William Hawes (1805–1885)

William Hawes (1805–1885) was an English businessman, banker and reformer, noted for efforts to improve the workings of the Poor Laws, bankruptcy law and excise.[1]

Early life

Hawes was the grandson of William Hawes M.D., and the brother of Benjamin Hawes; his parents were Benjamin Hawes (1770–1861), in business as a soap-boiler and a philanthropist, and Ann Feltham, sister of John Feltham.[1][2][3] In 1827 he climbed Mont Blanc with Charles Fellows (address given as 26 Russell Square).[4][5] With guides, they opened up what became known as the "Corridor Route" to the summit; the way via the Corridor and Mur de la Côte was standard for the next 30 years.[6][7] An account of the ascent was published in 1828, edited by Benjamin Hawes, the younger.[8]

Initially Hawes was in the family soap-boiling business.[9] A friend of Isambard Kingdom Brunel from youth, he joined the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1829, and was then described as a soap manufacturer.[10] He married in 1833, as was recorded in Brunel's diary, to Anna Cartwright, daughter of Samuel Cartwright.[11][12] He became chairman of the London and County Bank, retiring in 1847–8.[13] The Hawes Soap Factory in New Cross, south London, was closed down in 1849, a move attributed by the family to the excise duty on soap, against which they had campaigned.[14]

Interests

Hawes was involved in a number of learned and other societies. He was a Fellow of the Geological Society, from 1831 (address 17 Montagu Place, Russell Square);[15] and the same year is listed (at St. John's Lambeth) as Fellow of the Zoological Society, and member of the Royal Institution.[16] In 1848 he was borrowing a Royal Institution battery from Michael Faraday.[17] He was a Fellow of the Statistical Society.[18]

Hawes chaired the Council of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) four times in all, from 1863 to 1865 and in 1867. The membership included technocrats, largely Whig, Peelite or Radical in politics.[19] His involvement with the RSA included promoting technical education; he coupled his support of artisans, for whom the RSA provided foreign travel, with opposition to trades unions.[20][21] He brought in the Prince of Wales as President, in 1863.[22] Not uniformly admired, he found that his report to the RSA on the 1862 International Exhibition placed him, according to the Gas Journal, among "dull, commonplace, fluent people".[23]

Attending the meeting of 29 July 1857 at Lord Brougham's house, where the Social Science Association (SSA) was set up, Hawes is counted one of its founders.[24] In social matters, he had shown the visiting Gustave d'Eichthal round working-class dwellings, in 1828; and was still concerned with the issue in 1866. He took an interest in the management of public baths and washhouses, workhouses and hospitals.[9][25][26] In 1869, during the debate on the bill for the Elementary Education Act 1870, he defended the educational contribution of the livery companies. He belonged to the Haberdashers Company.[27][28]

Elizabeth Garrett was admitted to Middlesex Hospital for medical training in 1860.[29] This came about through networking and Hawes, a governor of the hospital. Barbara Bodichon introduced Garrett to Emelia Gurney, who had provided Garrett with an introduction to Hawes;[30][31] Hawes and Newson Garrett, Elizabeth's father, already knew each other via business;[32] while Russell Gurney, Emelia's husband, was first cousin to Hawes, since William Hawes M.D. was his maternal grandfather.[33] In 1871 Hawes spoke in favour of a presentation by Maria Grey to the RSA on female education.[34]

An official of the Law Amendment Society, in association with the SSA, Hawes took a particular interest in the law relating to bankruptcy, in the 1860s.[25][35][36] He spoke to the SSA in 1860, on anonymous writing in the press,[37] and in 1863 on patent law.[38] He took a negative view of the proliferation of patents.[39]

Family vault of William Hawes in Highgate Cemetery (west side)

Later business career

In 1851 Hawes was chairman of the Australian Royal Mail Company (ARM).[10] The Australian gold rushes were fuelling emigration to the continent, and the ARM placed orders for two steam vessels, the SS Adelaide and SS Victoria, using Brunel as consultant.[40] In 1852 Hawes oversaw the trial of the Adelaide screw steamer, made by John Scott Russell.[41] It made a journey to Adelaide in Australia, arriving in May 1853 but problems on the way had added three months to the journey.[42] The Victoria also went to Australia in 1853.[43] The Crimean War saw the Adelaide journeying to the Black Sea.[44] After the war, which had removed steamers from the Australia route, the European and Australian (as it had become) was taken over in 1857–8 by the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company.[45]

During later life Hawes was involved in railway companies.[1] He was a director of the Wallingford and Watlington Railway, and an investor in the North Metropolitan Railway and East London Railway, both of which he chaired.[46] He was a director also of the Thames Tunnel Company.[47] An advocate of a Channel Tunnel, he was a member of Sir John Hawkshaw's 1870 committee that sought government backing for the project, and read a paper on the subject to the Society of Arts in 1874.[48][49] He was a director of the National Telegraph Manufacturing Company, set up in 1870.[50]

He is buried in a family vault at Highgate Cemetery.

Notes
  1. J. S. Skidmore, The Award of The Society's Albert Medal to Napoleon III, RSA Journal Vol. 137, No. 5398 (September 1989), pp. 652–657 at p. 656 note 9. Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41375007
  2. Williams, Carolyn D. "Hawes, William (1736–1808)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/12648. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  3. Timothy D. Whelan, ed. (2008). Politics, Religion and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould Flower, 1794–1808. National Library of Wales. p. xxxv. ISBN 9781862250703.
  4. Cunningham, Allan (1843). The Life of Sir David Wilkie. pp. 434–5.
  5. Baigent, Elizabeth. "Fellows, Sir Charles". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/9268. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  6. McNee, Alan (14 May 2015). The Cockney Who Sold the Alps: Albert Smith and the Ascent of Mont Blanc. Victorian Secrets Limited. p. 122. ISBN 978-1-906469-52-8.
  7. La Montagne Et L'homme (in French). Fernand Lanore. 1970. p. 108. GGKEY:CKY9XYJS8QB.
  8. Jill Neate (1 June 1998). Mountaineering Literature: A Bibliography of Material Published in English. The Mountaineers Books. p. 78. ISBN 978-0-938567-04-2.
  9. Eugène d'Eichthal, Condition de la classe ouvrière en Angleterre (1828) Notes prises par Gustave d'Eichthal, Revue Historique T. 79, Fasc. 1 (1902), pp. 63–95, at p. 64. Published by: Presses Universitaires de France. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40940257
  10. A. W. Skempton (2002). A Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers in Great Britain and Ireland: 1500–1830. Thomas Telford. p. 305. ISBN 978-0-7277-2939-2.
  11. R. Angus Buchanan (19 June 2006). Brunel: The Life and Times of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. A&C Black. p. 40. ISBN 978-1-85285-525-3.
  12. Court Magazine, and Monthly Critic: Containing Original Papers, by Distinguished Writers, and Finely Engraved Portraits and Landscapes, from Paintings by Eminent Masters. E. Bull. 1833. p. vii.
  13. "London and County Bank". Chelmsford Chronicle. 11 February 1848. p. 4. Retrieved 4 February 2016 – via British Newspaper Archive.
  14. "Hawes Soap Factory, Grace's Guide". Retrieved 5 February 2016.
  15. Geological Society of London (1882). List of the Geological Society of London. Taylor & Francis. p. 23.
  16. Zoological Society of London (1831). List of the Members of the Zoological society. p. 29.
  17. Michael Faraday; F. James (January 1996). The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, Volume 3: 1841–1848. IET. p. 745. ISBN 978-0-86341-250-9.
  18. Statistical Society (Great Britain) (1854). Journal of the Statistical Society of London. Statistical Society. p. 15.
  19. Franz Bosbach; John Davis (1 January 2002). Die Weltausstellung von 1851 und ihre Folgen / The Great Exhibition and its Legacy. Walter de Gruyter. p. 144. ISBN 978-3-11-096019-8.
  20. Franz Bosbach; John Davis (1 January 2002). Die Weltausstellung von 1851 und ihre Folgen / The Great Exhibition and its Legacy. Walter de Gruyter. p. 145 note 20. ISBN 978-3-11-096019-8.
  21. M. Strong (23 January 2014). Education, Travel and the 'Civilisation' of the Victorian Working Classes. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 98. ISBN 978-1-137-33808-2.
  22. Journal of the Society of Arts. The Society. 1863. p. 753.
  23. Gas Journal. T. G. Barlow. 1863. p. 382.
  24. Lawrence Goldman (13 June 2002). Science, Reform, and Politics in Victorian Britain: The Social Science Association 1857–1886. Cambridge University Press. pp. 29–31. ISBN 978-1-139-43301-3.
  25. Lawrence Goldman (13 June 2002). Science, Reform, and Politics in Victorian Britain: The Social Science Association 1857–1886. Cambridge University Press. p. 380. ISBN 978-1-139-43301-3.
  26. The Law Times. Butterworths. 1866. pp. 779–.
  27. Gas Journal: Light, Heat, Power, Bye-products. T. G. Barlow. 1869. p. 213.
  28. The City of London Poll-Book. Election 1837. Joseph Rickerby. 1837. p. 337.
  29. Emily Davies; Ann B. Murphy; Deirdre Raftery (2004). Emily Davies: Collected Letters, 1861–1875. University of Virginia Press. p. ix. ISBN 978-0-8139-2232-4.
  30. Hirsch, Pam (1999). Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon: Feminist, Artist and Rebel. London: Pimlico. p. 252. ISBN 9780712665810.
  31. Barbara Nightingale Stephen (1927). Emily Davies and Girton College. Constable & Co., Ltd. p. 57.
  32. Adler Museum Bulletin. Adler Museum of the History of Medicine, University of the Witwatersrand. 1994. p. 15.
  33. Pease-Watkin, Catherine. "Gurney, Sir John". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/11767. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  34. Alicia C. Percival and Ray Rushton, General Notes, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts Vol. 126, No. 5258 (January 1978), pp. 106–110, at p. 108. Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41372680
  35. The Jurist. S. Sweet. 1864. p. 459.
  36. Law Times, the Journal and Record of the Law and Lawyers. Office of The Law Times. 1867. p. 97.
  37. Janice Schroeder, "Better Arguments": The "English Woman's Journal" and the Game of Public Opinion, Victorian Periodicals Review Vol. 35, No. 3 (Fall, 2002), pp. 243–271, at p. 261. Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20083888
  38. William Hawes (1863). On the Economical Effects of the Patent Laws: A Paper Read Before the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science at Edinburgh on Friday the 9th October, 1863. E. Faithfull.
  39. Arindam Dutta (2007). The Bureaucracy of Beauty: Design in the Age of Its Global Reproducibility. Taylor & Francis. p. 173. ISBN 978-0-415-97920-7.
  40. John M. Smith (2001). Troubled IT Projects: Prevention and Turnaround. IET. pp. 24–5. ISBN 978-0-85296-104-9.
  41. The Mechanics' Magazine, Register, Journal and Gazette. 1852. p. 431.
  42. Peter M. Gunnar (2003). Here Am I, Lord, Send Me: The Life of Missionary Leader Rev. William Binnington Boyce. Desert Pea Press. p. 152. ISBN 978-1-876861-03-2.
  43. Robert Hogg (14 November 2012). Men and Manliness on the Frontier: Queensland and British Columbia in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 68–. ISBN 978-1-137-28425-9.
  44. Lynn McDonald (21 December 2010). Florence Nightingale: The Crimean War: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale. Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. p. 165. ISBN 978-1-55458-245-7.
  45. Nicol, Stuart (2001). Macqueen's Legacy: Ships of the Royal Mail Line. Vol. 2. Stroud, UK: Tempus Publishing. pp. 40–1. ISBN 978-0752421193.
  46. P. S. Bagwell, General Notes, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts Vol. 123, No. 5224 (March 1975), pp. 234–237 at p. 234. Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41372121
  47. "East London Railway Company". London Evening Standard. 15 June 1865. p. 7. Retrieved 4 February 2016 – via British Newspaper Archive.
  48. Keith Wilson (1994). Channel Tunnel Visions, 1850–1945. A&C Black. p. 8. ISBN 978-1-85285-132-3.
  49. The Architect and Building News. 1874. p. 170.
  50. "The National Telegraph Manufacturing Company". London Evening Standard. 10 March 1870. p. 1. Retrieved 5 February 2016 – via British Newspaper Archive.
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