TOWNSHEND, John Villiers Stuart, viscount Raynham (1831-1899), of Raynham Hall, Norfolk; Balls Park, Hertfordshire

A ‘small, meek-looking personage’, Raynham, heir to the marquessate of Townshend, was a well-meaning, indefatigable but often ineffective champion of humanitarian causes, chiefly prevention of cruelty to women and animals.1‘How to dispose of well-meaning men’, Saturday Review, v (1858), 469. His eccentricity and deficiencies hampered his cause in Parliament and in many respects he was ahead of his time in addressing these issues.2F.M.L. Thompson, ‘Townshend, John Villiers Stuart, fifth Marquess Townshend (1831-99)’, www.oxforddnb.com. Hailing from a notable Whig family, Raynham’s father John Townshend was a naval officer and Whig MP for Tamworth from 1847, who succeeded his cousin as 4th Marquess Townshend in 1855. The vacancy in the representation was filled by Townshend’s only son, now known as viscount Raynham, who had been a foreign office clerk, 1850-4.

Returned unopposed in February 1856, Raynham promised a general support for Palmerston’s government and declared that he would use his position in Parliament to promote the improvement of education, and social conditions for the labouring classes.3The Standard, 7 Jan. 1856. Soon after his election Raynham joined his father as part of a deputation that lobbied Palmerston in favour of Polish independence, but on most other questions he backed the premier, including over Canton, 3 Mar. 1857.4The Standard, 17 Mar. 1856. At the ensuing general election, at which he was returned unopposed, Raynham described critics of Palmerston such as Richard Cobden as ‘rather Philo-Russian and Philo-Chinese than Philo-English’, and expressed support for Italian nationalism, the abolition of church rates and the Maynooth grant, and reform of the marriage laws.5Staffordshire Advertiser, 28 Mar. 1857. Raynham was re-elected after a token challenge at the 1859 general election.

After 1857 Raynham began to promote a variety of humanitarian causes, in particular protecting women from domestic abuse, preventing cruelty to animals and drawing attention to the condition of the metropolitan poor. He unsuccessfully proposed a select committee on aggravated assaults on women, 28 May 1857, which he argued had dramatically increased and were a ‘disgrace to the country’, existing legislation being in his view inadequate.6Hansard, 28 Mar. 1857, vol. 145, cc. 994-9 (at 994); PP 1857 sess. 2 (12), i. 21-6. In 1860 he introduced a bill to give magistrates the discretion to inflict corporal punishment on those found guilty of aggravated assault for the first time.7Hansard, 2 May 1860, vol. 158, cc. 519-23. He did not accept criticisms that flogging would further degrade and brutalise the culprits, and, in any case, he argued that it would be an effective deterrent. However, the bill was defeated by over a hundred votes, 20 June 1860.8Hansard, 20 June 1860, vol. 159, cc. 733-40; PP 1860 (126), i. 65-8. The following year he unsuccessfully attempted to extend prison sentences for wife beating and allow whipping as a punishment, in the debates on a government bill.9Hansard, 15 July 1861, vol. 164, c. 932. In 1863 he reintroduced a modified aggravated assault bill, which would sanction corporal punishment only in cases of third convictions, but it found ‘little sympathy in the House of Commons’, and was rejected by a large majority.10Hansard, 18 Feb. 1863, vol. 169, cc. 471-3; Examiner, 21 Feb. 1863.

An active patron of the recently-founded Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), in 1858 Raynham introduced a wide-ranging bill to impose fines for mistreatment of animals and the compulsory licensing and inspection of abattoirs.11Hansard, 22 Apr. 1858, vol. 159, cc. 1556-7; PP 1857-58 (33), i. 589-614. The bill made no progress, and Raynham introduced a watered down version in 1861, which he was forced to withdraw after criticism, and another bill in the same session was denied a second reading.12Hansard, 8 May 1861, vol. 162, cc. 1746-9; 8 July 1861, vol. 164, cc. 579-80; PP 1861 (60), i. 821-36. The third issue that Raynham championed was the plight of the metropolitan poor. In 1857 and 1858 he unsuccessfully called for a select committee on London workhouses, complaining of their administration, including the mixing up of ‘decent persons’ with ‘some of the worst characters’, due to inadequate classification.13Hansard, 25 June 1857, vol. 146, cc. 374-82; 4 May 1858, vol. 150, cc. 107-8. He continued to press Charles Pelham Villiers, secretary of the poor law board, on the administration of poor relief in the capital and in 1863 proposed a bill to unite the metropolis in to one poor law district.14Hansard, 27 June 1861, vol. 163, c. 1644; 8, 9 June 1863, vol. 171, cc. 523-5, 573-4. However, the lateness of the session compelled him to withdraw the bill.15Hansard, 8 July 1863, vol. 172, cc. 389-90.

None of Raynham’s bills became law before he succeeded to the peerage in September 1863, in part because of the climate of the time. For example, MPs received his 1857 prevention cruelty to animals bill with ‘inextinguishable mirth’, and parliamentary opinion generally thought the law on aggravated assaults was already sufficient unless it could be shown that the number had significantly increased.16‘How to dispose of well-meaning men’, Saturday Review, v (1858), 468; Examiner, 23 June 1860. Moreover, with some justice critics pointed out that to prevent cruelty to others Raynham sought to inflict cruelty ‘upon man’ through his enthusiastic promotion of flogging.17Hansard, 22 Apr. 1858, vol. 149, c. 1557. Indeed in 1863 Raynham proposed ending the use of corporal punishment in schools by stipulating that only ‘a birch rod should be used’, prompting the home secretary Sir George Grey to describe the bill as of ‘an unnecessary and almost of a ridiculous character’.18Hansard, 30 June 1863, vol. 171, c. 1842. The reputation Raynham acquired for impracticable, useless measures did not further his causes. At other times he suggested imposing a tax on all men employed as linen drapers to encourage female employment, and putting all poisons in hexagonal bottles to prevent accidental poisoning.19Hansard, 22 Apr. 1861, vol. 162, c. 896; 30 June 1863, vol. 171, cc. 1841-2. The Saturday Review sarcastically remarked of Raynham’s spate of bills in 1863 that the lateness of the session ‘has not deterred him from going through the pleasing fiction of bringing them in’.20‘The re-appearance of Lord Raynham’, Saturday Review, xv (1863), 812.

In the Lords, Townshend ‘moved a bewildering array of bills, … all hopeless causes, most barmy, but a few sensible and prophetic’.21Thompson, ‘Townshend’. After 1870 he turned away from Parliament to focus on charity work, mostly in London. His active philanthropy ‘frittered away large sums in charity not always deserving’, leaving a much reduced estate to his successors.22The Times, 7 Nov. 1899, qu. in Thompson, ‘Townshend’. Although Townshend was the patron of numerous humanitarian and philanthropic societies, his name lent cover for some questionable practices. One charity, the Royal Benevolent Society, established in 1857, of which he was president, raised £1,000 in its first year, but only £200 was distributed to the poor, the rest being swallowed up by expenses, and the secretary later fled. The audited accounts revealed that one fund-raising dinner had cost £112 and generated just £16.23‘The charity-brokers’, Saturday Review, viii (1859), 739. A noted supporter of teetotalism, Raynham was reputedly the first peer to be admitted to the order of Good Templars, a quasi-masonic temperance organisation.24Sheffield Evening Telegraph, 30 Oct. 1899.

In 1872 Townshend’s wife absconded to France with Lord Edward Thynne, an old roué and former MP for Frome. Townshend gained revenge by horsewhipping Thynne in 1881, for which he was briefly imprisoned before he reluctantly paid the fine. This humiliation and his declining finances forced Townshend to live much of his last two decades in Paris. Townshend died in 1899, leaving a personalty of just £3,600, and the title and the family estates of Raynham Park, Norfolk and Balls Park, Hertfordshire, passed to his only son John James Dudley Stuart Townshend, 6th Marquess Townshend (1866-1921).25Thompson, ‘Townshend’.