HUTCHINS, Edward John (1809-1876), of Sully House, Sully, Glam.; Dowlais, Glam. and 1 Wilton Street and 25 Eaton Square , London

A protégé of his uncle John Josiah Guest MP, who ran the world’s largest ironworks in Wales, Hutchins joined his family in business and politics, though his talents never quite matched his ambitions in either.1I am indebted to Lord Rowlands CBE for providing access to his transcripts of Lady Charlotte Guest’s journals, based on those in the possession of Lord Wimborne at Ashby St. Ledger (hereafter cited as Wimborne mss), and for information regarding Hutchins’ business interests. Portrayed by Guest’s second wife as ‘openhearted’ and ‘good-natured’, but also ‘impetuous’ and lacking ‘real business-like views’, Hutchins eventually sold the Guests his inherited share of the ironworks in 1851, after much haggling, enabling him to pay off substantial debts.2Lady Charlotte Guest. Extracts from her Journal 1833-1852 (1950), ed. earl of Bessborough, 264, 275-6; Wimborne mss, 29 Feb. 1836. Thereafter his drift towards the ‘Popish doctrines’ of his Spanish-American wife became more marked.3Lady Charlotte Guest, 263. A year before stepping down as a Liberal MP he converted and, in a highly controversial move, was resworn into the Commons as a Catholic, one of only two MPs to do so in this period.4See J. Stack, ‘Catholic Members of Parliament who represented British constituencies, 1829-1885: a prosopographical analysis’, Recusant History (1999), xxiv. 347. In retirement he became a noted spokesman for Catholic education, serving on the newly created London School Board.5The Times, 1 Dec. 1870.

Hutchins was the eldest son of Guest’s younger sister Sarah, who in 1809 married Edward Hutchins in Bristol but by 1828 was widowed.6For the Guest family tree see Iron in the Making. Dowlais Iron Company Letters 1782-1860 (1960), ed. M. Elsas, 238. Guest, a childless widower until his second marriage in 1833, evidently took Hutchins under his wing and, following his education at Charterhouse and Cambridge, brought him into the Dowlais ironworks near Merthyr Tydfil, where he ‘acquired a good insight into ironmaking’.7Lady Charlotte Guest, 17; C. Wilkins, The History of the Iron, Steel and Tinplate and other trades of Wales (1903), 189. Hutchins also began to assist his uncle in politics, speaking in his absence at Merthyr vestry meetings, taking an active part in the town’s campaign for the Grey ministry’s reform bill, and helping to prepare the ground for Guest’s unopposed return as Merthyr’s first MP in 1832.8See G. A. Williams, ‘The Making of Radical Merthyr: 1800-1836’, Welsh History Review (1961), i. 175, 180, 186; idem., ‘The Merthyr election of 1835’, Welsh History Review (1981), x. 386, 391; T. Rowlands, ‘Rebellion and Representation: The Making of the Merthyr Tydfil constituency, 1831-2’, Welsh History Review (2013), xxvi. 429. At the 1835 election he again came to his aid, travelling to Ludlow to ensure the co-operation of a major landowner. His provision of £100 for one supporter, however, was a step too far for Guest, who demanded its return.9T. Rowlands, ‘The Merthyr Tydfil 1835 Election Revisited’, Merthyr Historian (2013), xxv. 15, 16. In 1836 Hutchins helped Guest found the Taf Vale Railway Company, becoming its treasurer and a major shareholder.10TNA Taff Vale Railway minute book 684/1, cited in E. Jones, A History of GKN [Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds] (1987), i. 99-100.

By now, however, Hutchins was keen to make his own mark in business. After much persuasion, Guest agreed to lend him £5,000 for a partnership in a troubled ironworks at Blaina in Monmouthshire. Guest’s wife Lady Charlotte feared Hutchins lacked ‘firmness and forethought enough to do any good’ with the two elderly partners, but conceded that ‘responsibility on his own account may improve his character’.11Wimborne mss, 22 Jan., 16 Nov. 1836. Shortly afterwards, however, the death of Guest’s younger brother Thomas brought Hutchins an inheritance that included a share in the Dowlais works, making his stake in the rival company awkward. He promptly withdrew from Blaina, rather than forgo the possibility of becoming a partner at Dowlais, only to find, as Lady Charlotte recorded, that Guest’s business partner Wyndham Lewis MP was ‘greatly averse to admitting him’ on account of his ‘rashness’.12Ibid, 16 Feb. 23 Apr. 1837. ‘I do wish that Edward not become a partner’, she also observed, ‘his careless thoughtlessness may I fear be a source of trouble ... However, he ... may become more steady’.13Lady Charlotte Guest, 44. Kept out of the Dowlais boardroom, and having failed to secure the hand of Ann Ross, a ‘very wealthy heiress’ to whom he had ‘given his heart’, Hutchins decided to travel. By June 1837 he had left for America.14Wimborne mss, 26, 29 Feb. 1836, 27 June 1837. On 20 June 1836 Ross instead married Edward Divett MP. He did not return until August 1839, when he arrived in London with his Catholic wife Isabella, a daughter of the late Spanish consul-general in Baltimore, Don Juan de Bernabeu (1772-1834).15Wimborne mss, 3 Aug. 1839; E. Bartow, Bartow Genealogy, containing everyone of the name of Bartow descended from Doctor Thomas Bartow (1875), 144-6. Most sources, evidently taking their cue from Hutchins’ obituary in The Times, 19 Feb. 1876, incorrectly render his wife’s surname as Bernaben. According to the 1871 census, she was born in Baltimore, USA in 1816, but was a British citizen.

Resuming his work for Guest, whose business partner Lewis had died the previous year, Hutchins now began to look for a parliamentary seat. In December 1839 the Liberal chief whip Edward Stanley informed Guest of a vacancy at Penryn and Falmouth, where Hutchins might be returned for £1,500. Hutchins initially demurred, fearing his tenure would be cut short by a dissolution, but after Guest promised to ‘bear the expense’ of another election if the parliament did not last two sessions, Hutchins came forward.16Wimborne mss, 25 Aug., 8, 9 Dec. 1839. The Liberal election manager Joseph Parkes, meanwhile, warned Stanley that Hutchins was ‘a blagguard: one who would take your money and let out none of his own or “uncles”’. Finding that a leading election agent had received ‘no retainer for Guest’s nephew’, Parkes intervened in and secured the agent himself.17UCL, Parkes mss, Parkes to Stanley, 6, 19 Dec. 1839.

At the ensuing by-election Hutchins stood as a ‘reformer’ and a ‘man of business’, praising the recent introduction of the penny post and urging the necessity of a railroad from Falmouth to London to boost local trade. His reliance on his ‘notebook’ during his hustings speech provoked much ridicule, but after a notoriously venal contest, in which his agents allegedly paid £4 a vote, he secured a clear majority.18Cornwall Royal Gazette, 24 Jan. 1840; The Standard, 25 Jan. 1840. On 28 Jan. 1840 he took his seat.19Mirror of Parliament (1840), i. 401.

A regular but silent attender in his first parliament, Hutchins gave steady support to the Whig ministry in the lobbies, voting alongside Guest on most major issues, such as Irish registration and municipal reform, and backing free trade motions. He only rarely broke ranks, voting with the radicals for the abolition of capital punishment, 5 Mar., 15 July 1840, and differing with Guest by dividing for printers of parliamentary papers to be protected from libel, 6 Mar., and by opposing the funding of new Anglican churches out of the river weaver tolls, 19 May 1840. He and Guest jointly brought up a petition against the Taff Vale railway amendment bill, 25 Mar. 1840, but in a telling reminder that petitions and their presenters did not always concur, both men backed the measure in the lobbies, which repealed restrictions on track speeds and profits.20Ibid. iii. 1928. Guest was the railway’s chairman and served on the private bill committee. On behalf of Falmouth Hutchins secured papers on mail services with Malta and coal prices in ports, 23, 30 Mar. 1840.21Ibid. ii. 1875, iii. 2090. He also brought up petitions for the admission of foreign sugar and the admission of Jews to Parliament.22Hansard, 4 June 1840, vol. 54, c. 923, 10 Mar. 1841, vol. 57, c. 84. He and Guest of course backed the Whig ministry in the no confidence motion of 4 June that triggered the 1841 general election.

Hutchins had advised his agents as early as April 1841 that he would quit his constituency at the next dissolution.23Bristol Mercury, 1 May 1841. He offered no explanation, but his reasons may have been financial. He promptly found himself pilloried as the ‘deserter MP for Penryn’ when he stood instead for Southampton, another by-word for venality.24Hampshire Advertiser, 5 June 1841. Accompanied by Guest’s entourage, and backed with ‘warmth of feeling and money’, as Lady Charlotte put it, Hutchins again campaigned as a ‘man of business’, stressing the £20,000 a month he and ‘his relative’ paid in wages.25Ibid.; Wimborne mss, 23, 29 May, 18 June; Lady Charlotte Guest, 121. At the nomination he voiced his opposition to capital punishment, church rates and ‘all monopolies’, including the corn laws, and declared his support for the secret ballot, but was again mocked for reading his speech.26Hampshire Advertiser, 3 July 1841. After a fierce struggle against the local Tory interest, he was defeated in third place, having contributed £1,250 to a centrally-managed election fund.27A. Temple-Patterson, A History of Southampton 1700-1914 (1971), ii. 35, 39; J. Coohill, Ideas of the Liberal Party: Perceptions, Agendas and Liberal Politics in the House of Commons, 1832-52 (2011), 86-7.

Although a Liberal petition against the Tory victory was successful, the investigation unearthed too much corruption on both sides for Hutchins to be awarded a seat.28Hampshire Advertiser, 7 May 1842. Hutchins also found himself in court for failing to settle his account at the ‘Star Hotel’, where he and his committee had stayed. Sued by the hotel’s administrators after it went bankrupt, he was found liable and ordered to pay bills of £653, plus £432 damages.29Ipswich Journal, 21 May 1842; Patterson, Southampton, ii. 43. The bulk of this, crowed the local Tory press, related to ‘Bacchanalian orgies’ of food and drink for voters, including ‘50 bottles of wine’ consumed in one morning alone.30Hampshire Advertiser, 21 May 1842. Perhaps not surprisingly he declined to participate in the ensuing double by-election, and later that year apparently left for America.31Patterson, Southampton, ii. 46. ‘Trade is very bad’, the Dowlais manager wrote to him, 22 Nov. 1842, ‘cannot you obtain a few orders for rails in America for us?’32Dowlais Iron Company Letters, 96.

Hutchins had returned home by 1846, when the Guests gave him possession of their mansion Dowlais House and management of the ironworks during his absence.33Ibid. 43; Lady Charlotte Guest, 121, 181. The Guests had decamped to their newly purchased estate at Canford, near Poole, where they hoped to return Hutchins on the well-established ‘Canford interest’ at the 1847 general election, after finding that his prospects were poor at Southampton and Monmouth.34Hampshire Advertiser, 8 May 1847; Lady Charlotte Guest, 187-8. The constituency referred to was ‘Newport’, by which Lady Charlotte seems likely to have meant the contributory borough at Monmouth. Their presumption about the seat, however, created local resentment. After canvassing with ‘very little success’, Hutchins was narrowly defeated, ‘a great cry’ having ‘been raised against the Canford estate and his nomineeship’.35Lady Charlotte Guest, 192, 195.

Hutchins was eventually returned for a vacancy at Lymington in 1850, as a ‘staunch free trader and financial reformer’. Backed by the outgoing MP, the local Reform Association and the marchioness of Hastings, he declared himself to be ‘a radical in the strongest sense of the word’, citing his support for an extension of the franchise and the ballot. ‘Our clubs adopted the same principle and it was known to work well in America’, he explained, dismissing objections that secret voting was ‘un-English and unmanly’. He also contended that in fairness to taxpayers, the state should either fund all religious communities or none.36Daily News, 27 Apr.; Hampshire Telegraph, 4 May 1850. Back in the House, Hutchins resumed his place ‘sitting by’ Guest.37Lady Charlotte Guest, 263. He continued to vote with the Liberals on most major issues, but was soon in a radical minority for repeal of the advertisement duties, 7 May 1850, and of course steadily backed the ballot. Unlike Guest, he opposed the Russell ministry’s ecclesiastical titles bill outlawing Catholic bishoprics in 1851.

By now his relations with the Guests were becoming strained, with Hutchins increasingly insistent about taking full control of the Dowlais works.38Ibid. 233, 240-1. In January 1851 he ‘utterly outraged’ Lady Charlotte by refusing to postpone a visit from Dr. Brown, the ‘Catholic bishop’ of Merthyr, while the Guests were staying at Dowlais. ‘That I should ... have experienced such treatment from one who a few short years ago was penniless, dependent on my husband for everything ... who had brought him up’, as if ‘we were the junior partners ... inferior in rank and position’, she carped.39Ibid. 255. Hutchins’ supervision of the works during Guest’s absences had also been causing problems, with railway companies complaining about cracked rails and faulty axles.40Dowlais Iron Company Letters, 147, 169. When another rail ‘made under Mr. Hutchins’ management’ broke on a major Russian railway, Edward Divett MP, Guest’s business advisor in London, strongly supported Guest’s idea to part with Hutchins and ‘take his share’.41Lady Charlotte Guest, 273.

The protracted negotiations that ensued, according to Lady Charlotte, ‘vexed’ and ‘worried’ her husband so much that he ‘made himself ill’. Eventually in July 1851 Hutchins, after a ‘most monstrous’ rejection of one valuation, accepted £58,000 for his shares. From this was deducted £8,000, the amount he had ‘overdrawn his account’, and ‘about £20,000 which he owed Mr. Lewis’.42Ibid. 269, 273, 275. He was soon snapped up by the Rhymney ironworks in Monmouthshire, where he served as the company’s ‘untiring’ chairman for the next 24 years.43Wilkins, Iron, Steel and Tinplate, 189; http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Rhymney_Iron_Co Re-elected as an ‘extreme Liberal’ at the 1852 general election, Hutchins reiterated his support for free trade and giving the ‘humble classes’ the vote with the protection of the ballot.44Hampshire Advertiser, 10 July 1852.

Following Guest’s death later that year Hutchins became more conspicuous in the Commons, venturing into debate and becoming an occasional critic of government spending. In his first known speech, 20 May 1853, he took issue with the Aberdeen ministry’s preferential treatment of the Anglican college of St. David’s at Lampeter, objecting to its proposed funding when the grant to the Catholic seminary at Maynooth was to be cut, as seemed likely. He spoke and voted steadily against Protestant attempts to reduce the Maynooth grant thereafter.45See, for example, Hansard, 15 Apr. 1856, vol. 141, c. 1102. Other interventions included attacks on expenditure relating to the India bill, 28 July 1853, small arms procurement, 7 Mar. 1856, and emigration policy, 14 April 1856. Perhaps his most significant contribution, however, was chairing the select committee on coal mining accidents, 1853-4.46PP 1852-3 (691, 740, 820), xx. 1-279; 1854 (169, 258, 325), ix. 1-219. The principal questioner of witnesses during a lengthy inquiry, he eventually helped to steer its recommendations for new safety regulations into law, as part of the 1855 Coal Mines Act (18 & 19 Vict. c. 108).47C. Mills, Regulating Health and Safety in the British Mining Industries, 1800-1914 (2010), 107-9. His call for mining schools to be established with government grants, to remedy the ‘want of scientific knowledge’ that caused most accidents, however, was not taken up.48Hansard¸ 30 June 1854, vol. 134, c. 1005. Neither was his proposal to exempt industries located outside towns and cities, such as the copper works of Glamorganshire, from the restrictions imposed by that year’s Nuisances Removal and Diseases Prevention Act, 12 July 1855.49Hansard, 12 July 1855, vol. 139, c .798.

Hutchins’ other main concern was railways. A long-serving director of the London and South Western line, the leading rival to Brunel’s Great Western Railway in the so-called ‘gauge wars’, he actively defended its extension westwards, backing the relevant bill in the Commons, 8 Feb. 1855, and speaking in similar terms at company meetings, on one occasion even telling a disgruntled shareholder, ‘If you want to make a personal quarrel of it, we’ll soon settle that (Order!, Order!). I am not afraid of you, either in public or in private’.50Daily News, 17 Jan. 1856. He also served on various railway committees, such as that on the Ulverstone and Lancaster railway bill.51PP 1851 (692), xlvii. 5. Hutchins’ longest Commons speech, by far, was devoted to explaining why Members of both Houses had suffered severe delays and ‘inconvenience’ travelling on the South Western railway to a naval review at Southampton, after their best locomotive ‘burst its feed pipe’, 25 Apr. 1856. One of the most ‘indignant’ MPs was Charles Newdegate, the leading ultra-Protestant and campaigner against Maynooth.52Hansard, 25 Apr. 1856, vol. 141, cc. 1515-61.

This was significant because during the recess of the previous month Hutchins had ‘embraced’ Catholicism, attracting what one paper termed ‘world-wide publicity’.53Morning Chronicle, 2 Apr.; Hampshire Advertiser, 5 Apr. 1856. On 1 Apr. 1856 he was re-sworn into the Commons as a ‘new Member’, taking the Catholic oath.54Hansard, 1 Apr. 1856, vol. 141, c. 277. Hutchins had originally planned to take the Chiltern Hundreds on converting, but had evidently been persuaded to stay put by some of his constituents.55See Stack, ‘Catholic Members of Parliament’, 339, 347. His failure to resign or seek re-election, though not a legal requirement, nevertheless vexed both the Protestant lobby and many constitutional commentators, casting a shadow of impropriety over his final year in the House. ‘That Mr Hutchins was returned to Parliament by Protestants, will scarcely be denied’, remarked one local paper. ‘As a Romanist, then, he is in a false position and it behoves the constituency of Lymington to call upon the recusant to resign ... at once’.56Hampshire Advertiser, 5 Apr. 1856. ‘Such conduct is an abuse of the representative principle’ since he ‘is no longer the same man’, protested another observer, noting how ‘in the case of an MP accepting office under government, the law requires a fresh election’.57Derby Mercury, 9 Apr. 1856. With Lymington’s Protestants determined to oust the ‘sly Romanist’ at the next vacancy, Hutchins stood down at the 1857 general election.58Hampshire Advertiser, 5 Apr. 1856; Morning Post, 19 Mar. 1857. He is not known to have sought a seat elsewhere.

Hutchins’ membership of the freemasons, which he had joined in 1831, is well documented, but there is little indication that it influenced his parliamentary career, despite him telling his lodge that he hoped to ‘be useful to the craft’ and promote the ‘principles of our order’ on becoming an MP.59J. Fraser, Illustrated History of the Loyal Cambrian Lodge No. 110 of Freemasons, Merthyr Tydfil 1810-1914 (1914), 67. After serving for eight years as Guest’s deputy in South Wales, he succeeded him as provincial grand master in 1848. Following his conversion, however, he complied with the Papal ban and resigned.60Freemason’s Quarterly Magazine (1850), i. 383; P. Davis, ‘A worthy mason of yesteryear: Edward John Hutchins’, Guildford Gazette (2005), accessed at http://archive.is/CxhRz

In later years he became an ‘active member’ of the Roman Catholic Poor School Committee and in 1870 was part of a ‘very influential’ group of Catholics that met with the duke of Norfolk to lobby the Gladstone ministry on the elementary education bill.61The Times, 14 June, 21 Nov. 1870. Elected to the first London School Board with the support of the Catholic vote later that year, by 9,253 votes, he represented the district of Marylebone until 1873.62Ibid. 1 Dec. 1870.

Hutchins died childless at 47 Eversfield Place, St. Leonard’s-on-Sea, near Hastings, in February 1876, ‘after a lingering illness’.63Ibid. 19 Feb. 1876; Hampshire Advertiser, 23 Feb. 1876. By his will, dated 7 Nov. 1872 with a codicil of 11 Jan. 1876, he left £8,000 in cash and a £2,000 annuity to his widow, who died 17 May 1886.64National Probate Calendar (1876). The rest of his personal estate, proved under £90,000, 15 Mar. 1876, provided legacies for his sister-in-law, sister, nephew, nieces and their children.65The Standard, 7 Apr. 1876.