MITCALFE, Henry (1788-1853), of Whitley, Northumb.

A native of Tynemouth, Henry Mitcalfe was a member of a wealthy family who had been resident in North Shields since the seventeenth century. His father, William Mitcalfe, a prominent landowner and shipowner, had purchased Tynemouth House in the early nineteenth century, and his elder brother, also William, had developed a lucrative career as a London coal factor before inheriting his father’s wealth and subsequently investing heavily in the south-Wales iron industry.1D. Lewis, The Iron Industry in Maesteg, 1800-1885 (2007), 52-4. A successful shipowner in his own right, Mitcalfe was a popular local figure whose political credentials were well known. He had chaired the Reform meetings held in Tynemouth from 1829, and his character, ‘socially, commercially, and politically, always stood very high’.2Gent. Mag. (1853), ii. 95.

At the 1841 general election, Mitcalfe came forward to represent the Liberal interest at Tynemouth. After issuing an address that appealed to the electorate solely on the basis of his local credentials, he comfortably defeated his Conservative opponent.3Newcastle Courant, 25 June 1841. At a public dinner held to celebrate his return, he insisted that Britain’s shipping interests would be ‘more profitable’ under a Liberal government and argued that ‘our commerce should be free as well as our ships’.4Morning Chronicle, 21 July 1841. He confirmed his free trade credentials early in 1842 when he became a patron of the Anti-Corn Law League bazaar established at Manchester.5Manchester Times and Gazette, 5 Feb. 1842.

Although Mitcalfe attended steadily, he is not known to have made any speeches in the Commons. His voting record demonstrated a firm attachment to religious liberties. He was in minorities for the abolition of church rates, 16 June 1842, and for the abolition of oaths at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, 25 May 1843, and in majorities for the extension of the Maynooth grant, 19 July 1844 and 3 Apr. 1845. After his support for the latter policy was criticised by a minister of the Tynemouth Scotch church, he wrote a strong defence of Maynooth and lamented that the cry of ‘no popery’ still existed in ‘free, happy, tolerant England’.6Morning Chronicle, 28 Apr. 1845. In his last parliamentary session, he divided for the Liberal ministry’s Roman Catholic relief bill, 24 Feb. 1847.

Mitcalfe generally followed Russell into the Liberal lobby, and divided for his motion against reimposing income tax, 13 Apr. 1842, and to consider the state of Ireland, 23 Feb. 1844. A notable exception was the Bank of England charter bill, when he was in a minority of only thirty members against the second reading, 13 June 1844. Mitcalfe also divided in minorities during the factory bill debates, for John Arthur Roebuck’s motion against legislative interference in the hours that adults could work in factories, 3 May 1844, and against women being treated as young persons in the legislation, 6 May 1844. In common with his fellow Northumbrian MPs who were wary of the Peel ministry’s attempts to give the state purchasing power over future railways, he divided against the second reading of the railways bill, 11 July 1844. A champion of free trade, he divided for Cobden’s unsuccessful motions for an inquiry into agricultural distress, 12 Mar. 1844 and 13 Mar. 1845, and he was in the minority for Charles Villiers’s annual anti-corn law motion, 19 June 1845. He divided for corn law repeal, 15 May 1846.

Mitcalfe’s select committee service included inquiries into the West coast of Africa, the coalwhippers bill and lighthouses.7PP 1842 (551), xi. 2; PP 1843 (532), xi. 26; PP 1845 (607), ix. 2. He retired at the dissolution in 1847 due to declining health, and died at his home at Whitley, Northumberland, in June 1853. Although he appears to have made little impact in his parliamentary career, he was eulogised as ‘a man of remarkable intelligence and considerable zeal – possessed of a very retentive memory’.8Gent. Mag. (1853), ii. 95. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Henry Theodosius, who died three years later.