FERGUSON, Joseph (1788-1863), of Morton House, Carlise, Cumberland and 13 Devonshire Place, London

A dominant figure in Carlisle manufacturing and politics, Ferguson was the second surviving son of Robert Ferguson, a Cumberland linen check manufacturer.1Ferguson Brothers, Holme Head works, Carlisle, 1824-1924 (1924), 18; R.S. Ferguson, Cumberland and Westmoreland MPs from the Restoration to the Reform Bill of 1867 (1871), 352-3. At first in partnership with his father in the firm of Robert Ferguson and Sons, he left in 1824 to establish Ferguson Brothers, dyers and finishers of cotton goods at the Friggate works in Carlisle. He quickly became renowned for manufacturing ‘Silesias’, cotton goods with a ‘peculiarly soft, silky finish’, which were produced by beetling cotton in the same way as linen. ‘Silesias’, a Polish name that he chose to reflect his sympathies for the country’s struggle for independence, proved particularly popular in the United States, and in 1852 Ferguson completed the purchase of Holme Head works, in Denton Holme, near Carlisle.2Ferguson Brothers, Holme Head works, 18-23. An active supporter of workers’ education, in 1833 he founded the Carlisle mechanics institute, one of the first in England, and he established a school for his employees’ children at Holme Head. He was also a prominent philanthropist, giving away a fifth of his income to local charitable causes, and was elected mayor of Carlisle in 1836.3Ibid. A popular figure in the constituency, he largely owed his political influence to his role as a civic leader rather than as an employer, as even by 1868 his Holme Head works only employed 130 registered electors.4H.J. Hanham, Elections and party management: politics in the time of Gladstone and Disraeli (1978), 70-1.

At the 1852 general election Ferguson came forward as a Liberal for Carlisle. In his published address he objected to canvassing, arguing that ‘it may have a tendency to prevent the free and independent exercise of the will of the elector’ and at the nomination he professed ‘his unvarying attachment to the principles of free trade’.5Daily News, 6 July, 9 July 1852; Morning Chronicle, 10 July 1852. He was comfortably returned in second place. Although it was later stated that his ‘training had not been Parliamentary and his health was not suited to the air of St Stephen’s’, Ferguson was a regular attender.6Dr Londsdale, quoted in Ferguson, Cumberland and Westmoreland MPs, 353. In 1853 Ferguson attended 145 out of 257 divisions and in 1856 he attended 83 out of 198: Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853; J.P. Gassiot, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck: with a full analysis of the divisions of the House of Commons during the last session of Parliament (1857), 4. His known select committee service, though, was limited to the Harwich election petition: PP 1852-3 (449), xiii. 16. He divided against Disraeli’s defeated budget, 16 Dec. 1852, and for Gladstone’s subsequent proposals, 2 May 1853, and followed Palmerston into the division lobby on all foreign policy issues, voting against Disraeli’s motion critical of the Crimean war, 22 May 1855, Roebuck’s censure of the cabinet, 19 July 1855, and Cobden’s censure motion on Canton, 3 Mar. 1857. An advocate of parliamentary reform, he divided for the ballot, 14 June 1853, and the equalisation of the borough and county franchise, 19 Feb. 1857. He voted for church rate abolition, 16 May 1855, and was against the Maynooth grant, 15 Apr. 1856.

Ferguson dedicated his handful of known speeches to his Carlisle canonries bill. First introduced in March 1854, the bill proposed to suspend the appointment to the next vacant canonry of Carlisle, and appropriate the income to the ‘augmentation of certain ecclesiastical incumbencies’ in the city. According to Ferguson, ‘within the city of Carlisle too much attention altogether had been paid to the higher dignitaries of the Church, while those who occupied the lower stations were almost wholly unprovided for’.7Hansard, 21 Mar. 1854, vol. 131, cc. 1076-8. Anglican groups, who felt that the ‘very objectionable’ bill was an attack on the Dean and Chapter of Carlisle, criticised Ferguson, with one journal commenting that his proposals showed ‘into what blunders ignorant and self-confident reformers are apt to fall when they apply the axe and not the probe’.8Christian Remembrancer (1855), xxx. 177. Ferguson, defending the bill, claimed that ‘he did not blame the present Dean and Chapter, for they had no power to alter the present system’, but the bill was defeated 87-79 at its second reading, 3 May 1854. Insisting that his bill would ‘provide for the spiritual wants of a large and increasing population’, his renewed motion for a second reading narrowly passed, 102-98, 16 May 1855, but he subsequently decided to withdraw the bill, citing the lateness of the session, 1 Aug. 1855. Although he re-introduced the bill, 15 Feb 1856, it came to nothing.

At the 1857 general election Ferguson gave his equivocal support to Palmerston, defending his conduct over events at Canton, but accusing him of being ‘very deficient in the cause of reform: he ought to lead the way instead of being led’.9Daily News, 28 Mar. 1857. Following a difficult campaign that was undermined by local Liberal disunity over the Chinese war, Ferguson was defeated in third place. Thereafter he ceased ‘to play a prominent part in the public life’ of Carlisle.10Ferguson Brothers, Holme Head works, 26-7.

Ferguson died at Morton House, Carlisle, in February 1863, leaving effects valued at under £35,000.11England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index of wills and administration, 1861-1941, 15 May 1863. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Robert, Liberal MP for Carlisle, 1874-86, who, alongside his younger brother John Clark, assumed the management of Holme Head works, which survived the uncertainty in the cotton trade created by the American civil war.12Ferguson Brothers, Holme Head works, 22. Holme Head works continued to operate as a textile factory until 1991.