CANDLISH, John (1816-1874), of Park Place, Sunderland, co. Durham

Described by a contemporary as ‘an epitome of the history of Sunderland – modern, energetic, practical’, Candlish was a self-made man who became a leading radical in his native borough.1Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 26 May 1864. Born at Tarset, near Bellingham in Northumberland, he moved at a young age to Ayres Quay, Sunderland, where his father, originally a farmer, became a labourer in a local bottle works. The family was Presbyterian, of Scottish descent, but while a teenager, Candlish joined the Baptists and later became a lay preacher.2W. Brockie, Sunderland notables: natives, residents and visitors (1894), 321. His early career was varied, undertaking work as a draper before embarking on unsuccessful ventures in coal exporting, shipbuilding and glassworks. Initially Conservative in his politics, he briefly owned the Tory Sunderland Beacon in 1836, but during the campaign against the corn laws, he switched his loyalties to radicalism and free trade, and subsequently became a Liberal member of the Sunderland town council. In 1851 he established the radical Sunderland News, which ran for four years.3C. Ross, ‘Candlish, John (1816-1874)’, Oxf. DNB. www.oxforddnb.com. A change in his financial fortunes began in 1855 when he purchased the Londonderry Bottle Works at Seaham harbour, county Durham, which, under his ownership, secured lucrative contracts with brewers and government departments to manufacture black bottles for wine and beer, making him a wealthy man. In the early 1860s he also ventured into shipbuilding, though with less success.4Ibid.

Candlish first came forward for Sunderland at the 1865 general election, but without the backing of his fellow Liberal candidate, Henry Fenwick, finished bottom of the poll. He was returned the following year, however, at a by-election necessitated by Fenwick’s ministerial appointment, when Candlish pursued a highly personalised campaign against him.5The Times, 12 June 1865, 29 June 1865. In the Commons, he was an assiduous attender, missing only six divisions in his first session, and spoke regularly, although he was ‘not, strictly speaking, eloquent’, and was ‘somewhat slow and hesitant in debate’.6Brockie, Sunderland notables, 333. A dogged questioner of ministers on the subject of parliamentary grants for a range of schemes, he consistently argued for reductions in public expenditure and, not surprisingly, frequently intervened in debates concerning the shipping interest, calling, in particular, for the abolition of compulsory pilotage. He was also an active member of the select committee on admiralty finances and accounts.7PP 1867-8 (469), vi. 7.

In a review of the 1867 parliamentary session, Candlish informed his constituents that ‘on every occasion when a division was taken’ he had ‘invariably voted with the Liberal party’.8Political life and speeches of John Candlish, MP for Sunderland, 1866 to 1874 (1886), 40. He did, however, congratulate Disraeli on the ‘simplicity, and quiet, unassuming character of his budget’, 4 Apr. 1867. He was present for all the votes on the Derby ministry’s reform bill, and frequently pressed ministers for the definition of a ‘dwelling house’ to be extended to include individual parts of the house, 6 May, 27 May, 13 June, 25 June 1867. His proposal was then entrusted to Sir Roundell Palmer, ‘lest the house should regard it too much in the light of local grievance’, and the amendment subsequently passed.9Ibid. He had another success when his proposed clause that ‘no elector who had been employed for reward at an election shall be entitled to vote’, 1 July 1867, was inserted into the bill. Although he was one of the 52 MPs present at the tea-room meeting, 8 Apr. 1867, that decided to send a delegation to Gladstone, informing him of their refusal to back his attempt to reinsert a property qualification in the borough franchise,10Reynolds’s Newspaper, 14 Apr. 1867. he divided with the Liberal leader on every division of the representation of the people bill.

Although a declared supporter of complete religious equality, Candlish could diverge from his party on ecclesiastical matters, particularly in his attitudes towards Catholicism. With Conservative support, he successfully passed an amendment to the offices and oaths bill to ensure that the lord lieutenant of Ireland could not be a Roman Catholic, believing that ‘to throw open the viceregal office to a Roman Catholic would necessarily and irresistibly lead to the opening of the office of monarch of this country’, 9 Apr. 1867, and his opposition to a clause in the poor law amendment bill that proposed Catholic children be educated in their own religion at the workhouse, 26 July 1866, drew criticism from his constituents.11Political life and speeches, 30-3. An opponent of religious endowments, because ‘no state, no civil power, should assume the power over its subjects to devote their money to any sectarian purpose whatever’, Candlish pressed ministers for the abolition of all church rates in Sunderland, 8 May 1866 and 11 Mar. 1868, and, insisting that all established churches were ‘wrong in principle’, he backed Gladstone’s resolutions on the Irish church, 3 Apr. 1868.12Ibid., 44-6.

Returned to the Commons with an increased majority at the 1868 general election, Candlish continued to promote the shipping interest and successfully introduced amendments to the merchant shipping acts of 1871 and 1872. Although a visit to India in 1870 caused a subsequent breakdown in health, he remained, in the words of a colleague, a ‘glutton for work’ and became a vocal critic of the cost of the Abyssinian war.13Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 19 Mar. 1874. By 1873, however, illness was preventing him from carrying out his parliamentary duties and he retired from public service. He died from scrofula in March 1874 in Cannes, France, and was succeeded by his only daughter, Elizabeth Penelope, who, in 1869, had married William Shepherd Allen, Liberal member for Newcastle under Lyme, 1865-1886. Candlish was commemorated by a statue in Mowbray Park, Sunderland, erected in October 1875.14Ross, ‘Candlish, John’; Brockie, Sunderland notables, 332.