A. J. Mundella

Anthony John Mundella (28 March 1825– 21 July 1897) was an English manufacturer and later a Liberal Party MP and Cabinet Minister who sat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom from 1868 to 1897. He served under William Ewart Gladstone as Vice-President of the Committee of the Council on Education from 1880 to 1885 and as President of the Board of Trade in 1886 and from 1892 to 1894. As education minister he established universal compulsory education in Britain and played the major part in building the state education system. At the Board of Trade he was instrumental in the reduction of working hours and the raising of minimum ages in the employment of children and young people. He was among the first to prove the effectiveness of arbitration and conciliation in industrial relations. He also brought in the first laws to prevent cruelty to children. His political achievements in the late Victorian age are said to have anticipated 20th century society. but the Great Meeting baptismal register confirms that he was christened Anthony John.

Though from a Catholic and nonconformist background, he attended the Church of England school of St Nicholas in Leicester, an establishment maintained by the National Society for Promoting Religious Education to provide elementary education for children from poor homes, until the age of nine. Though he rebelled against the catechism and disliked the creed, describing them in later life as "my especial abomination", Mundella remained loyal to his early education in Anglicanism for the rest of his life. Because of the family's then abject financial circumstances, when Rebecca Mundella's eyesight worsened and she could no longer work at lacemaking the boy had to be withdrawn from school so that he could earn money to help the family. At nine, he started work in a printing office as a printer's devil, an opportunity used by him to extend his education.

From his father, and the exiled Italians who occasionally visited the family home, Mundella acquired at an early age what was described as "a kind of strange unconventional political education". At the same age he made his first political speech, in support of the Charter. He was further politically inspired by the arrival in Leicester of Richard Cobden on his nationwide campaign for the repeal of the Corn Laws, and was always active in advocating the causes of the working classes. He was one of the first industrialists in the Midlands to realise that steam power was something far more than a means to great wealth. He believed that it could be "so applied and developed as to lift the mass of workers out of serfdom".

Manufacturing career

In 1848 Mundella was offered a partnership by old-established hosiery manufacturers, Hine & Co of Nottingham, who needed help to construct and open a large new factory. He became a partner in the company, which soon became known as Hine & Mundella.|group=note He pioneered many changes, including new machines which produced tubular knitting rather than the stocking-frame's straight knit. Mundella had long maintained that the best machines in the hosiery trade were "principally the inventions of working men". Not by his own invention, but by encouraging inventors within the company (many of them loom operators) and sharing patents with them, Mundella was able to develop plentiful new hosiery-making machinery, a lot of it steam-driven, including a technological revolution: a machine which for the first time enabled a stocking to be made and fully fashioned automatically without stopping the action.

In 1860, a series of strikes and lock-outs hit Nottingham's hosiery business. The inadequate wages of home framework-knitters compared to those of the factory operatives led to demands for higher pay (although Mundella's employees were not involved). Mundella organised a conference between workers and the employers. He had to contend with suspicious employers and with powerful trade unionists, and reconcile the penurious framework-knitters with the comparatively well-paid and skilled factory workers.

Aside from local political action, Mundella's business experience showed him that progress in industry depended on reciprocal understanding between workers and employers, and that progress generally required significant improvements in the nation's education system, including technical training. He also recognised that very young children could not be properly educated if they were spending their time working in factories. When travelling in continental Europe on business and on personal relaxation, Mundella saw how superior the education systems of other countries were, particularly in Switzerland and the German states, and was dismayed at the comparative shortcomings of the English system.

Political career

Mundella took his seat in the House of Commons as part of the Liberal Party majority of 116. With his evident confidence, the respect in which he was held as a pioneer of industrial arbitration and as an expert on social matters, combined with the early perception that he was a hard worker, he immediately found himself to be one of the most highly regarded MPs of the new intake. The prime minister, William Ewart Gladstone, warmly congratulated him on his speech.|group=note Known officially as the Freshwater Fisheries Act 1878 (41 & 42 Vict. c. 39), and colloquially amongst anglers as the Mundella Act, it became law in 1878. At the same time, Mundella was also appointed the fourth Charity Commissioner for England and Wales.

Despite being junior to the Lord President of the Council Mundella was in charge of education, and he was now positioned to achieve a number of his aims, in particular that of compulsory elementary education. He set to work with vigour, despite strong opposition. Referring to Mundella's researches into schooling in continental Europe, The Times stated that "compulsory education might do for the Saxons, but would never be endured by the Anglo-Saxons". To those organisations and people who maintained that compulsion was un-English Mundella replied that it was "peculiarly English to be content to be in ignorance". This conclusion roused Mundella to urge local government to provide cheap meals for children.

While in England and Wales, endowments for higher education schools were being surveyed and where necessary reformed, no such action was taking place in Scotland. Mundella introduced bills to overhaul the Scottish endowments and extend compulsory elementary education to Scotland.

Mundella tried to modernise the Committee of the Council on Education by proposing the institution of an education department headed by a minister with a position in the cabinet, and the setting up of a department of agriculture which would take over his veterinary responsibilities (part of the education portfolio), but he was forestalled by the opposition of the Lord President of the Council.

In May 1885 Mundella was able to begin the process of introducing a measure to promote intermediate education in Wales, but on 9 June 1885 Gladstone resigned and as a result Mundella was forced to leave the vice-presidency. His Welsh legislation fell at the dissolution of parliament. The association became a force behind educational development, including secondary as well as technical education. Mundella also presided over the new National Education Association formed to promote a "free progressive system of national education, publicly controlled and free from sectarian interest" by publicising and advancing the School Board system and undermining denominational and private schools.

In 1888 Mundella introduced a bill for the prevention of cruelty to children. Due to opposition, progress of the bill was slow, with Mundella speaking 65 times in committee. The ensuing Prevention of Cruelty to, and Protection of, Children Act 1889 (52 & 53 Vict. c. 44) (commonly known as the Children's Charter) was the first act of Parliament to outlaw cruelty to children. It enabled the state to intervene in relations between parents and children, made it an imprisonable crime to neglect or ill-treat children, and outlawed the employment of children under the age of 10. Mundella regarded this Act as one of his greatest successes.

Resignation

In 1869 Mundella had joined the board of the New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Company. It was a successful venture and Mundella's pecuniary interest prospered. Under newly established rules, on becoming president of the Board of Trade in 1892 he relinquished all his directorships and thereafter had no control over the company's activities. In 1893, as a result of an economic downturn, the company was forced into liquidation and became the subject of a Board of Trade inquiry. Though Mundella was no longer a director and was innocent of any fault, a conflict of interest existed because the final decision on what further proceedings should follow a public investigation in court (in which Mundella gave evidence) would have to be made by Mundella himself as president of the Board of Trade. He was compromised, and his role as president became unsustainable. On 24 May he addressed the House of Commons on the matter. The magazine Punch wrote: "The House felt that here was a good man suffering with adversity. That it was undeserved, had swooped down, and blighted temporarily an honourable career when it seemed to have reached its serener heights, made the calamity none the less hard to bear. Mundella comported himself with the dignity that commanded the respect of the House. (He) sat down amid cheering on both sides".

thumb|left|upright|Mundella at the House of Commons by [[John Benjamin Stone, 1897]]Mundella wrote to his sister Theresa: "I was received with loud cheering when I entered the House, when I rose to address it, and the loudest from all sides when I sat down. Men crowded round me all night to shake hands with me, and all my colleagues said I had done it so admirably and with so much dignity" There were tributes from Gladstone and Rosebery (the latter insisting that it was a "source of grief and weakness" to the government to be deprived of his "great" services), and hundreds of resolutions of sympathy from workers all over the country reached him, thanking him for his life-long services to labour.

Death

Mundella died unexpectedly. On 14 July 1897 his butler found him "prostrated and unconscious" on his bedroom floor. He had suffered a stroke and remained paralysed with a complete loss of speech, and he was barely conscious for eight days. Many people, including Queen Victoria (who telegraphed a number of times for news) and leading politicians of all shades of opinion, expressed concern. At 1.55 pm on 21 July 1897 he died, at the age of 72.

Mundella's coffin was then taken through the centre of London to St Pancras station for transfer by train to Nottingham. It was the intention of Mundella's daughter Maria Theresa to write his biography (which would presumably have been celebratory), but despite working for some years on his archive, collecting contributions and loans from others, and making lengthy transcriptions, nothing was published. She died in 1922. Her collected Mundella papers then passed to his granddaughter, Dorothea Benson, Lady Charnwood, who presented them to the University of Sheffield Library in the 1930s.

A biography finally appeared. Harry Armytage's A.J.Mundella 1825–1897 – The Liberal Background to the Labour Movement was published in 1951. He made good use of Ms Mundella's copious research in his book, and before its publication in academic papers and a radio broadcast. Mundella is regularly mentioned in volumes recording the Victorian hosiery business, the history of education, and early labour relations. Academic theses have examined his political reputation.

Personal life

On 12 March 1844, and shared her husband's literary and artistic sympathies. Her "quiet, clever criticisms" were said to delight her guests and she was credited with an "unselfish, gentle, and sunny disposition" She died after a short illness on 14 December 1890. Their marriage was described as "outstandingly happy" and "blissful" and Mundella was said to have been "inconsolable" at his wife's death. His manner after his bereavement was said to have become sharper and more intolerant, as observed by another MP in the House of Commons.|group=note They had two daughters, Eliza Ellen and Maria Theresa.

When Mundella was a manufacturer he commissioned a large new villa, designed by the architect Thomas Chambers Hine, in The Park Estate in Nottingham, and after moving to London when he became an MP the family lived, firstly, in Dean's Yard in Westminster, then rented a house in Stanhope Gardens in Kensington before, at the end of 1872, purchasing 16 Elvaston Place nearby. While he had made money in business, Mundella had never been particularly rich. The crash of the New Zealand company which had been the cause of his resignation left him in financial difficulties, but on the recommendation of Lord Rosebery he was awarded an annual Civil List pension of £1,200 () which enabled him to continue to live in Elvaston Place.

Mundella had a striking presence, being tall and thin and bent at the shoulders with a dark complexion, a prominent hooked nose and a flowing beard. Easily recognisable, he was reported to be a familiar figure in London. The house was often crowded with friends, not only politicians, but also many from the world of the arts and literature, business, and journalism.

Though Mundella was not Jewish (his mother being a Protestant and his father a Catholic), throughout his political life his looks, his foreign-sounding name, and his artistic individualism in dress encouraged opponents and hostile cartoonists and journalists to indulge in anti-semitic insults.

Despite Mundella's claim when applying for his Civil List pension in 1894 that he had "insufficient private means",

Mundella likenesses

Portrait in oil: by Sir Arthur Stockdale Cope RA (1857–1940). Painted on commission for the citizens of Sheffield to celebrate Mundella's 25th anniversary as an MP. A three-quarter length portrayal of Mundella as president of the Board of Trade with his hand resting on a departmental despatch box. The Sheffield Telegraph commented: "His face wears a somewhat sad and serious expression, and the artist has given him the full measure of his years". The artist was Mundella's own choice. The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in the spring of 1894 and presented to Mundella on 11 Dec 1894 before being given to Sheffield Town Council. It is on loan to Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust.
A replica of the portrait, also painted by Cope, was presented to Mundella's daughter Maria Theresa on the same occasion. The school closed in 1985 and the portrait was passed to its successor schools, Roland Green Comprehensive and The Nottingham Emmanuel School. It was then taken into the care of a group of former students of the Mundella Grammar School, who in 2009 had it cleaned and loaned it to the Bromley House Library, Nottingham, where it is now displayed.
Bust, marble: by Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm RA (1834–1890). Working women and children, who had enjoyed the benefit of the Factory Act 1874 subscribed, mostly in single pennies, to a tribute to Mundella and his wife. It took the form of the bust by Boehm and bears the inscription: "Presented to Mrs. Mundella by 80,000 factory workers, chiefly women and children, in grateful acknowledgement of her husband's services". It was presented to Mary Mundella at a ceremony in Manchester in August 1884, ten years after the Factory Act had passed. the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the University of Sheffield Library.
Caricature, chromolithograph: by Spy, the pseudonym of Leslie Ward (1851–1922). It was first published in Vanity Fair on 30 November 1893. It is entitled "On the Terrace, A Political Spectacle: – The Ayes have it – the Noes have it" and it is a group cartoon portrait with Mundella in the right foreground. A copy of it is owned by the National Portrait Gallery in London.