WARING, Charles (1827-1887), of 29 Norfolk Street, Park Lane; 6 Albany, Westminster and 2 Grosvenor Square, Mdx.

Waring, ‘a hard-headed businessman’ of ‘phenomenal energy’, was the ‘life and soul’ of Waring Brothers, a leading firm of building contractors responsible for some of the largest civil engineering projects of the Victorian period, including London’s St. Pancras station and numerous railways, both at home and abroad.1Pall Mall Gazette, 1 Sept. 1887; Hampshire Advertiser, 3 Sept. 1887. His methods in obtaining and executing contracts often involved ‘sharp practice’, sometimes even ‘fraud’, according to a judgement of his activities produced a century after the event, but although he was implicated in various railway construction scandals during his lifetime, he was never convicted of acting illegally.2See L. Popplewell, Bournemouth Railway History: An Exposure of Victorian Engineering Fraud (1974), 56-115, 206-7.

Waring’s father, a contemporary of George Stephenson, was a successful builder and later a railway contractor, who around 1820 purchased Haworth Hall, the principal seat in Brinsworth, near Rotherham.3Hampshire Advertiser, 3 Sept. 1887; http://www.rotherhamweb.co.uk/h/haworth.htm; 1851 census. Waring began working alongside his father ‘whilst still in his teens’ and at the time of the 1841 census, aged 15, was residing in Dove Street, York, as a ‘civil engineer’.4Hampshire Advertiser, 3 Sept. 1887; 1841 census. In York he established a partnership with his two elder brothers William and Henry, and in 1846 tendered for a contract on the East Lincolnshire Railway.5Popplewell, Bournemouth Railway History, 62. Over the ensuing decades the brothers completed a number of lucrative foreign projects, including construction of the Central Peninsular Railway in Portugal (1856), a contract which was worth £800,000, as well as railways in Ceylon (1858), Brazil (1860), Sicily (1862) and East India (1862), and prestige projects such as the Luxembourg ‘Passerelle’ viaduct (1861).6Daily News, 12 Nov. 1862; http://bsahistory.blogspot.com/2008/02/charles-waring-bsa-trustee.html. Waring was in Paris with the journalist George Augustus Sala during the coup d’tat of 1852, and the following year commenced work on various lines in Belgium and France, for which he was later awarded the order of Leopold for his services to ‘railway communication’.7Hampshire Advertiser, 3 Sept. 1887; Essex Standard, 10 Feb. 1864. It was later said that ‘with the exception of the late Mr. Brassey’, Waring’s company ‘probably built more railroads in foreign countries, especially in South America and Transylvania, than any other firm of contractors’.8Pall Mall Gazette, 1 Sept. 1887.

Waring’s work at home was less conspicuous, but included sections of the Midland Railway and Kensington Railway, parts of the London underground, as well as the Dorset Central line (1858), whose directors included the MP for Poole Henry Danby Seymour and Sir Ivor Guest of Canford, one of Poole’s leading proprietors.9http://bsahistory.blogspot.com/2008/02/charles-waring-bsa-trustee.html; T. McDonald, ‘A political man: the political aspirations of William Taylor Haly’, Journal of Liberal Democrat History (2001), xxxi. 12-15, at 14. It was through this connection that Waring, ‘a shrewd, genial Yorkshireman of intellectual tastes and parliamentary ambitions’, became involved in a scheme to add a branch line from Poole to Bournmouth.10T. H. S. Escott, Anthony Trollope: his work, associates and literary originals (1913), 174. Poole’s existing railway station was a ferry crossing away from the town centre and with Seymour’s support, in March 1865 Waring obtained the necessary permissions for an Act of Parliament for the ‘much needed’ link and a more convenient station, and became a director of the new company.11McDonald, ‘Political man’, 14; F. Warren, ‘Early Railway Days in Dorset’, Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society Proceedings lv (1933), 76-85; Bradshaw’s Railway Manual (1869), 272. The previous month Waring, with the approval of both Seymour and Guest, had announced that he intended to come forward as a second Liberal for Poole at the next dissolution, evidently with the popularity of the new line in mind.12The Standard, 9 Feb. 1865. Around this time Waring also contributed to the launch of the highly influential Fortnightly Review, founded by Anthony Trollope. Recalling his involvement, one of Trollope’s biographers noted that Waring was

A man about town, living in The Albany, as generous and eclectic in his bachelor hospitalities as, after his marriage, in the cosmopolitan banquets, which during the eighties gave his house, 3 Grosvenor Square, a place of its own in the chronicle of the London season.13Escott, Trollope, 174.

At the 1865 general election Waring duly offered for Poole alongside Seymour, as a supporter of Lord Palmerston. After a contest against a Conservative, who accused him of siphoning off money from railway contracts, he was returned in second place with a comfortable margin.14The Examiner, 1, 8 July 1865; The Times, 5 July 1865; Reynolds’s Newspaper, 9 July 1865. A lax attender, who is not known to have spoken in debate, when present Waring supported the Liberals on most issues, voting for the abolition of church rates, 7 Mar., 13 June 1866, the abolition of university tests, 21 Mar. 1866, and for Gladstone’s abortive reform bill, 27 Apr., 4, 11, 14, 18 June 1866. In a vote possibly reflective of business interests, he was in the minority for the second reading of Irish railway bill, 14 Mar. 1866. He generally followed Gladstone into the lobbies on the Derby ministry’s reform bill the following year, but he cast wayward votes against the partial disfranchisement of boroughs (such as Poole) with a population of less than 10,000, 31 May 1867, and for the complete disfranchisement of those under 5,000, 3 June 1867. He loyally backed Gladstone over Irish church disestablishement throughout 1868. His last known vote was in the minority for prohibiting the use of licensed premises for election purposes, 22 July 1868.

At the 1868 general election Waring offered again for Poole, which had been reduced to a single member by the 1867 Reform Act. Now opposed by the Canford interest, which had rallied behind a Conservative family candidate, and accused of ‘swindling’ by a hostile local paper, which incorrectly cited The Times as its source, he was defeated.15Popplewell, Bournemouth Railway History, 75, 206-7. But see also The Times, 14 Nov. 1868. ‘The navvy has gone’, rejoiced his opponents.16Poole Pilot, 1 Dec. 1868. Over the next few years he completed more projects abroad, including construction of the Honduras Railway (1870) and the Uruguay Central Railway (1871), but continued to cultivate the borough.17http://bsahistory.blogspot.com/2008/02/charles-waring-bsa-trustee.html. ‘One day he was canvassing in Poole, and another seeing ministers in Vienna, negotiating for concessions’, it was later observed.18Hampshire Advertiser, 3 Sept. 1887. His station at Poole Junction was eventually completed in 1872 and the new railway to the outskirts of Bournemouth, which was christened ‘Waring’s line’, opened in June 1874.19Warren, ‘Early Railway Days in Dorset’, 76-85.

At that year’s general election Waring, with his line nearing completion, ‘carried Poole by storm’ against his former rival, only to be unseated on petition a few months later for treating carried out by his agents.20Hampshire Advertiser, 6, 13 May 1874, 3 Sept. 1887. His attempt to return his brother William in his place at the ensuing by-election was scuppered by the latter’s illness.21Popplewell, Bournemouth Railway History, 99. He offered again for Poole as a Liberal at the 1880 general election, but was narrowly defeated. He was also unsuccessful in 1885, when, following the abolition of the Poole constituency, he stood for Shrewsbury as a Liberal.22Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 22 Nov. 1885. McCalmont’s Parliamentary Pollbook, eds. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (1971), 215, incorrectly identifies him as a Conservative. His partnership with his brothers was dissolved ‘by mutual consent’, 29 Apr. 1880.23London Gazette, 30 Apr. 1880.

Waring, a noted art collector and contributor to various journals, including Vanity Fair and the Fortnightly Review, which he considered purchasing in the 1880s, wrote a number of notable works on railways.24The late Mr. Waring’s pictures by F. G. S. (1888); C. Waring, Somethings in America, set forth in thirteen letters [Reprinted from “Vanity Fair.”] (1880); Escott, Trollope, 174; C. Waring, Brazil and her Railways (1883). In his last, The State Purchase of Railways, he advocated a scheme of nationalisation, arguing that ‘these roads, which are the arteries of commerce, should be in the future operated for the sake of the industries which support them, and not, as now, merely in view of the dividends which may accrue to a small body of shareholders’.25Pall Mall Gazette, 1 Sept. 1887. Shortly after its publication in 1887, Waring died from an ‘affliction of the heart’ at Wycombe Abbey, High Wycombe, which he had been renting from the marquis of Lincolnshire.26Ibid. By his will, dated 6 Apr. 1866 and proved under £552,270, the bulk of his estate passed to his three children George, Walter, and Geraldine Rose, who received a four, two and one-seventh share respectively. His second son Walter (1876-1930), an army officer who served with distinction in the Boer War and First World War, was Liberal MP for Banffshire, 1907-1918. Thereafter he sat as a Coalition Liberal for Blaydon, 1918-22, as a National Liberal for Berwick and Haddington, 1922-23, and held various secretarial posts, including as private secretary to the war secretary, 1919-22.