THOMAS, Hawkes (1778-1858), of Himley House, Staffs. of 55 Lower Brook Street, London, Mdx.

The eldest son of a Dudley manufacturer, Hawkes was maternally descended from the ancient family of the Wootons of Wooton Hall, Staffordshire, who lost their extensive family estates under King Charles II.1R.B. Mosse, The Parliamentary Guide (1837), 174. He and his three brothers inherited their father’s business concerns in 1800. The glassworks, founded in 1766, went to Thomas and his brother George Wright Hawkes, who had jointly managed the firm for several years prior to their father’s death.2R.J. Charleston, W. Evans & A.E.A. Werner, ‘Studies in Glass History and Design’ (1968), 43. Hawkes’s father was also in the nail trade and had £2,800 capital invested in a blast furnace. He was treasurer of the Dudley Canal Company until 1796: Hawkes wills and settlements: Dudley Archives, DSCAM/5/8/7/12; C. Hadfield, The Canals of the West Midlands (1969), 75, 109; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 1 Feb. 1800; Nat. Probate Calendar, Index of Wills, 1858-1966 (will dated 9 Aug. 1800, executed 21 Mar. 1888). The company specialised in the export of flint glass to Russia and the United States and, having established business interests at Liverpool around 1805, Hawkes married the heiress of a salt works at Garston, Lancashire, in 1814.3T. Matsumura, The Labour Aristocracy Revisited: The Victorian Flint Glass Makers 1850-80 (1983), 29; Journal of the Society of Glass Technology, xiii (1920), 231; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 27 June 1857. Around 1823 his wife disposed of the manor of Garston to the Garston Land Company: ‘Townships: Garston’, in W. Farrer & J. Brownhill (eds.), A History of the County of Lancaster (1907), iii. 120-8. After re-establishing his glass company following the death of his brother in 1821, Hawkes became frustrated with the excise duties on glass and quit the family firm in 1827, only to return to the business two years later.4‘History of Hawkes & Co. and Successor Companies 1766-1843’: http://theantiquarian.us.Hist. By 1833 the firm was the second largest manufacturing concern in the Dudley-Stourbridge area, and expanded further in 1838, becoming ‘the main exponent of acid etching’, and a pioneer in the manufacture of pressed glass.5Ibid.; L. Watson, Understanding Antiques (1993), 127; T.T. Harman & W. Shovell, Shovell’s Dictionary of Birmingham (2006), 375.

Alongside his business interests Hawkes was a landed proprietor in Worcestershire, Lancashire and south Staffordshire, where he resided near Dudley, and was a captain of a local troop of yeomanry cavalry and a county magistrate.6The Assembled Commons; or, parliamentary biographer (1838), 113; The Times, 18 July 1836. He is said to have aimed ‘at high society and a seat in parliament’, albeit ‘without having the means sufficient for the one, or the ability desirable for the other’,7Daily News, 12 Nov. 1849. and was approached to stand for Stafford ‘on independent principles’ at the 1830 general election. However, after being ‘brought into the town in triumph’, he came a poor third behind the solicitor-general, Sir John Campbell.8HP Commons, 1820-1832, iii. 24.

Hawkes had acquired significant personal popularity at the election, his defeat being attributed solely to a delay in commencing his canvass. He was therefore approached again at the 1831 general election, this time allegedly ‘backed by the purse’ of the earl of Dudley.9HP Commons, 1820-1832, iii. 24-5; Standard, 7 May 1831. Although Hawkes presented himself as a ‘moderate reformer’, he largely avoided the subject at the hustings, confining himself to ‘strong professions of loyalty and patriotism’. He did express a hope that the reform bill might ‘be so amended that he might be able to support it’, but was also known to have signed a protest against a petition in its favour, and was regarded by the Liberal party as ‘a genuine Anti-reformist’.10Morning Chronicle, 3 May 1831. While Hawkes’s defeat was widely attributed to his failure to declare ‘decidedly in favour’ of the reform bill, others put it down to his refusal to spend a sufficient amount of money.11HP Commons, 1820-1832, iii. 25. Indeed, in a subsequent parliamentary inquiry into bribery at Stafford, one witness even claimed that it had been ‘notorious in Stafford that [Hawkes] did not pay a single shilling for a vote’.12The Times, 18 July 1836.

After his native borough of Dudley was enfranchised under the Reform Act, Hawkes entered the field at the 1832 general election, but soon withdrew.13Morning Chronicle, 1 Mar. 1834. He came forward again on the Conservative interest in February 1834, when he opposed the re-election of Sir John Campbell after the latter was appointed attorney-general.14Derby Mercury, 26 Feb. 1834. In a violent contest which saw ‘party spirit … run high’, he demanded a poll which he pursued with ‘great briskness’, in the course of which Campbell ‘gave up in a huff’.15Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 6 Mar. 1834; T.C. Turberville, Worcestershire in the Nineteenth Century (1852), 53. Hawkes’s clear victory was attributed to dissatisfaction amongst Dissenters with the government’s record on church reform, and the enmity of the borough’s ‘Ultra-Tory’ magistrates towards Campbell.16Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 27 Feb. 1834; Morning Chronicle, 1 Mar. 1834.

Hawkes was one of very few Black Country MPs in this period to have a strong personal link with his constituency, yet to his opponents he was ‘an old … backsliding Tory’, bereft of political principles and ‘utterly unfit for a representative’.17R. H. Trainor, Black Country Elites. The Exercise of Authority in an Industrialized Area 1830-1900 (1993), 222-3; Morning Chronicle, 1 Mar. 1834. Once in the Commons, he divided in favour of Sir Robert Peel’s amendment to the Hertford borough bill, which aimed to limit disenfranchisement to those proved guilty of bribery, 19 Mar. 1834, and backed Lord Althorp’s motion that church rates be replaced by a land tax, 21 Apr. He voted against shorter parliaments, 15 May, and disregarded non-conformist sentiment in his own constituency by dividing against the second reading of George Wood’s bill to admit Dissenters to the universities, 20 June. He joined the minority in favour of Lord Chandos’s motion on the depressed state of agriculture, 7 July, and later that month was granted three weeks’ leave of absence on urgent business.18CJ, lxxxix. 534.

At the 1835 general election, Hawkes flatly refused to ‘enter parliament fettered with pledges’, and beat an ‘Ultra Reformer’ by a clear margin.19The Parliamentary Test Book (1835), 78; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 1 Jan. 1835. By now he had ‘sincerely attached himself to the Conservative cause’, and thereafter acted ‘with the Tories’ in the Commons, backing Charles Manners Sutton for the speakership, 19 Feb. 1835, and voting with Peel’s minority on the address, 26 Feb. 1835. He divided for repeal of malt tax, 10 Mar.20Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 15 Oct. 1835; Assembled Commons, 113. He opposed Russell’s proposals for the Irish Church in April, and divided in favour of Cayley’s motion for a silver standard, 1 June 1835. That month he served on the select committee on accidents in mines, and in August welcomed the government’s decision to remit glass duties, arguing that the previously high level of duty had damaged the interests of the domestic industry, particularly in Ireland.21PP 1835 (603) v. 1; Hansard, 14 Aug. 1835, vol. 30, cc. 545-6.

Hawkes voted for Agnew’s Sabbath observance bill, 21 Apr. 1836, and divided in favour of the motion that it was derogatory to the character of the House for any member to become the paid advocate of an outside body, 30 June. In July 1836 he gave evidence to the committee on the Stafford borough disenfranchisement bill, but does not appear to have been a particularly regular attender at this time, voting in only 29 of the 195 divisions reported in 1836.22PP 1836 (541) xix. 1 [286-8]; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 1, 8 Sept. 1836. When present he routinely divided against the ballot, municipal reform and any reconsideration of the corn laws.

By 1837 Hawkes was convinced that the ‘stalking horse of Reform had lost its powers’, but was nevertheless challenged at Dudley by a Liberal. In a stormy contest both candidates had to be bound over by local magistrates to keep the peace when a duel seemed imminent.23The Times, 24 Oct. 1836; The Times, 7 Sept. 1837. Hawkes won the poll by a clear margin but briefly faced a petition which unsuccessfully challenged his return.24Turberville, Worcestershire in the Nineteenth Century, 54; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 3 Aug. 1837; CJ, cxiii. 112-3, 227-8.

Hawkes remained a firm supporter of Peel, regarding him as ‘the only man capable of effectually fighting the ‘battle for their church and their constitution’.25The Times, 7 Sept. 1837. He divided regularly against the abolition of church rates and Irish Church reform, but opposed Peel by voting against the motion to overturn Sir John Eardley-Wilmot’s motion for the immediate cessation of slave apprenticeships, 28 May 1838. Regarding the qualification of members bill of that year, Hawkes argued that funded property should be admitted as a qualification as well landed property, (which he regarded as ‘open to gross frauds’), but contended that the bill went too far in allowing professional income to be accepted as a qualification.26Hansard, 8 Feb. 1838, vol. 40, cc. 924, 927. In April 1838 he moved the second reading of the British manufacturers’ protection bill, which aimed to amend the law regarding the ‘present bonding system inflicted on the manufacturers of British hardware’ by preventing foreign manufacturers from bonding their goods in the United Kingdom and then re-exporting them with British marks.27Hansard, 4 Apr. 1838, vol. 42, cc. 425-6. Reflecting his own commercial interests, that July he moved for the insertion of a clause into the glass duties bill to protect flint-glass makers by granting them a monopoly on the production of small medical bottles. He backed Henry Goulburn for the speakership, 27 May 1839.28Hansard, 17 July 1838, vol. 44, cc. 286-7.

Having divided for Sir John Yarde Buller’s motion of no confidence in the government, 31 Jan. 1840, he backed Stanley’s Irish registration bill that May, and opposed the Whig measure the following year. He voted with Peel over foreign sugar duties, 18 May, and was again on hand to back Peel’s successful motion of no confidence in the Whig ministry, 4 June 1841. Although at the 1841 general election Hawkes’s ‘private circumstances’ - presumably his mounting debts - and divisions amongst the borough’s Conservatives were expected to impede his return at Dudley,29Morning Chronicle, 9 June 1841. he nonetheless obtained a very large majority, and a petition brought against him failed.30Turberville, Worcestershire in the Nineteenth Century, 54; Morning Chronicle, 2 July 1841; Morning Post, 2 July 1841; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 3 Mar., 28 Apr. 1842; CJ, xcvii. 38, 243.

Having voted with Peel on the address, 27 Aug. 1841, Hawkes backed his corn importation bill and the re-introduction of income tax in the spring of 1842. In July 1842 he spoke against the third reading of Lord Ashley’s mines and collieries bill, arguing that the coal owners of Staffordshire had not been afforded time to respond to the measure.31Hansard, 5 July 1842, vol. 64, c. 1008. In October 1843 he visited Florence to celebrate the marriage of his daughter Eleanor to the brother of his Staffordshire neighbour, Lord Ward.32Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 2 Nov. 1843. It was thought that Ward himself had long been the lady’s suitor, but ultimately lost out to his younger brother: Daily News, 12 Nov. 1849. He was, however, by then in debt to the sum of £10,943, and in the following month a proclamation of outlawry was issued against him.33J.P. De Gex & H. Cadman Jones, Reports of bankruptcy appeals, heard and determined by the Lord Chancellor and the Court of Appeal in Chancery (1861), 250; The Times, 17 Nov. 1843. After months of speculation about his parliamentary future, he closed his glassworks and accepted the Chiltern Hundreds, 1 Aug. 1844. Shortly afterwards he was sued by his creditor and took up residence at Le Havre in France ‘with a view to repair his fortunes’, while retaining his partnership in the Dudley and West Bromwich Banking Company.34The Times, 5 Aug. 1844; Bury & Norwich Post, 7 Aug. 1844; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 13 Feb. 1845; Daily News, 12 Nov. 1849.

On returning to England, Hawkes was arrested for debt and adjudged bankrupt on his own petition in October 1857. He obtained a bankruptcy certificate a year later and, having secured the capital of his wife’s settled trust fund for the use of his children, died at Brighton in December 1858.35De Gex & Cadman Jones, Reports of bankruptcy appeals, 250-5. Hawkes does not appear to have left a will. He was buried in Himley, and was succeeded by his eldest son, John Blackburne Hawkes (1820-68), a captain in the 3^rd Light Dragoons.36Morning Post, 9 Dec. 1858; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 18 Dec. 1858.