NORRIS, John Thomas (1808-1870), of Mill House, Sutton Courtenay, nr. Abingdon, Berks., 128 Aldersgate Street,, London, , Mdx. and Sandford-on-Thames,, Oxon.

A Berkshire paper manufacturer with a London printing and stationery business, Norris became a radical councillor on the City of London Corporation in 1839 and increasingly prominent in the politics of Abingdon, two miles north of his Sutton Courtenay paper mills. Defeated for the borough by a more ‘moderate’ Liberal in 1854, when he was accused of being an ‘upstart’ in ‘too great haste to get to the top of the ladder’, he finally secured election in 1857.1Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 16 Dec. 1854. In Parliament he emerged as a leading figure in the campaign to abolish the paper duties. His promising Commons career, however, was cut short by his election defeat and bankruptcy in 1865.

Norris’s early life is obscure but by the mid-1830s he was running a paper mill with his father at Sutton Courtenay, where he employed around 25 workers in 1840.2VCH Berks (1906), i. 382. He also had a print works in Aldersgate, which in 1837 secured the contract to supply the ‘county printing’ for Middlesex.3Morning Advertiser, 27 Oct. 1837. The firm produced stationery and published trade journals, including the weekly Railway Times, which Norris helped to finance in 1840 and eventually owned.4Railway Times (1838), 650; Perry’s Bankrupt Gazette, 9 Feb. 1839; Law Times (1859), xxxv. 123. In 1854 he leased another paper mill at Sandford-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, by which time about 80 of his London printers were attending his ‘annual treats’ to a dinner in the town hall at Abingdon.5VCH Oxon (1907), ii. 241; Reading Mercury, 26 July 1856.

Alongside business, Norris threw himself into local radical politics. In 1835, at the height of the crisis over the passage of the Whig ministry’s municipal reform bill, he published a scathing attack on Sir Peter Laurie, a city alderman and former lord mayor, for defending Tory proposals to elect aldermen for life. Laurie’s argument, Norris protested, was ‘the same which teaches us that constituents are made for representatives, laity for clergy, suitors for lawyers, and cities for aldermen’.6J. T. Norris, A Letter to Sir Peter Laurie ... in reply to his speech on the periodical election of city aldermen (1835), passim. In April 1837 he joined the short-lived General Association, led by the Irish agitator Daniel O’Connell, which campaigned for a repeal of the Union.7Morning Advertiser, 8 Apr. 1837. A supporter of the radical parliamentary candidates for the City at that year’s general election, he afterwards served alongside its veteran MP Sir Matthew Wood on one of the committees organising London’s coronation celebrations.8Southern Star, 1 Mar. 1840; Report from the committee for conducting the entertainment to distinguished foreigners ... at her majesty’s coronation (1838).

By now he was becoming the regular target of Tory ‘objections’ in the city’s voter registration courts, where his status as a resident was complicated by his joint occupation of a warehouse in Aldersgate and a house at Queenhithe.9Morning Advertiser, 19 Sept. 1839. He stood successfully as a ‘reforming’ councillor for Aldersgate ward in 1839, only to have his election overturned on petition for ‘non-residence’ the following year, as a result of an ‘extraordinary’ challenge by the Tories.10Morning Advertiser, 25 Dec. 1839, 14 Jan. 1840. Standing again at the ensuing council by-election, after proving his entitlement, he comfortably won the seat.11Southern Star, 1 Mar. 1840. He subsequently became a key figure in London’s campaign to remove the ‘cruel and filthy’ live cattle market from Smithfield, speaking and voting regularly on the issue at council meetings and lobbying ministers, including the home secretary Sir George Grey in 1851.12See, for example, Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 3 Mar. 1849; London Evening Standard, 21 Dec. 1849, 24 July 1850, 21 Mar. 1851. Legislation to relocate the livestock market passed later that year (14 & 15 Vict. c. 61). His ambition to become sheriff of London, however, was unsuccessful and he failed to secure nomination in 1852 or 1853.13Morning Advertiser, 13 Aug. 1853.

Norris was also active in Abingdon, where he served as one of the Thames navigation commissioners from the 1840s and became part of a group of reforming tradesmen and businessmen intent on breaking the Tories’ domination of the borough.14Oxford University and City Herald, 22 Aug. 1840. Along with local activists such as the wine and grain merchant Gabriel Davis (1809-89), Norris helped to organise a series of challenges to Abingdon’s sitting Conservative MP, the attorney-general Frederick Thesiger, backing campaigns to elect the Liberal army officer James Caulfield at contests in 1845 and 1847. Norris spoke on the hustings against anti-Catholicism in the Berkshire election of that year, and made an ‘energetic speech’ at Abingdon congratulating Caulfield on his successful return at the 1852 election, when he was himself briefly rumoured as a candidate for Deal.15Morning Advertiser, 4 Aug. 1847; Oxford Chronicle, 10 July 1852; Nottingham Review, 2 July 1852.

Norris was an obvious replacement when Caulfield died later that year. After issuing an address backing an extension of the suffrage, however, he found himself outmanoeuvred by supporters of the Liberal-Conservative Lord Norreys, in whose favour he withdrew ‘for the sake of unanimity’, having secured a ‘clear understanding’ that he would be selected should there be another vacancy.16Berkshire Chronicle, 13 Nov. 1852; Oxford Chronicle, 2 Dec. 1854. When Norreys succeeded to the Lords in 1854, however, a more ‘moderate’ Liberal candidate, Joseph Reed, was introduced by an ‘influential’ section of Abingdon’s reformers, who accused Norris of being an ‘upstart’ and a ‘tool’ of the central Liberal election manager James Coppock.17Oxford Chronicle, 2 Dec.; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 16 Dec. 1854. In response Norris’s supporters, led by Gabriel Davis, stressed his local connections, role in the borough’s elections ‘for some time past’ and his imminent ‘rescue’ of the mill upstream at Sandford, noting how he had ‘raised himself up from the ranks by his own perseverance, industry and assiduity’. With both sides refusing to give way, a ‘remarkably close struggle’ between the two Liberals ensued, in which Norris’s failure to become sheriff was eagerly seized upon by Reed’s supporters:

Norris was in too great haste to get to the top of the ladder; he was not content to climb step by step, but wished to vault at once to the top (laughter). The day might come when, having been passed over for the proper time, he might fill the office of sheriff of the city of London ... When he had attained that height, then he might try to get up another step and come forward as a representative.18Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 16 Dec. 1854.

In a similar vein the local Tories, who had declined to put up a candidate, voiced their relief at Norris’s eventual defeat:

We certainly are not sorry to see such a pretentious person as Mr Norris remitted to a sphere for which he is better suited. Great in the worshipful court of common council, the worst representative body in the entire kingdom,19A reference to the City of London corporation. or dazzling with his fatal fluency of speech in that other arena of city eloquence, the ancient and honourable lumber troop,20A bawdy radical smoking and drinking club in London with mock military ranks. Mr Norris may be, but the House of Commons is a slightly different assembly, and although Major Reed may not succeed there, Mr Norris, from all previous experience, can not.21Berkshire Chronicle, 16 Dec. 1854.

Reed’s decision to stand elsewhere at the 1857 general election, however, left Abingdon’s Liberals with little option but to rally around Norris, by now a director of the Eastern Counties Railway, when he announced that would stand again.22 Railway Record, 7 Mar. 1857. He made a point of distancing himself from the radical MP Richard Cobden, who had censured the Palmerston ministry for its bombardment of Canton, and strongly backed the premier, declaring that ‘the English flag must be upheld, whether in Chinese waters, or any other port’. He also reiterated his support for an extension of the county franchise, the admission of Jews to Parliament and the abolition of church rates.23Reading Mercury, 28 Mar. 1857. After a succession of Tory candidates quit the field, he was elected unopposed.24London Daily News, 19 Mar. 1857; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 21 Mar. 1857.

Norris, who is known to have made at least 43 contributions to debate, attended Parliament on a fairly regular basis until 1862, when his presence in divisions began to decline rapidly, dropping to just two recorded votes in 1865. An independently-minded Liberal, he followed the leadership into the lobbies on major issues, but voted steadily for the secret ballot and some other radical causes, including the abolition of military flogging and state funding for ‘ragged’ schools for the poor. He was one of sixty ‘radical’ Members who signed a memorial to Palmerston for more extensive retrenchment and financial reform in February 1861.25Carlisle Journal, 8 Feb. 1861.

In his first known speech, 24 June 1858, he objected to a bill removing the City of London’s right to levy tolls, condemning it as a ‘most unjust’ confiscation of their property. He acted as an occasional spokesman for the corporation thereafter and also defended the activities of the metropolitan board of works, 15, 22 July 1858. Complaints were made at the 1859 general election that Norris’s ‘business and other engagements’ remained ‘so multitudinous as to unfit him to be their member’. After defending his vote against the Derby’s ministry’s ‘remarkably unpopular’ reform bill, however, he easily topped the poll against a Conservative, in a contest that officially cost him a mere £137.26Berkshire Chronicle, 23 Apr., 7 May 1859; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 7 May 1859; PP 1860 (6), lvi. 204.

Back in the Commons Norris campaigned steadily against the proposed closure of Abingdon’s gaol and the transfer of its county sessions to Reading, as well as speaking on local police and railway matters.27Hansard, 21 Apr. 1863, vol. 170, cc. 505-6; 13 Feb. 1865, vol. 177, c. 219. He continued to defend the City of London’s autonomy and also opposed plans to rationalise church provision in the capital through closures, urging instead the appointment of better preachers to fill them, 8 Aug. 1860.28Hansard, 8 Aug. 1860, vol. 160, c. 910. By far his most significant contribution, however, was on behalf of the paper manufacturing industry, especially in the dispute over the repeal of the paper duties. Although repeal of this sales tax on paper had been included in Gladstone’s 1860 budget, it had been controversially rejected by the Lords, leading to a showdown between the two houses. Insisting that repeal would benefit the working classes as well as the producers of literature, not least by removing 5% from the cost of school books, Norris challenged the chancellor to ‘abide manfully by his budget’, and for the ministry to ‘stand by’ him.29Hansard, 12 Mar. 1860, vol. 157, cc. 372-5; 2 May 1861, vol. 162, c. 1432. He was incredulous when the ministry still went ahead with proposals to reduce the import duty on foreign paper while repeal remained unresolved. ‘It required no little courage in a private member, more accustomed to silence than to speech, to enter into a conflict with so accomplished an orator as the chancellor’, he declared, but paper manufacturers would now be ‘exposed to a most unequal competition’ by allowing ‘the foreign article to enter our markets at a reduced duty and to compete with home produce’. 30Hansard, 6 Aug. 1860, vol. 160, cc. 784-6. He was in the minority against lowering import tariffs, 6 Aug. 1860, but of course backed the ministry’s decision to force through repeal of the paper duties the following year, an event which was crucial in clarifying the Commons’ supremacy over the Lords in money matters.

Norris next took issue with the ‘unfair’ taxes imposed by European nations on the cotton products used to make paper, pointing out that while foreign paper was now being ‘imported duty free’, British manufacturers continued to be ‘subjected to a heavy export duty on rags coming from foreign countries’.31Hansard, 9 May 1861, vol. 162, c. 1798. He urged the case for an inquiry, which was appointed, 28 May 1861, and became one of the main questioners in the ensuing select committee. He also secured returns of information about the free export of rags, 25 June 1861.32PP 1861 (376), lviii. 517. The committee’s report, which he took the lead in drafting, blamed foreign competition and the export duties on rags for an ‘unprecedented depression’ in the paper industry, and demanded that ‘strenuous exertions’ be made to remove the taxes.33PP 1861 (467), xi. 267-97.

Norris’s other interventions included an attack on the ministry’s proposals to introduce a licence tax on domestic brewing, which he complained would be ‘unfair towards the humbler classes’ and do nothing ‘to reduce the temptation in men to enter public-houses, particularly in rural districts’, 3 Apr. 1862. He also objected to the additional costs of appointing Catholic and Dissenting ministers to gaols under the terms of the prisons bill, 11 May 1863. Returning to the difficulties facing the paper industry, 19 July 1864, he warned that some 50 or 60 paper manufacturers had recently gone bankrupt and called again for ‘the English paper maker, who was only a refiner of rags’ to be ‘placed in a similar position with regard to his foreign competitors’. By now he was clearly speaking from personal experience. With his business struggling, he became far less active in Parliament, though he continued to speak about Abingdon’s gaol and matters affecting London, including proposals to use its sewage for agriculture, 28 Feb. 1865.34Hansard, 13 Feb. 1865, vol. 177, c. 219; 28 Feb. 1865, vol. 177, c. 845; 8 March 1865, vol. 177, c. 362. In his last known spoken contribution he gave evidence to the inquiry on Thames navigation, as the ‘owner’ of the ‘old lock tolls’ at Sandford-on-Thames, 16 May 1865.35PP 1865 (399), xii. 683-6.

Standing again for Abingdon at that year’s general election, Norris was charged with being ‘an absentee’, despite the fact that only the year before he had received a vote of thanks from the borough for his services in helping to protect its gaol and sessions from closure.36Oxford Times, 8, 15 July 1865; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 13 Aug. 1864. Although he had voted for an extension of the borough and county franchises on at least three occasions, another complaint was his lack of support for parliamentary reform.37Reading Mercury, 8 July 1865. He had voted for reform on 13 Mar. 1861, 10 Apr. 1861 and 11 May 1864, but was absent from the divisions of 13 Apr. 1864 and 8 May 1865. Old prejudices about his background and concerns about his ability to spend sufficient money also surfaced, with one commentator predicting that he would ’not be supported by a united Liberal party, owing to a feeling that he does not combine in himself all the requisites for a member and besides holds the representation too cheap’.38Berkshire Chronicle, 8 July 1865.

With the local Liberal party again divided, Norris lost the election to a well-connected Liberal-Conservative.39Oxford Times, 15 July 1865. Later that year, to ‘much astonishment in commercial circles’, he was declared bankrupt.40Oxford University Herald, 11 Nov. 1865; London Gazette, 18 Nov. 1865. It subsequently emerged that his manager at Aldersgate, Henry Tuck, had mishandled his affairs whilst he was in Parliament, leaving him with debts of £89,000 and assets of only £40,000. (Norris himself had been living at the Mill House in Sutton Courtenay with his second wife, niece and three servants on a fairly modest £1,250 per year.)41London Evening Standard, 23 Mar. 1866. His paper mill failed to attract a new buyer and he was still running it in 1869, when a three ton boiler exploded, killing a stoker, whom he blamed for the accident. He was ‘fully insured’.42Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 22 May 1869.

Norris seems to have cleared a substantial portion of his debts by the time of his death in January 1870, when he was remembered as a ‘firm and consistent supporter of Liberal principles’.43Pall Mall Gazette, 19 Jan. 1870. By the end of that year all his creditors had been satisfied.44Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 10 Dec. 1870. His will, which was proved under a modest £2,000, 28 Feb. 1870, left everything to his wife.45National Probate Calendar, 28 Feb. 1870. His paper mill at Sutton Courtenay struggled on until the early 1880s, when it closed, and was demolished in the early 20^th century. The associated Mill House later became one of the country retreats of the Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. In recent years it was reacquired by Asquith’s great-granddaughter, the actress Helena Bonham Carter.