The state and dignity of the office of Chief Magistrate of the City of
London have, during nearly centuries of its existence, pointed many a
moral,—from the nursery-tale of Whittington to the accessories of
Hogarth’s pictures and a homelier illustration of our own days:
Our Lord Mayor and his golden coach, and his gold-covered footmen
and coachman, and his golden chain, and his chaplain, and great
sword of state, please the people, and particularly the women and
girls; and when they are pleased, the men and boys are pleased: and
many a young fellow has been more industrious and attentive from his
hope of one day riding in that golden coach.—_Cobbett._
This is, however, but the bright side of the picture. Civic office is
often a costly honour; not only by large expenditure, but by neglect of
private business to attend to the public duties of the station.
All that we propose to do here is to record a few noteworthy Mayoralties
of the _present century_, to show that the office continues to be filled
by men of high character and moral worth.
Among the worthy citizens should be mentioned Sir James Shaw, born in
1764, in the humblest circumstances, and educated at the grammar-school
of Kilmarnock. He settled in London as a merchant, by his own
perseverance and integrity amassed a fortune, served as Lord Mayor
1805-6, sat in three parliaments for the City, and was subsequently
Chamberlain. He was unostentatiously charitable, encouraged industrious
poor men, and succoured the indigent, because he remembered his own
unpromising infancy; and he was one of the first to assist the helpless
children of Robert Burns. In commemoration of these estimable qualities,
a marble statue of Sir James Shaw was erected by public subscription at
Kilmarnock in 1848.
Sir Matthew Wood, Bart., the most popular Lord Mayor in the present
century, began life as a druggist’s traveller, and then settled in
London in the ward of Cripplegate, for which he rose to be alderman: he
served as Lord Mayor two successive years, and represented the City in
nine parliaments; his baronetcy was the first title conferred by Queen
Victoria shortly after her accession. He gained much popularity as the
adviser of the ill-fated Queen Caroline; for which, and his general
political conduct, a princely legacy was bequeathed to him by the
wealthy banker of Gloucester of the same name. He died in his 75th year:
his eldest son, the present baronet, is in holy orders; and his second
son, Sir William Page Wood, is a sound equity lawyer and a
Vice-Chancellor.
Alderman Birch, Lord Mayor in 1815, received a liberal education, and at
an early age wrote some poems of considerable merit: he succeeded his
father in business, as a cook and confectioner, in Cornhill. He produced
several dramatic pieces, of which the _Adopted Child_ is a stock
favourite: he was a sound scholar, and wrote the inscription for the
statue of George III. in the Council-chamber at the Guildhall, and took
an active part in founding the London Institution.[109]
Robert Waithman, Lord Mayor in 1823-24, was born of parents in humble
life, in 1764, and, when a boy, was adopted by his uncle, a linendraper
at Bath, and sent to a school where the boys were taught public and
extemporaneous speaking. He was taken into his uncle’s business, and
subsequently came to London, and opened a shop at the south end of
Fleet-market. In 1794 he began to take an active part in City politics,
and was next elected into the Common Council, where his speeches,
resolutions, petitions, and addresses, would fill a large volume. He sat
in five parliaments for the City, made a popular Sheriff and Lord Mayor;
and after his death, in 1833, his friends and fellow-citizens erected to
his memory a granite obelisk upon the site whereon he commenced
business. A memorial tablet was also placed in St. Bride’s church,
stating that “it was his happiness to see that great cause triumphant,
of which he had been the intrepid advocate from youth to age.” Curiously
enough, this tablet is placed in the vestibule of the church, directly
opposite a similar memorial to Mr. Blades, of Ludgate-hill, who was a
fine old Tory, and a stanch opponent to Waithman throughout his stormy
political life: as in life, so in death the great leveller has laid them
here.
Waithman made his first political speech at Founders’ Hall, “the caldron
of sedition,” when he and his fellow-orators were routed by constables
sent by the Lord Mayor, Sanderson, to disperse the meeting. When
Sheriff, in 1821, Waithman, in endeavouring to quell a tumult at
Knightsbridge, had a carbine presented at him by a lifeguardsman; and,
at the funeral of Queen Caroline, a bullet passed through the Sheriff’s
carriage, in the procession through Hyde-park. Latterly, the alderman
grew too moderate for his Farringdon-ward friends, and he was defeated
of being elected Chamberlain; he then withdrew to a farm near Reigate,
and in this bucolic retirement passed away. He was an intrepid, upright
man, but had been sparsely educated; and many of the Resolutions on the
War with France, by which he gained political notoriety, were written by
his friend and neighbour, Sir Richard Phillips.
In early life Waithman showed considerable genius for acting; and we
once heard him relate that his success in the character of Macbeth led
his friends to press upon him the stage as a profession; but he chose
another sphere. He was uncle to John Reeve, the clever comic actor.
Alderman Kelly, Lord Mayor at the accession of her Majesty in 1837, was
horn at Chevening, in Kent, and lived, when a youth, with Alexander
Hogg, the publisher, in Paternoster-row, for 10_l._ a year wages. He
slept under the shop-counter for the security of the premises; but was
reported to his master to be “too slow” for the situation: Mr. Hogg,
however, thought him “a biddable boy,” and he remained: this incident
shows _upon what apparently trifling circumstances a man’s future
prospects in life depend_. Kelly succeeded Mr. Hogg in the business,
became alderman of the ward, and lived upon the spot sixty years: he
died in his eighty-fourth year.[110] He was a man of active benevolence,
and reminded one of the pious Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Abney.
Sir Chapman Marshall, Lord Mayor 1839-40, was also of humble origin, as
he narrated in 1831, when Sheriff, in replying to the toast of his
health: “My Lord Mayor and gentlemen, you now see before you a humble
individual who has been educated in a parochial school. I came to London
in 1803, without a shilling—without a friend. I have not had the
advantage of a classical education; therefore you will excuse my defects
of language. But this I will say, my Lord Mayor and gentlemen, that you
witness in me what may be done by the earnest application of honest
industry; and I trust my example may induce others to aspire, by the
same means, to the distinguished situation which I now have the honour
to fill.” Here is a similar instance.
Sir John Pirie, Lord Mayor 1841-2, received his baronetcy on the
christening of the Prince of Wales: at his inauguration dinner Sir John
said: “I little thought, forty years ago, when I came to the City of
London, a poor lad from the banks of the Tweed, that I should ever
arrive at so great a distinction.”
Alderman Wire, Lord Mayor 1858-9, was born 1801, and was one of the
large family of a tradesman at Colchester; yet he had the advantage of a
liberal education. He came to London and articled himself to a City
solicitor, and by his intelligence and industry was advanced to be
partner in the business, and ultimately became the head of the firm. He
was elected Alderman of his Ward (Walbrook), served Sheriff in 1853, and
then Lord Mayor. Early in his year of office he was afflicted with
paralysis, of which he recovered; but died on Lord-Mayor’s-day 1860! He
was an active advocate of sanitary and educational movements, a liberal
politician, and a man of cultivated taste, and made an able chief
magistrate.
Alderman Mechi deserves a niche among these civic worthies, by the
superior enterprise of his career. He is the son of a citizen of
Bologna, was brought to England by his father, and, obtaining a
clerkship in a house in the Newfoundland trade, he remained there eleven
years. Whilst in this service, he turned the hour allowed for dinner to
profitable account by selling, among his friends and acquaintance in the
City, a small and inexpensive article, of which he had bought the
patent. Mainly by these exertions, when in his twenty-fifth year, he
commenced business as a cutler, with the success we have already
intimated. He then studied how to remedy the defects of English farming
by scientific processes; rose to be Sheriff and an Alderman; took an
active part in the affairs of the Society of Arts, and was specially
sent by her Majesty’s Government to the Industrial Exhibition at Paris
in 1854.
Addison, we know, says, “the City has always been the province for
satire; and the wits of King Charles’s time jested upon nothing else
during his whole reign.” Nevertheless, “the Merry Monarch” dined with
the citizens no fewer than nine times in their Guildhall. Here also
Whittington had feasted Henry V. and his Queen, when he threw the King’s
bonds for 60,000_l._ into a fire of spice-wood. But a still more
memorable feast was that in 1497, when at the table of the Lord Mayor,
William Purchase, Erasmus first met Sir Thomas More; whence sprung one
of the most interesting friendships in literary history.
It has been well said that a dinner lubricates business; and it does
more—it fosters charity and good works. The annual banquet on
Lord-Mayor’s-day, in the Guildhall, is mostly to be viewed as a festival
of civic state: “the loving-cup and the barons of beef carrying the mind
back to medieval times and manners.”[111] The banquets at the Mansion
House—one of the most palatial edifices in the kingdom—are of a like
stately description; and for the more direct benefits of civic festivity
we must look to the Ward dinners, and the meetings of public officers at
table, when they forget the cares and heartburnings incident to every
grade of office, and enjoy with the feast the higher luxury of doing
good.
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Footnote 109:
Birch excelled in his art; and his _cuisine_ was unrivalled in the
City. Kitchiner immortalised his soups in print, and the Mansion-House
banquets and Court dinners of the Companies attested the alderman’s
practical skill in his business. The shop in Cornhill was established
in the reign of King George I. by Horton, who was succeeded by the
father of Alderman Birch, whose successors, in 1836, were the present
proprietors, Ring and Brymer. The premises present a curious specimen
of the decorated shop-front of the early part of the last century.
Footnote 110:
See _Life of Alderman Kelly_, by the Rev. R. C. Fell. 1856.
Footnote 111:
Cunningham.
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