Charles The First Charles Mander 1780-1853 Charles [Primus] Mander was the first of (now) seven generations to bear the name Charles, ever since used by the senior representative of the family. By early 1791 he was away at school, being educated with his aunts, the Miss Reads, who ran a dame school in Vicar Street, Kidderminster, and then he went to Mr. Harrod’s School at West Bromwich ‘where I was robbed of my precious time,’ he wrote bitterly sixty years later, ‘and have felt the loss of it all my life, to the present day … in my 71st year.’ As he left to boarding school, his mother, Betsey, offered him pious admonitions, typical of her letters written to him as a small boy, to ‘behave well and remember that, be where you will, the greate God sees you and knows all your thoughts and actions. I beg you not to tell anything that is not true.’ He seems to have learned by these worthy precepts, as his conduct was grave and irreproachable to the end of his days. But his formal education was clearly brief, and on 16 February 1795, aged fifteen, he was indentured as an apprentice, as trade practice required, to his father, Benjamin, for seven years as, nominally at least, a baker. He then continued with his brother, Benjamin Parton Mander, for a while in business as a japanner and tin-plate worker. Thomas Shepherd was not proving great assistance, and left the partnership with Benjamin in 1799, creating an opening for the younger generation. From this time onwards, Charles (Primus) and Benjamin Parton (junior) became more closely involved in their father’s japanning business, though it never really thrived. He was known as ‘Boots’, ‘on account of his boots’–at a time when such were an important article of dress. Charles, at a height of 5ft 6in (average for the time), according to his passport, with light brown hair, grey eyes, and wearing ‘mixture’, or tweed, was travelling to Ireland in April and again December 1800, at the time of the Rebellion. In 1808 he still describes himself as a ‘japanner’ first and foremost. But the two brothers gradually came to the conclusion that the future lay not in the restricted and traditional business of japanning alone, but in making japanning materials–in particular, varnish. Varnish, 1803 Charles was already making varnish to supply the growing japanning business in the area by the age of 23, spurred on by his uncle John next door, who had been doing it for 30 years. It was the obvious ‘high tech’ development. The varnish book of the brothers has survived, with its first entry in Charles’s hand bearing the date 1803: Jan 13 Maddox 2 quarts fine Copal 32 16s. In 1804, they were supplying O. & W. Rytons’ japanning works, the most famous in the town, trading at the Old Hall: 2 gallons Var 32 £3 4s. Can 2s. 4d. It was the symbiosis of these two trades, japanned ware and then the varnish and chemicals to supply it, which led to the development of the Manders business.
The early days were not without difficulty, but Charles Mander was a man of scrupulous integrity in matters great and small. In the 1810 depression, trade was bad. ‘In consequence’, the record states, ‘of acts not his own, he was found himself compelled to make a composition with his creditors’, of thirteen shillings in the pound. Ten years afterwards, being in a position to do so, he honourably paid the remaining seven shillings, ‘an example it would be well to find more frequently followed’. Business did prosper eventually though, and success was consolidated. Charles’s black ‘japan’ varnish was to become a phenomenally successful product in late Georgian and early Victorian England, cheap and strong and of good quality, used long after the decorated trays and furniture for which it was formulated had gone out of fashion. By 1817 the twin varnish and japan works employed some 30 people. In 1818 he is still listed as a japanner, varnish maker and tin-plate worker. The works remained on a domestic scale, the manufactory arranged like ‘the once beautiful back premises of a gentleman’s house’. The works occupied the extensive spare land between Cock Street and Woolpack Alley (still existing up to the 1970s) which had been owned by John and Benjamin. As well as organizing the works, Charles was travelling widely to sell and promote his varnish. Gerald Mander writes: The death of Benjamin Mander in 1819 left his son to confront all the difficulties attached to a one-man show. It was not the easiest of things to keep up the manufacturing part and at the same time be away for days if not weeks at a time trying to sell varnish and establish a reputation for it. Foreign trade was at this time done through merchants; his own journeys did not take him further afield than Ireland. Many of his letters travelling on business in the early years of the century survive and form an invaluable account of the life and high ideals of the early industrial families, operating among a network of nonconformist co-religionists throughout the Midland counties and the West. He is seen developing new markets, using varnishes for the decorated panels of coaches. We have a lively account of his efforts to sell carriage varnish in the West Country, dated 7 November 1817: I wrote my beloved wife from Bristol on the 5th in which I informed her I purposed leaving there as yesterday morning. Agreeable thereto, I left at 6 o'clock, and arrived at Bridgwater soon after 12 o’clock, where the only coach-maker keeps an Inn, at which, of course, I dined. Before dinner, I got an interview with the landlord (Mr. Sutton), with whom I had some difficulty to give my varnish a trial. He said he did all his business with Mr. Ives, and had done for more than 20 years, except when he had been persuaded to try some other, of which he had always repented. However, I must talk to his son, to whom he left the management of the business. I soon got the ear of the son, who took two quarts from me, and promised he would give it an immediate trial himself, and if he approved of it, the next time I came he would give me an order. At two o’clock I left B-water for Taunton, where I arrived before four o'clock, in which place there are three coach-makers. With great difficulty I prevailed upon the principal to try the two quarts I had with me, and from each of the other two I got an order for one gallon of Body. At 7 o’clock I came on by the Mail Coach to this place [Exeter], where I arrived about 12 o’clock at night, rather tired I assure you. This morning I sallied forth, and found there were six coach-makers, and having but two samples with me, I of course attacked the two best first. The first I called upon received me rather pleasantly, but said he could not try it without consulting his brother, who was out. I, however, talked to him till he said he had a body just ready for varnishing this morning, and if I would bring it him, he would have it immediately used, and if approved of would order when I came again. From him I went to the next in point of consequence, and he positively told me he would have nothing to do with it; he bought all his varnish from one person, and would try none else, for he had been taken in too often. However, having a good brassy face, I was not to be put off with such trifles as those, and then I began to argue the point with him and to give him proof that I was no impostor, but understood what I was about. At last I succeeded so well with him that he, like the other, said he had a body just ready for varnishing, and if I would let him have it, he would give it the first coat this day. I found the third nearly as bad, but I talked the matter over with him, till he told me he would enquire from one of the others with whom he was intimate, and if he approved, perhaps he may write to me before I came again. From the two next I took an order for two gallons from each, and the last I did not press, as he appeared to be doing nothing, but left him my card.
I have taken an inside place (for it is very wet) to leave here at 8 o’clock tomorrow morning for Bath, where I hope to arrive about 9 o’clock and where I trust I shall find a letter from the Dear Partner of my life, and of all the comforts I can procure her, which I sincerely wish were more and better. Tomorrow I shall of course be journeying all the day. O! that I may not only experience journeying mercies, which are indeed very great, but the presence of the Lord the Spirit communing with me by the way, till my heart shall burn within me! Then journeying mercies will be sweet indeed! I look forward with great desire to Sabbath Day. O that it may be a Sabbath indeed to my soul! May the presence of Jesus be felt by me, and by faith may I be enabled to call Him mine, then indeed will it be a Bethel to my soul never to be forgotten. A Sabbath began below, the blessed effect of which will never be lost through an eternity. Blessed be His dear name, for the least desire I feel towards Him, I cannot procure this myself, but I want to feel more of it, to feel Him precious, and to know that He is my Lord and my God, to live wholly to His honour and His glory and to do more for His great name. ‘Mine should the profit be, but His should be the praise.’ Wishing you every possible good, I must conclude with assuring you of my unceasing affection and believe me, Your truly devoted husband, Chas. Mander. Please write me for Monday. Post to the Swan Inn, Bridge Street, Bristol, where I hope to be on Tuesday. I have just heard since I wrote the above that the Princess Charlotte is no more! Lord what is man? "At his best estate he is altogether vanity." Charlotte Sophia (1744-1818), queen of George III, who died the following year, had been an early patron to Charles Mander. It was perhaps in fashionable Georgian Bath, a few years before, that he had clinched the sale of which he was most proud, when he managed to sell her a supply of varnish for her own carriages. From then on, throughout the nineteenth century, the firm’s letterhead, indeed every communication from the firm, triumphantly bore her royal arms above the inscription ‘Manufacturer to Her Majesty The Late Queen Charlotte’. The Royal Family are known to have patronised the Midland japanning industry, and George III admired Henry Clay of Birmingham’s techniques for lacquering on paper or slate (patented in 1778) to make buttons for himself, describing himself in the 1790s as ‘George the button-maker’. Clay was also ‘Japanner to the Queen’, and in 1793, presented her with a sedan chair with papier mâché panels. The next royal warrant for Manders was awarded with greater officialdom by George V, nearly a century after the sale to Queen Charlotte. The expansion of the business was not without its upsets. In the 1820s, the firm suffered a ‘great fire’ which nearly destroyed the whole of their property. Again Gerald Mander takes up the story: Strenuous as this was, there were also times of stress at home when he would work into the early morning at the office, ‘his health better than usual’ (1820). It was about the year 1824 (or perhaps later) when a great fire broke out in the works of Mander, Weaver and Mander, next door in John Street. The fire started in the morning and lasted the whole day; several lives were lost. The heat, an eye-witness says, was terrific, even the panes in the windows of the houses opposite were melted, machinery, iron, wooden floors and roofs were all destroyed; terror and confusion reigned throughout the whole town. Soldiers with fixed bayonets were placed at both ends of the street to keep the crowd back. Many ready helpers, men and women, carried water from the market place and other neighbouring pumps to pour on the ruins. Charles Mander’s stock rooms adjoined the burning walls, but the only damage caused him was from the hasty removal of his goods. He was away at the time, and did not arrive back until all was in order again. The town pumps no doubt played their part. More interesting would be the parish beadle and the hand fire-engine solemnly squirting the blazing mass.
Charles was clearly content to delegate the cares of the japanning side of the business. The partnership deed stipulated that Charles and his two sons would ‘devote the whole of their time to the business of a Varnish Maker’, while Wiley would handle the japanning business, which they foresaw would be abandoned when the 14 years’ life of the partnership was up in 1849. The capital was fixed at £4,000, of which Charles had two thirds, probably indicating the rough weighting between the two trades. An invoice of the following year (1835) describes Mander & Wiley on the letterhead as ‘Japanners, Tin Plate Workers and Manufacturers of Fine Paper Goods, Fancy Pontypool Work & Co.’ A Mander & Wiley invoice for Charles’s ‘varnish side’, as it continued to be called well into the twentieth century, survives dated 4 February 1835: 6 gall tar spirits But the deed proved a most unworkable arrangement. Soon there arose a ‘visible change’ when, instead of ‘harmony’, ‘there was opposition’, and ‘painful contentions’, resulting in a disturbance in the workforce up to the point of ‘a complete mutiny’. Wiley seems to have taken off for days at a stretch with what cash he could lay his hands on, and didn’t live up to the ‘trust and confidence’ placed in him by the God-fearing and strict-living Charles. He was soon driving Charles to distraction. A note of his quoting the Second Book of Samuel appended to the family Bible (1730) reads: This prayer suddenly darted into my mind as I was walking down John Street, Wolverhampton, at the time I was being so basely treated by Willm. Wiley. And I was immediately assured that I would be delivered out of His hand! And it proved so. Blessed be the Lord! He was never again permitted by me into the manufactory! Sure enough, there was acrimony and, as Jemima Cox wrote, ‘All disputes ended in dissolving the partnership’. When Benjamin Parton, Charles’s brother, died aged 50 in 1835, he left his brother £3,000 ‘in consequence of the very distressing circumstances in which he has been placed by his late partnership with Mr. Wiley’. The formal announcement of the dissolution after 18 months ‘by mutual consent’ was dated 10 June 1836. Wiley set up on his own account, taking with him into partnership Charles Mander’s chief ornamentor, Hancher, and other employees. The 1838 trade directory lists among 27 japanners active in the town: ‘Wiley & Hancher, Japanners, Tin Plate Workers and Varnish Makers, Zoar Street, Wolverhampton’. We are told that they did not prosper, and in due course many of the employees they took with them wished to return. Yet Charles Mander’s japan ware trade plodded on successfully a little longer. At an exhibition of local manufactures held in Wolverhampton in 1839, a prize of one guinea was offered for ‘the best piece of Japan Ware, the ornamental part being an original design’. Charles Mander entered two vases and shared second prize with another Wolverhampton firm, Edward Perry. The vases, one with a claret ground and the other with a green ground, were above two feet high and decorated by Mr Stockwin, one of Mander’s artists. (First prize was won by the Old Hall works.) But Charles was clearly losing interest and the japanning and tin-plate businesses were becoming secondary. It was varnish which evidently proved the more profitable business, and Charles, as he was reaching retirement, finally sold the japanning and tin-plate businesses altogether in order to concentrate on varnish making on 31 August 1840 to William Shoolbred. Shoolbred continued in the business under various partnerships, notably with Henry Loveridge, to the 1870s, moving in 1848 from John Street altogether to Merridale. The moment Charles chose to sell was well judged, as the Wolverhampton japanned ware trade never maintained its position and popularity. ‘The tray branch of the trade does not stand as it did some 20 years ago, customs having changed, and fashions with them,’ wrote George Wallis in 1860.
Regulations for a Traveller, 1839 In the archives of Manders there survive Charles Mander’s Regulations for a Traveller, giving advice to a salesman representing the firm, dated about 1839. It is worth quoting at length for its earthy flavour of life and manners on the road in the days of the coaching inns, and the wise counsel of an experienced man of affairs freely given to a rising generation. Charles had travelled widely in Georgian England, sober in the days of wine dinners, when a bottle of port for each man after the midday meal was the norm, and dispensing hospitality to customers was part of the traveller’s inducement: The Paramount duties of a Traveller may be compressed in a narrow compass; the most essential in addition to his Assiduity, Temperance and an undeviating attention to the principles of Justice, between Employer and Representative, are: Early Rising which will be found conducive to the promotion of Health and Comfort and consequent longevity, together with the advantages of being prepared for actual business while others are wasting their time in slothful indolence, recovering in beds, the results of the previous night’s intoxication or other bad practices–wasting the best part of the day in apathetic indifference, which ought to be usefully, rationally and industriously applied as a step to present happiness and the attainment of future comfort. Sobriety This does not require to be detailed upon, for if a young man is not governed by prudence appropriately of conduct, he is unfit for a Traveller–for it is an invariant axiom that the man who neglects his own duties and moral obligation is of too worthless a character to merit either esteem or confidence. Punctuality Is an indispensable requisite. For where there is not an universal attention to punctuality, there will be no respect paid to the individual, however talented he may be in every other respect; for confidence once lost, is rarely afterwards to be recovered or restored. Honour This admits of an extensive application: such as an undivided attachment to the interests of his Employer; the strictest care and integrity in the application of the property that may be placed in the possession of the Commercial Representative; obedience to all lawful commands; strict attention to all the relative duties. If you travel in your own vehicle, start early to make a stage before breakfast and, if by coach and there is a choice, travel in those hours least suited for the transaction of business–carefully arranging to avoid the markets and if possible to arrive on the evening of it, or early the next morning–and be sure to lose no time before making your first call, as by so doing you will save much time, and frequently catch your customer before he leaves home–and if he has small journeys, may prevent wasting a day or perhaps losing time for the journey. If you stop the night, see your room and have all you wish carried into it–as your packages are otherwise soon known by others and advertise your presence. Avoid singing in a Commercial Room, for that will lead to your company to be courted not so much for your own personal gratification, but for the only pleasure of hearing your vocal powers, and that temporary pleasure, the indulgence of vain inclination which has led to the ruin of many who might otherwise have been the highest ornaments of commercial focus. Avoid if possible to be the Chairman or Vice President of the dinner table, the ridiculous and absurd etiquette ruins health and is the destroyer of time, producing an empty purse and loss of reputation–nor sit more than l hr.–taking care to notice the wine, and call for the dinner bill before the full quantity is brought in… If there are more than [three] only, 1 bottle divided betwixt them, or glass of mixture each is usual. Avoid political discussion and by all means religious controversy, for where you cannot convince it is useless to waste your time. Firmness and integrity in principle and practise will be found the best shield for the protection of person and property. If you have any leisure time after the hours of business, exercise it usefully–and for the improvement of your mind by laying the foundation of future excellence by reading and reflection. Dinner bills are often swelled by those who state good will to the house to be their motive–but it is nearly always the case, it is either a man fond of wine, or a dealer in it, or spirits–avoid them. It will generally be that the servants or landlord notice those who carve economically and like them better than the dashing spenders–as they frequently destroy more than they use. Suppers are unusual–a late tea with meat if you like it and a glass after is sufficient. I usually found it necessary to use breakfast, to have it in good time–but if possible make engagements before breakfast and late in the day, so as to avoid the retail business hours as much as you can If you have a horse, take care to see he is attended to before you sit down to your meal–it saves time and keeps the ostler to his duty. Always see it fed, if you can, and bedded up in the evening; having a horse it is usual not to have any charge made for your own bed. Servants are paid thus: Ostler: horse only, 2d.; if a gig, 3d., and extras according to the trouble; 6d., oiling the wheels and washing the gig. Horse per day and night, 6d. Horse and Gig, 6d. per meal; 9d. per day and night. Boots:
2d.; trouble, extra pay–for shoes or boots. If the coaches [leave] early or late or hours not convenient to customers, it saves much time. Be careful to learn from the coachman what coaches [leave] your next stage and use the limit as a reason to urge your friends quickly to transact your business. If compliments are usual, keep up old customs, remembering if you [do so] it is [always] easy to retrace your steps. In all cases treat servants with respect for their services–and carefully avoid familiarity with either male or female. To spend the Sunday thus: Breakfast early if cold weather and the room is full; order a fire in your room (the usual charge: 1/-). I usually avoided the dinner table and took cold meat or chops or a steak about 1 o’clock. Tea about 5 o’clock; and a toast or jelly or something light or a small Welsh rarebit and a glass at night. Carefully avoid walking the streets or leaving your inn after you have closed business for the day–take off your shoes and put on your slippers. The Representative should be required to write home to his Employer at least twice every week, in addition to the orders required on the last day of the week, accompanying the Balance sheet statement of the current week. By this regulation, not less than three letters will be received weekly from the Representative, which must be a transcript of his order book and, on examination therewith at the close of the journey, be found strictly in accordance. Should however any order be given to the Traveller of an extensive kind, or that require immediate attention …, a letter should be sent home daily. When you receive cash, let it be first entered into your order book before it is put into your purse, and invariably enter upon your tablet the cash you are going to pay before such payment is made. Blood Money: Two Soldiers Rescued from the Gallows, 1817 Charles Mander followed the emerging family tradition as a man of high public ideals and a zealous social reformer. Two cases were widely reported and caught the public imagination of contemporaries, one inspiring a minor novel and both leading directly or indirectly to Acts of Parliament. The first concerns penal reform. On 23 July 1817 two soldiers, John Hall and Patrick Morrison, billeted in the town on a detachment from the Ninety-Fifth Foot, were denounced by one George Roberts, the keeper of the House of Correction, or ‘Whipping-House’ as it was called, in Stafford Street. Their crime was to knock down John (‘Jack’) Read, a bricklayer’s labourer, in a drunken brawl in St Peter’s Old Church Yard and rob him of just 1s.1d.–a shilling coin and a bad penny. The incident seems venial, but this was then classed as highway robbery and so technically a capital offence. Following a lurid sequence of events, just six days later, on 29 July, they were condemned to death at Stafford Assizes.
Read, a bully who fancied his prowess as a wrestler, challenged them there and then to a fight. Hall, the younger, was game, and the two men grappled. In the second bout, Hall got the better of Read, who was thrown to the ground, inadvertently dropping two coins from his pocket as he fell. It was all the money Read had, and according to a witness, he tried to pick it up at once, but Patrick Morrison kicked his hand away and snatched both coins. Read demanded them back and, as the young soldiers absconded laughing, Morrison either flung them on the ground before him, or pretended to do so. Precisely which we shall never know. It remains one of the mysteries at the heart of this drama. Early the following morning, Read, with a ‘dirty bloodstained face’ after his ‘bit of a skirmish’ with the two soldiers, set off to look for one of the constables who were responsible for law and order in the town, muttering that ‘two soldiers had been abusing him and had murdered him’. By half past eight, William Bell, a japanner passing by, had told George Roberts of the incident in the main square. Roberts showed ‘considerable interest’, saying ‘It will be a good job for us’. As the prison keeper, Roberts fancied he knew a little of the law, and seems immediately to have set about attempting to mould the events to fit the allegation, by making out that the incident had been in the eyes of the law a highway robbery–and a capital offence. By ‘stage managing’ a case, he hoped to secure the summary conviction of the soldiers as highwaymen. Then he and Read would be entitled to their fell reward as the price for bringing them to the gallows, sharing the ‘blood money’ between them. Under the Parliamentary Rewards System, the so-called Blood Money Act (one of the statutes of 4th and 5th William and Mary, c. 8), anyone who succeeded in securing a conviction of another for felony such as duly led to their indictment and hanging was entitled to a reward as blood money. The rewards were intended to encourage private citizens to use the justice system in the fight against the epidemic of crime, but they became a temptation to frame the innocent and ‘a fearful premium by which many judicial murders were committed … and one of the worst Acts that had ever disgraced the Statute Book’. We know that as soon as Roberts heard of the incident, he seems to have sought out Read with desperation in order to concoct a plausible story and move false evidence against the soldiers. He went with Bell, Read and others to apprehend the men at the Fox Inn, handcuffing them and marching them away in their red coats as they were about to go on parade. The soldiers soon found themselves arraigned before a clerical magistrate, Mr. Haden of Tettenhall. Read duly twisted his story, swearing blind that the soldiers had assaulted him and knocked him down unprovoked, robbing him of his money in the churchyard. His perjury lead to its horrific upshot when the magistrate duly committed them to the Assizes at Stafford. The soldiers were immediately imprisoned in the miserable conditions of Roberts’ ‘Whipping House’ until they were entered on the ‘long and melancholy list’ of those to be tried at Stafford assizes, on Saturday 26 July, before Sir William Garrow (1760-1840): John Hall, aged 22, and Patrick Morrison, aged 25, for assaulting J. Read in Wolverhampton. Sir William was a hanging judge, as well as one of the barons of the exchequer and sometime attorney general. The soldiers were without witnesses and allowed no counsel to plead their case at trial. Despite their previous good character and protestations of innocence, their case was poorly presented. They pleaded not guilty, foolishly attempting to perjure the court on the grounds of mistaken identity. In due course they were convicted as charged of highway robbery and sentenced to hang outside Stafford jail on the morning of Saturday 16 August. The inhabitants of Wolverhampton soon heard news of the turn of events, writes Gerald Mander: Up to this point [they] had not been interested in the case. Soldiers were birds of passage at the best: if they chose to become gaol-birds it was their own affair. Disorderly conduct must be punished, property protected. Those who had considered the matter at all expected a conviction for common assault. But the disparity between the offence and the sentence came as a shock to sympathetic readers when they saw it much later (as the paper had to carry the news forward a week) in the Wednesday Wolverhampton Chronicle of August 6th 1817. Public opinion was stirred to protect the soldiers, and it was evident that speedy action also was needed if the death penalty was to be averted, for only nine days remained. The news threw the town into a state of excitement. Peter Burke (1811-81) takes up the story in his detailed account of 1854: Their unjust condemnation became at once the loud subject of converse and comment in the Wolverhampton market-place. It chanced that an elderly gentleman, Mr Benjamin Mander, a highly respectable inhabitant of Wolverhampton, being then in the market, heard what was saying, and was struck with its momentous bearing. Returning home, he communicated the incident to his son, Mr Charles Mander, who became the instant champion of their cause. To the philanthropic zeal and activity of this Mr Charles Mander, the poor wretches owed, under God, the preservation of their lives. The country, too, was indebted to Mr. Mander for relief from the dreadful calamity of putting the guiltless to death.
There was no time to lose. Witnesses to an alibi were found and, in the course of the day, twenty people came forward to testify to their innocence. Charles had their affidavits written and sworn before a magistrate by the Sunday. On Tuesday, at least eleven more persons gave evidence under oath and letters were dispatched to Whitehall. Charles straight away took the post the whole way to London, reaching London late on Tuesday night, 12 August. The following morning he went with his brother-in-law, James Pearsall, ‘an eminent silk-mercer in Cheapside’, to petition the Home Secretary, Henry Addington, Viscount Sidmouth, for a reprieve for the innocent men. Sidmouth, accused by history as a man of mediocrity and grave countenance, gave Charles Mander and James Pearsall instant admittance, and a conference of some length ensued, Sidmouth paying every attention to what they had to say, and becoming deeply interested. So earnest were Charles Mander’s pleas for the lives of the two condemned men that Sidmouth later declared that he had ‘never in his life seen such an amount of interest exhibited in the fate of two men who were not related by domestic or other ties of affection to the individuals who were thus exerting themselves on their behalf’. At length, Sidmouth was persuaded to examine the affidavits. When they returned that evening, Sidmouth told them he was impressed with their view of the case and that a respite had already been forwarded by special messenger to Stafford. Charles Mander insisted he should write out a copy lest the original should miscarry and, as his clerks had already gone home ‘because of the lateness of the hour’, this Lord Sidmouth did in his own hand: Duplicate Whitehall 13 August 1817 Sir I am to signify to you His Royal Highness the Prince Regent’s Commands in the Name and on the Behalf of His Majesty [king George III], that the Execution of the Sentence of Death passed upon John Hall and Patrick Morrison, now in Gaol at Stafford, should be Respited until the further signification of His Royal Highness’s Pleasure. I am Sir Your most obedient humble Servant Sidmouth The High Sheriff of the Meanwhile, John Guard, the Herefordshire vicar of Pembridge, the Hall family village, had done his own lobbying and also secured an introduction to Lord Sidmouth, from Lord Somers of Eastnor Castle. The grim atrocity of the affair was becoming widely known in the Wolverhampton area, and causing a great deal of excitement. When Charles returned with a copy of the Reprieve for the High Sheriff of Staffordshire, there was a crowd of more than 2,000 people waiting in High Green, the main square of Wolverhampton, for the mail coach by which he was expected to arrive. He was able to read out Sidmouth’s respite. It was greeted by tumultuous cheers and he became a hero overnight. An abbreviated account abstracted from the contemporary sources is given by Gerald Mander: The people of Wolverhampton awaited the result expectantly and, the King’s Messenger having passed through the town unnoticed (it is possible he went by the shorter, postal route), Charles Mander was the first to give tidings of his success to an eager throng. He was spared the melodramatic: a last minute reprieve from the scaffold, which retelling the story is apt to inspire, for the final spectacle was not staged, and his copy of the Reprieve was not used. It is preserved, with the affidavits and papers concerned, by his descendants. The movement towards a free pardon was slower in taking shape, but it was signed a month later. Indeed, a respite was a stay of execution, but not a pardon. There was no retrial. The judge, Sir William Garrow, read all the new evidence and advised the Prince Regent to issue a pardon on 31 August. But still the men were not released. The public became impatient. On 8 September a ‘respectable requisition’ calling for a public meeting was handed to the town constables signed by sixty citizens of the town–including of course Charles Mander. It was published in the Chronicle of 10 September and the meeting took place two days later. A unanimous resolution was passed, expressing surprise that Hall and Morrison were still in prison in spite of the considerable exertions which had been made to furnish Sir William with sworn statements they themselves had heard read. They asked the chairman, Francis Holyoake, to write to the Secretary of State soliciting a speedy determination to the case.
An enquiry was held into the conduct of Roberts on 27 October, convened at the request of Lord Talbot, the Lord Lieutenant. Gerald Mander writes: The unexhausted part of public opinion turned its attention to an investigation into the conduct of George Roberts by the magistrates who appointed him. This caused some heated letter writing to the press. There was a die-hard reactionary, a point of view voiced by a long and violently worded letter by an eccentric lawyer who took on himself to cast doubt on the new affidavits and to point out that, had the victims only been sentenced to transportation, no one would have taken any notice. How true!–but it was not the humane or considerate view. This was taken by the magistrates who ‘resolved unanimously that it did not appear to them that Roberts was actuated by any corrupt or improper motives in the prosecution of Hall and Morrison and that in their opinion his character for humanity had not been in any way impeached.’ And if they could not remove George Roberts, they could remove his post, for Nemesis overtook it. General William Dyott of Freeford, who in his retirement found interest in the question of prisons, when on his way to a visit at Wrottesley (15 March 1820) ‘took Wolverhampton in my way, for the purpose of inspecting the house of Correction, which I found in a most filthy, dirty, shameful state’ (Diary, i, 333). Later, at the Sessions, he writes ‘I had a long debate after dinner to support my motion to discontinue the Wolverhampton House of Correction, but I carried my point without a division.’ Later, the prison was advertised for sale. News of the case carried far and wide. Benjamin, who had been first to encourage his son’s intervention when he heard report of the impending execution in the market square, was rewarded publicly for his part in saving the men’s lives. Son Charles and he were granted a number of Diplomas, including the Diploma of the London Vaccine Institution, founded under Sir James Shaw as Mayor of London in 1806, as a ‘benefactor of humanity’. Hugh Beams writes presenting The Diploma on 10 November 1817: Sir, Under the consciousness of their Institution being a life preserving Establishment, the Managers have peculiar pleasure in seizing the occasions of marking their admiration of those Characters who distinguish themselves by their philanthropy in whatever Country. The Diploma of their Metropolitan Establishment is therefore respectfully presented to you, Sir, as one of those gentlemen who by their happy exertions on a late occasion prevented atrocious homicide which the eye of office was found too dull to detect. Perhaps their families may hereafter consider this testimonial as a civic crown voted to their predecessors by a respectable Society. I have the Honour to be, on behalf of the Managers,
Charles wrote back to Mr Beams late, on 24 November, ‘after an absence from home which had prevented him for expressing his warmest thanks’, declaring he took great satisfaction, thankful that his efforts were crowned with success, although he ‘only performed a duty I owed to them as my fellow creatures, in snatching them from an unmerited and ignominious death’. The case won increasing notoriety, and the sense of outrage and public guilt remained. It was a time of much agitation for penal reform. Charles and his activists lobbied and manoeuvred behind the scenes. Scarcely a year later, in the next session of Parliament, his intervention led, with other similar cases that had preceded it, to the repeal of the iniquitous ‘Blood Money Act’ itself. First, the High Sheriff and the grand jurors of the county of Stafford presented a petition to Parliament imploring the House to do away with the evil of ‘blood money’ at the earliest opportunity. Then the Conviction of Offenders Rewards Bill was introduced by Henry Grey Bennet, the radical Member for Shrewsbury in the next-door county. The Government was moved to act. Sir Samuel Romilly (1757-1818), solicitor general (from 1806, in the administration of ‘all talents’), was acquainted as Charles Mander’s counsel in the John Street Chapel chancery case the year before. He now helped him to advance the cause in Parliament. He spoke to the bill on 4 May 1818, inveighing against the undoubted evils of the system of ‘rewards’: Rewards had the necessary effect of warping the evidence and of inducing informers to give a colour to their testimony, calculated to achieve their object in the conviction of a prisoner. The system, beside inducing persons to conspire against the lives of innocent individuals, created in witnesses an eagerness for the conviction of prisoners quite revolting… It was one of Sir Samuel’s last acts of philanthropy, as he died on 2 November in the same year when he slit his own throat with a razor ‘in a fit of temporary derangement’–affecting Lord Eldon to tears. The repeal was passed on 13 June 1818 (58 Geo. III, cap. 70). Eventually, with the tide of reform in the country, the death penalty for many such petty offences was abolished. The case of ‘the unmerited sufferings of two innocent men’ was recounted long after. Most notably, it gave rise, writes Peter Burke, to the ‘beautiful fiction’ by the Methodist novelist, Samuel Warren (1807-77), Now and Then, published in 1847. Henry Hylton is the chief character, the honnête homme and Charles Mander-figure, romanticised and removed to a pastoral context: ‘a man of good family; powerful industry; of accurate scholarship; deeply read in divinity; of great decision of character, and lofty independence of spirit; and fervent piety’. He is portrayed here as a worthy magistrate and clergyman, whose heroic intervention with the Secretary of State in London secures the respite at the eleventh hour of the goodly, innocent yeoman, Ayliffe, who had been condemned to hang for a midnight murder when circumstances pointed irrefragably to his guilt. The real-life story formed a vivid drama with a happy outcome. Burke himself collected it among his compendium of the great and curious law cases of Georgian England.
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