Thomas Hughes

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Thomas Hughes Template:Post-nominals (20 October 1822 – 22 March 1896) was an English lawyer, judge, politician and author. He is most famous for his novel Tom Brown's School Days (1857), a semi-autobiographical work set at Rugby School, which Hughes had attended. It had a lesser-known sequel, Tom Brown at Oxford (1861).

Hughes had numerous other interests, in particular as a Member of Parliament, in the British co-operative movement, and in a settlement—Rugby, Tennessee, USA—reflecting his values.

Early lifeEdit

Hughes was the second son of John Hughes, editor of the Boscobel Tracts (1830), and was born in Uffington, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire). He had six brothers, and one sister, Jane Senior, who later became Britain's first female civil servant. At the age of eight he was sent to Twyford School, a preparatory public school near Winchester, where he remained until the age of eleven. In February 1834 he went to Rugby School, which was then under the celebrated Thomas Arnold, a contemporary of his father at Oriel College, Oxford.

Hughes excelled at sports rather than in scholarship, and his school career culminated in a cricket match at Lord's Cricket Ground.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 1842 he went on to Oriel College, and graduated BA in 1845. At Oxford, he played cricket for the university team in the annual University Match against Cambridge University, also at Lord's, and a match still regarded as first-class cricket.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Legal careerEdit

Hughes was called to the bar in 1848, became Queen's Counsel in 1869 and a bencher in 1870. He was appointed to a county court judgeship in the Chester district in July 1882.<ref name="DNB"/>

Social interestsEdit

A committed social reformer, Hughes became involved in the Christian socialism movement led by Frederick Maurice, which he joined in 1848. In January 1854 he was one of the founders of the Working Men's College in Great Ormond Street, and was the college's principal from 1872 to 1883.<ref name=Harrison>J. F. C. Harrison ,A History of the Working Men's College (1854–1954), Routledge Kegan Paul, 1954</ref>

Hughes gave evidence in 1850 to a House of Commons committee on savings.<ref name="DNB">Template:Cite DNBSupp</ref> In so doing he participated in a Christian Socialist initiative, which led shortly to the Industrial and Provident Societies Partnership Act 1852, and the emergence of the industrial and provident society.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The Act was the work of Robert Aglionby Slaney, with whom Hughes worked in alliance.<ref>Template:Cite ODNB</ref><ref name="ODNB">Template:Cite ODNB</ref>

Hughes was involved also in the formation of some early trade unions, and helped finance the printing of Liberal publications; and acted as the first President of the Co-operative Congress in 1869, serving on the Co-operative Central Board.<ref>Template:Citation</ref> He invested with William Romaine Callender in co-operative mills, in 1866.<ref>Template:Cite ODNB</ref>

In politicsEdit

File:Thomas Hughes Vanity Fair 8 June 1872.jpg

Caricature by Adriano Cecioni published in Vanity Fair in 1872.

Hughes was elected to Parliament as a Liberal for Lambeth (1865–68), and for Frome (1868–74). He stood as candidate in 1874 for Marylebone in 1874, but dropped out just before the election, despite support from Octavia Hill.<ref name="DNB"/><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The context for the end of his political career was the unpopularity with Hughes's Frome constituents of his support for the Elementary Education Act 1870.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

As an MP Hughes worked on trade union legislation, but was not in a position to have major changes passed.<ref name="DNB"/> He had greater success in improving the legal position of co-operatives, which in particular became able to operate as a limited company.<ref name="ODNB"/> The issue of legal obstacles to the operation of labour unions was topical, and in 1867 Hughes was made a member of a Royal Commission set up to consider the matter. Initially he was the only one on the committee sympathetic to the union point of view; after some lobbying he was joined by Frederic Harrison, and a concession was made to union representatives, allowing them observer places in the proceedings.<ref name="Smith">Template:Cite book</ref> Hughes then worked with Harrison and Robert Applegarth to diminish the effect of some of the testimony from employers.<ref>Template:Cite ODNB</ref>

The outcome of this commission was that Harrison, Hughes and Lord Lichfield produced a minority report (1869), recommending that all the legal restrictions should be dropped.<ref name="Smith"/> Then the matter was raised again in a second Commission, at the end of Hughes's time in Parliament. At that point Alexander Macdonald used a minority report to refer back to Hughes's earlier view; but Hughes signed the majority report. It advocated amendment of the Master and Servant Act 1867, but little substantive change to the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1871 and the law of conspiracy.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

VolunteersEdit

During the invasion scare of 1859, Hughes raised the 19th (Bloomsbury) Middlesex Rifle Volunteer Corps from among the students of the Working Men's College, and commanded it with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel until 1869, when he became the unit's first Honorary Colonel. The battalion was known as 'Tom Brown's Corps'. Hughes estimated that it was the poorest in London, Rifle Volunteer Corps at the time being predominantly middle class. He also served as deputy editor of the Volunteer Services Gazette.<ref>Army List.</ref><ref>Ian F.W. Beckett, Riflemen Form: A Study of the Rifle Volunteer Movement 1859–1908, Aldershot: Ogilby Trusts, 1982, ISBN 0 85936 271 X., pp. 33, 61, Appendices VI and VII.</ref><ref>Ray Westlake, Tracing the Rifle Volunteers, Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2010, ISBN 978-1-84884-211-3, p. 168.</ref>

Later lifeEdit

In 1878–9 Hughes began writing The Manual for Co-operators (1881), with Vansittart Neale, for the Co-operative Congress. As a side-product he developed an interest in the model village.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In 1880, he acquired the ownership of Franklin W. Smith's Plateau City and founded a settlement in America—Rugby, Tennessee—which was designed as an experiment in utopian living for the younger sons of the English gentry. It followed closely on the failed colony Buckthorn (existing about 1872 to 1879), established by another Englishman, Charles Lempriere, in western Virginia; this settlement had supposedly been suggested by Hughes.<ref>Template:Cite DNB12</ref> Rugby was also unsuccessful on its own terms, but it still exists and is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

Hughes was also a prominent figure in the anti-opium movement, and a member of the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade.<ref name="Lodwick1996">Template:Cite book</ref>

At the end of the 1880s Hughes clashed with John Thomas Whitehead Mitchell of the Co-operative Wholesale Society, over the vertical integration Mitchell favoured for the Society.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Hughes died in 1896 aged 73, at Brighton, of heart failure, and was buried there.

WorksEdit

While living at Wimbledon, Hughes wrote his famous story Tom Brown's School Days, which was published in April 1857. He is associated with the novelists of the "muscular school", a loose classification but centred on the fiction of the Crimean War period.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Although Hughes had never been a member of the sixth form at Rugby, his impressions of the headmaster Thomas Arnold were reverent.

Hughes also wrote The Scouring of the White Horse (1859), Tom Brown at Oxford (1861), Religio Laici (1868), Life of Alfred the Great (1869) and the Memoir of a Brother. His brother, George Hughes, was the model for the Tom Brown character.

FamilyEdit

In 1847, Hughes married Frances Ford, daughter of Rev. James Ford, and niece of Richard Ford, and they settled in 1853 at Wimbledon.<ref name="DNB"/> Their house there was built by the North London Working Builders' Association, a Christian Socialist co-operative; and was shared with J. M. F. Ludlow and his family;<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Ludlow already shared barristers' chambers with Hughes, and the arrangement lasted four years.<ref name="DNB"/> There were five sons (Maurice, James, George, John, and Arthur) and four daughters (Lilian, Evie, Caroline and Mary) of the marriage.<ref>Template:Cite ODNB</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Lilian Hughes perished in the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912. The youngest child Mary Hughes was a well known Poor Law guardian and volunteer visitor to the local Poor Law infirmary and children's home.

LegacyEdit

File:Thomes Hughes statue, 4.22 (1).jpg

Statue of Thomas Hughes at Rugby School

A Hughes Scholarship was founded at Oriel College, Oxford. It was a closed award, open only to members, or sons of members, of some Co-operative Societies, in which aspect the award reflected Hughes's involvement with the Co-operative Movement.<ref>Oxford University Handbook (1912), p. 31; archive.org.</ref> The first scholar was elected to Oriel in 1884.<ref>Charles Lancelot Shadwell, Registrum Orielense, an account of the members of Oriel College, Oxford vol. 2, (1893), pp. x–xi; archive.org.</ref> It was later combined with an award honouring the social reformer Edward Vansittart Neale.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

A statue of Hughes (pictured right) stands outside Rugby School Library: the sculptor was Thomas Brock, and the statue was unveiled in 1899.<ref>Public sculpture of Warwickshire, Coventry and Solihull by George Thomas Noszlopy, page 28–29</ref>

BibliographyEdit

FictionEdit

Tom Brown's School Days (1857)
The Scouring of The White Horse (1859)
Tom Brown at Oxford (1861)

Non-fictionEdit

Religio Laici (1861)
A Layman's Faith (1868)
Alfred the Great (1870). In the Sunday Library for Household Reading, this was a largely political work, and was history verging on fiction.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Memoir of a Brother (1873)
The Old Church; What Shall We Do With It? (1878)
The Manliness of Christ (1879)
True Manliness (1880)
Rugby Tennessee (1881)
Memoir of Daniel Macmillan (1882)
G.T.T. Gone to Texas (1884)
Notes for Boys (1885)
Life and Times of Peter Cooper (1886)
James Fraser Second Bishop of Manchester (1887)
David Livingstone (1889)
Vacation Rambles (1895)
Early Memories for the Children (1899)

ReferencesEdit

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This entry incorporates some public-domain text originally from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica but has been heavily edited.
The Aftermath with Autobiography of the Author (John Bedford Leno published by Reeves & Turner, London, 1892)