Thomas Bayley Potter

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Thomas Bayley Potter

Thomas Bayley Potter

JP (29 November 1817 – 6 November 1898)[1] was an English merchant in Manchester and Liberal Party
politician.

Early life

Born in

Polefield, Lancashire, he was the second son of Sir Thomas Potter and his wife Esther Bayley, daughter of Thomas Bayley, and younger brother of Sir John Potter.[2] Potter received his early education in George Street, Manchester, then at Lant Carpenter's school in Bristol.[3] He subsequently attended Rugby School under Thomas Arnold and then University College London.[4]

In business

On graduating, Bayley went into the family business in Manchester. His father died in 1845, at

Buile Hill, his home. His elder brother John, knighted in 1851, took over most of his father's role; the firm then traded as Potter & Norris. Thomas became the major partner in it when his brother Sir John died in 1858.[2] He brought in as partner Francis Taylor (1818–1872), who had worked for Potter & Norris, around 1865, and the firm traded as Potter & Taylor.[5] Not long after Taylor's death, Potter withdrew from business activity, to concentrate on politics.[2]

Liberal politics

Potter became Chairman of the Manchester branch of the Complete Suffrage Society in 1830.[3] While he was generally aligned with the Radicals, there was a rift between their leaders John Bright and Richard Cobden over the Crimean War, which the Potter brothers supported; and Sir John Potter successfully stood against Bright in 1857. Potter, who was in many ways a follower of Cobden, tried to smooth matters over at the end of the 1850s.[2]

In 1863 Potter was the founder and president of the Union and Emancipation Society.

J. S. Mill and Goldwin Smith.[6]

In 1865, Potter entered the

British House of Commons and sat as Member of Parliament (MP) for Rochdale. This was the seat of Cobden, who had died that year. Potter kept it until 1895.[1] In the House of Commons he was known as "Principles Potter".[2]

Potter established the Cobden Club in 1866 and was honorary secretary until his death.[3] He had proposed a "political science association" in a letter to J. S. Mill of 1864, taking as model the Social Science Association. It operated as a publisher, funded education in economics, and held an annual dinner, under a name suggested by Thorold Rogers. It was fundamentalist about free trade.[7]

A personal friend of

Italian unification. The finance for Garibaldi's purchase of the island of Caprera was arranged at a dinner given by him.[8]

Manchester school"
Potter as caricatured by Spy (Leslie Ward) in Vanity Fair
, June 1877

Last years

Potter was a

Deputy Lieutenant.[4] He sold the Buile Hill mansion to the Bennett family, and in 1902 it was purchased by Salford Council.[9]

At the end of his life Potter spent his vacations in Cobden's old home, The Hurst, at Midhurst in Sussex. He died there on 6 November 1898, aged 80, and was buried in Heyshott four days later.[10] [11]

Family

Potter was twice married:

Potter had four sons and a daughter by his first wife. The third and fourth sons, Arthur and Richard, and the daughter Edith, survived their father.[10]

Thomas and Mary Potter were in the Unitarian congregation of Cross Street Chapel.[14][15] William Gaskell was an assistant minister there, to John Gooch Robberds, from 1828 to 1854 when Robberds died; his wife Elizabeth Gaskell published her first novel Mary Barton in 1848.[16] Mary Potter perceived a upsetting connection between the murder of her brother Thomas Ashton in 1831, a result of industrial tensions, and the novel's murder plot. The author denied any conscious use of Thomas Ashton's story, of which she knew, but the Potter family saw the plot device as referring deliberately to it.[17]

Richard Ellis Potter

The fourth son, Richard Ellis Potter (1855–1947), was educated at Eton College, and at age 17 took part in the third of Benjamin Leigh Smith's expeditions, in 1873 to Svalbard. Letters that he wrote to his father remain.[18]

Harriot Kingscote

He was in

Arthur Kingscote Potter.[23]

In later life Potter resided at Ridgewood, Almondsbury, in Gloucestershire. He became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1899.[24]

References

  1. ^ a b "Leigh Rayment - British House of Commons, Rochdale". Archived from the original on 20 December 2009. Retrieved 4 May 2009.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  2. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/22621. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  3. ^ a b c Manchester Faces & Places (Vol X, No 3 ed.). London & Manchester: JG Hammond & Co Ltd. December 1898. pp. 42–46.
  4. ^ a b c Debrett, John (1886). Robert Heny Mair (ed.). Debrett's House of Commons and Judicial Bench. London: Dean & Son. p. 122.
  5. ISBN 978-0-19-921198-2
    .
  6. ISBN 978-0-86193-263-4
    .
  7. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/45600. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  8. ^ London Unitarian Historical Society (2009). Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society. Vol. 24. Lindsey Press. p. 6.
  9. ^ Historic England. "Details from listed building database (1001537)". National Heritage List for England.
  10. ^ a b c d Orme 1901.
  11. ^ a b "ThePeerage - Thomas Bayley Potter". Retrieved 16 December 2006.
  12. ^ Aspland, Robert (1846). The Christian Reformer. London: Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper. p. 192.
  13. ISBN 978-1-136-01054-5
    .
  14. ^ Slugg, Josiah Thomas (1881). Reminiscences of Manchester Fifty Years Ago. J.E. Cornish. p. 173.
  15. ISBN 978-0-571-17036-4
    .
  16. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/10435. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  17. ISBN 978-1-901341-03-4
    .
  18. ISBN 978-1-55238-705-4
    .
  19. JSTOR 2592518
    .
  20. ISBN 978-0-87611-035-5
    .
  21. ^ "Tennis Come to Texas - old". texas-tennis-museum.
  22. ^ The Illustrated London News. Illustrated London News & Sketch Limited. 1887. p. 61.
  23. ^ Young, Archibald Hope; Strachan, John (1920). The Revd. John Stuart, D.D., U.E.L. of Kingston, U.C. and his family : a genealogical study. Whig Press: Kingston. p. 15.
  24. ^ A list of the honorary members, fellows and associate members. London. 1921. p. 71.
Attribution

Wikisource This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Orme, Eliza (1901). "Potter, Thomas Bayley". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography (1st supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co.

External links

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Rochdale
1865 – 1895 		Succeeded by
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