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ABSTRACT
Emerson Bainbridge was an important entrepreneur, philanthropist and (briefly) Liberal M.P. whose influence has been overlooked and under-estimated by historians. His wide-ranging industrial success, particularly in coal mining, and his growing personal wealth enabled him to play an important role in the North Midlands region particularly from 1890. His familial roots in Methodism and Temperance and his adherence to the main tenets of political nonconformity and Liberalism were the foundations of his ‘world view’. This was to prove of critical importance in the design, development and ethos of the ‘model villages’ his company founded in the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire coalfield. The impact and influence of this ‘enlightened paternalism’ long outlasted him.
Disclosure Statement
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Notes
1 The Times, 13 May 1911, p. 12.
2 See Derbyshire Courier, 20 May 1911, p. 16 and Derbyshire Times, 20 May 1911, p. 5.
3 Report of speech by D. Lloyd George at the Drill Hall, Hereford, 21 October 1904.
Typed extract from the Hereford Mercury, 26 October 1904, Parliamentary Archives, Lloyd George Papers A/12/2/35.
4 For a full account of his wide-ranging business interests and career see D. Wilmot, ‘Emerson Bainbridge of Newcastle and Sheffield, An Overlooked Entrepreneur’ in Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 77 (2005), 241–52.
5 H. C. G. Matthew and B. Harrison, eds., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 322–3.
6 He was appointed as a J.P. in 1886, elected to the Sheffield Club in 1890 and elected President of the Sheffield Reform Club in 1896.
7 For a detailed account of his wide-ranging industrial investments see Wilmot, op.cit., p. 250.
8 Bainbridge became the richest member of his family. His wealth on his death in 1911 was over £460,000. See Matthew and Harrison, ODNB, p. 323.
9 T. Darlington, Memoir of Emerson Muschamp Bainbridge (Edinburgh: R. & R. Clark, 1893), p. 102.
10 G. France, ed., Reminiscences: Thomas Hudson Bainbridge (London: Charles H. Kelly 1913), p. 18.
11 George Williams was the founder of the YMCA and contributed financially to the new building in Sheffield. He was featured in the ‘Our Portrait Gallery’ section of the August 1891 edition of the Sheffield Association’s journal.
12 D. Thompson, Sheffield District YMCA: The First 125 Years 1855–1980 (privately printed, Sheffield Local Studies).
13 Sheffield and Rotherham Independent (SRI), 4 June 1891, p. 6.
14 The Sheffield Young Men’s Magazine, 1 (May 1891), 1, (Sheffield Local Studies).
15 R. Harman and N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England, Yorkshire West Riding: Sheffield and the South, (London: Yale University Press, 2017), p. 532.
16 Thompson, Sheffield District YMCA.
17 The Sheffield Young Men’s Magazine, XI (February 1892), 127. This letter was printed and circulated to members. Interestingly, Sheffield’s greatest-ever benefactor, J. G. Graves was made President of the Junior Branch in 1893.
18 The Sheffield Young Men’s Magazine, 11:14 (May 1892), 13–14.
19 The Sheffield Young Men’s Magazine, 11:24 (March 1893), 13–14.
20 SRI, 7 March 1895, p. 5.
21 Ibid., 5 June 1891, p. 6.
22 Ibid., 13 September 1879, p. 2.
23 Alderman Clegg was later Mayor of Sheffield from 1887–89 and a total abstainer.
24 SRI, 1 September 1882, p. 3.
25 Edward Cavendish (1838–91) was Liberal M.P. for West Derbyshire from 1885 until his death. He was succeeded by his son, Victor, who went on to become the 9th Duke of Devonshire.
26 SRI, 25 February 1884, p. 3.
27 The company had to take on further premises to provide a wider range of products and services including laundry, bakery, general stores as well as the production of aerated water.
28 Bainbridge worked closely with the architect H. W. Lockwood to ensure architectural harmony in this important part of town directly opposite the new Town Hall.
29 Sir Henry Stephenson (1865–1947) was a Liberal politician who was an active member of the city council, twice serving as Lord Mayor of Sheffield (1908–9 and 1910–11). He became pro-Chancellor of the University of Sheffield in 1911. He later served in the Great War and was awarded the DSO. In 1918 he was elected as the Liberal M.P. for Sheffield Park.
30 SRI, 3 October 1889, p. 3.
31 SRI, 17 October 1888, p. 5.
32 B. Harrison, The Transformation of British Politics 1860–1995, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 140.
33 Revealingly, the motto of the latter organisation was ‘Help those who help themselves’.
34 This loss was followed by further family tragedies, in particular the deaths of his wife, father, and sister all in 1892.
35 Eliza Jefferson Bainbridge (1874–92) suffered from significant ill-health and ‘had been more or less an invalid for some years’ prior to her death. SRI, 18 January 1892, p. 6.
36 B. Harrison, Peaceable Kingdoms (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 221–4.
37 D. M. Thompson, ‘The Emergence of the Nonconformist Social Gospel in England’, in Protestant Evangelicalism: Britain, Ireland, Germany and America c1750-c1950, ed. by K. Robbins (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp. 255–80.
38 SRI, 25 October 1892, p. 5.
39 Ibid., 8 July 1895, p. 4. It was estimated that the overall cost of building and establishing the centre was £10,000. Running costs thereafter would be taken on by a committee of the NSPCC using the rental income from the ground floor shops.
40 Ibid., 27 September 1892, p. 6.
41 The Company was registered with a capital of £150,075 and had five directors. See Mansfield Reporter, 31 January 1890, p. 6.
42 P. Riden and D. Fowkes, Bolsover: Castle, Town and Colliery (London: Phillimore, 2008), p. 106.
43 John Plowright Houfton (1857–1929), an experienced mining engineer, was appointed General Manager of the Bolsover Company in 1890. A devout Methodist, he went on to have a distinguished career in industry and in public life. He unsuccessfully contested the parliamentary seat of NE Derbyshire for the Liberals in 1914 and later won East Nottingham as a Unionist in 1922. He was knighted in June 1929 shortly before his death. He was a cousin of the architect Percy B. Houfton.
44 These were at Cresswell, Mansfield, Rufford, Clipstone and Thoresby, reflecting the eastward expansion of mining activity.
45 This was not a particularly successful venture despite Bainbridge’s energetic chairmanship and public advocacy and was only ever partially completed. However, it did play a key part in connecting the Bolsover Company pits to a vital network. It became part of the Great Central Railway in 1907.
46 SRI, 3 January 1893, p. 7.
47 Sir Richard Everard Webster, later 1st Viscount Alverstone, (1842–1915) was an important member of the political and legal establishment and held several senior positions including Attorney General and Lord Chief Justice.
48 Derbyshire Record Office (DRO), NCB/A/BOL/4/2/1, Letter Book of J.P. Houfton, 26 July 1891.
49 J. E. Williams, The Derbyshire Miners (London: Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1962), p. 443.
50 SRI, 9 November 1893, p. 5; S. M. Gaskell, ‘Model Industrial Villages in South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire and the Early Town Planning Movement’, The Town Planning Review, 50:4 (October 1979), p. 442.
51 Derbyshire Courier, 7 April 1900, p. 7.
52 See DRO NCB/A/BOL/6/5, ‘Bolsover Colliery Company – Village Scheme’, 6 April 1891.
53 See New Bolsover Model Village Interim Evaluation Report at <https://committees.bolsover.gov.uk/Data/New%20Bolsover%20Joint%20Partnership%20Committee/20180718/Agenda/report22827.pdf> [accessed May 15, 2024].
54 See DRO, Letter book of J. P. Houfton, 16 April 1896.
55 R. Sheppard, ‘An Historical and Architectural study of miners’ housing dating from c.1870 in the district of Bolsover, Derbyshire’, Trent and Peak Archaeology (2007), available at <https://arhaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-1001–1/dissemination/pdf/Bolsover_Derbyshire_Project/Report/HDC_Full_report.pdf> [accessed May 15, 2024].
56 This may seem an unlikely industrial development, but it provided employment opportunities in the village, particularly for women, and exploited the excellent rail links.
57 Percy B. Houfton went on to become a leading architect who often worked in a restrained Arts and Craft style. He was an advocate for the Garden City movement and improved housing for working class families as well as a member of the early town planning movement. See M. Pollard, ‘Percy B. Houfton: An “Unknown” Derbyshire School Architect’, in Derbyshire Archaeological Journal, 143 (2023), 203–17.
58 See Williams, The Derbyshire Miners, p. 446.
59 C. Hartwell, N. Pevsner and E. Williamson, The Buildings of England: Derbyshire (London: Yale University Press, 2016), p. 181.
60 Riden and Fowkes, Bolsover, p. 102.
61 DRO, Letter book of J. P. Houfton, 25 March 1893. On 2023 figures this would represent expenditure of approximately £16 m and £2.3 m.
62 Riden and Fowkes, Bolsover, p. 8.
63 Sheppard, Miners’ Housing.
64 Riden and Fowkes, p. 134.
65 Derbyshire Times, 7 April 1900, p. 2.
66 DRO, Letter Book of J. P. Houfton, 16 November 1891.
67 DRO, Letter Book of J. P. Houfton, 26 April 1895.
68 See DRO, ‘Conditions of Tenancy of Cottages’, Letter Book of J. P. Houfton n.d.
69 DRO, Letter Book of J. P. Houfton, 26 April 1895. It has also been noted that there were no workers of Irish heritage resident in the village in 1901. See Riden and Fowkes, p. 102.
70 J. Lawrence, ‘Paternalism, Class and the British Path to Modernity’, in The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain ed. by S. Gunn and J. Vernon (London: University of California Press, 2011) pp. 149–50.
71 David Bebbington, ‘Fin de Siecle Nonconformity: The concerns of the Young at Brunswick Wesleyan Chapel, Leeds in the 1890s’, in Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society, 63:4, (2022), 135–58.
72 H. Price Hughes, ‘A New Catechism’, in Contemporary Review, 75 (1899), 45–57.
73 DRO NCB/A/BOL/4/1, see letters from J. P. Houfton to Emerson Bainbridge, 5 February 1896, 15 February 1896 and 3 March 1896.
74 SRI, 3 July 1895, p. 7.
75 This decision was agreed at a Board Meeting in 1893, with work on New Bolsover very much underway but some way off completion. Coal was first turned at Cresswell in 1897.
76 SRI, 2 April 1900, p. 7.
77 Methodist Times, 4 July 1895, p. 9.
78 SRI, 2 July 1895, p. 6.
79 Lincolnshire Echo, 24 July 1895, p. 2.
80 At his first public meeting in the constituency, Bainbridge emphasised his support for the reconstruction of the Second Chamber, a further extension of the Franchise, Home Rule, Welsh Disestablishment and Poor Law reform. See Lincolnshire Echo, 10 July 1895, p. 3.
81 SRI, 26 July 1895, p. 5 and 27 July 1895, p. 5. Bainbridge’s majority was 776.
82 Ibid., 29 March 1899, p. 4.
83 Bainbridge was one of 93 Liberal MP’s who voted in favour of the Stanhope amendment in 1899 which became ‘a kind of litmus paper test … as the ultimate proof of pro-Boer sentiments’. See S. Koss, The Pro-Boers: The Anatomy of an Antiwar Movement, (London: University of Chicago Press, 1973), p. 45.
84 Gerald France (1879–1935) married Bainbridge’s niece Hilda. He was a both a committed Methodist and a temperance advocate. He was elected as the Liberal M.P. for Morley in 1910.
85 Derbyshire Courier, 22 December 1900, p. 5.
86 See for example ‘The Coal Strike of 1893’, Contemporary Review, 65 (January 1894), 1–15, and ‘The Eight Hours Bill for Miners – its Economic Effect’, Contemporary Review, 66, (October 1894), 457–74.
87 Percy Bunting (1836–1911) was one of the founders of the West London Mission and a leading figure in social purity campaigns. Under his editorship the Contemporary Review became a leading organ of advanced Liberal opinion and the ‘social gospel’.
88 For example, Bainbridge was a guest at a party hosted by R. W. Perks M.P. Other guests included Bunting and Mrs Price-Hughes. See Methodist Times, 11 June 1896, p. 9.
89 Unlike Henrietta Barnett, the founder of Hampstead Garden Suburb, Bainbridge never published anything about his pioneering work at New Bolsover. See ‘A Garden Suburb at Hampstead’, Contemporary Review, 87 (February 1905), 231–37.
90 Bainbridge founded a holiday home for poor children from London at Seaford on the Sussex coast and a ‘Start in Life’ fund at the new London Polytechnic in the 1890’s. Both ventures were probably linked to his growing involvement with the West London Mission. He regularly attended the annual anniversary celebrations, on occasions presiding, and he contributed generously to the memorial for Hugh Price Hughes. Mark Guy Pearse who was very active in the Mission became a close friend.
91 The Times, 1 December 1913, p. 12.
92 For a fuller account of this see R. J. Waller, The Dukeries Transformed: The Social and Political Development of a Twentieth Century Coalfield (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) particularly the section on ‘industrial feudalism’, pp. 75–105.
93 In the 1920’s the Dukeries became the heartland of the Spencer Union which looked to cooperate with the employers in opposition to ‘political’ trade unionism and aspects of this outlook lingered well into the 1980’s and 1990’s and played a key part in industrial troubles of that era.
94 Gunn and Vernon, The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity, pp. 5–6.
95 R. Richardson, ‘Business Enterprise, Consumer Culture and Civic Engagement, 1890s-1930s: Sheffield Entrepreneur, John Graves’, (PhD diss., Sheffield Hallam University, 2018).
96 Derbyshire Times, 7 April 1900, p. 2.
97 Hartwell, Pevsner and Williamson, p. 281.
98 Lawrence, p.154.
99 There was no public house in New Bolsover until after the second world war.
100 A. Sutcliffe, Towards the Planned City: Britain, the United States and France, 1780–1914 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), p. 63.
101 H. Meller, ‘Philanthropy and public enterprise: international ambitions and the modern town planning movement 1889–1913’, in Planning Perspectives, 10:3 (1995), p. 305.
102 For a particularly interesting discussion of this issue see, the section on ‘Rethinking Philanthropy’ in H. Rogers, ‘Kindness and Reciprocity: Liberated Prisoners and Christian Charity in Early nineteenth Century England’, in Journal of Social History, 47:3 (2014), 721–45.
103 Derbyshire Courier, 2 September 1893. p. 6. For a full account of this major nationwide dispute, see Williams, The Derbyshire Miners, pp. 314–43.
104 Both Haslam and Harvey were ex-Union officials and the nominees of the Derbyshire Miners Association. In the January 1910 General Election, Houfton ‘was here, there and everywhere’, according to the Miners leader James Martin, and his involvement in the campaign was seen as ‘pivotal’ to Harvey’s increased majority. See Derbyshire Courier, 22 and 29 January 1910, p. 6.
105 There were features in the architectural press of some of the individual buildings in the model villages, particularly Cresswell, but no coverage of the overall scheme or Bainbridge’s role. See for example Builders Journal and Architectural Record, 29 April 1903, and 4 January 1905.
106 See The Times 6 and 13 December 1904, and 13 February, 11 and 25 March, 7 June 1905. Bainbridge had arranged the supply of tea to the company and had also guaranteed bank loans to allow shares to be purchased in the ill-fated Nelson Tea share syndicate by a business associate.
107 See letter to the Manchester Guardian about ‘The Nelson Widows Relief Fund’, 17 March 1905, p. 5. The letter claimed that 19,000 widows had been left destitute.
108 His final act was to fund the construction of a hostel for homeless young women, ‘Emerson Bainbridge House’, on Cleveland Street, London. A pleasing Arts and Crafts building, it was designed by Percy B. Houfton and opened in 1911. On Bainbridge’s death it was transferred to the West London Mission. It was later used to accommodate medical staff from the Royal Middlesex Hospital nearby. More recently, it was converted into luxurious apartments, a move described by the local M.P. as ‘a callous and anti-social transaction’. See <https://fitzrovianews.com/2012/12/10/hospital-workers-evicted-from-homes-to-make-way-for-investors/> [accessed May 16, 2024].
109 Bainbridge had a villa built at Roquebrune, near Menton on the French Riviera but sadly did not live long enough to fully enjoy it. His second wife Norah spent large amounts of time there with her second husband, cultivating a renowned garden.
110 Waller, p. 95.
111 See C. Matthews with C. Hartwell, Model Villages of the Nottinghamshire Coalfield (Nottingham: Nottinghamshire County Council, 2022).
112 Harrison, Peaceable Kingdoms, p. 256.
113 Ibid., p. 221.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Michael Pollard
Michael Pollard completed his PhD at the University of Sheffield in 2002 on the political life of F. S. Oliver and had a scholarly article published in History in 2005 on an aspect of that work. He has recently retired as a Headteacher, and is now now actively researching the political, social and architectural development of the midlands and south yorkshire coalfields from 1890 to 1930.