BAGNALL, Charles (1827-1884), of Sneaton Castle, nr. Whitby, Yorks.

Remembered for ‘his urbanity as a gentleman, and his charming manners in private life, joined to his brilliant wit and fine conversational powers’, Bagnall, an ironmaster, was an unexceptional Conservative backbencher, although the Liberal party organiser Joseph Parkes described him as ‘formidable in coin & piety’.1North-Eastern Daily Gazette, 26 Feb. 1884; Joseph Parkes to Lord Hatherton, 19 Apr. 1859, Hatherton papers, Staffs. RO, D260/M/F/5/27/34. He came from ‘an old Staffordshire family distinguished for enterprise, philanthropy, and public spirit’.2North-Eastern Daily Gazette, 26 Feb. 1884. His grandfather John (1759-1829), the son of a mining surveyor, had founded the family business in the late eighteenth century, and by the 1850s John Bagnall & Sons was one of the largest enterprises in the Black Country, owning several coalmines, 6 blast furnaces and 3 ironworks.3R.H. Trainor, ‘Bagnall, John Nock (1826-1884)’, in D.J. Jeremy (ed.), Dictionary of Business Biography (1984), i. 92. Bagnall took an active role in the family business from around 1846.4Birmingham Daily Post, 22 Apr. 1859. In the 1850s he and his brothers John Nock and Thomas set up a separate enterprise, J. Bagnall & Company, which operated colleries at Bloxwich and Leamore in Walsall.5A.C. Baker & T.D. Allen Civil, Bagnalls of Stafford (2007), 46-7.

Having gained experience of local administration while serving on the West Bromwich improvement commission, Bagnall in 1859 accepted a ‘very influential and numerously signed’ requisition to offer at Walsall. He declared his attachment to ‘Liberal Conservative’ principles, and while admitting that the Derby ministry’s reform bill required some improvement, condemned Liberal opposition to it as ‘factious and unpatriotic’. He emphasised his local connections, and his efforts to promote the interests of the working classes and the religious instruction of children.6The Times, 20 Apr. 1859; Birmingham Daily Post, 19 Apr. 1859. (He was personally involved with the latter, being praised by a local vicar as ‘a regular and laborious Sunday school teacher’.7R.H. Trainor, Black Country élites: the exercise of authority in an industrialised area 1830-1900 (1993), 183.) Although he favoured the abolition of church rates, he wished to see a compromise settlement, as he ‘looked upon the churches as public property’.8Birmingham Daily Post, 20 Apr. 1859. He opposed the ballot, but supported an £8 household franchise, and would be prepared to support a £6 franchise9Ibid., a move which was said to be an attempt to outbid the incumbent Liberal, Charles Forster.10Birmingham Daily Post, 25 June 1866. However, Bagnall was considerably outpolled in a disorderly contest, a result which he ascribed to the ‘Wolverhampton physical force influence’ used by his opponents.11Birmingham Daily Post, 13 July 1859. At a dinner following his defeat, he declared that ‘he had never talked about universal suffrage or any such hollow nonsense’, and while he supported extending the franchise, he did not wish to see the working classes dominate, opining that ‘the greatest of tyrannies is that exercised by the working men over each other’.12Ibid.

Bagnall was a keen supporter of various educational bodies, and in 1860 lectured to the Bloxwich Mutual Improvement Society on his travels in Egypt and Palestine, where he had made a three month tour.13Birmingham Daily Post, 18 May 1860, 24 May 1860. A devout Anglican, in a later talk about Mount Sinai he observed that ‘he could not conceive how any infidel or atheist could visit the East without being struck with its confirmation of the records of the bible’.14York Herald, 1 Nov. 1862. In 1861 Bagnall seconded the nomination of the Conservative candidate at the Wolverhampton by-election.15Daily News, 2 July 1861. This marked the end of his involvement with public life in Staffordshire, however, as in 1861 he and his brother Thomas purchased ironstone mines at Grosmont, near Whitby in North Yorkshire, where they erected two large blast furnaces, adding a third in 1875, and becoming major employers in the area.16Bulmer’s History and directory of North Yorkshire (1890) [http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/NRY/Eskdalesidewithugglebarnby/Eskdalesidewithugglebarnby90.html]; Northern Echo, 4 Sept. 1873. The 1881 census listed Charles Bagnall as an employer of 450 men and boys. Bagnall took up residence at Sneaton Castle, near Whitby.

In 1865 Bagnall received an unexpected invitation to offer again for Parliament, when the disgraced railway entrepreneur George Hudson, who had been due to stand in the Conservative interest at Whitby, was arrested shortly before the nomination at the behest of one of his creditors and imprisoned at York Castle.17North-Eastern Daily Gazette, 26 Feb. 1884. Bagnall, whose wife Harriet was a member of the locally prominent Chapman family, who had provided Whitby’s first MP (Aaron Chapman, 1832-1847), stepped into the breach.18Harriet Curtis Chapman’s great-grandfather William (1761-1840) was one of Aaron Chapman’s older brothers: Burke’s landed gentry (1855), 194. He was said to be ‘a more popular man with his party than the ex-Railway King’, attracting support from Conservatives who had only reluctantly backed Hudson.19Leeds Mercury, 12 July 1865. Despite being a last-minute candidate, he ousted the unpopular Liberal incumbent, Harry Thompson, by a narrow margin.20Leeds Mercury, 13 July 1865. In 1866 a Whitby solicitor brought a case against Bagnall for unpaid fees of £16 11s. from the election, and was awarded 12 guineas plus costs: Daily News, 24 Sept. 1866. Having secured a ‘warm berth’ at Whitby, he was said to have reversed his earlier support for a £6 borough franchise, and would not even countenance a £7 limit.21Birmingham Daily Post, 25 June 1866. As MP, Bagnall patronised various local institutions, including the Whitby Agricultural Society, and presided over a local meeting in 1866 which urged the Yorkshire Agricultural Society to hold its next annual meeting at Whitby.22Leeds Mercury, 2 May 1867; Nottinghamshire Guardian, 10 Aug. 1866. He lectured to the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society on ‘Iron’ and ‘Coal’ in 1867, and extolled the ‘beneficial and elevating tendency of mechanics’ institutes’ when attending a meeting of the Grosmont Institute.23York Herald, 21 Dec. 1867; The Whitby repository (1867), i. 279.

At Westminster Bagnall generally voted with the Conservatives, opposing the abolition of church rates, 7 Mar. 1866, and Gladstone’s motion on the Irish church, 3 Apr. 1868. He divided against the Liberal ministry’s reform bill, 27 Apr. 1866, and in his first significant contribution to debate, spoke forcefully against proposals to group constituencies, 28 May 1866.24Bagnall had previously asked a question regarding gas lighting in the National Gallery, 9 Apr. 1866. Drawing on his knowledge of Staffordshire, he argued that West Bromwich and Wednesbury should be enfranchised rather than giving increased representation to South Staffordshire, emphasising their importance as populous centres of the iron trade. He protested that the Liberal bill ‘ignored them, and he would oppose it at every stage’. The following year he consistently entered the lobby with his party’s leaders in support of the Conservative reform bill.

Bagnall was said to be ‘an eloquent and pungent speaker’, and reportedly gave a ‘very humorous address’ when proposing the health of the ladies at the inaugural banquet of the York Working Men’s Conservative Association in 1867.25North-Eastern Daily Gazette, 26 Feb. 1884; The Standard, 1 Nov. 1867. He was, however, an infrequent contributor in the Commons. He occasionally raised concerns affecting Whitby, opposing the second reading of the Holderness embankment and reclamation bill, which he believed would seriously damage the harbour of refuge on the Humber, 6 June 1866. He also asked questions on the Whitby rectory tithes, 26 Mar. 1867, and the dismissal of Whitby’s collector of customs, 28 Apr. 1868. Issues which related to his own business experience drew more of his attention. He opposed proposals to extend local rates to woodlands, plantations and all kinds of mines, citing the opinion of the inspector of mines for North Staffordshire that the method of assessing coal mines (which were already rated) was unjust, 19 Feb. 1867.26Bagnall secured a return that session on how union assessment committees calculated the rateable value of coal mines: PP 1867 (429), ix. 576. He expressed his hopes that this bill would be referred to a select committee, where a satisfactory system of assessment might be devised, 10 Apr. 1867. In the following session, when a bill to assess mines alone was debated, he protested that woodlands and plantations escaped rating, while coal mines were ‘made the victims’, 6 May 1868.27Although the second reading was carried, this bill was subsequently withdrawn, 29 July 1868. In 1867 Bagnall was among MPs and peers who signed a memorial to ministers urging that for the benefit of those travelling from London to that year’s Paris Exhibition, surveillance should be substituted for individual luggage searches at customs.28The Times, 11 Jan. 1867.

His committee service also reflected his industrial interests. He served on the 1867 select committee on the Factory Acts extension bill and the hours of labour regulation bill, which recommended the appointment of a royal commission to consider whether legislation should be extended to print works, bleaching and dyeing works.29PP 1867 (429), ix. 576. He supported Bernhard Samuelson’s motion for a select committee to inquire into scientific instruction ‘for the Industrial Classes’, highlighting the need for better education for those who became factory managers, 24 Mar. 1868. He served on the ensuing inquiry, but was absent when it discussed the alternative reports proposed by Samuelson and Thomas Dyke Acland.30PP 1867-68 (432), xv. 10. His last known contribution in the House was to urge that if more staff were provided to inspect mines, they should be inspectors and not sub-inspectors, 12 June 1868.

Bagnall did not seek re-election in 1868, explaining in ‘a long, eloquent, and powerful speech’ that ‘his private duties were incompatible with his continuance in Parliament’.31York Herald, 4 July 1868. He remained closely involved with Conservative politics at Whitby, however, and in 1874, with the local party having apparently ‘failed to get a candidate from London’, he stood again, declaring himself the representative of ‘local interests and local industries’.32York Herald, 30 Jan. 1874. He failed to oust the incumbent Liberal, William Henry Gladstone, who alleged that Bagnall ‘was going in for progressive legislation, and did not scruple to ride the Liberal horse to serve the ends of his party’.33Ibid. Following his defeat, he continued to be the ‘most eloquent speaker and most indefatigable organizer’ for Whitby’s Conservatives.34North-Eastern Daily Gazette, 26 Feb. 1884. He nominated their candidate at the hustings in 1880 and presided over the remodelling of their organisation in 1882, when he also appeared in support of the Conservative candidate at the North Riding by-election.35Daily Gazette [Middlesbrough], 30 Mar. 1880; Morning Post, 20 Mar. 1882; The Standard, 29 July 1882. Rumours in 1883 that he would offer again for Whitby at the next election were, however, unfounded.36Morning Post, 5 Mar. 1883.

In 1869 Bagnall was among the ironmasters who attended the first provincial meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute, and later served as a council member of that body.37Leeds Mercury, 23 Sept. 1869; Glasgow Herald, 7 Aug. 1872. Alongside his Grosmont ironworks, in 1874 he became a director of the Cleveland Slag Working Company Ltd.38York Herald, 2 Jan. 1874. He was also chairman of Jackson, Gill & Co., which operated the Imperial Ironworks in Middlesbrough, but this went into liquidation in 1879, due to the depression in trade.39York Herald, 16 July 1879; Leeds Mercury, 20 Dec. 1879. After leaving the Commons, he devoted considerable energy to local administration at Whitby, where he was ‘a very valuable public man... widely known and respected’.40North-Eastern Daily Gazette, 8 Jan. 1884. He was chairman of the Whitby magistrates, the Whitby district highway board, and the school attendance committee, and also served as a Whitby harbour trustee and on the board of conservators of the Esk fishery district.41Daily Gazette [Middlesbrough], 4 Mar. 1878, 10 May 1880; Northern Echo, 4 May 1876, 14 May 1883; Leeds Mercury, 29 Jan. 1877; York Herald, 12 May 1877. A ‘zealous advocate of popular education’, he campaigned to get the Free Libraries Act adopted at Whitby, but without success.42North-Eastern Daily Gazette, 26 Feb. 1884. He was associated with a variety of charitable causes, particularly those connected with the Anglican church, and subscribed generously to the building of a new church and school at Grosmont.43Northern Echo, 3 Dec. 1874, 7 Aug. 1875; Daily Gazette [Middlesbrough], 22 May 1877. At a church conference at Middlesbrough in 1869, he contended that ‘the wilful Sabbath breaker was no true friend of his country – no true son of the Church of England’, but explained why it was impractical to stop working blast furnaces on Sundays, although he suggested that efforts could be made to mitigate the evils of Sunday working.44Authorised report of the Church conference held at Middlesbrough, on the 13th and 14th of October 1869 (1869), 51-2. Known as ‘a temperate man’, Bagnall supported the local Church of England Temperance Society, but nonetheless attended the 1881 annual dinner of Whitby’s licensed victuallers, at which he criticised the ‘blatant, well-paid teetotal lecturers’.45Daily Gazette [Middlesbrough], 28 May 1881; Northern Echo, 15 Mar. 1877.

Serious illness, ‘arising from an affection of the heart’, meant that Bagnall left Whitby in 1883 to take up residence at Brighton, putting Sneaton Castle up to let and entrusting his business affairs to his brother.46North-Eastern Daily Gazette, 29 Oct. 1883, 26 Feb. 1884. He died at Brighton in February 1884, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Charles Edward. He was buried in Grosmont churchyard, and Whitby’s ships flew their flags at half-mast on the day of his funeral, which was attended by representatives from the many local public bodies on which he had served.47North-Eastern Daily Gazette, 28 Feb. 1884. The firm of C. & T. Bagnall closed in 1891 due to the economic depression.48Baker & Allen Civil, Bagnalls of Stafford, 47.