COLLETT, William Rickford (1810-1882), of 2a St. James’s Square, London

Learning his Conservative politics from his father, William Collett’s main concern while serving as MP for Lincoln was the need for firm government and new railways in Ireland. His father Ebenezer Collett, who had represented but never visited the Irish pocket borough of Cashel (1819-30), having previously sat for Grampound, was silent in the Commons but could always be relied on to vote against Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform.1HP Commons, 1820-32, iv. 714. The family had made their money as hop merchants; William Collett also invested in banks, slate quarries in Tipperary (which employed 900 men) and in railways in Britain (notably the Chester to Holyhead line, of which he was chairman) and Ireland.2Ibid.; F. Hill, Victorian Lincoln (1974), 22; Leeds Mercury, 13 Sept. 1845. Collett was also chairman of the Dundalk and Enniskillen railway and the Shrewsbury and Birmingham railway, and a director of several other companies: Freeman’s Journal, 27 Aug. 1846; PP 1846 (473), xxxviii. 66. In 1846 he held £144,175 in railway shares, almost double his investment in 1845.3PP 1845 (317), xl. 30; PP 1846 (473), xxxviii. 66. He was described as ‘a big, handsome man with large features, swarthy complexion, copious curling whiskers, and a great deal of hair’, who was an ‘amateur painter in oils’ and ‘fond of music’.4Hill, Victorian Lincoln, 22.

Collett first offered for Parliament as a ‘thorough Conservative’ at Boston in 1837, but polled a distant fourth.5Lincoln Gazette, cited in Morning Post, 18 Apr. 1837. Shortly after this defeat he was approached to stand at Lincoln by a committee of local Conservatives headed by Sir Edward Bromhead.6Hill, Victorian Lincoln, 22. Declaring himself at the nomination in 1841 to be ‘unequivocally Conservative’, Collett made clear that he could be relied on to support the corn laws and vote for the removal of certain ‘obnoxious clauses’ in the new poor law. His Liberal opponent Edward Bulwer insisted on referring to the new man as ‘a Mr Collett’, which greatly riled him.7Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury, 25 June, 2 July 1841. Collett’s election alongside Charles de Laet Waldo Sibthorp was the only occasion on which the Tories held both seats in Lincoln during the nineteenth century.

Collett managed to improve on his father’s contributions to parliamentary debate, but only intervened intermittently. He made his debut in 1845 with a question about the import duty on straw plat, 27 Feb. 1845. Collett only contributed ‘when thoroughly acquainted with the subject and able to substantiate his statements with undeniable facts’.8Hansard, 30 Mar. 1846, vol. 85, c. 363. This prompted several speeches on railways in Ireland, where he was associated with building almost 400 miles of line.9Hansard, 16 Feb. 1847, vol. 90, c. 116. He was extremely concerned about disorder in Ireland, declaring that ‘there was not a steward on his Irish property that had not been shot at – two of them murdered … he had been told that for one bottle of whiskey men could be procured in Ireland to shoot him at any time’, 1 May 1846. He contended that the solution lay in a curfew and a government loan for the building of railways, which would provide employment for thousands of labourers. In support he cited the Chester and Holyhead railway company, of which he was chairman, which he claimed had given work to 13,000 men and protected Anglesey from distress, 16 Feb. 1847. The House heard Collett repeat these arguments on several occasions in 1846-7. In the latter part of this Parliament he was joined in the House by his brother John, MP for Athlone, 1843-7, although as John was a Liberal they were usually found in opposite lobbies.10John Collett committed suicide in 1856: Morning Post, 10 Dec. 1856. Collett was not an assiduous attender, but when present, he generally divided with his party. He supported Peel’s sliding scale on corn, 9 Mar. 1842, but opposed the repeal of the corn laws, 27 Mar., 15 May 1846. He rallied to Peel on the Irish coercion bill, 25 June 1846. His committee service appears to have been limited to private bills, among them the committee on the Falmouth harbour improvement bill, which he chaired.11PP 1845 (659), xxxvi. 109.

Collett’s parliamentary performance, however, did not endear him to those who elected him. He resisted attempts to force him to retire and went down to defeat in 1847, finishing bottom of the poll with only 278 votes.12Hill, Victorian Lincoln, 25. However, contrary to Hill’s assertion that Collett had angered local Methodists by voting for the Maynooth grant, Collett appears to have been absent from the votes on this question in 1845. It was reported that he had ‘virtually withdrawn from the contest, finding that he has no chance’.13Daily News, 28 July 1847. Declaring the election ‘a mere farce’, he immediately allowed himself to be put forward as a Conservative candidate for county Tipperary, where his slate mines were located, but, in the face of great mockery at the hustings, spared himself a second defeat by deciding not to go to the poll.14Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury, 30 July 1847; The Times, 16 Aug. 1847. Collett appears to have remained in Ireland following his abortive Tipperary contest, and in 1849 married Hannah Maria Hartigan, the 16 year old daughter of a Galway clergyman, with whom he set up home at Raheen, near Gort.15Morning Chronicle, 19 June 1850. The failure of ‘several speculations’ in Ireland and elsewhere prompted his bankruptcy, with debts of £52,400, in October 1851, when he was recorded as a ‘coal and lead merchant, dealer, and chapman’.16Daily News, 7 Oct. 1851; Freeman’s Journal, 1 Oct., 11 Oct. 1851.

In 1852 Collett joined the Australian gold rush as one of the directors of the Australian Mutual Gold Mining Association, emigrating there with his family and accompanied by 40 miners to work in the goldfields.17Colonial Times [Hobart], 13 July 1852. His career in the colonies was, however, a chequered one. Within less than a year, he was removed from his post by a unanimous vote of the Association’s shareholders.18Morning Post, 8 July 1853. His wife’s brother, Stratford Hartigan, was also dismissed. In 1854 he was appointed to superintend the Northern Road in New South Wales, and took up residence at Singleton.19Sydney Morning Herald, 23 Jan. 1854. He had clearly presented strong, if somewhat exaggerated, credentials: ‘the whole system of Irish railways is stated to have been carried out by him, and also some very difficult lines of communication across the Pyrenees, and the interior of South America’.20Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser, 11 Feb. 1854. Collett had been elected as a director of the National Brazilian Mining Association in 1847: Morning Post, 8 Mar. 1847. In his early years as surveyor there was considerable dissatisfaction with him, but he was rewarded with a testimonial when he left this post upon his appointment by the New South Wales government as commissioner of roads in 1861.21Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser, 29 July 1854, 12 Aug. 1854, 15 Nov. 1854, 12 Dec. 1855, 23 Apr. 1861. However, Collett had held this position for less than a year before one of his subordinates complained to the government about his ‘loose and discreditable system’ of management, and amid allegations of corruption and incompetence, a select committee was appointed to investigate the Northern road contracts.22Sydney Morning Herald, 27 Nov. 1861; Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser, 30 Nov. 1861. The committee subsequently found ‘very great irregularities’ on Collett’s part, and also noted that in his previous position as superintendent, he had in 1859 received a formal reprimand for insubordination and exceeding his authority, with the threat of dismissal if any further misdemeanour occurred.23Sydney Morning Herald, 25 June 1862.

The New South Wales government had meanwhile effectively abolished the post of commissioner of roads in December 1861 by cutting the salary from £700 to 1s., partly from a desire for economy, but Collett’s conduct in the office was also a factor.24Sydney Morning Herald, 17 Dec. 1861. Collett was, however, allowed to return to his previous post as superintendent of roads, but was compelled to resign after he announced in July 1862 that at the first opportunity he would offer as a representative for Patrick’s Plains (Singleton) in the New South Wales legislature.25Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser, 1 July 1862. (He was swiftly informed that the position of potential candidate was incompatible with holding office under the government.26Sydney Morning Herald, 9 July 1862.) Shortly thereafter it emerged that he had entered into contracts in excess of his authority prior to his resignation.27Sydney Morning Herald, 6 Aug. 1862.

The ever enterprising Collett turned to a variety of new projects. He became a director of the Upper Hunter Quartz-Crushing Association, which sought to extract gold from quartz.28Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser, 2 Aug. 1862, 9 Dec. 1862. He also served as secretary to the Great Northern Railway, which opened in 1863.29Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser, 2 May 1863. That year he offered as a parliamentary candidate for a vacancy at Liverpool Plains, but withdrew before the nomination.30Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser, 20 Jan. 1863; Sydney Morning Herald, 29 Jan. 1863. He remained as a potential candidate for Patrick’s Plains.31Sydney Morning Herald, 28 Aug. 1863. His gold-extracting enterprise failed to yield a profit and he sold out, and in 1864 departed for New Zealand to build military roads.32Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser, 19 Jan. 1865; Sydney Morning Herald, 19 Mar. 1864. That April he was appointed as chief superintendent of roads and bridges in that colony, and himself ‘took a navvy’s spade and wheelbarrow’ to cut the first sod of a new railway from Maungatawhiri to Meremere.33Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser, 21 Apr. 1864. He oversaw several road, railway and mining projects, and served as a JP.34Daily Southern Cross, 11 May 1865. He also formed a company for extracting gold from sand by a chemical process.35Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, 11 Nov. 1865. However, once again, doubts were raised about Collett’s abilities: the Meremere railway was ‘a botch’, and he ‘squander[ed] the public money in purposeless and ignorant experiments’ in the Kawakawa coalfield.36Daily Southern Cross, 16 Feb. 1866. Collett’s Australian property at Singleton had meanwhile been sold by order of the mortgagee, and in January 1866 he was declared bankrupt in Australia, with assets of £4668 0s. 1d. and liabilities of £6,750 9s. 1d.37Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser, 6 June 1865; Sydney Morning Herald, 6 Jan. 1866. That May he returned to the New South Wales goldfields, but in April 1867 he departed for England with his wife and four of their surviving children, six children having died in infancy in Australia.38Sydney Morning Herald, 23 May 1866, 24 Apr. 1867.

Collett took up residence in Caernafon, Wales, but renewed his parliamentary ambitions in county Tipperary, where he emphasised the defence of the Protestant church in Ireland as the key issue when seeking election in 1868.39Morning Post, 29 Aug. 1868; Freeman’s Journal, 14 Sept. 1868. However, although he and a fellow Conservative were nominated, they retired immediately.40Freeman’s Journal, 24 Nov. 1869. Collett offered again for a vacancy there in November 1869, but ‘no serious effort was made by the Conservative party on his behalf’, and he polled a derisory dozen votes.41Daily News, 27 Nov. 1869. He was listed on the 1871 census as a director of mines in North Wales.42Information from 1871 census. Collett was a boarder at the Tyn y Groes Inn, Ardudwy, while his family was resident at Caernafon. He died at Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire), county Dublin in November 188243Information from Stephen Lees., a forgotten man: no obituary appeared in the Lincoln newspapers at the time of his death.