SMITH, Sir John Mark Frederick (1790-1874), of 39 Hyde Park Square, London and Buckland House, Dover, Kent

Smith’s distinguished career in the royal engineers and official roles regulating Victorian railway development have been well documented.1R. H. Vetch, rev.J. Falkner, ‘Smith, Sir John Mark Frederick’, Oxford DNB [www.oxforddnb.com]. His nine year stint in the Commons, however, has received less attention, despite its inauspicious start with a well-publicised attempt to prosecute him for electoral bribery.

Born into an impeccable military lineage, whose members included his great-uncle Count Von Kalckreuth (1737-1818), a commander-in-chief of the Prussian army during the Napoleonic wars, and his father, a commander of the Royal Artillery, Smith took a commission in the royal engineers in 1805 after passing out from Woolwich. He served with distinction in the Peninsular wars between 1807 and 1812, taking an active part in the siege and capture of Ischia, Procida, Zante and Santa Maura, for which he was mentioned in despatches, before returning to Woolwich as adjutant to the sappers.2Army List (1870), 122. He rose steadily through the ranks of the corps thereafter, assuming command of its London district in 1830, in which capacity ‘he made frequent reports’ to William IV.3Minutes and proceedings of the Institute of Civil Engineers (1875), xxxix. 299. The following year, in recognition of his ‘services in the Mediterranean’, as he later explained, he was knighted.4Morning Chronicle, 2 Mar. 1853. He became an usher of the privy chamber in 1833 and retained his place in the royal household until his death. On 29 Feb. 1836 he received £155 14s 2d compensation for six manumitted slaves held at Port Royal, Jamaica.5Information from Legacies of British Slave Ownership project [www.lbs.org].

Smith’s contribution to railways included a brief spell as inspector-general of railways, 1840-1, chairing a royal commission on the desirability of a uniform railway gauge, 1845-6, and serving on that appointed to investigate London’s termini in 1846. In 1842 he was made director of the royal engineers’ base at Chatham, where he had been stationed for at least nine years, and in 1851 took command of the entire southern district, which included the bases at Chatham and Portsmouth. He refrained from becoming a candidate for Chatham during this period, as he later recalled, ‘not wishing to oppose’ the Whig courtier George Stevens Byng, who was the son-in-law of his ‘friend’ Lord Anglesey, the former Irish viceroy.6Morning Chronicle, 2 Mar. 1853. Following Byng’s retirement at the 1852 general election, however, Smith came forward as a supporter of the beleaguered Derby ministry with treasury support, describing himself as ‘a true Conservative’ and the ‘poor man’s friend’. Aided by personal appearances from the admiralty secretary Augustus Stafford, Smith defeated his Liberal opponent with ease, amidst allegations of ‘unscrupulous’ bribery and corruption ‘by means of government patronage’.7Morning Post, 21 Feb. 1853; N. Gash, Politics in the age of Peel (1953), 446. A petition in these terms was lodged against his return.

Meanwhile, Smith followed the Derby ministry into the lobbies on free trade, 27 Nov. 1852, their policy in Ireland, 30 Nov., 7 Dec. 1852, and their budget, 16 Dec. 1852, the issue which brought the ministry down. A committee was appointed to investigate his election, 17 Feb. 1853, and after a well-publicised inquiry, in which he strenuously denied any wrong-doing, he was unseated for bribing an elector with a position in the post office worth £50 a year, 7 Mar. 1853.8Morning Chronicle, 2, 8 Mar. 1853. Demands for his criminal prosecution followed, but Smith’s defence, that the voter had already given a ‘binding’ pledge to support him five months before the election, which had settled the matter long before any appointment, found a sympathetic ear in the Commons. Debating whether to prosecute, 3 May 1853, it was argued that Smith, who was ‘inexperienced’ in elections, ‘had not intended to bribe’ and ‘had not the slightest notion that he was doing anything illegal’, believing that when ‘a promise to vote had been given, it was possible for the voter to recede from it’. Pressed to comment on behalf of the government, Lord John Russell lamented the election committee’s lack of clarity over Smith’s culpability, but suggested that a failure to act when so many electors were regularly prosecuted would be ‘fatal to the reputation of the House’. Left to a free vote, however, the Commons decided 188 to 78 against Smith’s prosecution.9Hansard, 3 May 1853, vol. 126, cc. 1049-75. Unrepentant, but unable to stand in the ensuing Chatham by-election, Smith and his Conservative supporters instead brought forward his younger brother Leicester Viney Vernon, another sapper, who narrowly defeated Smith’s former opponent in another controversial campaign.10Morning Post, 7 Apr. 1853.

At the 1857 general election Smith was spoken of for Portsmouth, but in the event he stood again for Chatham after his brother, who had become unpopular for opposing Palmerston over the Chinese war, offered elsewhere.11Caledonian Mercury, 16 Mar. 1857. Stopping short of outright support for Palmerston, but making his leanings clear, Smith described himself as an ‘independent man, untrammelled by party’, who was determined to ‘uphold the dignity of the country and to maintain unsullied the honour of the British flag’. He also voiced support for the abolition of church rates.12Morning Chronicle, 18 Mar. 1857. After a hard-fought campaign against a Liberal he was elected with a slim majority.

A fairly regular attender, Sir Frederick Smith, as he was usually known, duly gave general support to Palmerston in the months ahead, breaking with Disraeli, the Conservative leader in the Commons, on a number of issues, including church rates, 17 Feb. 1858, and the conspiracy to murder bill which brought the ministry down, 19 Feb. 1858. In the first of many interventions on military matters, he offered advice about how to deal with the Indian mutiny, urging the deployment of ‘sappers and miners’ to create ‘a breach’ that would facilitate the recapture of Delhi, 20 Aug. 1857.13Hansard, 20 Aug. 1857, vol. 147, cc. 1901-2. He rallied behind the Conservatives following their appointment to office in 1858, voting steadily with them on most issues and speaking in support of their army reforms, 1 June 1858, although he continued to back the abolition of church rates. He was in the minority for the ministry’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859, but later defended the character of the ‘dockyard artisans’ which that measure had proposed to disfranchise, prompting ‘a laugh’, 4 Apr. 1859.

At the ensuing general election he was re-elected for Chatham with government support. Thereafter, following the change of ministry, he was absent from many major divisions, including those on church rates and reform of the borough and county franchises, although he divided steadily against the ballot. He remained a regular contributor to debate on military matters, however, taking issue with Charles Wood’s proposed reorganisation of the Indian army, 2 July 1860, questioning the utility and cost of additional fortifications along the south coast, 13 Aug. 1860, recommending open competition for appointments to the royal marines and navy, 8 Feb. 1861, and accusing ministers of ‘wasting money in the erection of barracks’, 25 June 1861. On 6 Mar. 1862 he criticised the cost and efficiency of the Armstrong gun. Explaining his rationale for calling ministers to account, he disclaimed any ‘feeling of hostility’ towards them, 3 June 1862, insisting that he was only motivated by ‘the defence or non-defence of the country’. His frequent spats with the secretary to the admiralty Lord Clarence Paget often assumed a partisan hue, and on one occasion resulted in a written attack on him by Paget’s nominee as chief constructor of the navy, whose competence he had questioned, which was ruled a breach of privilege.14Hansard, 26 Feb. 1863, vol. 169, cc. 798-802. Smith deemed Paget’s decision to erect a barracks at Portsmouth without consulting the war department ‘a most flagrant instance of neglect’, explaining that ‘in the whole course of his military experience, he had never found a barrack worse situated’, 2 May 1864. In another attack he moved unsuccessfully for a commission to inquire into the system of building warships, observing that the number of guns ‘was never settled till after the vessel was launched’, instead of the ‘rational course of building a ship suitable for a definite battery’, 19 July 1864.15Hansard, 19 July 1864, vol. 176, cc. 1749-7.

Another frequent refrain was the lack of progress on creating harbours of refuge, as recommended by the various select committees to which Smith had been appointed since 1857, and the royal commission on which he served from 1858-9. Speaking at great length on the issue, 17 Apr. 1863, Smith moved unsuccessfully for work to begin on specific harbours, noting that:

In very early life he himself had been wrecked, and the impression on his mind of what he then saw had never left him. He felt most deeply for sailors when exposed to dangers in a position in which there was no refuge at hand.16Hansard, 17 Apr. 1863, vol. 170, cc. 308-27.

Resurrecting the issue in his last known speech, 13 June 1865, he contended that an annual outlay of £134,000 would be sufficient for the construction of harbours ‘that would lead to the saving of a vast amount of life; and it would be niggardly, on the part of this great country, to refuse so moderate an expenditure for the accomplishment of so desirable an object’. His motion was defeated by 99 to 111.17Hansard, 13 June 1865, vol 180, cc. 164-78.

At the 1865 general election Smith ‘succumbed’ to the treasury influence at Chatham and quit the field after a disappointing canvass. Commenting on the Conservatives’ ‘severe losses’ that July, the Hampshire Advertiser noted how Sir John Charles Dalrymple Hay and Sir Frederick Smith, ‘both obnoxious to the government from their great knowledge of naval and military affairs, and for their exposures of government shortcomings, had both gone to the wall’.18Hampshire Telegraph, 15 July 1865.

Smith published a number of military works, including translations of Marshal Marmont’s The Present State of the Turkish Empire (1839) and the French army’s Military Course of Engineering at the Regimental School at Arras (1850), as well as his Journal of the operations in mining carried on under the direction of Lieutenant-Colonel Sir J. M. F. Smith (1844). He achieved general in 1863 and died childless at his London home in Notting Hill Gate in November 1874, leaving estate valued under £3,000.19The Times, 25 Nov. 1874.