CONINGHAM, William (1815-1884), of 26 Sussex Square and 6 Lewes Crescent, Kemptown, Brighton, Suss.

Coningham has been neglected as an early English socialist, his credentials having been overshadowed by his privileged background, furious rows with the National Gallery, and episodes of erratic behaviour, which culminated in his eventual ostracism for standing against the rising star of the advanced Liberals Henry Fawcett at Brighton in 1868. Described with uncanny foresight by George Eliot in 1851 as ‘a disciple (not yet run mad) of Robert Owen’s’, who was also ‘a gentleman’ and ‘rather aristocratic’, Coningham was the eldest son of an Ulster clergyman with family connections to the West India trade, and the daughter of a Bengal army officer.1George Eliot Letters, ed. Gordon Haight (1954), i. 175. Born in Penzance and educated at Eton, he briefly attended Trinity, Cambridge, where he associated with the Cambridge Apostles, before purchasing a commission in a fashionable cavalry regiment in 1834. Following the death of his father two years later he bought himself out, ‘finding the society of the barrackyard was not congenial enough to his feelings’, as he later put it. Thereafter he ‘went abroad’, evidently on a substantial continental tour, before returning to England and marrying a clergyman’s daughter in 1840.2The Times, 26 June 1852.

Around this date he fell under the spell of his influential cousin John Sterling, the celebrated author and associate of Thomas Carlyle, with whom he also became friends. His correspondence with Sterling exploring ‘the received doctrines on Christianity’, a selection of which he later published, appears to have profoundly shaped his political outlook and interest in social problems.3Twelve Letters by John Sterling, ed. W. Coningham, 1851; The Spectator, 4 June 1859, p. 585. He also established a lifelong friendship with the noted artist John Linnell, whose portrait of Coningham was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1842.4F. Haskell, ‘William Coningham and his collection of old masters’, Burlington Magazine (1991), cxxxiii. 676-81, at 676.

Between 1843 and 1846 Coningham undertook a series of trips across Europe buying Italian old masters, many of them in Rome and often for a ‘small price’. By 1847, aged just 32, he had assembled what is now recognised as one of the finest collections in nineteenth-century England, most of it purchased ‘on his own initiative, without advice from dealers or other connoisseurs’.5Haskell, ‘Old masters’, 676-8, 680. His outspoken attacks in pamphlets and the press that year on the purchasing policy and cleaning methods of the National Gallery, however, coupled with his dismissal of the modern English school as ‘chalky absurdities’, set in motion a long-running dispute between himself and the art establishment, whom he accused of ‘imbecility’ for failing to recognise forgeries and of pandering to the ‘pruriency’ of the court and its German tastes.6W. Coningham, The Picture Cleaning in the National Gallery (1847), passim.; The Abuses of the National Gallery by Verax (1847), 22-30; E. Cleere, ‘Dirty Pictures: John Ruskin, Modern Painters and the Victorian Sanitisation of Fine Art’, Representations (2002), lxxii. 116-139, at 126. They in turn denounced him as ‘bigoted’ and an ‘amateur’.7Art Union Journal, 1 Jan. 1847. In June 1849, in a move that caused a stir and remains unaccounted for, he put his entire collection of old masters under the hammer, save only a ‘little Giotto’ of the Pentecost (now in the National Gallery). There is no evidence that he needed the money.8Haskell, ‘Old Masters’, 679-80.

By now he had made his first attempt to enter Parliament. A resident of Brighton’s fashionable Kemptown since the early 1840s, where he lived with his wife, two children, and a dozen servants, in 1847 he had accepted an invitation from the newly established Brighton Liberal Association to come forward as a second Liberal candidate at the general election, and secured the backing of the local Society of Friends (Quakers). On the hustings he eulogised Richard Cobden, cited his support for the secret ballot, triennial parliaments, and the abolition of the rate-paying clauses of the Reform Act, and promised to uphold the interests of workers. After a violent contest he was defeated in third place, amidst allegations that the Liberal and Tory sitting Members had worked in coalition against him.9Northern Star, 5 June; Hampshire Telegraph, 31 July 1847. He remained active in local politics, however, and in a public lecture at the town hall in 1851, which he later published, called for the establishment of working men’s co-operative associations as a means of adjusting ‘the proportional division of profits between capital, labour, and talent’ in ‘a more equitable manner’. Distancing himself from communism, where equality was enforced irrespective of individual property, and socialism, which had acquired a ‘vague and most uncertain meaning’, he stressed that the profits from co-operative associations were allocated in proportion to ‘investment and input’ and posed no threat to ‘individual liberty and the right of possession’, citing the recent example of the pianoforte co-operatives in Paris. He also recommended turning workhouses into ‘national schools of industry’ and abolishing the law of primogeniture.10W. Coningham, The Self-Organised Co-Operative Associations in Paris and the French Republic (1851), 3-4, 13, 17, 23.

Adopting a more strident tone at a meeting of the newly established Amalgamated Society of Engineers at Manchester in February 1852, which he chaired, he defended the railway engineers’ ‘right to combine’ against their ‘tyrannical employers’ in protest at overtime and the ‘most noxious and pernicious system of piecework’, adding that ‘the working classes not only paid an enormous proportion of the taxes of this country, but they had to suffer from the monopolies of the aristocracy’. That month he also presided at meetings of the striking railway engineers on the London, Brighton and South Coast railway, of which he subsequently became a director.11The Times, 14, 26 Feb. 1852. He declined an invitation to stand again at Brighton at the general election in July, citing the ‘peculiar’ nature of a constituency where men ‘professing to hold Radical opinions unite with Conservatives’, but instead came forward as a ‘people’s candidate’ for Westminster, where he was immediately branded ‘a Communist, an Anarchist, and a Republican’ by his opponents.12Morning Chronicle, 5 Mar.; The Times, 1, 2, 8, 9 July 1852. His own addresses outlined his support for manhood suffrage, the ballot, annual elections, equal electoral districts, the abolition of MPs’ property qualifications, the separation of church and state, and the provision of state education, but stressed his opposition to ‘any interferences whatever between the employers and the employed’, citing his belief that the ‘operative should, by the removal of all legislative restrictions, be enabled to elevate his condition and carry his labour to the best market’. After an ill-humoured contest, in which he had to rebut charges of being a Catholic, he finished bottom of the poll.13The Times, 26 June, 8 July 1852.

Coningham’s eventual return for Brighton at the 1857 general election owed much to his support for Palmerston over the Chinese war. In 1854 he had backed Palmerston’s ‘liberal notions of foreign policy’ in a series of outspoken letters to the press, insisting that the latter’s dismissal by Lord John Russell in 1851 had been ‘a preconcerted coup d’etat’ masterminded by Prince Albert and the Coburg family, whom he accused of ‘unconstitutional interference in the foreign affairs of the country’ for their own ‘Teutonic’ ends, and of suppressing a pamphlet on the affair.14W. Coningham, Lord Palmerston and Prince Albert. Letters by W. Coningham together with the ‘Suppressed Pamphlet’ entitled ‘Palmerston: what has he done? By one of the people (1854). Describing himself on the hustings as an ‘independent supporter’ of Palmerston and ‘an ardent political and commercial reformer’, he denounced the coalition which had brought the ministry down and was elected comfortably in second place.15The Times, 11, 13 Mar. 1857.

A frequent attender and a regular presence in the lobbies, Coningham initially rallied behind Palmerston, before breaking with him over the conspiracy to murder bill in February 1858. He voted steadily for most radical causes, including the ballot, triennial parliaments, extension of the franchise, and the abolition of church rates, and has been identified among a handful of ‘radical independents’ who regularly divided against the Liberal majority in 1861, most notably on issues of defence.16V. Cromwell, ‘Mapping the Political World of 1861: a multidimensional analysis of House of Commons’ division lists’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, vii (1982), 281-97, at 290-3. In his first known major speech, 22 May 1857, he opposed the grant of an annuity to the Princess Royal as she was about to marry a German and would therefore ‘become identified in interest with a foreign house and a foreign dynasty’. Revisiting another bugbear, 29 June 1857, he launched a scathing attack on the money being wasted on ‘rubbishy museums containing an omnium gatherum of the auction rooms of London and the trash of the old picture dealers’, and denounced the Royal Academy and National Gallery for pandering to the ‘teutonic element’ in their methods of art restoration, which had been introduced from Berlin by Gustavus Waagen. Speaking at length, 2 July, he accused the National Gallery’s former director Sir Charles Eastlake of ‘gross incompetence’ and ‘numberless intrigues’ with Waagen. In a reply sent to The Times, Waagen charged Coningham with ‘contemptible slander’ and questioned whether ‘a man who so far abuses his position ... as to make the House of Commons the field for attacks of a personal nature’ could be worthy of the trust bestowed on him.17The Times, 7 July 1857. Undeterred, Coningham campaigned steadily in similar terms against the National Gallery’s policies throughout the remainder of his career in the Commons. On the related theme of artistic taste, he also became a prominent critic of the commission of fine arts, which he wished to see abolished, and ‘the frightful monuments’ and ‘solecisms and deformities’ being erected to ‘celebrated men’ at Hyde Park corner and Trafalgar Square. The bulk of his venom, however, was reserved for the ‘barbarous’ and ‘European’ Gothic style adopted for public buildings, including the ‘bastard Gothic’ House of Commons, whose ‘architecture gave at the maximum of cost the minimum of accommodation, and, at the same time, a degree of darkness which, in London, was most inconvenient’.18Hansard, 4 June 1858, vol. 150. c. 1583; 11, 18 Feb. 1859, vol. 152, cc. 269, 523; 3 Aug. 1860, vol. 160, cc. 678-9.

Coningham’s other contributions included suggestions for saving army expenditure, especially that relating to the manufacture of small arms, a subject on which he had previously undertaken ‘a series of careful experiments’ relating to the conversion of muskets into rifles.19See The Times, 14 Jan. 1852. He was one of those who argued for censuring the Derby ministry over Lord Ellenborough’s handling of the Indian mutiny, 21 May 1858, but in the face of Whig opposition was unable to persuade Edward Cardwell to press home his resolution on the issue.20The Parliamentary Diaries of Sir John Trelawny, ed. T. A. Jenkins (1994), 44. He made a number of complaints about the restricted opening hours of the British Museum, which prevented visits by the working classes, and took a leading part in the campaign against the London sewage scheme proposed by the Metropolitan Board of Works, which he believed would be too costly and unlikely to purify the Thames.21Hansard, 19, 22 July 1858, vol. 151, cc. 1724-5, 1929, 1949. Backing a motion by Sir John Trelawny for an inquiry into the nature and privileges of the household guards, 17 Mar. 1859, he was heckled and jeered, prompting him to give those ‘who were so ready to indulge in exclamations due warning that, although he might be foiled on the present occasion, he would come back to the charge and renew his onslaught on privileges [Cries of "Oh, oh!"]’. ‘Coningham fairly broke down’, Trelawny noted in his diary, adding, ‘he had come in when the debate was nearly over, and consequently was hardly in a situation to speak with effect’.22Trelawny Diaries, 73. He was in the majority against the Derby ministry’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859.

Re-elected for Brighton with a comfortable majority at the ensuing general election, he was present at the meeting of Liberal MPs at Willis’s rooms, 6 June 1859, when he spoke briefly against adopting a hostile policy towards France.23The Times, 7 June 1859; Trelawney Diaries, 81. During his last parliament Coningham became increasingly preoccupied with economy and retrenchment, making regular interjections on the supplies and military estimates. He supported but was unimpressed with the Liberal ministry’s county franchise bill, explaining that he ‘was a sincere Reformer, thoroughly opposed to the shams and hypocrisy by which the question of the amendment of the representation of the people of England was now too much disfigured, and one who firmly believed that at no distant day those who trifled with great questions like that would be called to an account in a summary manner’, 13 Mar. 1861. Repeatedly interrupted whilst speaking against the night poaching prevention bill, a measure he simply ‘could not believe’, 23 July 1862, he earned a reproof from the Speaker for warning Members that they would ‘repent of what they were doing’. ‘Was it thought that because the Government had turned its back upon reform, the people had become indifferent to having their interests fully represented in Parliament?’, he retorted, to more heckling. Commenting on an exchange between Coningham and the under-secretary for war Hartington over the ‘ill-treatment’ of the paymaster Smales and Colonel Crawley of the 6th dragoons, 25 June 1863, Trelawney noted that Coningham, whom he had hitherto considered a speaker of ‘minor order’, ‘for once catechized a minister and seemed to have the best of it’.24Trelawny Diaries, 133, 259. On 3 July he reported another fracas on the issue involving Coningham and Ralph Bernal Osborne:

The sun gets hotter, and debates follow suit. Coningham and Osborne have been fighting over Crawley’s case. O. interrupted C. on a supposed point of order. C. doubted whether O. was sober. O. doubted whether C. was sane ... The two combatants damaged themselves and the House.25Hansard, 3 July 1863, vol. 172 cc. 230-40; Trelawny Diaries, 262;

Deeply suspicious of the government’s attitude towards the Confederacy, and their motives in considering to recognise its independence, one of Coningham’s last known speeches, to an inattentive House, was to refute the existence of any sympathy among the British working classes for the Southern States, even in the cotton manufacturing districts, 10 July 1863.26L. Blanc, Letters on England (1866), i. 256; Hansard, 10 July 1863, vol 172 col. 561. ‘Coningham spoke’, Trelawny recorded, ‘lashing himself into a fury. He begins quietly. Gradually, the House interrupts. Then he gets off his balance, and for a time seems almost insane’.27Trelawny Diaries, 264.

In January 1864 it was reported that Coningham would retire for reasons of ill-health and on 6 Feb. 1864 he vacated his seat, taking the stewardship of Northstead. Satirizing the ‘main points of Mr. Coningham’s political biography’, the Tory Standard listed his ‘strong opinion about a picture of Apollo and Marsyas’, ‘general antipathy to Sir Charles Eastlake’, and discontent ‘with everything, the British constitution included’.28The Standard, 22 Jan., 17 Feb. 1864. He was evidently suffering from some form of mental breakdown and in later years exhibited clear symptoms of acute depression.29Haskell, ‘Old Masters’, 676, 679-80. His attempt to return to politics by running against Henry Fawcett at Brighton in 1868 backfired disastrously, leaving him bottom of the poll and ostracised by his former allies, among them John Stuart Mill, who in his speeches alluded to Coningham having been corrupted or gone native as an MP. ‘You will be as indignant as I am at the attempt to turn out Fawcett’, Mill informed one correspondent, relating with astonishment how Coningham had actually reproached Fawcett ‘for wanting to punish severely an elector who is bribed’.30Public and Parliamentary Speeches by J. S. Mill, eds. J. Robson and B. Kinzer (1988), xxviii. 350-1; Later Letters of J. S. Mill, 1849-73, eds. F. Mineka and D. Lindley (1972), xvi. 1465. Writing to Linnell in 1876, Coningham’s wife described ‘how entirely shattered his health and spirits have become; and how (to see if it would do him any good) we have wandered, from one place to another; with no cheering result’.31Mrs. Coningham to J. Linnell, 17 Dec. 1876, cited in Haskell, ‘Old Masters’, 680.

Coningham died after a ‘long illness’ in December 1884, leaving his estate, proved under £6,000, to his wife and only surviving child William John Capper Coningham, an Indian army officer (1843-99).32Isle of Wight Observer, 27 Dec. 1884.