Benjamin Mander 1752-1819 Benjamin Mander was a pioneer manufacturer and entrepreneur, and a public figure in the Wolverhampton of the early industrial revolution. His upbringing was distinctly pious: ‘He was brought up under the sound of the Gospel … even in his youth he sought the company of the most serious and experienced christians’. But his father died when he was twelve, so he must have taken over the family businesses early under the supervision of his stepfather, a dour Scottish Presbyterian called Charles Hunter, who was also responsible for turning the family to strong nonconformity. Benjamin Mander & Son, Japanners, 1792 Benjamin continued for a while in the old family business as a baker and maltster. But in 1792, when he was 40, he changed direction and we find him setting up in one of the new industries becoming established in the town as a manufacturer of japanned ware and tin-plate work. The japanning trade was always connected, particularly in the Midlands, with the varnish trade. His eldest son, Charles Mander, was making varnish to supply the growing japanning business by 1803 and it was the symbiosis of these trades which led to the development of the famous manufacturing business in the nineteenth century. The earliest formal account of the industry, J. Stalker and G. Parker’s A Treatise of Japanning and Varnishing, published in Oxford in 1688, already links the two trades. As a strict neo-classical account, it traces japanning back to the time of Alexander the Great: ‘True, genuine Japan, like the salamander, lives in the flames, and stands unalterable, when the wood which was imprisoned in it, is utterly consumed’. The japanned ware trade grew up to provide goods in imitation of the fashionable and exotic ‘lackwork’ which had begun to be imported by the English East India Company in the early seventeenth century, but in quantity after 1660. Grand japan furniture was produced in trading cities like Venice and London. In its industrial form, techniques of japanning on iron plated with tin were pioneered on the estate of Major John Hanbury (1664-1734) at Pontypool Park in South Wales. Here, during the last years of the seventeenth century, his manager Thomas Allgood, from Northampton-shire, made great advances in iron making, with adjustable rolling machinery capable of producing thin iron sheets of uniform thickness. Soon Thomas Allgood had set up a successful tin-plate works where his famous ‘Pontypool ware’ was made for three generations, up to 1790, and in Usk up to 1820.
The lacquer formed a protection and decoration, and the Midlands trade gradually developed traditions in increasingly industrial techniques and decoration all of its own. Tinned plate was a contraction of ‘tinned iron plate’, involving the coating of iron with a thin layer of tin, as in galvanising (where zinc is the coating), to preserve the iron from rust, ‘while the tin itself is the most wholesome and cleanly of metals’. By the 1720s the japanned ware trade had started to find its way to the Midlands. We find records of it in Bilston, centre of the craft of enamelling, where Joseph Allen and Samuel Stone are mentioned as japanners in 1719. Imports of German tinplate contributed well over a million plates a year in the years up to 1738, when the War of the Austrian Succession put a stop to it, and English manufacturers seized their opportunity. John Baskerville (1706-75), best known today as a typefounder and printer, had followed the same pattern as also a varnish maker and pioneer japanned ware manufacturer, setting up the first Birmingham japanning works in 1740, which produced mostly ‘cheap tin trays’. The Midlands trade developed quickly. In 1740, the Shropshire ironmasters, Edward and Ralph Knight of Stourport, were engaged in early industrial espionage, sending John Cooke (grandson of Thomas Cooke, right-hand man to Major John Hanbury) to Pontypool to gather what trade secrets he could, paying him £36 15s. for ‘information on tinning’. Japanning became a fashionable amateur pursuit: The Ladies’ Amusement, or The Whole Art of Japanning Made Easy (1760) was a best seller. Wolverhampton in the eighteenth century was rich in the necessary metal-working skills for which it was already well known. Trades established there included locksmithing, ornamental iron and brass casting, ‘toy’ making (which meant at the time manufacturing small articles and trinkets, such as snuff boxes, étuis, needlecases), and the manufacture of fine steel goods. Sword hilts, steel buttons and buckles, chatelaines, chains, fob seals and jewellery were made of polished and ‘cut’ steel, faceted like pyrites. The trade was already described by Dr Plot, Staffordshire’s first county historian, in 1686; thirty ‘toy’ makers are listed in 1770. One John Warralow became ‘steel jeweller’ to George III at the height of the trade in 1782. A large export trade developed to markets in France and Spain, where before the events of the Revolution and the tariffs that followed on, their merchants bought the fashionable steel goods of Wolverhampton for their weight in gold, ‘Spanish doubloons in one scale, steel goods in the other’. The japanning trade had reached Wolverhampton by the 1760s, where it fitted in well with the existing pattern of the local metalwork trades, and others like vitreous enamelling established in Bilston, so that Wolverhampton gradually became the centre of manufacture. A good deal of the talent which was no longer engaged in the fine steel ware trade was diverted into the rising japan ware trade ‘and the sons and grandsons of the best workmen in steel became … the best japanners in England’. The emphasis shifted towards the mass production of the trays and coasters, as well as firescreens, wine coolers and then highly-varnished panels for carriages. Sketchley & Adams’ True Guide of 1770 lists eight japanners in Wolverhampton, including two women and the famous Taylor and Jones who occupied the Old Hall, then Turton Hall, which is described as ‘the cradle of the Midlands japanning industry’. Successful Wolverhampton japanners included Edward Bird, son of a carpenter who trained at the Old Hall and became a Royal Academician; George Wallis, the art theorist and Deputy Commissioner of the Great Exhibition in 1851, who was apprenticed at the Old Hall and worked for Manders; and Junius Brutus Booth (1796-1852), the eccentric actor, who started life as a skilled decorator at the Old Hall and went on to found one of the most distinguished acting dynasties of nineteenth-century America.
12 to 36 layers of paper pasted together on a block. Edges torn to prevent creases. Dried in a hot room. Saturated with hot linseed to harden. When dried in oven can be worked like wood. Japanned about 12 times, each coat being dried and rubbed with pumice stone. Ornamentation.–Gold leaf laid onto with water. Pattern painted over gold with ‘asphaltum’. Uncovered gold taken off with wet rag. Asphaltum removed by turpentine. Other painted added by hand. Handed up with ‘rotten stone’. Benjamin Mander established his japan shop in the family works in John’s Lane, while continuing his bakery and malthouse on the same premises and living in the old family house next door. He took into partnership a Thomas Shepherd, introduced to him by his brother, John. They quickly advertised for more staff: Wanted immediately. Several Tinmen. Good workmen will meet with every encouragement from Mander & Shepherd, Tin-plate workers and Japanners in general, John Street, Wolverhampton. His japanning shop was never large. ‘Because the nature of the work demanded manual dexterity rather than capital’, writes the Victoria County History of Staffordshire, ‘most of the firms were small, consisting of the master craftsman and a handful of workers...’ By 1802, there were eleven tinplate workers in Wolverhampton recorded in the rate book, including ‘Mander–, 48 John Street’. In 1805, he is still described on a deed as ‘baker and japanner’. Examples of early ‘paper’ wares produced by their workshop turn up in the antiques’ trade from time to time; one documented example recorded in the authorities is a ‘rectangular papier mâché tray with canted corners and a deep chinoiserie border in tinted gold of figures in a landscape’. A fire screen is listed in The Mount probate inventory of 1930 as a ‘Mander heirloom’: ‘Mahogany pole fire screen with square base and papier mâché oblong banner with Nubian figures in coloured lacquer’. Six plaques with landscape scenes were lent by the family to Mander Brothers in 1952, but have since become lost. Other items at The Mount included oval plaques of ‘Lord Nelson’, or of ‘two children and a dog’, or ‘a girl with a basket’; also water cans, snuffer stands and, most impressively, ‘a Regency black japanned and gilt cane-panelled couch with scroll end and back’. A music stand with bulbous leg of about 1840 is at Owlpen. The firm became known as ‘Benjamin Mander & Son’, and was supplying a paper waiter and other japanned wares in April and July 1811 to Chamberlains of Worcester, a well-known porcelain manufacturer who purchased goods for resale in their retail shop: ‘one 22 inch waiter No. 4. 10/6’. A letter sent to the firm in 1815 states that export was being considered by then: Mr. J. Shore called yesterday; he admires the winecoolers very much, also the plate-warmer, which he thought very elegant and quite suitable for the American market... He says his friend (an American) will want some trays for the spring trade, and hopes he will be able to do something with us. Benjamin seems to have become moderately successful as an early entrepreneur, active in public life as ‘one of the leading and most public-spirited men of the town’. He became one of the original Town Commissioners, forerunners of town councillors, under the first Wolverhampton Town Improvement Act of 1777 for ‘removing nuisances and encroachments’. Commissioners were all people with property worth more than £12 a year and owning lands or goods worth more than £1,000, meeting at The Red Lion inn, where they were expected to pay sixpence ‘to be spent in drink for the good of the house’. By 1814 four Manders are recorded among the sixty Commissioners of the borough at the same time. They were already setting the tradition for public service for which succeeding generations of Manders became distinguished.
The mob duly made their way through the streets of Birmingham burning and pillaging, and then proceeded to Wolverhampton intending to burn down the old meeting house, or chapel, in John’s Lane, believed to be a hotbed of Jacobin propaganda, of which Benjamin was the leading member, and then to burn down his house and property. As the mob surged down John’s Lane, the owner of the house
next door to the chapel, a Dr Morrison, whose wife lay ill on the second floor,
had the presence of mind to distract the mob’s attention by coming to his front
door and, taking off his hat and waving it, shouting at the top of his voice This ruse saved the chapel from almost certain destruction and kept the invaders on the move. They rushed down the street to seek out the ‘arch dissenter and embryo revolutionary’, Benjamin Mander. His grandson, Samuel Small Mander, wrote that Dr Morrison’s shout gave a delay which had given my grandfather time to prepare for them and accordingly he posted himself at his front door with a drawn sword in his hand, and at the other entrance he placed one of his servants, a strong muscular man armed with a massive kitchen poker threatening to kill the man who should throw the first stone. Benjamin lighted candles in the windows in order to identify his assailants which, together with ‘the fierceness and courage he displayed’, disconcerted the rioters. By his quick thinking he managed to hold back the rabble. The eight o’clock bell then rang as a curfew for the apprentices, so the crowd were compelled to disperse, deciding to meet the following day, when they expected to be reinforced by a large band of rioters from Birmingham. But by the next morning, troops of cavalry had arrived preventing the crowd from reassembling, and the day was saved. Bread and Circus: Benjamin Mander and the Union Mill, 1812 Benjamin Mander’s interests were certainly diverse, perhaps too much so for his own profit as a businessman (we shall see that he died leaving a meagre estate). His promotion in 1812 of the Wolverhampton Flour and Bread Company, which built and operated the Union Mill, together with the Union Poor House (a fine building to a radial plan which stood on the Cleveland Road) as a philanthropic adjunct, again led to notoriety. The company was modelled on the more famous Birmingham Union Mill, largely as a charitable venture to provide cheap bread to the poor in the period of economic difficulty and social agitation which followed the Napoleonic wars. In 1812 the labourers were suffering from a depression in agricultural prices and trade in a brutal climate of protection which favoured the landowners, and there was deep unrest, leading to rioting in the streets. Against a background of growing population and 35 years of war, piracy, and blockade, the price of bread had inexorably risen. There were years of dearth, as when in 1795 Pitt had taxed the use of flour in hair-powder, and then saw fit to forbid its use altogether. Since Benjamin had become a master baker, bread had gone from being the staple diet of the poor to being in some cases a luxury item. The Union Mill was founded on a sense of mission and high principle, intended to keep the price of good quality bread cheap. The Union Mill project was launched when the promoters offered mass subscriptions to the public one market day in August 1812. The idea caught on immediately, and the public welcomed it by subscribing. Gerald Mander wrote: It came at a time too when steps were taken to enforce the Statute concerning the size and quality of bread in the county [which] perhaps reminded the authorities of their duties in this regard. It was perhaps fortunate that the baking of bread was such an everyday domestic affair, because the committee, strong in sentiment, was undoubtedly weak on the technical side. The notice: WANTED, SEVERAL JOURNEYMEN BAKERS, who perfectly understand their Business was not without meaning; for Benjamin Mander who, as managing-director, sought their services and was to study their characters for Integrity, Sobriety and Industry, was himself a japanner. But the established millers and bakers were hostile to a scheme whose purpose, after all, was to undercut their prices, and wasted no time in retaliating. They brought a Bill of Indictment for conspiracy against Benjamin and his committee of eight other promoters of the Mill at the Lent Assizes. Benjamin and his committee were charged with illegal combination by the millers, stating they were annoyed by ‘a scheme which was held out as a probable way to reduce the price of provisions, and be of great public benefit’. The case was brought to trial at Stafford in 1814 at the summer assizes before Sir Robert Dallas, and Benjamin, as chairman of the Mill, found himself as first defendant in ‘The King versus B. Mander and eight others’. So he came to lead a celebrated trial on its behalf, the proceedings of which were published in full. The prosecution was founded on an Act passed in 1720 (6 Geo. I, c. 18, sec. 18, which the booksellers of the town and district were selling for 2d.) to prevent monopolistic trade combinations which were not in the public interest. The principle at issue was that enormous sums, here 15,000 shares of one pound each, could be held by as many subscribers, so that the Mill could sell its produce at a price scarcely exceeding that of the raw commodity. The legal question was whether the possible annihilation of the legitimate trade would be to the detriment of the public in general, or just one section of the public, i.e. the consumers. In the proceedings, Benjamin, as principal manager of the Mill, is impugned as a japanner, ignorant of the trade of baker which he professed to carry on, ‘an evil to a known and recognised trade’, although on cross examination he pointed out he was, in fact, formerly a baker.
For the Union it was argued that nine or ten thousand pounds had been spent on the mill, the greater part of which would have been lost if it were stopped. Great benefit had arisen from the preceding Union Mill in Birmingham. John Devey, a corn factor, stated that the idea was driven by the rise in the price of wheat: when the Mill started in August 1812, wheat was 23s. a bushel, but ‘the people of Wolverhampton were much dissatisfied’ when it rose to 26s., and ‘there was much murmuring’, in consequence of which he supposed the Union Mill originated. The bakers and millers made an impassioned case against the Union. One baker gave evidence–echoed by many others–to the effect that he was obliged to sell at reduced prices, or he could not sell at all. When the mill began, the profits were small, because flour was falling in price, yielding profits of 3s. 6d. a sack. In January 1814, the price of flour was 62s. 6d. Another baker, Thomas Wilkes, stated that whereas before the Union Mill he baked on average about nine sacks a week, now he only baked half that quantity, perhaps three of four sacks a week, losing his trade when the Union began to undersell. When he complained to Mr. Mander of his situation, and said what a sad thing it was to their trade, Mr Mander said he was sorry for it, but it could not be helped, and he advised him to give up baking. [Wilkes] asked him how he must live? and Mr. Mander replied, ‘Oh! go into the huckstering way, and sell flour for us’. ‘Ah!’ said Wilkes, ‘but I know nothing of that, I was brought up a baker, and have been one almost all my life; besides my house is too large.’ ‘Why then,’ said Mr. Mander, ‘you should take a smaller.’ Such arguments continued, and the trial lasted a full fourteen hours: It proved a fiasco from the bakers’ point of view, judge, jury and audience being for the defendants. It is possible that the prosecution was only half-hearted; counsel had only been briefed at the last moment, and vainly did his witnesses show that the Union Mill was ‘unfair trading’, ‘a monopoly’ and would drive the bakers to extinction. The judge rather pertinently asked how the case differed from the decision given by Lord Ellenborough in 1811 in favour of the Birmingham Flour and Bread Company (The King versus Webb) and to that there was no answer. The case was finally decided in favour of Benjamin Mander and the Mill, with shouts of ‘Mander and the Union for ever!’ He was pronounced the hero of a popular demonstration, which ‘hailed him as the champion of justice and the poor’. Gerald Mander describes the upshot: The verdict of not guilty, that the company was not illegally associated, was a popular one; and though the news reached Wolverhampton at daybreak, the bells almost immediately commenced to ring and continued at intervals during the day. The coach bringing the witnesses was met at Gosbrook and drawn through the town in triumph. The crowds assembled were immense, shouting ‘Justice and Union for ever’, ‘The Big Loaf has won’. And yet the wildest rumours had been afloat; that B. Mander as ringleader was to be hanged and the rest transported for seven years; but ‘it was a long and fair fought Battle and the Victory quite complete! .... if we had not taken a single witness, we should have won.’ (Family letter, 4 August, 1814).
The government’s answer was harsh and blinkered, increasing the powers of the magistrates in a climate of widespread discontent which led up to the most unpopular of the Corn Laws imposed in the year of Waterloo (1815), fixing the price of home-grown wheat at 80s. a quarter and forbidding the import of foreign wheat until the home price reached that level. The effect was to keep the price of bread artificially high in the interests of the landowning classes, and it was of course to be a running sore for the government for the next generation or more. The cause ran high in Wolverhampton. Richard Fryer, Radical, a local banker (and one of the first subscribers to the town Library with John and Benjamin) was also one of the first members to represent the borough in the Reform Parliament. He was the first to propose in the House of Commons the repeal of the Corn Laws. The House was lit with candles, and he smashed a pair of snuffers to pieces as he struck the table in a moment of heated debate, startling the members and forcing their attention. But the motion was defeated, and on the first opportunity he resigned his seat. Benjamin married Elizabeth Hanbury Read of Kidderminster in 1776. Known as ‘Betsey’ in the family, she was a skilled needlewoman: her childhood doll of about 1750, with the clothes made by her, and several examples of her needlework of expert quality, survive in the family. Benjamin and Elizabeth had eleven children. Two sons, Charles, born in 1780, and Benjamin Parton, born in 1785, entered the business and became pillars of support to their father with the tinplating-japanning business and with the bakery. But both were to set out in different directions as industrialists. Benjamin’s letters are, after the fashion of the time, strained, misspelt and often barely legible, although written in a clearly artistic hand: Gerald describes it as ‘pretty’, ‘an epithet one might hesitate to apply to the handwritings of some of his descendants’. He writes from London on 2 December 1809 to Betsey, while staying with his son-in-law, James Pearsall, a member of the London Common Council, and daughter, Rebecca, in Cheapside: Dear Betsey, I am obliged to you for yours, I have said in Char[les’s] that Rebi [Rebecca] is much better and James very well, you say how much you are pleased that I have had some precious meals, it is a mercy & I desire to esteem it such to merit with some crumb, by the way, I wish the flavor did last longer, but so it is that our corrupt Meats & the various seens around us soon spoil our joys, steal our affection away from them that deserve our every thought and every love, but so it is & I fear will be in this wilderness state of life. Mr. Scales does win upon … you & many precious souls may he have much of the Lords presence and may the spirit seal this work to the souls of many and that a Cause that the Lord will plant & own may spring up in Wolverhampton, I have had some pleasant thoughts that I shall see Zion in prosperity & peace upon Israel if it is the Lord’s will may I not be disappoint… you talk of dulness deadness & co. in spir… & affections, I find much of it, it is a mercy to be enabled to lament it may be drawn out to that precious fountain that can do all these things away, & supply all our needs may we look to him at all times, I intend if all is well to leave next week. Today I calld on Messrs N… he & she send their respects if you sd be in Town will be glad to see you providence seems to appear for they must like you … unless when I see you, the Lord does what he pleases with all his Creatures and all he does is well may we constantly view [h]is hand in all our concerns Yours Affly B. Mander Another letter to his daughter, Sarah, describes the
illuminations which followed the declaration of the Peace of Amiens, which was
soon upset by the escape of Napoleon from Elba and renewed hostilities at
Waterloo, in June 1815: Dear Sarah, We have been expecting to hear from you some days–your Mother thinks you may find time. You have had the pleasure of having peace declared, suppose there is a deal of bustle, we have had nothing else since the news reached us, the people can’t settle to work. Yesterday there was a grand illumination in Birmingham, and it is said there is to be another tonight, and one at Bilston. It is proposed to have ours on Friday week, and a general dinner for the poor and labouring people, men and women. A considerable subscription is on foot for the purpose. People in general want provisions lower–butchers’ meat was never so dear, as at present, trade very indifferent, not near so good as it was twelve months ago. I hope the people will be enabled to see whence all mercies flow, and have hearts of gratitude given them, then we may expect showers of blessings. How is the weather in London? It is very cold here–our fires are nearly as large as in Winter–I wonder anything grows–if the warm weather does not soon set in, the prospects will be awful. He that rules his own best and will do all things well through mercy. Your dear Mother continues very comfortable, has been very bustling today and yesterday–it was our wash, some blame her but she is never so much in her element as when she is stirring about–may her useful life be long spared. I don’t know her equal in most things–as a Mother, as a Wife, as a Neighbour. I would say to her daughters "go, and do thou likewise"–let us hear very soon from you–we long to hear of you all–give our love to your brother and Sister James and Ellen. Your affectionate Father, Benj. Mander Great preparation is making here for the illumination–it will be such an one as never was in Wolverhampton before. Benjamin died in 1819 at the age of 67. In his life, according to his funeral panegyric, ‘he courted not the smiles of the rich, nor did he regard their frowns; he watched to do good! To the poor and the distressed his ear was always open, and to his advice and even his purse (far beyond what prudence may have dictated) have they found relief.’ His death was sudden: He had long laboured under a complaint in his chest … and had no doubt his dissolution would be sudden. On the day he departed he was in his usual spirits and made many calls, and although he felt more pain than common, he did not appear to apprehend the change, but in the midst of his usefulness was taken away without a sigh or a groan & sweetly fell asleep in Jesus and entered into the joy of his Lord. Eighty years later he is described by Joseph Jones as ‘a man of zeal and courage, ever ready to defend the weak against the strong, and stand up for right and liberty. At the same time, his kindness of heart was proverbial.’ He never made a will and his wife was given letters of administration. After a life of worthy industry, his estate was valued at just fifty pounds. The bakery died with him.
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