgson’, i. 662. However, he had been managing the firm on his father’s behalf for some time before this.7Charlesworth’s father formally left the business in 1847: London Gazette, 24 Sept. 1847. In 1853 the firm possessed six collieries in West Yorkshire and four in South Yorkshire, making Charlesworth one of the largest colliery proprietors in the county.8Ward, ‘West Riding landowners and mining’, 70; H. Marland, Medicine and society in Wakefield and Huddersfield, 1780-1870 (1987), 111. In that year the firm voluntarily gave its workers a 15% pay increase, which it marked with a celebratory dinner, carefully timed to discourage its two to three thousand West Riding employees from attending a miners’ demonstration at Wakefield.9The Times, 13 Sept. 1853, 15 Sept. 1853. Charlesworth purchased Grinton Lodge in Swaledale in 1855, which although initially intended as a hunting lodge, later became the family’s main residence.10Goodchild, Coal kings, 144. Charlesworth had previously been a tenant of Stanley Hall, near Wakefield: J.W. Walker, Wakefield: its history and people (1934), 513. His estates eventually extended to 2,169 acres in Yorkshire, with a further 1,300 acres in Worcestershire and Shropshire, by which the family had clearly ‘joined the ranks of the Victorian gentry’.11F.M.L. Thompson, Gentrification and the enterprise culture: Britain 1780-1980 (2001), 71; J. Bateman, The great landowners of Great Britain and Ireland (4th edn., 1883), 85; Ward, ‘West Riding landowners and mining’, 70.

A ‘forceful character’, Charlesworth did not play a particularly prominent part in Wakefield politics before his selection as Conservative candidate in 1857, although he was a local magistrate and patron to institutions such as the Wakefield grammar school, where he served as a governor from 1852, and the Clayton hospital, of which he was president from 1855.12Goodchild, ‘Charlesworth, John Charlesworth Dodgson’, i. 661; Venn, Alum. Cantab., ii. 16; Walker, Wakefield, 525. He was returned unopposed at the 1857 election after the Liberal, William Henry Leatham, withdrew following a discouraging canvass.13Bradford Observer, 26 Mar. 1857. The Bradford Observer quipped that proceedings at the hustings would be short, as Charlesworth was ‘no speaker’.14Ibid. This certainly rang true in the Commons, where he was ‘all but dumb’, his few known comments being extremely brief.15Leeds Mercury, 7 May 1859. He successfully intervened to substitute Wakefield for York as the location of the district registry for the West Riding under the probates and letters of administration bill, 10 July 1857. The following year he described this as ‘the greatest boon ever granted to the inhabitants of the West Riding’, and pressed Wakefield’s claims to also become an assize town, 27 Apr. 1858, a long-standing local grievance, which he again raised with the home secretary, 15 Feb. 1859.16Charlesworth also introduced a local deputation to the Home Secretary on this subject: The Times, 28 June 1858. He does not appear to have served on any select committees.

Generally voting with the Conservatives, Charlesworth supported the Maynooth grant, 29 Apr. 1858, but divided against abolition of church rates, 8 June 1858. He opposed the removal of Jewish disabilities, backing Sir Frederic Thesiger’s amendment to the oaths bill, 15 June 1857, and was in the minority against the second reading of the Jewish disabilities removal bill, 16 July 1858. He divided in support of Palmerston’s motion for leave to bring in the conspiracy to murder bill, 9 Feb. 1858, but was absent from the division on the second reading, 19 Feb. 1858. He opposed further measures of electoral reform, dividing against the abolition of the property qualification, 10 June 1857, triennial parliaments, 20 Apr. 1858, the ballot, 8 June 1858, and the county franchise bill, 10 June 1858. However, he voted with his party in support of the second reading of the Derby ministry’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859. Outside the House, Charlesworth faced ‘bitter’ industrial unrest, with an eight-week colliery lockout in late 1858, during which an unsuccessful attempt was made to break the strike at his Rawmarsh colliery by importing workers from Staffordshire. However, industrial relations improved once trade unionism had been accepted.17Ward, ‘West Riding landowners and mining’, 70; Nottinghamshire Guardian, 28 Oct. 1858, 23 Dec. 1858; Birmingham Daily Post, 12 Nov. 1858.

On seeking re-election in 1859, Charlesworth declared his support for Derby’s government, but explained that he had voted for their reform bill because it might have been improved in committee, but would have opposed the third reading.18Bradford Observer, 5 May 1859. The contest was close – Charlesworth at one point made a victory speech believing he had won – but Leatham defeated him by just three votes, only to be unseated on petition. The ensuing inquiry suggested that there had been extensive corruption on both sides, and a royal commission was appointed to investigate. Giving evidence to the commission, Charlesworth denied that any money had been spent improperly on his behalf with his knowledge or consent, but suggested that the additional sums spent on the Conservative side might have come from his cousin, John Barff Charlesworth.19The Times, 13 Oct. 1859. However, he was called back to explain himself when it transpired that he had supplied a £5,000 railway debenture (‘the smallest I had by me just then’) to open a bank account for his cousin to use for election purposes, of which £4,750 had been withdrawn, and much expended in bribery.20The Times, 18 Oct. 1859. The commissioners concluded that Charlesworth had ‘provided a fund in order that illegal payments might be made thereout on his behalf’, and had ‘designedly abstained’ from asking how this money was used.21Bradford Observer, 19 Feb. 1860.

Charlesworth’s professed ignorance did not prevent him from being committed for trial at the York assizes in July 1860 (alongside Leatham, John Barff Charlesworth and several others), with nine counts of bribery filed against him.22PP 1860 (385), lv. 25-8. While Leatham was found guilty, the Charlesworth cousins had their trial postponed due to the illness of a key witness, who subsequently died.23Wakefield poll book 1862 (1862), 31. They were again spared when another crucial witness, Jose Luis Fernandez, refused to testify at their March 1861 trial. A leading Wakefield Conservative, Fernandez was said to have disbursed £3,750 of the £4,750 withdrawn by John Barff Charlesworth.24The Times, 19 Mar. 1861. Having been sentenced to six months’ imprisonment with a £500 fine for contempt of court, Fernandez finally gave evidence at Charlesworth’s trial in July 1861, as did John Barff Charlesworth, who was given a pardon. The jury found Charlesworth guilty on the charge of supplying £4,750 for bribery, but could not agree on the other charges relating to bribery of specific individuals.25The Times, 22 July 1861. The jury was discharged from giving a verdict on the charges where they could not agree. Two charges had been dropped by the attorney-general before the trial: The Times, 23 July 1861. Goodchild, Coal kings, 142, suggests that John Barff Charlesworth ‘was ultimately imprisoned’, for which no evidence has been found (in fact, a nolle prosequi was entered in his case: W.M. Best & G.J.P. Smith, Reports of cases argued and determined in the court of Queen’s bench, and the court of exchequer chamber of appeal from the court of Queen’s bench (1862), 533), and misdates his pardon to July 1862, rather than July 1861. The Leeds Mercury declared that there was ‘no moral doubt of the guilty complicity of Mr. Charlesworth in the wholesale corruption which has brought such severe retribution on the borough of Wakefield’.26Leeds Mercury, 23 July 1861. However, he escaped punishment, after a successful appeal that November on the grounds that the judge had misdirected the jury, because it was unclear whether making payments in order to win the show of hands did, as the judge had suggested, constitute bribery.27Leeds Mercury, 6 Nov. 1861; Newcastle Courant, 8 Nov. 1861. Although it would have been open to the attorney-general to argue for a new trial, this appears to have marked the close of these protracted and costly legal proceedings.

Before going on trial, Charlesworth had in December 1859 declined the opportunity to stand for a vacancy at Pontefract, and he is not known to have sought a return to the Commons.28The Examiner, 24 Dec. 1859. He was not active in Wakefield’s political life thereafter, although he continued to serve as a magistrate, and was a member of the West Riding police committee.29Marland, Medicine and society, 111-12. He also maintained his philanthropic interests, being remembered as a ‘very liberal supporter’ of Wakefield’s Clayton Hospital.30Leeds Mercury, 23 Mar. 1880. He was honorary colonel of the Wakefield volunteers, a master of the Wakefield lodge of freemasons, and, as a keen sportsman, president of Wakefield cricket club and chairman of the Badsworth hunt committee.31Goodchild, Coal kings, 141. A ‘rigid Churchman’, he was a benefactor to the parish churches at Wakefield and Sandal, and a vice-president of the Church Missionary Society.32Marland, Medicine and society, 112; Leeds Mercury, 24 Mar. 1860. In the early 1860s he spent several thousand pounds rebuilding the main facade of Chapelthorpe Hall.33Goodchild, Coal kings, 144.

Charlesworth died in March 1880 ‘after a lingering and painful illness’, having been in poor health for over two years. He was buried at Sandal church, and was also commemorated with a stained-glass window at Grinton church.34Leeds Mercury, 23 Mar. 1880; Goodchild, Coal kings, 144. His personal estate was sworn under £200,000. He made provision for his wife, who was given the use of Chapelthorpe Hall for her lifetime, and left £20,000 each to two of his daughters, having already provided for the third.35The Times, 26 June 1880. The bulk of his estate passed to his only son, Albany Hawke Charlesworth (1854-1914), who followed in his father’s footsteps to serve as Conservative MP for Wakefield, 1892-5, having unsuccessfully contested the Normanton division of the West Riding in 1885 and 1886. He sold the Chapelthorpe estate in 1903, but Grinton Lodge remained in family hands until 1946.36Walker, Wakefield, 525; Goodchild, Coal kings, 144. Grinton Lodge is now a youth hostel: http://www.yha.org.uk/find-accommodation/yorkshire-dales-south-pennines/hostels/grinton-lodge/index.aspx The firm of J. & J. Charlesworth – described in 1892 as ‘one of the largest vendors of coal in England’37Colliery Guardian (1892), cited in Goodchild, ‘Charlesworth, John Charlesworth Dodgson’, i. 662. – continued to operate with family involvement until the nationalisation of the coal industry in 1948.38Goodchild, Coal kings, 162. Papers relating to the Charlesworths and their business interests, as well as legal papers regarding the 1859 petition and subsequent trials, are held by the West Yorkshire Archive Service, Wakefield.[38]