FOSTER, William Orme (1814-1899), of Stourton Casle, near Stourbridge, Worcestershire

An immensely rich Black Country ironmaster, Foster safeguarded the interests of his trade as MP for South Staffordshire in the 1850s and 1860s. A moderate Liberal, Foster ‘ranked among the dissentient Liberals who found their way into … the Cave of Adullam’ during the debates on reform in the mid-1860s. This contributed to his defeat in 1868, but ‘he had not, however, much liking for parliamentary life’.1The Times, 3 Oct. 1899.

Foster’s grandfather Henry (1743-1816) was married to the widow of Gabriel Bradley, whose son had founded an ironworks at Stourbridge. Foster’s father William (1784-1861) sold his share in John Bradley & Company to his brother James Foster (1786-1853) and half-brother John Bradley in 1813.2N. Mutton, ‘Foster, William Orme (1814-99)’, Dictionary of business biography (1984), ii. 409-11 (at 409); Burke’s landed gentry (1908), 619. Before 1850 Foster worked as an agent for his uncle James, MP for Bridgnorth, 1831-2, in charge of around thirty separate mining establishments. In 1843-4 Foster served as a director of Stourbridge and Kidderminster Banking Company that had been founded by his uncle in the previous decade.3N. Mutton, ‘The Foster family: a study of a midland industrial dynasty, 1786-1899’, Univ. of London Ph. D. (1974), 139-40. On his uncle’s death in 1853, Foster inherited a fortune of £700,000 and became the head of the company; on his father’s death in 1860 he received another £60,000.4Mutton, ‘Foster, William Orme’, 410. Continuing the system established by his uncle, Foster relied on agents to manage a geographically dispersed business including coal and iron mines, blast furnaces, foundries, and engineering and finishing plants, most of it based in Worcestershire, Staffordshire and Shropshire.

By the early 1860s, when the business was at its peak, the firm was the largest producer of wrought iron in the Black Country and among the major producers of pig iron, and its assets included five mines, two blast furnaces, seven forges and two foundries and engineering plants.5Mutton, ‘Foster, William Orme’, 410; Mutton, ‘Foster family’, 115. According to the firm’s historian, Foster was a secretive and autocratic businessman who relied solely on his lawyer for advice and communicated with his agents through correspondence rather than face to face contact.6Ibid., 116, 147; Mutton, ‘Foster, William Orme’, 411. Although he was a member of the South Staffordshire Ironmasters’ Association he declined to become chairman in 1853. He was a founder member of the British Iron and Steel Institute in 1868, but did not assume the power or influence on trade bodies that his industrial position might have merited.7Mutton, ‘Foster family’, 127-8.

Foster was linked with the vacancy for South Staffordshire in 1853, but did not stand, leading his fellow ironmaster, William Mathews, to write critically:

Foster’s position in the staple trade of the district, with his large fortune, & no inconsiderable landed property would, as perfect these essentials, have made him a capital candidate but there his pretensions end – the requisite enlargement of head & heart are wanting & hence his refusal to put on his armour.8William Matthews to Lord Hatherton, Staffordshire Record Office, D260/M/7/5/27/26.

Foster did, however, second the successful Whig candidate at the 1853 South Staffordshire by-election.9The Times, 16 Dec. 1853. At the 1857 general election the Ironmasters’ Association decided to return one of the candidates in what was a solidly Liberal constituency. Foster was preferred by the Association to William Matthews, for apparently having ‘less extreme’ views, even though his rival had long been one of the leading organisers of Black Country Liberalism.10Staffordshire Advertiser, 21 Mar. 1857. Foster declared support for Palmerston and the redistribution of seats, and was returned unopposed after Mathews, always a reluctant candidate, withdrew.11Staffordshire Advertiser, 28 Mar. 1857, 4 Apr. 1857.

In his first session, perhaps surprisingly in view of his later scepticism towards electoral reform, Foster backed the ballot and voiced support for the divorce and matrimonial causes bill, 18 Aug. 1857.12Hansard, 18 Aug. 1861, vol. 147, c. 1800. He was among the minority of members on the committee investigating the law and practice regarding the rating of mines, who argued that they were currently exempt from rates.13PP 1857 session 2 (241), xi. 533, 535, 542. Foster was absent from the votes on the conspiracy to murder bill in 1858, but in the same session cast votes in favour of Jewish relief and the abolition of church rates, and against Spooner’s anti-Maynooth motion. He opposed Derby’s 1859 reform bill and at the ensuing election, when he was unopposed, explained that while he approved of the proposed extension of the county electorate, the borough franchise clauses were inadequate. He considered the ‘fancy’ franchises linked to education tests or savings to be impracticable and argued that a £6 ratable or £8 rental qualification ‘would comprise a large and better proportion of the working classes’, widen the base of the constitution and ‘add to the strength of the superstructure’.14Birmingham Daily Post, 4 May 1859. These views anticipated his position in the later debates on reform. As Robert Saunders has recently shown, Liberal backbenchers drew fine distinctions between rental and ratable franchises, with many of the Adullamites arguing that the latter offered a more secure basis for extending the urban electorate.15R. Saunders, Democracy and the vote in British politics, 1848-1867: the making of the Second Reform Act (2011), 185-7, 217-21.

Foster backed the 1861 borough franchise bill, and the following year spoke in favour of simplifying the licensing laws to end the anomaly of ‘having four different licences’ for the sale of alcohol, 7 Apr. 1862.16Hansard, 7 Apr. 1862, vol. 166, c. 697. He opposed Edward Baines’s 1865 borough franchise bill, which he described as unsatisfactory at the subsequent general election, when he was again unchallenged. He added that ‘he was opposed to any project of reform which would have the effect of doubling the constituency and swamping that middle class who elected the Parliament by which so many useful legislative enactments had been passed’.17The Times, 30 June 1865, 15 July 1865.

Foster backed Kelly’s motion to prioritise the reduction and repeal of malt duty, 17 Apr. 1866. He supported the second reading of the Liberal government’s reform bill in the same session, opposing Grosvenor’s amendment for a parallel redistribution scheme, 27 Apr. 1866. However, in line with his earlier expressed views, he sided with other dissident Liberals and Conservatives in favour of Dunkellin’s amendment for a ratable instead of a rental franchise, which turned out Russell’s government, 18 June 1866. However, in the debates on the 1867 representation of the people bill he generally voted with the majority of Liberals in favour of a reduced residency qualification, enfranchising urban leaseholders and copyholders, and increasing the representation of the largest towns at the expense of the smallest boroughs.

In 1866-7 Foster served on the select committee that considered miners’ grievances. In the votes on the report, he generally took an employer’s view of the question. He supported a twelve hour day for those over the age of sixteen years and was in the majority that rejected measuring the work of miners by weight, subject to oversight by inspectors of weights and measures.18PP 1866 (431), xiv. 3; 1867 (496), xiii. 2, 22-3. He opposed fencing off working or pumping pits or mine shafts and backed the current system of selecting coroners’ juries for accidents, which miners complained was rigged against them.19Ibid., 24, 27. He backed Gladstone’s Irish church resolutions, 3 Apr. 1868.

Foster’s wayward votes on reform led to his defeat for the new constituency of West Staffordshire at the 1868 general election and he did not seek a return to the House thereafter. In 1870 he bought the Apley Park estate in Shropshire from the Whitmore family for £507,000, which allowed him to return his heir William Henry Foster (1846-1924) for Bridgnorth, 1870-85.20H. Hanham, Elections and party management: politics in the time of Disraeli and Gladstone (1978), 48; Mutton, ‘Foster family’, 82, 213. Foster consolidated his industrial properties during the depression of the later nineteenth century. Astonishingly, ‘from 1874 to 1895 he received not a penny of profit from any of his industrial enterprises’.21Mutton, ‘Foster, William Orme’, 410; Mutton, ‘Foster family’, 159-60. However, his deep pockets were able to absorb any losses, especially as he had invested much of his fortune in land and stocks. His last annual balance sheet, dated 31 Dec. 1898, showed assets worth £3,100,000, with investments, mostly in railway stocks, accounting for £1,900,000 and land just under £1,000,000.22Mutton, ‘Foster family’, 234. Railway stock accounted for 46% of Foster’s total assets and 72% of his shares. On his death in 1899 he left a personalty of over £2,500,000 and the works were worth £155,000.23Mutton, ‘Foster, William Orme’, 410-11. He was succeeded by William Henry, who had disposed of the remainder of the family business by 1919.24Ibid., 410-11. Foster’s estates in county Wexford, where he served as high sheriff in 1876, were sold off under Irish land legislation after 1903.25Mutton, ‘Foster family’, 214-15.