After leaving office John remained as active as ever in civic affairs.
In the middle of March 1884 he went again to Parliament as a witness for Manchester's case for the Ship Canal, speaking before the House of Lords Committee. There he gave, quite unwittingly, a good deal of amusement to everyone.
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| Punch's view on 7 October 1882: Manchester-sur-Mer Manchester is dipping her toes in the canal while the rivers Irwell, Irk, Medlock and Cornbrook play around her |
Sir Bosdin Leech, cotton merchant and the financial director of the Ship Canal, describes the moment in his History of the Manchester Ship Canal. [1]
John was explaining his idea of a main sewer built along the bank of the Ship Canal to take Manchester's sewage out to tidal waters.
He was telling the Committee the figure he had been given for the number of WCs involved, said that "Eleven thousand was the number of water closets put into his mouth."
The amusement was, wrote Sir Bosdin, "accentuated by the witness being unconscious of having said anything out of the way."
Manchester finally succeeded in 1885 against Liverpool's fierce opposition. Queen Victoria came to open the Ship Canal on 21 May 1894 amid great excitement. [2]
John was there, riding in the procession in a carriage with Sir Bosdin. They were nearly in an accident – "one of the horses kicked and got its foot entangled in the front of the carriage, which had to be abandoned" and they had to get out and walk from Platford's Hotel in Stretford Road to the docks, "dodging amongst the crowd as best they could, and arriving only just in time for the ceremony" [3]. Eventually, the Port of Manchester was able to live up to John's hopes and become Britain's third busiest port.
It wasn't only the work in civic improvements that John found fulfilling. On 17 November 1884 he wrote to Alice
Yesterday and today I have had long conversations with people in great distress or difficulty – one a civil engineer, the other a lady. The telling of their tales of trouble seemed a marvellous relief to both. And I was able to send both away in better spirits with very little expenditure beyond time and feeling. The first was, I believe, at the far end of desperation, quite a stranger. Why he should come to me I don't know.
The same quality of humility and surprise in a talent he had found unexpectedly in himself can be seen too in this comment about his work in connection with the Rusholme Road Chapel. He was asked by a grandmother to get her grandson admitted to Nicholls Hospital, the boys' refuge in Ardwick (the buildings are now part of Manchester City College)
Today I have a Grandmother from Rusholme Road wanting to get her grandson to Nichols Hosp: Father dead. Mother wicked, gone away. Found it easy to help her. I am quite satisfied now that Providence was right in not letting me gratify my longing to live in the country. It would have been every way a more selfish life, and perhaps on that account, in the long run, a less enjoyable one. I begin to feel that gray hairs, business ways, and a bit of sympathy mixed together, do constitute a sort of talent which it would be criminal to leave unused. And that being so, I feel ready to do or enjoy everything that comes to me here. [4]
It was in about 1888 that Ellen Ewing notes the appearance "in the Father's accounts of his work a certain slightly aggressive self-assertion, new to him and amusing unless due, as is possible, to declining health".
She quotes a letter he wrote to Alice on 20 October 1888
I could only write you a few lines in the interval of a strong debate in which Barton and myself were against Mr Smith. I got into a bad temper and was very impatient. He is the least lucid intellect I have ever met with in a professional man of experience. To fix a thought or train is like driving a nail into a bag of wool. However by patience this morning we got to understand each other [5]
I think this argument took place in a work matter and that Barton is a fellow engineer, referred to by John in a letter of 25 November 1884 with details of Mrs Barton's success with her hens [6]. But Ellen Ewing's next example from a letter to Alice in 1888 is definitely from John's rôle as an alderman
We have had a grand fight in Council today, of which I must give you full particulars tomorrow. I roused myself up towards the end of the debate and got it hot and gave it hot to Mr Clay, to the satisfaction of my friends, some half of whom told me afterwards, that it was the best speech I had made for years. Some tried hard to shut my mouth but I insisted on being heard and was supported strongly by the majority … I wish you had been in the seat of distinguished strangers. If you had been at my coat tails I fear you would have exercised a sinister influence and cooled my temperature … Perhaps, after the excitement, I am rather upset internally now [7]
This is very probably connected to the long-running saga of a botched improvement scheme for the Victoria Hotel, in which the Improvement Committee lost control of both project and costs and was slammed by a report in 1886 by the Manchester Ratepayers' Association, which hinted darkly at corruption in the Council. The Association was very hostile to the Council's habit of electing aldermen for life from among their own number, pointing out that aldermen tended to dominate the council's committees, and claiming that were far too cosy.
The problem was that committees handling technically involved projects needed experienced and committed men to understand the practical background and to carry them through. As a result Manchester allowed committees to nominate their own members for re-election each year, so membership of committees often changed very little, and members became fiercely loyal and took criticism badly. Combined with the changing expectations in standards in business and civic life, this was bound to attract public criticism. The Victoria Hotel scheme saga ran and ran, acrimoniously . [8]
John was never personally criticised in the saga but he was very touchy when the Improvement Committee was accused and he took very badly any imputation against his character – he couldn't afford not to, as such imputations would be a threat to his professional standing and livelihood.
So in April 1886, we have Councillor Chesters-Thompson moving that the committee should provide a complete inventory of the furniture owned by the Corporation in connection with the Victoria Hotel and passing on a complaint from a tradesman that his lower tender for the work had been rejected before the fixed date for the tenders to be in. "He wished to know if that statement was true – whether such a thing could be – and if it were true, then there had been no greater scandal in the wide world".
John, the recently appointed chairman of the committee, snapped back that "Mr Thompson had made a charge against the committee of conduct which he called scandalous" and launched into a something of a diatribe.[9] Mr Chesters-Thompson countered that he hadn't said that he believed the allegation. Finally John accepted the position – but, probably rather grumpily, said he still wanted to know who had made the "scandalous" statement against the committee.
On 5 May 1888 the Manchester Courier reported a meeting at which John went head to head with Councillor George Clay, a builder, over a special report which featured the Victoria Hotel saga. This time it was Mr Chesters-Thompson who calmed things down. He said he thought he could throw a little oil on the troubled waters
He would suggest that they should shake hands in the matter – that Alderman Hopkinson should say to Mr Clay, "If you will withdraw your report I will withdraw those aggressive remarks I made and the letters I wrote to the papers on the subject of the improvement". (Hear, hear)Alderman Hopkinson said he acceded with pleasure to the appeal made by Mr Thompson (Hear, hear)Mr Clay said he was also ready to withdraw the report (Hear, hear)
It seems that Council meetings had definitely become more heated and John's forthrightness had become more aggressive.
But there was major work still to do for the Corporation. Especially in the noisome matter of sewage and the rivers.
Notes
[1] Sir Bosdin Leech, The History of the Manchester Ship Canal from its inception to its completion with personal reminiscences by Sir Bosdin Leech, in two volumes, (1907) pub. Sherratt & Hughes (available online
Vol 1 p. 215
[2] History of the Manchester Ship Canal, Vol 2, p. 208 et seq.
[3] ibid., p. 212
[4] John and Alice Hopkinson 1824-1910 (1948) ed. Mary Hopkinson and her niece Lady Ewing, with a Preface by Sir Gerald Hurst, K.C., p. 88
[5] ibid., p. 96
[6] ibid., p. 87
[7] ibid., p. 96
[8] The Victoria Hotel saga is covered extensively by Pamela Mary Nuttall in Corruption in Municipal Government in the late Victorian Period, (1871 – 1902). Thesis submitted to University of Huddersfield March 2019
[9] Manchester Courier, 15 April 1886
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