JACKSON, William (1805-1876), of The Manor House, Claughton, Cheshire

‘A hard-headed, self-made man’, Jackson was a Liberal businessman with extensive commercial and industrial interests.1Gent. Mag. (1869), i. 460. His expertise was highly valued in the Commons. As one obituary recorded, his

political temperament was always controlled by common sense, and he was a thoroughly trusted party man. He did not often speak in Parliament, but when addressing the House was always, notwithstanding some provincialisms which he retained to the last, listened to with attention.2Minutes of proceedings, Institution of Civil Engineers (1876), xlv, pt. iii, 252-6 (at 256).

Although rarely vocal in the chamber, he was ‘always exceedingly useful on committees’.3Liverpool Mercury, 2 Feb. 1876.

Jackson’s father, a Warrington doctor, had died when he was six years old, after which his mother took the family to Liverpool, where Jackson was apprenticed to a merchant, before working in a counting-house.4Ibid. Largely self-taught, Jackson’s studious reading habits and self-improvement during this time later earned him the approval of Samuel Smiles in Self-help: ‘He afterwards put himself to trade, was diligent and succeeded in it. Now he has ships sailing on almost every sea, and holds commercial relations with nearly every country on the globe’.5S. Smiles, Self-help (1905 edn.), 20. After a spell as an ironmonger, Jackson co-founded the Liverpool merchant house of Jackson, Hamilton and Company, which had a ‘short but brilliant career’.6Minutes of proceedings, Institution of Civil Engineers (1876), xlv, pt. iii, 253. The firm made a fortune in transporting palm oil from west Africa, but Jackson dissolved the business in 1839, which proved to be timely, as the trade later declined.7Liverpool Mercury, 2 Feb. 1876. However, Jackson did not become a rentier capitalist as:

He was essentially a producer. Safe income-yielding investments had no charm for him; as fast as he made money he put his earnings into something which would, in however small a degree, increase the wealth of the world.8Minutes of proceedings, Institution of Civil Engineers (1876), xlv, pt. iii, 255.

In the early 1840s Jackson became an improvement commissioner at Birkenhead, Cheshire, and invested heavily in the town. He was part of the consortium that bought up land with a view to exploiting the peninsula’s natural harbour to construct docks. As the commission had the authority (by a local act) but not the funds to build a gas and water works, Jackson and his brother stepped in to construct them and supply the town. He also purchased the Woodside Ferry service that operated between Liverpool and Birkenhead, and later converted some of his property into Birkenhead Park. Most importantly, perhaps, Jackson was chairman of the Birkenhead and Chester Railway Company. (He also held numerous other railway directorships).9Railway directory for 1847 (1847), 18, 41, 48, 141, 167. In 1846 another director, MacGregor Laird, accused Jackson of buying land knowing it was essential to the Birkenhead to Chester railway line and then selling it to the Company at 890% profit.10Herapath’s Railway Journal (1846), viii. 187, 234. This was perhaps the origin of the rivalry between Jackson and John Laird, MacGregor’s brother. In 1846 Jackson moved from Birkenhead to a newly-built manor house at nearby Claughton. In the same year he resigned as chairman of the improvement commission, citing a conflict of interest between his civic duties and position as owner of the gas and water works. As Birkenhead grew, these became very lucrative, and Jackson sold them to the commission in 1858 for £220,000.11Liverpool Mercury, 2 Feb. 1876. Following his resignation in 1846, the commission split, with subsequent elections contested between the ‘Reds’, John Laird’s party, and the ‘Blues’, who were associated with Jackson, who, however, withdrew from Birkenhead’s public life, although he retained property in the town.12Liverpool Mercury, 2 Feb. 1876; P. Sulley, History of ancient and modern Birkenhead (1907), 138, 190-1, 201-2.

A staunch Liberal free trader, Jackson welcomed the repeal of the corn laws in 1846, predicting that the measure would be ‘of incalculable advantage to Birkenhead’.13William Jackson to Sir Robert Peel, 30 June 1846, Add. 40594, ff. 485-6 (at 486). He was one of the investors in the Liberal Daily News founded in 1846, and apparently lost £5,000 by it.14Richard Cobden to John Bright, 8 Nov. 1848, Add. 43649, ff. 91-2, qu. in The letters of Richard Cobden, ed. A.C. Howe (2010), ii. 77-8, n. 2. Jackson’s deep pockets no doubt aided his return for the venal constituency of Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1847, where he was re-elected with little difficulty until retiring in 1865. Jackson emphasised his humble origins when addressing the freemen, who comprised the majority of the local electorate. He knew, he told them on one occasion, ‘what it was to serve an apprenticeship’.15Staffordshire Advertiser, 17 July 1847. However, he bluntly warned them that the hope of reviving the ailing hat trade was ‘illusory’ and that only a general extension of the country’s trade and commerce would help the town.16Staffordshire Advertiser, 24 July 1847. Despite his support for free trade, which included advocating the repeal of the duties on tea, sugar and coffee, Jackson maintained that ‘he was not a disciple of the Manchester school’.17Tea duties: report of the second public meeting held in the sessions house, Liverpool, (1848), 18; Staffordshire Advertiser, 31 July 1847, 10 July 1852. He was ‘not a mere theorist’, but a ‘practical commercial man’.18Staffordshire Advertiser, 10 July 1852.

In his first Parliament, Jackson’s votes followed a similar pattern to those of his friend Sir Joshua Walmsley, another former Liverpool merchant, and MP for Leicester, 1847-8, 1852-7, and Bolton 1849-52. Jackson supported Jewish relief, Joseph Hume’s ‘little Charter’ of political reforms, and the equalisation of the borough and county franchise. In 1849 he backed the repeal of the navigation laws at ‘every stage’ and was among the minority who endorsed Cobden’s motion for retrenchment, 26 Feb. 1849.19Staffordshire Advertiser, 10 July 1852. After his re-election, Jackson was listed among the free trade majorities in the 1852-3 session, but opposed Hume’s motion for removing the remaining protective duties on imports, 3 Mar. 1853.

In his maiden speech, 22 Feb. 1848, which drew on his experience of west Africa, Jackson supported William Hutt’s motion for a select committee on the slave trade. Jackson argued that slavery was a ‘question of pounds, shillings and pence’.20Hansard, 22 Feb. 1848, vol. 96, cc. 1101-7 (at 1103). In his view, fostering trade would be a more effective and cheaper way of extinguishing slavery than expensive naval patrols, as Africans would develop profitable industries that would make free labourers much more valuable than slaves.21Ibid., 1105-6. Jackson also claimed that the ‘black character was misunderstood’ as ‘no race of men were more intelligent, more desirous of obtaining knowledge, or more anxious to extend commercial relations, and advance in the path of civilisation’.22Ibid., 1106. He served on the subsequent inquiry which sat during the 1848 and 1849 sessions and endorsed Hutt’s report, which argued that the policy of attempting to put down the slave trade by naval squadrons was ‘impracticable’.23PP 1847-48 (272), xxii. 2; 1847-48 (366), xxii. 284; 1847-48 (536), xxii. 467; 1847-48 (623), xxii. 706; 1849 (308), xix. 20; 1849 (410), xix. 180-1, 197-8. Although he opposed slavery, Jackson was sharply critical of British smugness on the issue. He noted, 19 July 1850, that the money that secured the measure in 1833 was paid not to the ‘black men whom we had so badly treated’ but to ‘ourselves’ in the form of compensation to British and West Indian slave-owners.24Hansard, 19 July 1850, vol. 133, cc. 47-8.

In the 1850s Jackson, in partnership with Thomas Brassey, another Birkenhead investor, Samuel Morton Peto, Liberal MP for Norwich, 1847-54, Finsbury, 1859-65, and Bristol, 1865-8, and Edward Ladd Betts, became one of the great railway contractors of the age.25R.S. Joby, The railway builders (1983), 73. With Brassey, Jackson built a series of railways in Italy and Austria.26The Times, 5 July 1852, 4 Nov. 1852, 9 Feb. 1853, 29 May 1854, 29 Feb. 1856; C. Walker, Thomas Brassey: railway builder (1969), 74. In 1853 Jackson’s negotiation skills helped to win the firm of Peto, Brassey, Jackson and Betts the contract to construct the Grand Trunk Railway in Canada. Jackson later approved the trebling of the original plan from 330 to 1,100 miles and the capitalisation from £3,000,000 to £9,500,000. The project was beset by financial problems, which were underplayed to London investors. The firm teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, which, had it been held to fulfilling its contract, undoubtedly would have occurred. The railway opened in 1860 and was hailed as an engineering triumph in Britain, although Canadians complained of the poor design and materials used and the legacy of debt they inherited as taxpayers.27A.W. Currie, The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada (1957), 4-5, 11, 12-13, 30, 33-5, 36-7, 41-6, 54, 56-64; A. Vaughan, Samuel Morton Peto: a Victorian entrepreneur (2009), 155-63.

Perhaps as a consequence of his business commitments, Jackson was silent in the House for much of the mid-1850s. He opposed the motions criticising the conduct of the Crimean War by the Aberdeen coalition, and later Palmerston’s first ministry, moved by Roebuck and Disraeli, 29 Jan. 1855, 25 May 1855, 19 July 1855. He divided against Cobden’s Canton motion, 3 Mar. 1857, and had nothing but praise for Palmerston at the subsequent general election.28Staffordshire Advertiser, 4 Apr. 1857. He was absent from the division on the conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858, which brought down Palmerston’s first ministry.

Despite his general silence in debate, Jackson remained an active committee man. Most important, perhaps, were the series of investigations into the system of contracts for public departments, notably the Weedon establishment which provided clothing for the Ordnance, which had been exposed as inefficient during the Crimean War. After two years of sitting on this committee, Jackson declared, 8 June 1858, ‘that in the whole of his business experience he [had] never had brought before him such a course of neglect, extravagance, and waste of public money’ as had occurred at Weedon.29PP 1856 (362), vii. 118; 1857 sess. 2 (269), xiii. 6; 1857-58 (328), vi. 6; 1857-58 (398), vi. 480; PP 1857-58 (418), vi. 577; 1857-58 (438), vi. 585; Hansard, 8 June 1858, vol. 150, c. 1800. He later welcomed the government’s establishment of a commission of inquiry on the issue, which, he hoped:

would consist not of purely military men, but of accountants and men practically qualified for such an investigation. The question was entirely a mercantile one, and the Commission should number among its members men with mercantile minds.30Hansard, 28 June 1858, vol. 151, c. 585.

In the late 1850s Jackson became one of the directors of the company formed to back Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s leviathan steamship The Great Eastern.31G.S. Emmerson, The greatest iron ship – S.S. Great Eastern (1981), 54, 69, 70, 71; Bankers’ Magazine, xviii (1858), 880. He argued that the expansion of commercial shipping through such vessels would enable transatlantic mail to be carried without government subsidy, 5 Apr. 1859.32Hansard, 5 Apr. 1859, vol. 153, c. 1412. Increasingly a critic of Admiralty spending, Jackson successfully moved for a royal commission on the management of the royal naval dockyards, 24 Apr. 1860, which he believed would uncover similar waste and mismanagement to that found at Weedon.33Hansard, 24 Apr. 1860, vol. 158, cc. 54-6, 68-9. In a debate the following year, Jackson noted that he was no longer ‘connected’ with the ‘direction’ of railways, which perhaps spared him the financial difficulties that increasingly troubled his former partner Peto, who was declared bankrupt in 1868.34Hansard, 12 Mar. 1861, vol. 161, c. 1822. Jackson endorsed the bill which enfranchised Birkenhead as a parliamentary borough in 1861, although the beneficiary turned out to be his old rival John Laird, who defeated Brassey’s son at the inaugural election that December, and Jackson’s heir in 1865.35Hansard, 25 Feb. 1861, vol. 161, c. 923; 17 June 1861, vol. 163, cc. 1203-4; McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 23. However, Jackson joined with Laird in regularly criticising the Admiralty.36Hansard, 12 Mar. 1863, vol. 169, c. 1363; 9 June 1863, vol. 171, cc. 665-6. Continuing his brief interventions in commercial debates, he opposed the partnership law amendment bill, which proposed allowing investors to be limited rather than general partners, as it ‘was in favour of the capitalist … and not … the trader and man of industry’. It would strike at the root of England’s ‘greatness’, namely the system of personal credit, which, Jackson noted, had he not received when young, ‘he would never in all probability have become a Member of that House’.37Hansard, 24 Mar. 1863, vol. 169, c. 1893.

At the 1865 general election Jackson retired from Newcastle-under-Lyme to stand for North Derbyshire. Through his friendship with the Stephenson family, railway engineers, he had become a partner and then the sole owner of the Clay Cross colliery and iron works in the county.38Minutes of proceedings, Institution of Civil Engineers (1876), xlv, pt. iii, 255; Derby Mercury, 3 May 1865; Liverpool Mercury, 2 Feb. 1876. Although Jackson was returned unopposed with another Liberal, during the campaign he stormed out of one meeting after being asked to explain his vote on a gas and water bill. He angrily told electors that he would have nothing to do with ‘local squabbles, and that he would not, [even] if he were paid 50,000l. a year, be their member if he had to defend himself on such matters’.39Derby Mercury, 21 June 1865. Having declared himself a supporter of a £6 borough franchise on the hustings, Jackson backed the Liberal government’s 1866 reform bill.40Derby Mercury, 14 June 1865. In the debates on the representation of the people bill the following year, he supported the enfranchisement of compound ratepayers and women, and the expansion of the representation of the largest towns at the expense of the smaller boroughs. Jackson opposed the 1867 bill to amend the law of contract between master and servant, because, although he had no objections to the principle of the measure, he thought the provisions were not in accordance with the resolutions of the 1866 select committee on the issue, on which he had served.41Hansard, 4 June 1867, vol. 187, cc. 1610-11; PP 1865 (370), viii. 2; 1866 (449), xiii. 3. Jackson offered no opposition to Edward Greene’s motion for a royal commission on coal mining accidents, although he defended his fellow coal-owners from some of the imputations cast during the debate, 26 May 1868.42Hansard, 26 May 1868, vol. 192, c. 944.

Jackson unsuccessfully contested the new constituency of North East Derbyshire at the 1868 general election, a loss compensated by Gladstone’s gift of a baronetcy in 1869. Thereafter Jackson’s health declined steeply and he died in 1876. His personalty was valued at £700,000, 23 Feb. 1876, but re-sworn as £350,000 in June 1878.43Calendar of Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration (1876), 50. One obituary declared that Jackson’s role in the development of Birkenhead displayed his ‘extraordinary perseverance, his undaunted resolution, his indomitable force of mind, and his wonderful spirit of enterprise’.44Liverpool Mercury, 2 Feb. 1876. Another commentator remarked that ‘his courage and determination led him to despair of nothing, and his friends not unfrequently joked at his fondness for a doubtful investment’.45Minutes of proceedings, Institution of Civil Engineers (1876), xlv, pt. iii, 255. However, Jackson was always careful not to spread himself too thinly during his long and varied business career, generally committing his time and energies to a particular project or sector, before moving on. His philanthropy included founding the Albert Memorial Industrial Schools in Birkenhead in 1866, which could accommodate 180 children.46C.G. Mott, Reminiscences of Birkenhead (1900), 46. Jackson was buried in Flaybrick Hill Cemetery in Birkenhead and was succeeded in the baronetcy by his eldest son Henry Mather Jackson (1831-81), Liberal MP for Coventry 1867-8, 1874-81, who resigned from Parliament on his appointment as a high court judge, only to die four days later. He was succeeded in turn by his son and namesake, the 3rd baronet (1855-1942).47Burke’s peerage and baronetage (1949), 1080-1.