MELLOR, John (1809-1887), of 21 Endsleigh Street, London, Mdx. and Otterspool House, Watford, Herts.

A distinguished judge whose Unitarian schooling gave him ‘an inveterate repugnance to the subscription to all dogmatic articles of religion’,1The Times, 28 Apr. 1887. John Mellor enjoyed a short but active parliamentary career, representing Great Yarmouth from 1857, before successfully contesting Nottingham in 1859, a seat he held until his appointment to the queen’s bench in December 1861. The only son of a wealthy hat manufacturer from south Lancashire who was a partner in the firm Gee, Mellor, Kershaw and Co., Mellor, shortly after his birth in Oldham, moved to Leicester, where his father became mayor and a justice of the peace. Educated under Charles Berry, a local Unitarian minister, Mellor was unwilling to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles and abandoned his plans to attend Lincoln College, Oxford. Instead, he was admitted as a student to the Inner Temple on 5 June 1828, and was called to the bar on 7 June 1833. He subsequently joined the Midland circuit, practising at the parliamentary bar, at assizes, and in both civil and criminal cases at the Leicester and Warwick sessions.2J.A. Hamilton, ‘Mellor, Sir John (1809-1887)’, rev. S. Agnew, Oxf. DNB. http://www.oxforddnb.com.

Mellor’s first two forays into parliamentary politics were unsuccessful, finishing bottom of the poll as the sole Liberal candidate at Warwick in 1852, and losing to two official Liberal candidates, Edward Ellice and Sir Joseph Paxton in 1857 at Coventry, where he had come forward at the behest of a group of local working men frustrated at Paxton’s perceived repeated absences from the Commons.3Reynolds’s Newspaper, 22 Mar. 1857. Returned as one of two unopposed Liberal candidates at a double by-election at Great Yarmouth in August 1857, Mellor voiced his support for Palmerston, although he attacked Lord John Russell over his conduct during the debate on the ballot.4Daily News, 5 Aug. 1857. Reflecting his Unitarian upbringing, Mellor advocated the admission of Jews to parliament and favoured the extension of education based on ‘the great principles of morality and the gospel’, in addition to backing safe and prudent parliamentary reform, as anything radical would be rejected by the Lords. 5Daily News, 11 Aug. 1857. Arguing that many parliamentary divisions were ‘caused by political adventurers who brought questions forward merely to make a little political capital’, Mellor warned his constituents that he ‘should not be found voting in every division’. 6Ibid. However, in the weeks following his election, he voted assiduously, his attendances dropping only after his first year of parliamentary service.7House of Commons Division Lists, 1857 session, 12-25 Aug.

It has been suggested that Mellor ‘tended to speak little in parliament’,8Hamilton, ‘Mellor, Sir John’. but, despite his misgivings about divisions, he spoke frequently, and often at length during his four years in the Commons. After supporting the oaths bill in his first known speech,9Hansard, 10 Feb. 1858, vol. 148, cc. 1111-2; 10 May 1858, vol. 150, c. 353. Mellor made a number of contributions to the church rates debate during Derby’s second administration. As a lawyer retained in various church rate suits, and believing that ‘no compromise on this question would be satisfactory’, Mellor argued that, as the rates had never been a uniform tax, they were imperfect and should be abolished immediately.10Hansard, 13 May 1858, vol. 150, cc. 561-2, 571, 575; 21 Feb. 1859, vol. 152, cc. 652-3. His speeches on the church rates bill were praised by Trelawny. The parliamentary diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 1858-1865 ed. by T.A. Jenkins (1992), 41. While representing Great Yarmouth, Mellor spoke on a range of law and order issues,11Hansard, 15 Apr. 1858, vol. 149, c. 1167; 27 Apr. 1858, vol. 149, c. 1812-3; 30 Mar. 1859, vol. 153, c. 1131-2. and moved unsuccessfully for a bill for the better settling of the real estates of intestates, stating that he wished ‘in the interests of humanity and equity to remove a restriction imposed in feudal times’.12Hansard, 17 Feb. vol. 152, cc. 483-4; 2 Mar. 1859, vol. 152, cc. 1121-3; House of Commons Division Lists, 1859 session, 2 Mar. Following the dissolution of parliament in April 1859, Mellor, who had earlier agreed to retire from the representation of Yarmouth in order to assist the re-election of his predecessor,13Morning Chronicle, 5 Apr. 1859. accepted an invitation to stand as a Liberal at Nottingham, where, after cautiously supporting parliamentary reform, he was duly returned.14Lloyd’s Newspaper, 17 Apr. 1859. Having previously deemed it unwise to seek an appeal to the electorate over the reform issue, Mellor used an address in response to the Queen’s speech to attack Derby’s government over their reform bill and the dissolution of parliament, describing it as ‘wholly unjustifiable’.15Hansard, 7 June 1859, vol. 154, c. 151.

Making a number of candid speeches on corrupt practices at elections, Mellor made his most significant contributions during Palmerston’s second administration. Having chaired a select committee on the Clare election petition,16PP 1860 (178), xi, 159. and divided against a motion to appoint a commission to inquire into corruption at Wakefield because he could not obtain a pledge that guilty persons would be punished,17Hansard, 26 Jan. 1860, vol. 156, c. 186. in January 1860 Mellor proposed a bill to amend the Corrupt Practices Prevention Act of 1854, which was due to be renewed that year. Calling bribery ‘a cancer eating into the vitals of the political system’, he argued that the current Act had become a ‘mockery and delusion’, and, given that bribery was a ‘degrading crime’, it was ‘requisite to affix to it a degrading punishment’, such as the imposition of hard labour.18Hansard, 31 Jan. 1860, vol. 156, cc. 378-85, 390-1; 15 Feb. 1860, vol. 156, cc. 1070-3. Serving on the select committee subsequently appointed to examine the operation of the 1854 Act, a number of Mellor’s proposals, including his suggestion that witnesses should not be able to refuse to answer a question on the ground that their answer may incriminate themselves, were included in the final report,19PP 1860 (329), x. 2-5. but a subsequent resolution of urgency regarding the expiration of the 1854 Act meant that it was renewed without any amendment.20Hansard, 7 Aug. 1860, vol. 160, c. 882.

Mellor’s Unitarian beliefs continued to shape his parliamentary contributions in this period as he introduced the trustees of charities bill, arguing that no man should be ineligible for any trusteeship on account of his religious denomination,21Hansard, 20 Apr. 1860, vol. 157, c. 2066; 20 Feb. 1861, vol. 161, cc. 684-7; 17 Apr. 1861, vol. 162, cc. 672-3. and backed the religious worship bill22Hansard, 14 Mar. 1860, vol. 157, c. 541. and the abolition of professional oaths,23Hansard, 20 June 1860, vol. 159, c. 732. in addition to reiterating his support for the abolition of church rates.24Hansard, 13 July 1859, vol. 154, cc. 1153-4; 28 Mar. 1860, vol. 157, cc. 1452-4. His legal background was also evident as he spoke on a number of occasions in support of the bankruptcy and insolvency bill,25Hansard, 11 Feb. 1861, vol. 161, c. 314; 18 Feb. 1861, vol. 161, cc. 518, 518; 25 Feb. 1861, vol. 161, c. 898. and served on select committees on the courts of justice building bill,26PP 1861 (356), l. 10. and the offences against the person bills.27PP 1861 (240), xiv. 240. His belief in retrenchment was also manifest, speaking frequently on the civil service estimates28Hansard, 14 Aug. 1860, vol. 160, c. 1263; 15 Aug. 1860, vol. 160, c. 1335; 17 Aug. 1860, vol. 160, cc. 1500, 1506. and, drawing the ire of Disraeli, calling for a reduction of expenditure on the army.29Hansard, 9 May 1861, vol. 162, c. 1808. He also supported the repeal of the paper duty, arguing, in what was described as ‘a very fair speech for a lawyer’,30Trelawny Diaries, 174. that it served the interests of trade and commerce, the ‘cause of morality’ and the ‘furtherance of education and literature’.31Hansard, 30 May. 1861, vol. 163, cc. 246-250.

Appointed a judge in the queen’s bench, Mellor retired from parliament in December 1861, receiving his knighthood six months later. A member of the special commission which tried Fenian prisoners at Manchester in 1867 and of the court in the notorious Tichborne case of 1873, Mellor enjoyed an eminent legal career until deafness forced him to retire in 1879.32Hamilton, ‘Mellor, Sir John’. Spending much of his retirement at his home in Kingsdown, Kent, where he pursued his interest in the activities of his local lifeboat, he also published Suggestions as to oaths (1882), in which he observed that he was ‘profoundly convinced by a long judicial experience of the general worthlessness of oaths’.33The Times, 28 Apr. 1887. He died at his London home, 16 Sussex Square, Hyde Park, on 26 April 1887, and was succeeded by his eldest son, John William Mellor, who was Liberal MP for Grantham from 1880 to 1886, and Sowerby from 1892 to 1904.