SALT, Thomas (1830-1904), of Weeping Cross, Staffordshire

A country banker, Salt, a ‘moderate Conservative’ and party loyalist, contributed to a diverse range of debates in the first of his four spells in Parliament.1R.S. Sayers, Lloyds bank in the history of English banking (1957), 34. His grandfather had married into the Stevenson family, who had founded a bank at Stafford in 1737, with a London branch established in 1787.2Ibid. Salt’s father and namesake was an influential banker in Stafford and a staunch Conservative, who told the Whig Lord Hatherton in 1841 that he would ‘“consider it a duty to his god” to oppose the present ministers’, prompting the peer to comment that ‘he seems to me on politics to be quite insane’.3Hatherton Journal, 28 May 1841, Staffordshire Record Office, D260/M/F/5/26/22. It was Salt senior who acted as the conduit between Conservative candidates with money and the venal electorate of Stafford.4Hatherton Journal, 28 May 1841, 28 June 1841, Staffs. RO, D260/M/F/5/26/22.

Salt was elected for his native town in 1859. Although a ‘Tory’, Hatherton conceded that ‘I never remember any other candidate with so legitimate a claim on that borough’.5Hatherton Journal, 29 Apr. 1859, Staffs. RO, D260/M/F/5/26/81. However, the Whig peer was later astonished that ‘honest T. Salt’ had followed another candidate and pledged ‘in favour of an equalisation of poor rates! No doubt to win votes’.6Hatherton Journal, 2 May 1859, Staffs. RO, D260/M/F/5/26/81. In Parliament, Salt followed a Conservative line. He opposed the borough and county franchise bills of the early 1860s, and the abolition of Oxford University tests. He spoke on a number of different issues. In 1862 he suggested employing the wives and widows of soldiers to make clothes for the army.7Hansard, 13 Mar. 1862, vol. 165, c. 1464. The following year he expressed sympathy towards John Walter’s abortive motion for extra grants for the poorer schools, but thought it inexpedient when the revised code had only been recently introduced.8Hansard, 5 May 1863, vol. 170, cc. 1210-11. He supported the 1864 church rates commutation bill as a ‘reasonable attempt to settle this difficult question’, but his speech was notable for a eulogy to the established Church as ‘the noblest, the purest, the most effective church system which ever existed in any country in the world’.9Hansard, 27 Apr. 1864, vol. 174, cc. 1716, 1718. Salt also used his expertise in financial debates. He offered qualified support for the 1864 friendly societies bill, believing that the state was right to intervene to offer more stability and security to the savings of working men.10Hansard, 17 Mar. 1864, vol. 174, cc. 231-3. In 1865 he declared that William Gladstone’s bill proposing to phase out the power of all other banks to issue notes apart from the Bank of England, was of ‘great importance’ and ‘deserving of great consideration’.11Hansard, 1 May 1865, vol. 178, c. 1268.

Salt retired at the 1865 general election, but was re-elected for Stafford at a by-election in 1869, and served as parliamentary secretary to the local government board 1875-80. He was defeated at the 1880 general election, but had two further spells as MP for Stafford, from 1881-85 and 1886-92. In 1866 the Stafford branch of Stevenson, Salt and company was sold to Lloyds Bank, of which Salt became a director. The following year the London branch of the old family bank was amalgamated with Bosanquet and Company, which was also absorbed by Lloyds in 1884. In 1886 Salt became chairman of Lloyds Bank. Pursuing a strategy of expansion through buying up smaller, old private banks, under Salt’s stewardship Lloyds grew from 61 offices in 1886 to 257 in 1898, when he stepped down. In the same period the paid up capital increased from £1.1 million to £2.4 million and the total assets from £11 million to £40 million.12Sayers, Lloyds bank, 34-5; The Times, 9 Apr. 1904; Burke’s peerage and baronetage (1949), 1777. On Salt’s banking career see also Y. Cassis, City bankers, 1890-1914 (1994), 55. Salt was also chairman of the North Staffordshire and New Zealand Railway Companies.13Sayers, Lloyds bank, 34-5. He held ‘many important public appointments’, and a historian of Lloyds bank has written that ‘in the range of his activities in public life Salt surpassed all his predecessors and most of his successors’.14The Times, 9 Apr. 1904; Sayers, Lloyds bank, 34. He was appointed a church commissioner in 1879, an ecclesiastical commissioner in 1880, an honorary commissioner of lunacy in 1883 and chairman of lunacy commissioners, 1886-92.15Al. Oxon. 1715-1888, iv. 1286. Awarded a baronetcy in 1899, Salt died in 1904 and was succeeded by his eldest son, Thomas Anderdon Salt, 2nd bt. (1863-1940), a soldier.16Burke’s peerage and baronetage (1949), 1778. Salt’s personal effects were sworn at £177,897 13s. 4d.17Calendar of Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration (1904), 7.