Introduction
During the opening years of the twentieth century, Robert William Perks was a man of high public profile both in London financial circles and across Britain more broadly. In December 1906 the Financial Times published a “portrait” of Perks as a “special supplement.”[1] This was number eighteen in the F.T.’s series on chairmen of public companies. Lord Northcliffe had been number seventeen. Joseph Lyons, Thomas Lipton, George Westinghouse and Lord Strathcona had appeared earlier. The F.T. described Perks as “a well-known figure” in three worlds: the worlds of business, of politics and of religion, and continued “though in which arena he has secured the greatest prominence it would be rather difficult to say.”[2] This theme of Perks as a man of prominence in three distinct worlds was central to the 1909 biography of Perks written by “Denis Crane”.[3] It is at the forefront of the various other biographical sketches of Perks that were published during his lifetime and in the immediate wake of his death in 1934.[4] Also prominent in these writings was the description of Perks as a “son of the manse”[5] and a depiction of his family background as having been financially modest. The New York Times obituary of Perks was headlined “Self Made Man, A Clergyman’s Son” and described him as “the son of a poor Methodist minister.”[6]
At first glance this picture of Perks as a man from humble beginnings who had worked successfully and achieved recognition in three separate arenas might seem to suggest we are looking at a man who was spreading his talents and energies too broadly. In the early 1900s he was chairman of two public companies: Thomas Owen and Company Ltd – the manufacturer of the paper on which the London Times and the Manchester Guardian were printed;[7] and the Metropolitan District Railway (MDR) – a role in which Perks oversaw the conversion of the MDR from steam to electric traction and its integration into the broader Underground Electric Railways of London (UERL) “combine” created by Charles Tyson Yerkes.[8] At the same time he was, in the words of the Financial Times “a member of the big contracting house … of Messrs C.H. Walker and Co. whose name is associated with dock or canal enterprises at Preston, Barry, Manchester, Buenos Ayres, Rio de Janeiro, Bermuda and other widely separated places.”[9] In the arena of religion, Perks was the promoter of the Wesleyan Methodists’ “Twentieth Century million guineas fund” which canvassed for one million donations of one guinea per head to mark the commencement of the new century. This involved him in public speaking across Britain and in co-ordinating the overall campaign, and then in the processes of deploying the funds – a portion of which went into purchasing the land and constructing the Westminster Central Hall adjacent to the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey.[10] In the arena of politics, Perks, a Liberal MP since 1892, had become by the early 1900s a leading organiser in the faction of the party that wanted to see Lord Rosebery restored to the party’s leadership. In 1902 this involved Perks taking on the role of Treasurer to the newly formed Liberal League and becoming one of the seven donors who gave £3,000 each to allow the League to function effectively.[11] One of the Who’s Who-type publications for British Businessmen of the mid-Edwardian era predicted that Perks would soon be a cabinet minister.[12]
Perhaps it is true that Perks was spreading his talents and energies too broadly and too thinly at the time of this period of his greatest public prominence – the early- to-mid 1900s. But it can be argued that there were synergies between the three arenas Perks chose to work in, and that these played an important part in the overall story of his career. In a paper presented to a previous ABH conference, the present writer sought to provide an outline of Perks’ business career from his Lydd railway project of 1881 through to the 1890s.[13] This paper attempts to provide a “prequel” to that paper. How did Perks come to be acquainted with, and become trusted by, his earliest business associates? How did the “son of the manse” set about the task of transforming himself into highly successful City of London businessman? It will be argued that an exploration of Perks’ family kinship network and of his family’s connections into the wider Wesleyan Methodist community in Britain during the relevant period helps shed light on these questions.
Family Background: (1) G.T. Perks and the Madeley “roots”
The father of Robert William Perks was the Rev. George Thomas Perks, born in Madeley, Shropshire in 1819. Robert William Perks himself was born on 24 April 1849 in Hammersmith. Ministers of the Wesleyan Methodist church during that period were not allowed to remain in one “circuit” for more than three consecutive years. George Thomas Perks (1819-1877) had been appointed into the Brentford (or Hammersmith) circuit in August 1847, and Robert William was the second of his children to be born at the “manse” provided to the Methodist minister in that circuit. His sister Isabella had been born there in 1848. G.T. Perks and his wife Mary had had one earlier child in Perth, Scotland (G.T. Perks’ previous circuit) born in 1846. Christened Mary Ann in November 1846, she died in Perth in February 1847. Prior to being appointed to the Perth circuit in August 1845, G.T. Perks had spent two years in the Dalkeith circuit, Edinburgh. It was during that time that he met his future wife Mary Dodds. The two were married in Edinburgh in August 1845. They had five further children after Robert William: Elizabeth, Mary and Flora, born in Manchester in 1851, 1853 and 1855 respectively; Georgina, born in Bristol in 1861; and George Dodds Perks, born in 1864 in London. George Thomas Perks was appointed into the Manchester First circuit in 1850. After three years in that circuit, he had three years in the Manchester Second Circuit, then moved to Bath for three years followed by three years in the Bristol North circuit. In 1862 the family came back to London, with G.T. Perks appointed to the City Road Circuit. After three years he moved into the Highbury circuit. This turned out to be the end of the family’s peripatetic days. In 1867 G.T. Perks was appointed Secretary of the Wesleyan Missionary Society and thus ceased to be a “circuit” minister. He held that post until his death, working from The Mission House, at Bishopsgate street in the City of London, and continued to live in the house he had bought in Highbury in 1865 (9 Leigh road).[14] From 1858 to the summer of 1865 Robert William Perks was a pupil at the New Kingswood School, Bath. He then lived in the Leigh road house until moving into his own house in Chislehurst, Kent shortly before his marriage in 1878.
At the time Robert William Perks was born, both of his paternal grandparents and his maternal grandfather were dead. George Thomas Perks was orphaned at the age of eleven. His mother Elizabeth (née Pearce) died in May 1828, followed by his father William in March 1831. G.T. Perks had one sister, Rebecca, about fourteen months older than him, and two younger brothers Charles Thomas and William who were 5 and 3 years old respectively when their father died.[15] William Perks (1781-1831) was a cabinet-maker and upholsterer in Madeley, Shropshire.[16] He appears to have worked in the cabinet-making and upholstery business established by his father George, and to have taken over the running of that business when George retired around 1828.[17] When William died in 1831, George resumed work in order to support his four orphaned grandchildren. He was at that stage aged 79.
While very little is known about R.W. Perks’ grandfather William, much more is known about his great grandfather George Perks (1752-1833). The Wesleyan Methodist Magazine for 1835 contained a “Memoir of Mr George Perks of Madeley” written by Mary Tooth (pages 895-900). George Perks had been churchwarden to John Fletcher, one of the most prominent of the early Wesleyans, when Fletcher was the vicar in Madeley. This and later work led to his becoming a highly respected figure in the Wesleyan Methodist community. In the Mary Tooth memoir it appears that George Perks’ resumption of cabinet-making work was intended to allow George Thomas to complete an apprenticeship and become able to take over the running of the business. If that was the plan, it unravelled when George Perks’ health deteriorated during 1833, leading to his death in October, two months after George Thomas had turned 14.
Robert William Perks’ grandfather William was the only son of George Perks but George had had one daughter also. This was Marianne, often written as Mary Ann, born 1783 in Madeley. She married her first cousin Robert, born 1780. It was this aunt and uncle who stepped in to support the four orphans. The published biographical material on R.W Perks makes no reference to the role played by Mary Ann. Nor does the British-published biographical material on George Thomas Perks. But the latter’s entry in the American-published Cyclopaedia of Methodism states: “… was a grandson to old Mr Perks, the intimate and beloved friend of the saintly John Fletcher of Madeley. Early left an orphan, Mr Perks was happy in having a godly aunt (Mrs R. Perks of Wolverhampton), who responded with true womanly instinct …”.[18] Mary Ann and Robert had no children of their own, and Robert was a successful businessman in Wolverhampton. They were devout Wesleyans, Robert having played a significant part in the establishment of Darlington Street chapel in Wolverhampton in 1823.[19] They had the capacity to go to the assistance of Mary Ann’s orphaned niece and three orphaned nephews. Bonds of kinship were supported by their belief-system in motivating them to do that. And they also had previous relevant experience. Robert Perks’s own father had died in November 1805 when Robert was 25, with two younger brothers aged 11 and 8, and a sister aged 7. Although he had two other sisters aged 23 and 20, it would seem likely that much of the responsibility for bringing up Robert’s three younger siblings was undertaken by himself and his wife Mary Ann.[20]
Thus, in late 1833, Robert William Perks’s father George Thomas ceased to live in Madeley. Together with his two younger brothers, his sister, and his grandmother (aged about 75 at this stage), he moved to Wolverhampton, into the household of his aunt Mary Ann and uncle Robert. It seems reasonable to assume that when George Thomas named his eldest son Robert William, it was in joint honour of this uncle Robert and his own father William while the naming of his eldest daughter Mary Ann was in honour of his aunt and “second mother”. The published biographical material on R.W. Perks makes a number of mentions of his family roots in Madeley, but no mention of the role of Wolverhampton in his family background. The 1903 British Monthly piece on R.W. Perks included a photograph titled the “House at Madeley, Salop, opposite the parish church: where Mr Perks’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather were born.”[21] The same photograph was reproduced in a piece signed by R.W. Perks titled “My Methodist Life”, published in the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine in 1906.[22] Its caption also included the words “where Mr Perks’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather were born”, although the great-grandfather had been born at Higford in Shropshire and did not move to Madeley until March 1781.[23] The Perks’s house at Madeley still stands as does the attached building which was the cabinet-making and upholstering workshop. From the dimensions of these structures, it is hard to believe that the Perks cabinet-making and upholstering business could have employed more than a very small number of non-family members – if indeed there were any such employees at all. The family owned the house and workshop, but the circumstances of the household that George Thomas Perks was born into clearly fit the description financially modest. The Wolverhampton branch of the Perks family was much better-off. It will be argued that a consideration of the linkages between R.W. Perks and his “Wolverhampton” relatives is helpful to an understanding of the early years of his overall career.
Family Background: (2) The Wolverhampton Perks Family
George Perks of Madeley (1752-1833) had two older brothers, one younger brother and one younger sister. It was his younger brother William (1755-1805) who moved at some stage from Higford to Wolverhampton, twelve miles away, and set about establishing a number of businesses there. The principal business was edge-tools manufacturing. The Victorian County History of Staffordshire states: “The Perks family are considered to have been the first edge-tool makers in Wolverhampton.”[24] It seems likely that William Perks was also in business as an iron master and metal merchant.[25] These various businesses appear to have prospered overall. When the youngest son of William Perks (1755-1805) died in October 1875, he left an estate valued at some £120,000.[26]
It has already been noted that the oldest son of this “William Perks of Wolverhampton” had married his first cousin, Mary Ann, the aunt of George Thomas Perks, that this couple did not have any children of their own, and that from around 1833 (or possibly earlier) they stepped in to provide support to the orphaned G.T. Perks and his three siblings. At that time Mary Ann’s husband Robert was head of the Wolverhampton branch of the family. He had been the principal heir to his father’s businesses in Wolverhampton when his father died in 1805. During the period that his two younger brothers were minors, Robert Perks was in sole charge of the family businesses. By the early 1820s it appears that the youngest brother John had become a partner in the edge-tools manufacturing business. The “middle” brother William may have become a partner in some of the other family enterprises.[27] In November 1834 Robert Perks died, intestate.
For George Thomas Perks and his three siblings this was a third major family misfortune in the space of less than four years. First their father dying in 1831, followed by their grandfather in 1833, and then thirteen months later their benefactor uncle. The upbringing of the four orphans thus devolved to being a responsibility for their widowed aunt. The “heir at law” to the estate of Robert Perks (1780-1834) was his brother William Perks (1794-1869). During the year or so following Robert’s death this William Perks appears to have withdrawn from all business interests in the Wolverhampton area and relocated himself to Sunderland. But by the end of the decade he had returned to the Midlands and established himself in Birmingham as a merchant in coal, glass and metals. This William Perks will therefore be referred to as “William Perks of Birmingham”. Mary Ann Perks removed her household to Birmingham also. John Perks (1797-1875) continued to live in Wolverhampton, and had full control of the continuing Perks business enterprises in that city. In 1839 the Wesleyan Methodist church mounted a major drive to raise funds for the “Wesleyan Centenary Fund”. The published report of the donations made to that fund provides some indication of the relative financial means of these three Perks households. The household of Mary Ann Perks donated nine guineas. This includes Mary Ann’s mother but not George Thomas Perks who by this stage was a student at the Wesleyan Theological Institution in London.[28] The William Perks household in Birmingham donated one hundred guineas, plus an additional ten “in memory of a dear departed brother.” The John Perks household in Wolverhampton donated £155. The Perks orphans from the Madeley family completed their upbringing in a household that was not in poverty. But in comparison to the circumstances of their cousins in the William Perks and John Perks households, it seems likely they would have been viewed as “poor cousins.”
The Connection with H.H. Fowler
Henry Hartley Fowler (1830-1911), from 1908 first Viscount Wolverhampton, had a significant role in the development of R.W. Perks’s career. In 1875, when R.W. Perks completed his articles as a solicitor in London, he immediately went into partnership with H.H. Fowler. At that stage Fowler was a partner in a solicitors practice in Wolverhampton with his brother-in-law Charles Corser. He had lived in Wolverhampton since 1855, had been elected a town councillor in 1858, and mayor in 1862. He became first chairman of the Wolverhampton School board in 1870.[29] The arrangement with the 26 year-old and newly qualified Perks was that a separate practice from the Wolverhampton solicitors firm would be established in the city of London, under the title “Corser, Fowler and Perks” and that R.W. Perks would be the resident partner there.[30]
Henry Hartley Fowler was a Wesleyan Methodist and an active layman in his church. His own father had been a prominent Wesleyan minister, Joseph Fowler (1791-1851), and a leading figure in the ‘liberal’ wing of Wesleyan Methodism during the 1830s and 1840s. In 1906 R.W. Perks wrote that Joseph Fowler had been one of his father’s three “leaders”.[31] There was thus a connection of friendship between H.H Fowler and George Thomas Perks encouraged by their joint adherence to the liberal wing within the Wesleyan Methodist church, and by the esteem G.T. Perks held for H.H. Fowler’s father. R.W. Perks said that he had first met H.H. Fowler in 1865 at his father’s house “next to Wesley’s Chapel in the City Road” and that his father and Fowler “thought very much alike upon Methodist affairs and general policy.”[32] There was also a connection of kinship between H.H. Fowler and G.T. Perks, which was via the Wolverhampton Perks family discussed in the preceding section of this paper.
It was noted in that section that William Perks, the younger brother of G.T. Perks’s benefactor uncle Robert had withdrawn from his business activities in Wolverhampton and moved to Sunderland during the year or so after Robert’s death. This move to Sunderland appears to have been associated with William’s links with the Hartley family. John Hartley (1775-1833) had in 1828 gone into partnership with Robert Lucas Chance to establish the Chance-Hartley glass-making factory at Smethwick. When he died in 1833 his interests were taken over by his two sons James (1811-1886) and John (1813-1884). These two brothers withdrew from their partnership in the Smethwick firm and moved to Sunderland to establish their own glassmaking firm at Bishopswearmouth. William Perks (1794-1869) appears to have had a financial interest in the Hartleys’ enterprise and in January 1836 married Jane Longridge Hartley (born 1805), the eldest of the four sisters of James and John. In June 1837 Louisa Hartley (born 1814), the youngest of those four sisters married John Perks (1797-1875). These marriages between the two Hartley sisters and the two Perks brothers created a link of kinship between George Thomas Perks and Henry Hartley Fowler. The mother of the Hartley sisters was Margaret née Stevenson. When she married John Hartley (senior) in 1802 she was a widow with one child (a daughter) from her previous marriage. That daughter, Elizabeth Liang, married Joseph Fowler and was the mother of Henry Hartley Fowler.
John Hartley (1813-1884) withdrew from the glass-making partnership with his brother in Sunderland and moved to Wolverhampton. There he became an “ironmaster” in the firm Thorneycroft, Hartley, Kesteven and Perks.[33] This partnership was formed to take over the Shrubbery Iron Works in Wolverhampton, (founded in 1824 by G.B. Thorneycroft and his brother Edward), when Edward Thorneycroft decided to withdraw from the business. John Hartley had married G.B. Thorneycroft’s second daughter Emma in August 1839. He thus became brother-in-law to the Wolverhampton Solicitor Charles Corser who had married Thorneycroft’s oldest daughter in April 1839. It was Charles Corser who took the 27 year old Henry Hartley Fowler into partnership in 1857, the same year that Fowler married the youngest of G.B. Thorneycroft’s daughters, Ellen.
The activities of the three interlinked families of the Wolverhampton Perks’s, the Hartleys and the Thorneycrofts were a prominent feature of business and political life in Wolverhampton in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. G.B. Thorneycroft was the city’s first mayor in 1848/9. In the 1840s the Shrubbery Iron Works was the biggest employer of labour in the eastern side of the city.[34] John Hartley was County Mayor in 1851, mayor of Wolverhampton 1858/9, High Sheriff of Staffordshire 1870, a member of the Royal Coal Commission and a director of the London and North-Western Railway.[35] John Perks, in addition to his edge-tools manufacturing business and his partnership in the Shrubbery ironworks, was chairman of the Railway Rolling Stock Company of Wolverhampton.[36] One indicator of the close relations between the three families comes from the 1841 Census, which records four couples on holiday together at Belgrave House, Ryde, on the Isle of Wight: G.B. Thorneycroft and his wife Eleanor; John Perks and Louisa; John Hartley and Emma; and Charles Corser and Mary. The first three men report themselves “Iron Master”, and Corser is “solicitor”.[37] The biographers of H.H. Fowler report that he was regarded as a poor relation by his future wife’s family and that attempts were made to dissuade her from marrying him.[38] Fowler’s own experiences in his mid-twenties, and the benefits to his career he had received through Charles Corser accepting him into partnership may have played a part in his willingness to accept the newly-qualified R.W. Perks into partnership in 1875.
In his posthumously published “Notes for an Autobiography”, R.W. Perks stated that the original offer made to him by Fowler was that he should “go to Wolverhampton as his managing clerk” (pp. 51-52). Perks says that his father had wanted him to accept this offer but that he had said ‘No’ because he wanted to go into practice in London. Perks states that when Fowler heard his decision, he then made the suggestion of the separate partnership practice in London (loc. cit.). These discussions probably took place during 1874. F.T. Langley was appointed managing clerk to the Corser and Fowler practice in Wolverhampton in 1874, having just completed his articles. Langley became a partner in the Wolverhampton firm in 1879, the same year that Corser withdrew from the London partnership and it became “Fowler and Perks.”[39]
Llandudno Pier
The first commercial business project that the new firm of Corser, Fowler and Perks, of 147 Leadenhall street, became associated with was the project to construct a promenade pier at the growing seaside resort of Llandudno in North Wales. This project involved registering a new limited liability company, obtaining a “provisional order” from the Board of Trade to provide that company with the necessary legal powers to build the pier, “floating” the new company to raise the required finance, and then actually constructing the pier and associated works. The project was successfully carried through to fruition, and references to Perks’s work on it formed an important component of Perks’s nomination to become an Associate of the Institute of Civil Engineers in March 1878.[40] But curiously, this project receives no mention in the Denis Crane biography of Perks, or in any of the other biographical material on Perks published during his lifetime. In the posthumously published “Notes for an Autobiography”, there is a very brief reference to the project. But this passage states that Perks’s work on the Llandudno Pier project was done subsequent to his work on the Conway Bridge project, and Perks states that it was his success on the Conway Bridge project that “led to my engagement as the lawyer for the projected Pier and the construction of the Marine Drive, Llandudno.”[41]
In the Denis Crane biography, the manner in which Perks first becomes involved in the Conway Bridge project is described as “his first piece of good fortune, and this he owed more to his own push and enterprise than to any merely fortuitous combination of circumstances” (op. cit., p. 66). In Crane’s account, Perks is spending his summer holidays in Llandudno in 1877. Out of curiosity he reads up on the history of the financial arrangements for the tolls on the Conway Suspension bridge. He develops an idea for how these might be reduced substantially by obtaining a private Act of Parliament taking the bridge out of central government ownership and putting it into the hands of a local body of bridge commissioners. One day he is sitting alone in the coffee room of the hotel where he is staying when four middle-aged men who are “strangers” to him arrive and sit together at a nearby table, where they speak loudly to one another complaining about the bridge tolls. Perks walks over and outlines to them his idea for doing something about the problem. The four strangers turn out to be four very important local figures. “So struck were they with Sir Robert’s suggestion that they engaged him on the spot to bring into Parliament the necessary Bill” (ibid, p. 67). This story essentially reproduces the account of how Perks “got his first Parliamentary work” which appeared at page 82 of the 1903 British Monthly piece on Perks. In both accounts Perks is on his summer holiday in Llandudno, and the year of this is stated to be 1877.[42]
The notice of application for a Provisional Order regarding the Llandudno Pier project was published in the London Gazette of 23 November 1875 and was dated 16 November 1875.[43] The Llandudno Pier Company Ltd was registered on 11 November 1875 by Corser, Fowler and Perks of 147 Leadenhall Street, with the documents showing R.W. Perks had witnessed all seven of the initial subscribers’ signatures on 10 November.[44] A prospectus inviting the public to subscribe for shares in the new company (3,000 shares at £10 each) was published in early December 1875.[45] The prospectus cites Corser, Fowler and Perks as the company’s solicitors and lists as one of the company’s nine directors: “George Perks, Esq., Perry Barr, Staffordshire.” This George Perks was the younger son of William Perks (1794-1869), and thus a cousin of R.W. Perks. He had been born in Wolverhampton in November 1824, the youngest of four children to his father’s first marriage.
Clearly these visible signs of activity in November and December of 1875 must have been preceded by several months of planning-work on the project. An article in The North Wales Chronicle of Saturday 10 July 1875 titled “Grand Promenade Pier for Llandudno” provided a description of the proposed pier based on “the plans which we have had the pleasure of inspecting”. It also stated: “Mr George Perks, of Birmingham and Llandudno, has been the principal mover in the scheme, and he has been ably assisted by his nephew, Mr Perks, of the London firm of solicitors, Messrs Corser, Fowler and Perks.” The article noted that there had been previous projects to build a pier at Llandudno, all of which had been abortive, but commented: “We think, however, that the right gentlemen have at last taken up the matter.”[46]
The first meeting of the shareholders in the newly-floated company was held on Friday 3 March 1876 at the Imperial Hotel, Llandudno. The North Wales Chronicle reported that “a large number of shareholders resident in the town and neighbourhood” attended. The deputy chairman of the company presided at the meeting, but most of the reporting on the state of the company’s affairs was done by R.W. Perks. He told the meeting that the necessary provisional order had been “fully settled with the Board of Trade and the Confirmatory Act would be at once introduced into Parliament.” Once that Act has received Royal assent Perks continued “The works would be immediately commenced and vigorously pushed on.”[47] The company’s solicitor also played a prominent role in the public festivities associated with the “Driving the first pile” ceremony held on Friday 15 September 1876. The ceremony itself was conducted on-site by the company’s chairman Lord Hill-Trevor MP and was followed by a ceremonial luncheon at the Imperial Hotel. At this luncheon the public speaking followed the format of “toasts” being proposed and then responded to. The first of the substantial toasts was proposed by Lord Mostyn to “The prosperity of the Llandudno Pier Company.” The principal reply to this toast was given by R.W. Perks. He spoke at some length on the state of the company’s affairs. He acknowledged the support the company’s application for a provisional order had received both from “the governing body of Llandudno, the commissioners of the town” and from the Mostyn family – the principal landowners in the area. He also lauded the London and North Western Railway for the “very frank, generous and business-like way” it had negotiated over the transfer of its pre-existing landing-stage to the new company.[48] This picture of R.W. Perks as being visibly associated with the Llandudno Pier project, and hence coming into contact with the various public figures of the Llandudno area is supported by other press reports from this period.[49]
In the Denis Crane biography of Perks the story is told that Perks was on “a short holiday at Llandudno in the summer of 1877” (pp. 65-66) when he had a chance encounter with four men whose identities he was unaware of, and it was this that led to his being engaged to work on the Conway Bridge project. The facts suggest that the genesis of the Conway Bridge project probably occurred during 1876 rather than 1877. On 12 January 1877 Perks spoke at a public meeting held at the Guildhall, Conway, called to discuss the issue of the bridge tolls. What Sir Richard Williams-Bukeley, the chair of the meeting, described as “The very able and exhaustive report prepared by Mr Perks” had been circulated prior to the meeting.[50] Sir Richard was cited by Crane as one of the four men in the chance encounter in the hotel coffee
room.[51] If the Crane account of the chance encounter was otherwise accurate, but the events took place a year earlier, there are still curious features to the story. Crane cites another of the four men as the MP for Carnarvon, Mr William Bulkeley-Hughes. In 1876 Bulkeley-Hughes had been chairman of the Llandudno Improvement Commissioners for five years.[52] In light of the negotiations that had been necessary between the Llandudno Pier Company and the Commissioners during 1875 and early 1876 referred to by R.W. Perks at the September 1876 celebratory luncheon (see above), it is difficult to see how Perks would not have known who Bulkeley-Hughes was in the “chance encounter”. And as the two Private Acts of Parliament for the Conway Bridge project were not passed until the 1878 session, it clearly cannot have been Perks’ success on that project that “led to” his being engaged as lawyer for the Llandudno Pier project.
Perks v. Gillott
George Perks (1824-1892), the cousin of R.W. Perks described by the North Wales Chronicle as “the principal mover” in the Llandudno Pier project, is not mentioned in the Denis Crane biography of Perks. But he is referred to in Perks’s posthumously published Notes for An Autobiography, although there is no link stated between him and the Llandudno Pier. The brief reference begins:
My father had a distant relative living in Birmingham, also called George Perks. He was a handsome man of considerable ability. He was fortunate in his marriage. He married one of the daughters of Gillot (sic), the famous pen maker. She was a talented woman and had a large fortune. They became involved in protracted litigations with their relatives and employed me as their lawyer (op. cit., p. 57).
Perks goes on to say that this George Perks and his wife regularly spent their summer holidays in Llandudno, that they had asked him to visit them there, and that “they used to give me money in order that I could lunch at the Imperial Hotel.” This then leads into an account of the chance encounter with the four men Perks did not know and the genesis of the Conway Bridge project. No more is said about George Perks and his wife.
George Perks of Birmingham had married Maria Gillott (born 1828) in December 1868. In an 1855 court case at which he appeared as a witness for the prosecution George Perks of Birmingham described himself as “a glass manufacturer, carrying on business at Nailsea, near Bristol” and the agent for an Assurance company responsible for managing its branch in Birmingham.[53] On his marriage certificate he is reported simply as “gentleman”, and in the 1871 census he is “Retired glass and lead merchant.” Maria Gillott was the second daughter of Joseph Gillott, the famous steel-pen manufacturer who died in 1872 leaving £250,000.[54] At the time of her father’s death, Maria Perks had seven living siblings: two married sisters and five brothers. On 10 June 1875 Maria commenced a Chancery legal action against her brother Joseph and his two co-executors/trustees of her father’s deceased estate. The Bill of Complaint which triggered the case was lodged by Messrs Corser, Fowler and Perks of 147 Leadenhall Street.[55] At that time, for a woman to commence such proceedings a male “next friend” needed to be identified on the documents. Maria’s “next friend” was William Charles Johnson, one of the solicitors’ clerks employed in the Corser, Fowler and Perks practice.
It is not clear when Maria Perks and George took the decision to mount the case, or when they decided to engage R.W. Perks as their lawyer for the proceedings. It may be that these decisions had already been settled upon before R.W. Perks completed his articles as a solicitor in April 1875. In September 1874, Maria Perks signed a codicil to her own Will dated 22 June 1872, appointing a replacement executor to William Henry Reece who had recently died. Reece had been the family solicitor of the Birmingham branch of the Perks family.[56] The replacement executor named in the codicil was “Robert William Perks of Number Nine Leigh Road, Highbury.” This appears to represent a significant statement of confidence in the abilities of the then 25 year-old and not-yet formally-qualified R.W. Perks. The plaintiff’s case in Perks v. Gillott was argued across a number of separate grounds. But one of the grounds on which Maria and George won a significant improvement in their treatment related to the executors/trustees handling of a situation where one of the original principal beneficiaries of the estate died without either a surviving spouse or children. Should the relevant trust monies be applied to the benefit of only the grandchildren of Joseph Gillott senior, or should a slice go to George Perks? On 9 August 1874, Gillott senior’s third son Henry died, eight days after his wife’s death and leaving no children. Up until August 1874 the question just raised was merely hypothetical. From August 1874 it was in the more immediate interests of Maria and George, who were childless, to secure good legal advice on the matter. If they had sufficient confidence in R.W. Perks to appoint him an executor to Maria’s Will, it seems reasonable to expect that they would have been interested in his advice on the Gillott estate matter.[57]
Chancery proceedings in Perks v. Gillott continued until 1916 when the youngest of Joseph Gillott senior’s surviving grandchildren had reached the age of 21 and the trusts were wound-up. There must have been a substantial flow of solicitor’s fees to R.W. Perks’s legal practice from his work on the case over the years. The Will of George Perks (1824-1892) indicates that R.W. Perks had also been managing his property interests during his lifetime and instructed that he should continue to do so for the purposes of his estate. This estate was sworn at £41,019, with R.W. Perks left £1,000 plus “two diamond and ruby studs.”[58] During the final years of George Perks’ life, the work he brought to R.W. Perks was probably responsible for only a minor part of the overall income of the by-then financially successful R.W. Perks. But during 1875 and 1876 the combination of the Perks v. Gillott Chancery case and the Llandudno Pier project probably did play an important role in the development of R.W. Perks’s career.
The Conway Suspension Bridge
The notice of the promotion of a Private Act of Parliament regarding the Conway Suspension Bridge was published in the London Gazette of 23 November 1877 citing Corser, Fowler and Perks as the solicitors to the project.[59] In essence, this project required five steps: negotiation with H.M. Treasury of a price at which they would be willing to transfer ownership of the bridge; obtaining Parliamentary approval for such a transfer of ownership on the agreed terms; obtaining the agreement of the London and North Western Railway (LNWR) to its paying a lump-sum to buy-out the annual payment it was required to make in respect of the bridge under the predecessor arrangements; putting in place a suitable entity that would assume ownership of the bridge and securing for this entity the gap-finance required to cover the difference between the price paid to H.M. Treasury and the sum received from the LNWR; and “selling” the idea that the above four steps represented an appropriate way of resolving the underlying issue (the exorbitant tolls for using the bridge) to the relevant local interests. Clearly the last-mentioned of these five steps represented a necessary pre-requisite for launching the attempt to obtain the required Parliamentary approval. And this in turn required some tangible “plans” regarding the nature of the arrangements in the various other steps.
During 1877, the process of “selling” R.W. Perks’s proposal for resolving the Conway Suspension Bridge tolls issue was pursued. This involved a series of meetings. At some of these Perks spoke. At others, a letter signed by him conveying relevant information was read out. The first such meeting was at the Guildhall, Conway, on 12 January 1877. Other such meetings were reported in the Press during the course of the year.[60] During the first half of 1878, there were reports in the North Wales Chronicle of the progress of the Conway Bridge project through Parliament. Following the successful conclusion of the various stages of the project, a ceremony was held on 2 September 1878 to mark the transfer of the bridge from H.M. Government to the newly established Conway Bridge Commissioners. R.W. Perks attended this ceremony. Following the transfer ceremony, a celebratory luncheon was held at the Castle Hotel, Conway. G.S. Douglas Pennant MP, who had presided at the transfer ceremony stated at the luncheon: “Without the untiring efforts of Mr R.W. Perks, the Bill would never have been passed.” A toast was then proposed to “The Promoters of the scheme and the Rev. Henry Rees and Mr R.W. Perks.”[61] Perks then rose and spoke “in reply” on the project. Two weeks later he sent a letter to The North West Chronicle, dated 16 September 1878, clarifying the genesis of the project. He wrote:
It may be interesting to your readers to know that the measure … was conceived upwards of two years ago at an interview at which Mr Rees, the vicar of Conway; Mr Brooke of Pabo; Mr Radcliff and myself were accidentally present. Larger meetings were subsequently held at which among others Sir R.W. Bulkeley … were present.[62]
Of the three people named in this letter, none were among the four names given in the Denis Crane biography as the names of the four men at the chance encounter at the Imperial Hotel, Llandudno. But Mr Brooke of Pabo is the one named in the Notes for An Autobiography account of the same incident that does not accord with the Crane account. The phrase “upwards of two years ago” is open to varying interpretations. But in both the Crane account and the Notes for An Autobiography account, there is rapid movement in the project from this initial chance encounter. This seems to point to it having occurred during 1876 rather than at some time earlier. And that in turn supports the view that the engagement of R.W. Perks to work on the Conway Bridge Project came subsequent to his work on the Llandudno Pier project, and not in the reverse sequence as portrayed in Notes for an Autobiography.
Other Perks projects during 1875-77
When R.W. Perks was nominated to become an Associate of the Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE) in March 1878 there were eight signatures to his nomination. Two were James Brunlees and Alexander McKerrow, the consulting engineers to the Llandudno Pier project. One was John Dixon, the contractor for the Llandudno Pier project. As well as citing Perks’ contribution to the Pier project, the nomination cited his services to major civil engineering projects in Staffordshire. Since one of the other nominators was Thomas Hawksley, it seems possible that this means R.W. Perks performed work for the South Staffordshire Mines Drainage Scheme during this period. The Scheme’s Commissioners had run into problems in functioning under their 1873 Act and had sought amendments to that Act. Corser and Fowler of Wolverhampton had been solicitors to the original Act.[63] H.H. Fowler was one of the Scheme’s Commissioners and gave evidence, on 30 April 1877, to the Parliamentary Committee considering the amendment Bill.[64]
In the Denis Crane biography, it is reported that when Perks was nominated to become an Associate Member of the Institute of Civil Engineers: “His proposers were Sir John Hawkshaw, Sir John Fowler, and Sir James Brunlees.”[65] With the exception of Brunlees, this appears to be erroneous when checked against ICE archival records. But Crane’s account is repeated by Perks himself in Notes for An Autobiography: “I was nominated for this honour in 1878 by three distinguished Civil Engineers, Sir John Hawkshaw, Sir John Fowler and Sir J. Brunlees” (op. cit., p. 68). It is conceivable that the mismatch here relates to the distinction between who were the signatories to the nomination, and who it was that proposed the acceptance of that nomination at the formal ICE meeting at which that nomination came forward on the agenda.
Concluding Comments
[Made at the ABH Conference presentation of the paper, but not included in this printed version of the paper]
[1] Financial Times, Saturday 29 December 1906. The supplement was inserted between pages 6 and 7 and consisted of a photograph only. The accompanying text appeared at page 3, column 5.
[2] ibid, p. 3.
[3] Denis Crane, The Life Story of Sir Robert W. Perks, Baronet, M.P., Robert Culley, 1909. “Denis Crane” was the pen-name of Walter Thomas Cranfield who was a journalist with The Methodist Recorder.
[4] See for example the unsigned piece “Mr R.W. Perks, M.P.” in The British Monthly January 1903, pp. 77-85; and O.A Rattenbury, “Perks, Sir Robert William”, in L.G. Wickham Legg, Dictionary of National Biography, Supplement 1931-40, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1949, pp. 687-8.
[5] Examples of use of the phrase include: Crane op. cit., p. 13 (which is the third page of text); the first page of the British Monthly piece; and “Methodist Public Men IV: Mr R.W. Perks M.P.” in Methodist Times, 8 February 1894, p. 83.
[6] New York Times, Saturday 1 December 1934, p. 14.
[7] Colin Baber, “The Subsidiary Industries of Glamorgan, 1760-1914”, Chapter V of Volume 5 of Arthur H. John and Glanmor Williams (editors), Glamorgan County History, University of Wales Press, Cardiff 1900. Baber states “By the end of the nineteenth century, Thomas Owen had become one of Britain’s premier paper manufacturers … [specialising] in the manufacture of high quality newsprint and the firm became a major supplier to both the Times and Manchester Guardian newspapers” (p. 240).
[8] See T.C. Barker and Michael Robbins, A History of London Transport, Volume 2, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1974; A.A. Jackson and D.F. Croome, Rails Through The Clay, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1962; and John Franch, Robber Baron: The Life of Charles Tyson Yerkes, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 2006.
[9] Financial Times, 29 December 1906, p. 3.
[10] See Crane op. cit., chapter 7, pp. 140-167. Crane quotes Perks as saying of this work: “It absorbed nearly three years of my time.” (p. 140)
[11] See R.W. Perks, Sir Robert Perks, Baronet: Notes for an Autobiography, Epworth Press, 1936, pp. 140-144. Perks cites the other six key donors as Lord Rosebery, Hudson Kearley, Clifford Cory, Weetman Pearson, Alfred Harmsworth and Harold Harmsworth (pp. 142-3). The predecessor body to the Liberal League was the “Imperial Liberal Council”. Perks presided at that body’s inaugural meeting in April 1900 and at its first dinner in May 1900. See H.C.G. Matthew, The Liberal Imperialists, Oxford University Press, 1973, pp. 50-51.
[12] E. Gaskell, Oxford Leaders, 1907.
[13] Owen E. Covick, “Mapping the career of a businessman who was an ‘independent operator’ and who left no substantial papers: the case of Sir R.W. Perks 1849-1934”, Paper presented to the 2005 Conference of the Association of Business Historians, Glasgow, May 2005. A more detailed account of Perks’ role in one of his major 1880s projects has been published in three parts in the Journal of the Railway and Canal Historical Society. See Owen Covick, “R.W. Perks and the Barry Railway Company”, in JRCHS July 2008 pp. 71-83; November 2008, pp. 141-153; and March 2009 pp. 22-37.
[14] At this stage the Wesleyan Methodist church had three posts of “separated Secretaries” working at the Mission House (“separated” in the sense of not having “circuit” responsibilities). In the absence of any ecclesiastical hierarchy, these posts were important in the co-ordination of the church’s activities overall. They were held by: “the most prominent Ministers of that Church”. See G.G. Findlay and W.W. Holdsworth, The History of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, Volume 1, Epworth Press, London, 1921, chapter 4. The quoted passage appears on page 107.
[15] Parish Register, Madeley, Shropshire. Rebecca was christened 19 July 1818 and George Thomas 26 September 1819. George Thomas was born 29 August 1819 but the birth date for Rebecca is not known. Charles Thomas and William were both christened on the same day, 2 August 1833, with their birth dates recorded as 2 January 1825 and 7 July 1827 respectively. The explanation for the lengthy delay in their case remains to be discovered.
[16] The christening records of Rebecca and George Thomas record him as “cabinetmaker”. At Rebecca’s marriage, 22 August 1840, his occupation is cited as having been “upholsterer”.
[17] Pigot and Co.’s National Directory, 1828-29 records George Perks as cabinet-maker and upholster in Madeley.
[18] Matthew Simpson (ed.), Cyclopaedia of Methodism, 5th revised edition, Philadelphia, Louis H. Everts, 1882, p. 707.
[19] See Aris`s Birmingham Gazette, 19 July 1824, p.1, column 3.
[20] A descendent of Robert Perks’s youngest brother John some years ago deposited at the Shropshire Archives a family tree of the various descendants of R.W. Perks`s great great grandfather, George Perks of Higford, Shropshire (born 30 December 1715). The reference number is C57.1.vf. The tree does not give marriage dates for Robert’s three sisters. The older two were 23 and 20 at the time of their father’s death.
[21] British Monthly, op. cit., p. 78.
[22] Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, volume CXXIX, pp. 94-98.
[23] Mary Tooth, “Memoir of Mr George Perks of Madeley”, The Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, 1835, p. 895. The Denis Crane biography of R.W. Perks stated: “His father, George Thomas Perks, came from Madeley in Shropshire where the family had been resident for several generations” and then said of the Perks’s house “on account of its early associations with the Fletchers [it] could perhaps lay claim to a certain degree of sanctity” (op. cit., pp. 13-14).
[24] E.J. Humeshaw, “Edge Tools”, in M.W. Greenslade and J.G. Jenkins (eds.). A History of the County of Stafford, volume 2, Oxford University Press, 1967, pages 259-262. The sentence quoted is at page 260. There are some early surviving records of this business, relating to the period 1793 to 1833, in the Staffordshire County Archives (ref: D1007/A/1/1).
[25] The source for this information is an unpublished manuscript written by the descendant of the Wolverhampton branch of the Perks’ family referred to in footnote 20.
[26] This was John Perks (1797-1875). His estate was sworn for probate purposes as “Effects under £120,000. No leaseholds.”
[27] Source as per footnote 25.
[28] General Report of the Wesleyan Centenary Fund (Leeds, 1844). The pages of this volume are not numbered. The “Mrs Robert Perks” household and the John Perks household appear in the segment for the Wolverhampton circuit. The William Perks household appears in the segment for the Birmingham East and West circuit. In each case, a list of the “donating” members of the household is provided, which allows an accurate identification of these households. George Thomas Perks is recorded as donating five guineas in the Madeley circuit plus an additional two “in memory of a sainted grandfather”. He entered the Wesleyan Theological Institution at Abney House when it opened in 1839 and continued as a student there until 1842. See Kenneth B. Garlick, “The Wesleyan Theological Institution, Hoxton and Abney House 1834-42” Proceedings of Wesleyan Historical Society, vol. 39, February 1974, pp. 104-112.
[29] For biographical material on H.H. Fowler, see: Timothy Larsen, “Fowler, Henry Hartley, first Viscount Wolverhampton (1830-1911)” in H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (editors) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, vol. 20, pp. 580-582; Edith H. Fowler, The Life of Henry Hartley Fowler, First Viscount Wolverhampton, G.C.S.I., Hutchinson and Co, London, 1912; and Anthony Perry, The Fowler Legacy: The Story of a Forgotten Family, Brewin Books, Studley, 1997.
[30] The arrangement is described in E.H. Fowler op. cit., pp. 92-93, which quotes Perks as saying: “… our law business was only in London. I had no professional connection with the Wolverhampton business.”
[31] R.W. Perks, “My Methodist Life”, Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, 1906, page 95. For more on Joseph Fowler, see Benjamin Gregory Sidelights on the Conflicts of Methodism, Cassell and Co, London, 1899.
[32] Quoted in E.H. Fowler, op. cit., p. 548.
[33] The “Perks” here is John Perks. Thomas Kesteven (born 1815) was the son of Maria the only sister of G.B. Thorneycroft, who had married John Kesteven in Leeds in 1806.
[34] See the entry for “Shrubbery Iron Works” on the Wolverhampton local history society’s website www.localhistory.scit.wlv.ac.uk
[35] For more on the Hartley family see entry by Catherine Ross, Dictionary of Business Biography (1985), Volume 3, pp.93-95.
[36] Birmingham Daily Post, Wednesday 29 July 1863, p. 4, column 5.
[37] 1841 Census details taken from the “Ancestry” website. The two younger Thorneycroft daughters were at this stage aged 13 and 12 and are recorded at the Thorneycroft house in Wolverhampton (“Chapel House”).
[38] See E.H. Fowler, op. cit., pp. 20-22; and A. Perry op. cit., pp. 5-7. G.B. Thorneycroft had died in 1851, a year after his third daughter Harriet married Frederick Charles Perry, the son of another wealthy Wolverhampton iron-founder and merchant Thomas Perry of the Highfield Works, Bilston. Both E.H. Fowler and Anthony Perry state that Thorneycroft left a sufficient fortune “to make all his children rich.”
[39] Langley had at first asked for a salary greater than Corser and Fowler were prepared to pay, but “ultimately agreed to go at the smaller salary [offered]” E.H. Fowler, op. cit., p. 81. It is possible that Fowler’s initial approach to Perks was made during the period that Langley was asking for the higher salary. Charles Corser retired from the Wolverhampton partnership in August 1886.
[40] Archives of The Institute of Civil Engineers. Nomination papers of R.W. Perks, 1878.
[41] R.W. Perks, Notes for an Autobiography, pp. 59-60.
[42] The 1909 account gives the names of all four of the men Perks spoke to in the Imperial hotel whereas the 1903 account named only one of them. In the “Notes for an Autobiography” account of the same incident (op. cit., pp. 57-59) four names are given but only three correspond to the names given in the Denis Crane biography.
[43] The London Gazette, 23 November 1875, pp. 5773-5774.
[44] The Llandudno Pier Company Ltd, Company Number 9992, was dissolved in 1998, but its file was in 2005 still available at Companies House, Cardiff. This company was the “successor” to an earlier company of the same name (Company number 4254, registered 6 January 1869 and wound-up during 1870-71). That predecessor company’s file is at The National Archives (BT31/1440/4254).
[45] The North Wales Chronicle, Saturday 11 December 1875, p. 8, column 5.
[46] The North Wales Chronicle, Saturday 10 July 1875, p. 5, columns 4-5. Notices of application for a Provisional Order for a Pier at Llandudno had previously been published in The London Gazette in 1862 (4 November, p. 5244), in 1865 (28 November, pp. 6020-6021), and in 1872 (29 November, p. 5984-5985). Of the nine directors of the 1875-registered Pier company, three had previously been directors of the 1869-registered company (see footnote 44). The July 1875 North Wales Chronicle article, without mentioning the predecessor company, names those three individuals stating they “have been added to the directorate.” This may indicate that a merging of the predecessor group with George Perks’s group had only recently been negotiated and this had provided the trigger for the appearance of this article.
[47] The North Wales Chronicle, Saturday 11 March 1876, p. 7, column 4.
[48] The North Wales Chronicle, Saturday 23 September 1876, p. 7, columns 1-3. The report clearly identifies the speaker as “Mr R.W. Perks, one of the solicitors of the Company.” His cousin George is not reported as having spoken, though he was specifically thanked for his services to the project by another of the speakers.
[49] See for example The North Wales Chronicle, Saturday 25 November 1876, p. 6, column 3 (Report on the company’s first ordinary general meeting, held at the Imperial Hotel, 16th November); and The North Wales Chronicle, Saturday 21 April 1877 (reporting that the pier would open for Whitsun week).
[50] The Liverpool Mercury, Saturday 13 January 1877, p. 7, column 6; and The North Wales Chronicle, Saturday 20 January 1877, p. 6, columns 5-6.
[51] Crane refers to him as “Sir Richard Bulkeley, Lord-Lieutenant of the County.” In Notes for an Autobiography, it seems clear that this is the same man Perks cites as “Sir William Bulkeley (then Lord Lieutenant of the County of Carnarvon).” The Sir Richard William-Bulkeley who was Lord-Lieutenant of the County of Carnarvon from 1851 died on 28 August 1875. The Sir Richard Williams-Bulkeley who chaired the Guildhall meeting in January 1877 was his son.
[52] See the evidence given by William Bulkley-Hughes MP at the committee stage of the Llandudno Improvement Bill, 23 May 1876 (H.L.R.O.).
[53] The evidence is available on the website “The Proceedings of the Old Bailey” (www.oldbaileyonline.org.uk). The case is Reference No. t1855 0611-634: R v Charles William Winchelsea Bevan, June 1855.
[54] Pr C for Joseph Gillott (died 5 January 1872). £250,000 is the figure the estate was originally sworn as “under” in February 1872. The estate was re-sworn as “under £350,000” in march 1898. For context re. Gillott, see David Cannadine, “Joseph Gillott and his Family Firm: The many Faces of Entrepreneurship”, in Kristine Bruland and Patrick O’Brien (eds.), From Family to Corporate Capitalism: Essays in Business and Industrial History in Honour of Peter Mathias, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1998.
[55] The Bill of Complaint which triggered the case is at TNA C16/1029 and is marked 1875 P100, filed 10 June 1875. Most of the published biographical material on R.W. Perks and H.H. Fowler states that their legal partnership commenced in 1876. That is clearly erroneous.
[56] See the notice regarding the death of George Perks’s father William, The London Gazette, 18 October 1870, p. 4532.
[57] The date of Henry Gillott’s death is given at paragraph 8 of Maria Perks’ Bill of Complaint. Paragraph 9 notes that another brother Alfred had died in April 1873 but had left a widow and a son, to whom his remaining interests in the estate flowed through.
[58] PrC for George Perks (died 26 December 1892). The estate was three times re-sworn, with the final figure £38,411 at some point after November 1902.
[59] The London Gazette, 23 November 1877, p. 6526. The notice is dated 7 November 1877.
[60] The North Wales Chronicle (NWC) 2 June 1877, p. 5, column 1 (Meeting of Llandudno Improvement Commissioners held 25 May 1877); NWC, 16 June 1877 (Meeting of Conway Corporation held 13 June 1877, and Meeting of Llandudno Improvement Commissioners held 11 June 1877); NWC, 7 July 1877 (Meeting of Penmaenmawr Local Board); NWC, 13 October 1877 (Special Meeting of the Conway Bridge Committee to be held 22 October 1877).
[61] The North Wales Chronicle, Saturday 7 September 1878, p. 5, columns 1-2.
[62] The North Wales Chronicle, Saturday 21 September 1878, p. 3, column 3.
[63] The London Gazette, 26 November 1872, pp. 5762-5764.
[64] HLRO HL/PO/PB/5/43/8, pp. 75-108.
[65] Denis Crane, op. cit., p. 79.