BRAMLEY-MOORE, John (1800-1886), of 10 King Street, St. James’s, London; Langley Lodge, Bucks.; and Carioca Lodge, Aigburth, nr. Liverpool, Lancs.

Bramley-Moore, ‘a moderately bulky and rather round-shouldered man, with a kindly enough face’, represented Maldon and Lincoln in the Conservative interest, but was best known for pioneering the dramatic extension of the Liverpool docks in the 1840s.1N. Hawthorne, The English notebooks, ed. R. Stewart (1941), 56-7. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the American writer and United States consul to Liverpool, who dined with Bramley-Moore in 1856, found him to be rather vulgar and ‘not quite a gentleman’, adding, ‘I hope … he will not ask me to dinner any more’.2Ibid.

Little is known of Bramley-Moore’s early childhood. He was the second son of Thomas Moore, of Pontefract, Yorkshire, but his mother’s heritage is unclear. In 1814 he emigrated to Rio de Janeiro, where he became a successful merchant. In 1830 he married Seraphina Hibernia, daughter of William Pennell, British consul-general for Brazil.3C. W. Sutton, ‘Moore, John Bramley- (1800-1886)’, rev. A. Jarvis, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com. Throughout the rest of his commercial and parliamentary career, he remained an unwavering champion of the South American country. In May 1848 he appeared as an expert witness before a parliamentary select committee on the slave trade in Brazil.4PP 1847-48 (366), xxii. 419-49. He also appeared as a witness to select committees on the Passengers’ Act and local charges upon shipping: PP 1851 (632), xix. 581; PP 1856 (332), xii. 752.

Bramley-Moore returned to England in 1835, settling in Liverpool, where he established himself as the head of the successful Brazilian merchant house Bramley-Moore & Co., and was elected an alderman by the borough council.5B. Guinness Orchard, Liverpool’s legion of honour (1893), 197. In April 1840 he formally assumed the additional name of Bramley.6Gent. Mag. (1841), ii. 532. In November 1842 the council appointed him to the city’s influential dock committee and twelve months later he became its chairman. If his swift rise raised a few eyebrows, his subsequent domineering leadership of the committee upset a significant portion of the local council and mercantile community, who felt that his ambitious expenditure (the Liverpool dock committee became the fastest-growing port authority in the country under his stewardship) was close to reckless.7Sutton, ‘Moore, John Bramley-’, Oxf. DNB. One contemporary found him ‘highly obnoxious’.8Liverpool Mercury, 29 June 1852. His secret and unsanctioned negotiations with the earl of Derby, which secured a free gift of two and a half miles of shore at the north end of docks, seemed to underline a reputation for dictatorial behaviour.9Orchard, Liverpool’s legion of honour, 197-8. The agreement with Derby, however, paved the way for the Liverpool Dock Act of 1844, which enabled the construction of five new docks, one of which was named ‘Bramley-Moore’. Given his penchant for self-promotion, it seems unlikely, as was reported following his death, that he declined a knighthood in 1846, shortly after Prince Albert had officially opened the new docks.10Hampshire Advertiser, 24 Nov. 1886; Sutton, ‘Moore, John Bramley-’, Oxf. DNB. In November 1848 he was elected mayor of the city.11Orchard, Liverpool’s legion of honour, 197.

Although Bramley-Moore seemingly swept all before him as chairman of the Liverpool dock committee, he found entering (and staying) in the Commons a more protracted affair. At the 1852 general election he came forward as a Conservative candidate for Hull, an important port where his impassioned criticism of the recent repeal of the navigation laws played well to the gallery. His staunch opposition to ‘all aggressions of popery’ also endeared him to the Conservative faithful, but following a hard-fought contest, he was defeated in third place.12Hull Packet, 25 June, 2, 9 July 1852. He fared equally miserably at a double by-election at Liverpool in July the following year. Initially selected by the city’s Conservative Association, he was subsequently dropped in favour of Henry Thomas Liddell, the former Member for Durham North, who was a renowned (and wealthy) supporter of the shipping interest. Encouraged to nevertheless go to the polls by a disaffected section of the local Conservative party, Bramley-Moore declared himself to be ‘a consistent Liberal Conservative’, but following another hard-fought contest he finished bottom of the poll.13Liverpool Mercury, 24, 28 June, 1, 5 July 1853; Daily News, 8 July 1853; Morning Chronicle, 9 July 1853. He was finally returned to the Commons at the third attempt. Standing for a double vacancy at the small Essex port of Maldon in August 1854, he presented himself as a fierce opponent of free trade who was committed to restoring the damaged British shipbuilding industry. He was elected in second place.14Essex Standard, 11 Aug. 1854; Daily News, 17 Aug. 1854.

Bramley-Moore took his time to find his feet in the Commons. He attended regularly – he was present for 131 out of 198 divisions in the 1856 session – but was largely silent in debate for his first two sessions.15J. P. Gassiot, Third letter to J. A. Roebuck: with a full analysis of the divisions of the House of Commons during the last session of Parliament (1857), 7. He followed Disraeli into the division lobby on the major issues of the day, including the Crimean War. He backed Roebuck’s motion for a select committee into the condition of the army, 29 Jan., Disraeli’s motion criticising the prosecution of the war, 25 May, and Roebuck’s censure of the cabinet over its handling of the conflict, 19 July 1855. He voted against the church rate abolition bill, 5 Mar. 1856, and the Maynooth grant, 15 Apr. 1856. He was absent from Cobden’s censure of the government over the bombardment of Canton, 3 Mar. 1857. His main contribution in his first Parliament was on the subject of the Sound dues, a toll imposed by the Danish government on foreign ships passing through the Sound strait. He was an active member of the 1856 select committee on the issue, when his assiduous questioning of witnesses reflected his deep knowledge of the shipping industry in northern Europe.16PP 1856 (380), xvi. 726. A staunch opponent of Britain compensating Denmark in exchange for free passage through the strait, he moved for copies of any papers relating to an agreement with Denmark to be laid before the House, but withdrew his motion following an explanation from Sir George Cornewall Lewis, chancellor of the exchequer, 17 Mar. 1857.

At the 1857 general election Bramley-Moore called for income tax to be reduced for those on low pay, explaining that, for him, ‘Conservatism’ meant helping to raise the labouring man in the social scale. He also appeared to have softened his stance on free trade, insisting that he did not wish to see a return to protectionism, only a level playing field for British merchants. He was re-elected in second place.17Essex Standard, 20 Mar., 1 Apr. 1857. Following a petition against the return of the victorious Liberal candidate, 17 May 1857, a further petition was launched against his own return, 21 May 1857, but the election committee subsequently ruled that it had been ‘frivolous and vexatious’, intended only to induce the withdrawal of the original petition, 21 July 1857.18CJ (1857), cxii. 152, 164; PP 1857 sess. 2 (226), vii. 168.

In his second Parliament Bramley-Moore was more vocal in debate, especially on shipping issues and Britain’s relations with Brazil. Speaking in support of Roebuck’s motion for a committee to consider establishing better relations with the South American country, he asserted that he knew the Brazilian people ‘intimately’, and criticised Palmerston for suggesting that Brazil had not done all it could have to extinguish the slave trade. He also denounced the 1845 Aberdeen Act, which gave the British navy authority to stop and search any Brazilian ship suspected of carrying slaves, as a violation of that country’s sovereignty. He was one of only seventeen MPs who subsequently voted for Roebuck’s motion, which was defeated by an overwhelming majority of 295 votes.19Hansard, 28 May 1857, vol. 145, cc. 946-9. On the subject of the Sound dues, meanwhile, he voiced his strong objection to the government’s decision to pay £1 million in compensation to the Danish government in exchange for free passage, lamenting that ‘England must always pay for everything, no matter what’.20Hansard, 5 June 1857, vol. 145, cc. 1234-7. He voted against Palmerston’s conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858, the defeat of which caused the collapse of the Liberal ministry, and supported the Derby ministry’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859.

Bramley-Moore originally intended to defend his Maldon seat at the 1859 general election, but following ‘differences of a personal kind’ with the second Conservative candidate, he withdrew from the contest and instead accepted an invitation to stand for the Hampshire port of Lymington.21Hampshire Advertiser, 16 Apr. 1859; Essex Standard, 20, 29 Apr. 1859; Standard, 23 Apr. 1859. His decision was a poor one. Following a brief campaign in which he promised his ‘independent’ support to Derby and called for the abolition of timber duties, he was narrowly defeated in third place. In a bizarre twist, the victorious Conservative candidate, Sir John Rivett-Carnac, who had encouraged him to stand, immediately offered to resign his newly-won seat in favour of Bramley-Moore, but, unsurprisingly, the mayor refused to simply substitute him.22Hampshire Advertiser, 30 Apr. 1859; Daily News, 4 May 1859. In 1861 he accepted an invitation from local Conservatives to contest a vacancy at Lincoln, only to withdraw when it became clear he had little chance of success.23F. Hill, Victorian Lincoln (1974), 33. He remained in close contact, though, with the borough, and was swiftly brought forward when another vacancy occurred the following year. The ensuing contest was extremely bitter: his Liberal opponent accused him of owning seventy slaves while living in Rio de Janeiro, declaring that he had risen ‘from obscurity to a splendid fortune and position by embarking his capital in slaves’. After vociferously denying the ‘foul and calumnious charges’, however, he was elected by a majority of thirty.24Daily News, 30 Jan. 1862; Standard, 1 Feb. 1862; Morning Post, 13 Feb. 1862; Manchester Times, 15 Feb. 1862.

It was in his third Parliament that Bramley-Moore emerged as arguably Westminster’s most vocal champion of Brazil. Britain’s diplomatic relations with the country were at a particular low in 1863, following the decision of William Dougal Christie, Britain’s ambassador to Brazil, to aggressively demand that Brazil pay an indemnity for the recent shipwreck of the British merchantman, the Prince of Wales, near the Rio Grande do Sul.25A. Graham-Yooll, Imperial Skirmishes: war and gunboat diplomacy in Latin America (2002), 97. Moving a resolution in March 1863 to restore a ‘cordial understanding’ between the two countries, Bramley-Moore offered an impassioned defence of the Brazilian emperor’s leadership and, more controversially, attacked the British government for mismanaging a proposed settlement with Brazil over the shipwreck.26Hansard, 6 Mar. 1863, vol. 169, cc. 1130-9. His resolution for improved relations was agreed to, but did little to change the deteriorating situation. Meanwhile, his subsequent denunciation of Christie’s approach to diplomacy, accusing him of ‘arrogance and insolence’, earned him a sharp rebuke from Palmerston.27Hansard, 7 May 1863, vol. 170, cc. 1303-15. By the summer of 1863, diplomatic relations had been broken off, despite him making further pleas to the British government to put their relations with Brazil on a ‘proper footing’, 16 July 1863. His efforts did not go unnoticed in Brazil, however, and later that year the emperor awarded him the order of the Rose, the highest honour bestowed on a foreigner.28Orchard, Liverpool’s legion of honour, 198-9.

Bramley-Moore continued to be a steady attender, voting with the Conservative opposition on the major domestic and foreign questions of the day, including Disraeli’s motion criticising the government’s handling of the Schleswig-Holstein question, 8 July 1864. He consistently voted against church rate abolition, the abolition of tests of religious faith at Oxford University and radical motions to reform the borough and county franchises. He was an active member of the 1864 select committee on the weighing of grain at the port of London.29PP 1864 (479), viii. 573. His parliamentary career was brought to an abrupt halt, however, at the 1865 general election when he was defeated by two Liberal candidates.30Nottinghamshire Guardian, 30 June 1865; Liverpool Mercury, 13 July 1865. Following the fourth electoral defeat of his parliamentary career, he never sought a return to the Commons, but he remained an active supporter of the Conservative party, later becoming a Primrose League Knight. He also retired from his position as a Liverpool alderman in 1865 and largely withdrew from public life thereafter, spending the majority of his time at his Gerrard’s Cross residence in Buckinghamshire, although he generally returned once a year to Liverpool as an honoured guest at the dock board’s annual excursion.31Orchard, Liverpool’s legion of honour, 198-9.

Bramley-Moore died while staying at 116 Marine Parade, Brighton, in November 1886, and was buried at St Michael’s-in-the-Hamlet, Toxteth Park, Liverpool.32Liverpool Mercury, 23 Nov. 1886; Sutton, ‘Moore, John Bramley-’, Oxf. DNB. He left effects valued at £167,815 15s. 0d.33National Probate Calendar, Apr. 1887. He was succeeded by his eldest son, the Rev. William Joseph Bramley-Moore (1831-1918), a Church of England clergyman and author of several theological works. His second son, John Arthur Bramley-Moore (1840-1899), continued the family’s merchant house.34Sutton, ‘Moore, John Bramley-’, Oxf. DNB. Bramley-Moore’s papers are held by the University of Liverpool.35Univ. of Liverpool, Special Collections and Archives, D40.