RUFFORD, Francis (1805-1863), of Yew Tree, Bellbroughton, Stourbridge, Worcs.

align="left">Born at Kington, Herefordshire, Rufford was the son of a Stourbridge glass manufacturer. His grandfather and namesake of Old Swinford, Worcestershire, was a successful banker and brick manufacturer at Stambermill.2Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 30 June 1831. His works employed more than 1,000 workers in 1840: www.stmaryschurcholdswinford.org.uk. At an early age Rufford joined his father as a partner in Richard, Biggs, and Rufford, which owned banks at Stourbridge and Bromsgrove (they were joined by Charles John Wragge in July 1834), and in 1828 married the daughter of a local rector.3Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 19 June 1823, 12 Apr. 1827, 7 Aug. 1828; Morning Chronicle, 13 Oct. 1851. A Conservative and protectionist, he served on Sir John Pakington’s election committee during the East Worcestershire election of 1832, and was briefly spoken of as a second Conservative candidate for the constituency.4Morning Post, 27 Oct. 1832; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 15 Nov. 1832.

Speaking at a Conservative dinner in 1835, Rufford acknowledged that a considerable measure of parliamentary reform had been necessary, but repudiated a Whig government under ‘the dictation of O’Connell and Hume’, and was shortly afterwards appointed treasurer of the East Worcestershire Conservative Association.5Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 5 Mar. 1835, 7 May 1835. A strong supporter of Peelite reform, he appears to have been active in the registration of ‘operative voters’ at Stourbridge, Dudley and Halesown, pledging himself to ‘sift every claim that was placed upon the register’.6Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 27 Oct. 1836, 1 Nov. 1838. In September 1837 he chaired a meeting at Stourbridge to celebrate Conservative successes at the general election, and in August 1841 he presided over a festival held by the Bromsgrove Operative Conservative Association.7The Times, 7 Sept. 1837; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 5 Aug. 1841. Early in 1843 he helped to prepare a memorial to government concerning the burden then being placed on local poor-rate payers, and assisted in raising funds to support distressed workmen.8Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 9 Mar. 1843.

The firm of Rufford and Wragge expanded in the 1840s, with Rufford managing the Bromsgrove Bank and Wragge the Stourbridge Bank. The former was heavily involved in the salt and alkali trades, and in December 1842 Rufford chaired a meeting of the shareholders of the British Alkali Company.9Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 8 Dec. 1842; Staffordshire Record Office, D695/1/32/3. By 1844 the company was indebted to his bank by £67,000, and was duly bought out. Rufford also advanced huge sums to the Disc Engine Company of London, amongst other ventures, while the Stourbridge Bank invested heavily in the Churchbridge and Bloxwich collieries.10The Law Journal Reports for the Year 1852, 32-6; Daily News, 31 Mar. 1852. The debts of the Stourbridge and Bromsgrove Banks were finally proved at £223,452 and £95,605 respectively: Morning Post, 27 June 1856. Rufford joined the management committee of the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway in July 1844, led a deputation to Lord Dalhousie at the board of trade in October, and was elected chairman and chief manager of the company that December. He gave evidence to the relevant parliamentary committee in April 1847, before stepping down to become vice-chairman of the railway from 1849.11Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 1 Aug. 1844, 12 Dec. 1844, 16 Oct. 1845, 5 Mar. 1846, 2 Mar. 1848; Morning Post, 10 Oct. 1844; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 24 Apr. 1847; Birmingham University Archives, L.Add 4619-89. He was also banker to the company, and a director of the Birmingham and Oxford, and Birmingham and Wolverhampton Railways: Morning Post, 25 June 1852.

Having been brought forward as a successor to the sitting Conservative member for Worcester in July 1846, Rufford was returned at considerable expense at the general election of 1847.12Morning Post, 2 July 1846. It emerged that ninety public houses were thrown open, and 17 legal professionals, along with 70 or 80 flagmen, were employed by the candidate, the total expense exceeding £4,000: Daily News, 31 Mar. 1852. Claiming to stand on ‘free and independent grounds’, he declared himself ‘a protectionist of native industry’, and supported a property tax in lieu of taxes on articles of consumption. An ‘unflinching advocate of Church and State’, he nevertheless wished to see the funds of the Church more fairly distributed, and advocated better pay for ‘the worthy hard-working clergy’. He also wanted ‘more liberality’ in the money supply, and lamented seeing ‘so much of our wealth locked up idle in the coffers of the Bank of England’. If Britain was ‘to have the benefit of Free Trade’, he argued, the current restrictions on banking had to be removed and the country provided with ‘a sufficient currency to enable us to embark in extended enterprise’. He also supported reforms to the ‘unfair and unjust’ game laws, but opposed the endowment of the Catholic clergy, favouring instead ‘education without regard to religious opinions’.13Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 5 Aug. 1847; Stenton, Who’s Who of British MPs, i. 335.

Rufford is not known to have spoken in debate or to have sat on any committees or introduced any bills. He voted against the government’s Jewish disabilities bill, 11 Feb. and 4 May 1848, before taking leave of absence on account of the death of his uncle. He supported Disraeli’s motion to relieve the burdens on agriculture, 15 Mar. 1849, but attended only 24 of the 219 divisions in that session.14Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 25 May 1848; Hampshire Telegraph & Sussex Chronicle, 20 Oct. 1849. He also backed Disraeli’s attempt to relieve distress on the owners and occupiers of land, 13 Feb. 1851, and voted in favour of repealing the malt tax, 8 May 1851.

Rufford’s enthusiasm for less restrictive banking practices proved his undoing. In May 1851 the banks of Rufford and Wragge suffered a liquidity crisis as a result of Rufford’s ‘wild career of speculation’, and failed. Rufford surrendered to the bankruptcy court on 8 July, after which he and his partners, were declared bankrupt and accused of ‘gross misconduct’, for having continued to receive deposits and issue notes in spite of having been aware that their banks were hopelessly insolvent.15The Times, 27 May 1851; York Herald, 12 July 1851; Liverpool Mercury, 15 July 1851; Daily News, 31 Mar. 1852. Rufford in particular was judged to have ‘shamefully violated’ his duties as a banker, and he was therefore refused a certificate of bankruptcy, and thus protection from his creditors, on 1 May 1852. The case merited an editorial in The Times, which claimed that a ‘more disgraceful case of bankruptcy’ had seldom ‘come under the judicial notice of the courts’.16The Times, 3 May 1852; The Banker’s Magazine (1852), xii. 307-10; The Times, 12 June 1852. Rufford’s personal annual expenditure at this time was said to have reached £3,000. Rufford had taken the Chiltern Hundreds on 20 April 1852, and his residence at Yew Tree, Bellbroughton, which had been purchased with £20,000 drawn from his own bank, was sold by his creditors the following month.17Daily News, 31 Mar. 1852; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 20 May 1852. The decision of the bankruptcy court was upheld upon appeal on 10 June, and, although the assigned creditors did not object to personal protection from imprisonment for debt being granted to the defendants, it was not clear that this concession would avail against the common law right of outside creditors.18The Law Journal Reports for the Year 1852, 32-6. Rufford’s personal debts were proved at £40,871. By 1856 the assets collected amounted to only £10,582: Morning Post, 27 June 1856.

Rufford is known to have resided at York Street, Portman Square, London in 1854 but his whereabouts thereafter are unknown. He was admitted to the lunatic asylum in Sutton Coldfield in 1859 and died there in January 1863.19F. Boase, Modern English Biography, vi (1921), 2123; information from Stephen Lees. Rufford’s wife died at Stourbridge on 28 April 1890 but no mention was made of her late husband in the death notice: Daily News, 2 May 1890.