Excerpt from the Chapter
A CONGREGATIONAL SOAP: SOME PRODUCTS OF A NINETEENTH-CENTURY BLACKCOUNTRY MANSE
By Nigel Lemon
Pages 546 – 561
The Hudson Family
And their connection to
Dr Peter Gilroy
Navan, Co Meath, Ireland
Nineteenth-Century Congregationalists had some distinctive links with the soap industry (1). For many observers, such an association will be located in William Lever's purpose-built manufacturing and residential community at Port Sunlight, just south of Birkenhead. This model development, commenced in 1888 and several decades in building, enjoyed access to water and railway transport, used large-scale production efficiency and exhibited a concerti for workers' housing, social amenities and their general well-being. Lever also built the architecturally distinctive churches at Port Sunlight, Late Perpendicular in style and of 1902-04, and at Thornton Hough, Romanesque and dating from 1906-07: although eschewing membership of the County Union, they had a Congregational ethos, were normally served by Congregational ministers, and were listed in the Wirral District of the Cheshire Union in Congregational Year Books. This all represented a notable, though neither unique nor final, example of socially committed industrialisation by a Nonconformist entrepreneur, here exercised with a paternalistic authoritarianism (2).
Rather less well known than Lever, more personally involved in scientific achievement, and perhaps more prominent in his active Congregationalism, is the subject of this present paper, Robert Spear Hudson, styled in contemporary reports of all kinds as Mr. R.S. Hudson. He lay nearer in time than Lever to Gladstone's 1853 abolition of soap duty: this Act related to an increasingly industrialised, urban and dirt-laden Britain. His inventiveness and subsequent commercial success permitted a denominational benevolence of almost unimaginable extent: to date, however, he appears to have been described only in isolated references where other narratives or individuals have larger import (3), and also to have lacked substantial mention in works with a business focus (4).
Robert Spear Hudson was born in West Bromwich on 6 December 1812: he served an apprenticeship with a Bilston apothecary and before 1839 had set up on his own account as a druggist and chemist in his home town (5) His experiments with a "dry soap" or soap powder were made initially by hand-grinding hard barsoap in the back of his High Street shop: the resulting commercial product was the first successful example of its type and mainstay of the Hudson business (6)" Further development albeit, without ever patenting the secret method of manufacture, expansion of production from the Blackcountry to Liverpool, residence in Chester, a lifetime's philanthropy towards a whole breadth of humanity, and a particular financial support for his Congregationalism filled the decades until his death in 1884.
The chemist's father was the Revd. John Hudson, born in Staines, Middlesex, in 1778 and trained for four years at Hoxton Theological College, London: he assumed the pastorate of Mares Green Independent Church, West Bromwich, in June 1801, was ordained in May 1802 and spent the whole of his active ministry and indeed his retirement at the one church (7) John Hudson also probably led the 1830s Mares Green outreach work at Smethwick having earlier, with Jehoiada Brewer, a Birmingham minister, helped to revive an older cause at Bilston. His numerous family included three sons whose activities in science and religion reflect different aspects of the changes within nineteenth-century British life (8). Respected for his work amongst both the townspeople and his congregation, Hudson died a wealthy man in 1864 (9): an apparent business acumen was also used in the service of the church when in 1808 he ensured the purchase of a sizeable plot of land from the Waste Lands Enclosure Commissioners (10).
The family's reasons for choosing the third son's names remain a mystery.
Robert Spear was a Manchester cotton speculator working on his own account from 1783 until 1808: he made some of the earliest imports into this country of sea-island cotton. Born in 1762, he was sufficiently successful to retire early from his cotton business; funded from 1803 to 1808 Roby's Academy in Manchester for the training of itinerant ministers, despite an initial hope to facilitate with Robert Haldane the establishment of a College for intending missionaries; financed other ministerial training at the Rotherham Independent Academy; and gave generously to a range of people, some entirely unknown to him save for their reported distress or disadvantage. He removed from Manchester to Cheshire in 1808 and finally to Edinburgh in 1816 (11). Robert was thus born after Spear's retirement and during his Cheshire years; no other Hudson of that generation bears his names; no family link has yet been traced, and the plausible suggestion that around 1812 John Hudson received some particular pecuniary support from Spear himself sits uneasily with Hudson's later financial comfort, even after funding a university education for two of his sons.
Mares Green Independent Church was founded in 1785, opening its Messenger Lane building in 1788 (12): it owed its origins to some West Bromwich members of the Wednesbury Independent Church and initial ministerial support· to the· Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion. Mares Green formed itself into a· Congregational church in 1800, (13) replacing its original building in 1807 and extending its schools in 1813. New school premises costing more than £1,000 were raised in 1844, prior to the formation of a British School: this was leased to the local School Board in 1871, but closed in 1893. Following John Hudson's retirement in 1843, three other ministers successively served the congregation before Robert Hudson's principled decision to leave: the then resident minister being accused of preaching someone else's sermon, a split occurred leading to a secession which included William Creed, minister at Mayers Green from 1852 to 1859 until resting on health grounds with very early but full retirement following his next pastorate. The result was the founding in 1873 of High Street Congregational Church (14). Robert Hudson retained his trusteeship at Mayers Green, already held in 1844, until at least 1878 (15): with a brother-in-law, Joseph Cooksey, he had also stood guarantor for a mortgage on adjacent property which the chapel purchased at an earlier date.
The new congregation, meeting initially under Creed's honorary ministry, was temporarily housed in the rented Prince's Assembly Rooms and then in the Town Hall: its first entry ,as a separate church was in the 1878 Congregational Year Book, with E. Waldron Skinner from New College who settled in 1879 as its first named minister. John Sulman, the London architect, designed striking and extensive permanent premises which anticipated growth in all departments of church life: the first phase costing £2,700 was opened in April 1879 (16). By then however Hudson had himself moved away, from his work at West Bromwich to Liverpool and from residence in perhaps Edgbaston to Chester: he was not among the initial trustees at High Street.
William Creed remained part of the Robert Spear Hudson story, not least through his marriage to Hannah Elizabeth, John Hudson's third daughter. Born in Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire, in 1819, Creed trained at Airedale College and served at Wakefield before his call to Mayers Green. When ill-health forced his permanent withdrawal from active ministry following a Bangor pastorate, he appeared to live comfortably either on his own independent means or through a reported aptitude for business. Having returned to Gloucestershire, he described himself in 1881 at Rodborough as Superintendent of Carpentry Advertising of a London firm (the census enumerator's amended entry was as Newspaper Agent) with no mention of his ministerial status: his later title both as one of Hudson's executors and at death is as Gentleman (17).
The success of Hudson's dry, and later liquid, soaps over those of his competitors had required the expansion of the company and a vastly increased factory space. Production in 1854 involved only a small workshop industry employing ten former Mayers Green Sunday School scholars whose hymn singing was found to aid productivity; in 1861 the total was still only twenty-five. It developed to occupy from 1875 the Bank Hall, Bootie, factory and Head Office at Liverpool where ultimately one thousand people would work with export markets already active in Australia and New Zealand. Around 1900, Lever Brothers' own carbolic dry soap, a powdered version of Lifebuoy, attempted to challenge the Hudson's dominance in this area but achieved little success, much to Lever's own puzzlement: the long-standing Hudson hold on the housewife seemed quite impossible to loosen (18).
Following two generations of Hudson leadership, the family company was in 1908 sold to Lever Brothers: the new owners managed the business as a subsidiary enterprise retaining the Hudson name until 1935 when the West Bromwich and Bank Hall works were closed during a period of severe Unilever rationalisation. Hudson's powders were then produced by Crosfield's at Warrington, an older company taken over by Lever Brothers in 1919, with some lines such as "Hudson's Extract" still being manufactured in small quantities after the Second World War (19).
The growth of Hudson's Soaps reflected the founder's adoption of vigorous nationwide and indeed international advertising when most soap production was only regionally focused. He early established a regular Liverpool to York coach bearing the slogan "A little of Hudson's goes a long way"; his employment of professional artists to design strikingly attractive posters preceded the Pears' firm's purchase for advertising purposes of the Millais painting, "Bubbles"; in his own lifetime, Parisian boulevards would display "Hudson’s Savon Sec; Savon Poudre" (20), and both before and throughout the period of Lever Brothers control,· "For Washing Clothes; Hudson's Soap; For Washing Up" was ubiquitous on the curved ends of electric tramcars, as far apart as Rotherham and Devonport (21).
When the Liverpool factory opened in 1875 Hudson settled at Bache Hall, an eighteenth-century residence in rural surroundings one mile north of the centre of Chester: he greatly extended and, in Victorian terms, improved the property in its structure, farm and pleasure grounds. In less than a decade, he so accommodated himself to his newly adopted city and county as to attain a wide-ranging prominence. He was made a J.P. in 1881; became Chairman of the Liberal Club; subscribed generously to Chester's new Museum of Science and Art and to the North Wales College which would later become part of the University of Wales; and served as a governor of the King's School, founding scholarships to it from the Chester British Schools of which he was president and which he supported financially. He contributed regularly to the funds of the Cheshire Union of Congregational Churches (CUCC), as he continued to do to the South Staffordshire Union; and gave particular aid within the denomination towards the construction of such Cheshire village chapels as Barton, the schools at Great Boughton and two new Chester Churches. These latter were at Handbridge on the city's southern boundary where he paid part of the minister's stipend, and at Northgate where he worshipped and funded the employment of a missionary and a Bible Woman for work in the immediate vicinity.
Hudson undertook this local financial commitment despite never, apparently, transferring his church membership from West Bromwich (22). In 1883, his personal contribution comprised some forty per cent of the monies passing through the Northgate accounts; £50 to the County Union; £200 to the LMS, with £20 to its Widows' Fund; £50 to the Zenana Missions among Indian women; and £ 106 for Northgate's own outreach work which was necessarily terminated after his death in August 1884. By the following January, the church was concerned about an ensuing deficit.
Perhaps most significantly in terms of Congregationalism in the north-west, Hudson was elected the first Chairman of the North Wales English Congregational Union (NWECU) at its 1876 inauguration in Chester, serving in this capacity until his death (23). His gifts here included an initial subscription of £1,000 spread over five years; numerous contributions to site or building funds for churches or manses and to relieve chapel debts; a possibly final gift of £500 towards a replacement Rhyl church where D. Burford Hooke, the first Secretary of the North Wales Union, was now minister; and both £100 towards the church site and a commendation of "the case of the New Congregational Church at Colwyn Bay, believing it to be deserving of the practical help of all who love the cause of Jesus Christ"; he was commemorated there, an apparently favourite place of fellowship, when its permanent building was completed as the Hudson Memorial Church (24).
Hudson was prodigal in using his increasing wealth to aid a far broader Congregationalism: although an annual subscriber to the London Missionary Society, his main concern was for the presence and extension of the Christian faith in this country. His gifts frequently took the form of "Challenge Grants", his own example encouraging churches and societies to increase their own contributions: beyond the Cheshire and North Wales of his residence and particular involvement, he aided in Birmingham the new church at Birchfield (25) in Hanley an 1882 rebuilding scheme which received £1,000 (26) and many churches more generally placed around the country, the capital not excluded (27). He gave £500 each year to the Home Missionary Society, where his initially anonymous donations totalling £3,000 secured the founding of a Reserve Fund, was equally generous to the English Congregational Chapel Building Society and promised a munificent £20,000 to the Jubilee Fund of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, to be paid in annual instalments. Further, he undertook substantial committee work for these organisations: he represented the CUCC not only on the NWECU but nationally on the Council of the Church Aid and Home Missionary Society; was both President of the Chapel Building Society and involved in the formation of the Chapel Extension Committee for London; and was, with Samuel Morley, a Joint Treasurer of the Jubilee Fund. Hudson's personal giving found a parallel in this fellow Congregationalist: the practical chemist and the financial administrator kept the highest standards in the beneficial use of wealth gained from their respective businesses in soap and hosiery.
There was, however, nothing parochial in spirit or action about Hudson's contacts and his personality, nor were other denominations refused his open purse. In West Bromwich, he had been an Improvement Commissioner and on the Board of Guardians, actively promoted the Ragged Schools and was one of the founders· of the local Building Society. In Chester, the local Welsh Calvinistic Methodists and the Presbyterian Church of England, this latter almost entirely a congregation of Scots, also enjoyed his benevolence when rebuilding in the 1880s; the 1881 Annual Meeting of the Chester Boatmen's Bethel recorded his provision of soup and bread during the preceding winter's severe frost which brought extreme hardship to boat people by stopping all canal traffic; and he continued an earlier interest with a year's service as President of the Chester Ragged & Industrial Schools (28).
A substantial obituary tribute in a local newspaper was written by J.K. Montgomery, minister of Matthew Henry's Chapel from 1860 to 1896: this, the earliest of Chester's Dissenting causes, had by then long been Unitarian. Montgomery, who was involved with Hudson in the management of Chester's British Schools, considered that the layman saw his "neighbour" simply as the needy, without distinction of race, locality or creed: he also reported the Congregationalist's intention to institute a charity fund at West Bromwich having among its trustees one of his own, Unitarian, co- religionists (29). The warm social links between Bache Hall and Eaton Hall, the Duke of Westminster's Cheshire seat, illustrate the high respect in which the Duke apparently held Hudson, the two men necessarily meeting through shared involvement in a number of Chester good causes: despite his Anglican commitment, the Duke was himself a frequent contributor to local Congregational building funds (30).
The full extent of Hudson's continual generosity lies now beyond any accurate investigation: only the vagaries of local newspaper content and perhaps the more formal County Union or other Congregational Reports or histories could rescue from total anonymity his apparently more widespread gifts, whether to churches or to individuals. These latter notably provided crucial support for many needy ministers through necessarily unreported acts so different in manner from his most publicised and munificent offerings. Although he had for some years received treatment for angina pectoris, Robert Hudson's death on 6 August 1884 at Scarborough, where the family had gone for Mrs Hudson's health, was unexpected. The event occasioned widespread and genuine sadness across Chester. The Town Hall flag was at half-mast for some days and business suspended throughout the route of the funeral procession of this prominent citizen, a quite remarkable honour to a Nonconformist in such a strongly Anglican cathedral city. The display of mourning around the pulpit and table at the Northgate Church was agreed at an incomplete Saturday morning Deacons' Meeting at a member's shop, and then confirmed retrospectively and individually after the Sunday morning service. On the day of the funeral, twelve broughams travelled from the house to Chester Cemetery where he was buried from its Nonconformist Chapel. Attending that service were seven Chester ministers besides Congregationalists; the Principal of University College, Aberystwyth; and a NWECU representative from Llansantffraid. Hudson had moved comfortably in the circles of Chester's establishment, of both church and society: the Dean of Chester now sent one of the broughams whilst five clergy of the Established Church, the Cathedral precentor among them, were present at the Cemetery.
Unsurprisingly, notices of some detail and with warm praise appeared in denominational publications and Chester and West Bromwich newspapers. They described a goodness, kindness and charity experienced by a wide circle of recipients (West Bromwich Weekly News); a princely liberality, wise counsels, and unvarying geniality (NWECU); a zeal and munificence in the cause of Home Missions probably never surpassed (CUCC); and qualities as organiser, philanthropist and good Samaritan to the suffering, being remarkably catholic in spirit (Cheshire Chronicle). A substantial Obituary Minute originating from the Committee of the CUEW found Robert Spear Hudson's attitude to his wealth in a perception of its being a trust committed to him by Christ (31).
Hudson's Personal Estate was valued at £295, 167.19s.6d (32). His effective will of August 1883 made provision for his family and for the continuance of the Hudson firm: following some years when a family trust would control most assets and the consequent income, the major beneficiary would be his surviving son, Robert William Hudson (33), whenever an eldest grandson of that line attained the age of twenty-one. Failing such direct heir, the alternative division was threefold: to immediate family, to certain named nieces and nephews, and to those charities and institutions already receiving specific bequests.
Robert Spear Hudson's hopes of aiding his chosen evangelical charities after his death engaged three methods which brought mixed results. His Will named six bodies to share in varying proportion a total of £10,000: Congregationalism benefited through its Pastors' Retiring Fund, the Chapel Building Society, and the Manse Loan Fund for Independent Ministers. A wider concern included the London Missionary Society, the Irish Evangelical Society, and the British & Foreign Bible Society. In the year when he made his will, intimations of a failing strength wisely led Hudson to bank with the Treasurer of Chester's Handbridge Church the total sum promised towards the minister's stipend: this money, at £50 per year' over a particular coming period, would then be released annually.
A similar treatment, however, was not accorded his promises made earlier and very publicly to the NWECU at £200 per year, nor to the Jubilee Fund of the Congregational Union: the latter was deficient to the tune of £8,000 at the time of Hudson's death. This money had in fact been allocated in advance by the Treasurers of the Fund to particular churches who, seeking through their own increased giving to meet the challenges set them, anticipated an almost imminent relief to their indebtedness: a Deficiency Fund was therefore established following the 1885 Annual Assembly, designed to ensure that the aims of the Fund in those particulars were in fact met. Samuel Morley again contributed handsomely, others receiving the encouragement to add however modestly to their existing donations.
In addition to this, a legal process was instituted by the executors, who sought authority to allot to various Congregational bodies what Robert Hudson had promised and intended to give, had not death intervened. Whilst the Biblical and Congregational concept of covenant did not appear in the published report of the case, and perhaps not in court either, the argument proposed by those representing the Congregational Union was of this nature: by stipulating that his own promised gift be challenge grants, the donor induced others to contribute financially to achieve their joint goal and thus all, it was claimed, were involved in a legal contract. The action cited the sums promised to the Jubilee Fund, a fund for church extension in London and another for erecting mission halls in or near London: perhaps among others, the Home Missionary Society, the NWECU and the Handbridge Building Fund also had an interest in the outcome. Heard in May 1885 in the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice before Mr Justice Pearson who feared the perhaps limitless extent of "a new form of posthumous charity ... a form of charity that was quite bad enough as it was", they were unsuccessful (34).
The wider Hudson family descending from John and Sarah Hudson, their eight children all surviving into maturity, play some continuing part in Congregationalism or are examples of a nineteenth- century upward social success. Cyrus (born 1810) followed his father into the ministry, studying at the Universities of Dublin and Glasgow: his graduate status as M.A. of the latter was quite rare in the Congregationalism of 1841 when he commenced his ministerial work. Following three pastorates, a constitutional nervousness forced the premature close of, his formal ministry: out of charge for some years, he died in London in 1871 (35). In the following year, his second son Morris Jones Hudson, a Member of the London Stock Exchange who was worth over £40,000 at his death, married a first cousin Sarah Borwick at Marsh Street, Walthamstow (36).
An outstanding professional success attended the eldest Hudson brother, Alfred (born 1808), who was initially but unhappily apprenticed to a general practitioner in West Bromwich: he fulfilled his medical ambitions with a catalogue of achievements in Ireland. He had graduated B.A. and M.B. by 1834 at Trinity College, Dublin; undertook general practice at Navan, Meath County, adding meanwhile the superintendency of its Fever Hospital; returned to Dublin in 1854, admitted a Licentiate and later elected Fellow of the College of Physicians; was Physician successively to the Adelaide and the Meath Hospitals from 1858 and 1861 in which latter year he progressed M.D.; President for two years of the King and Queen's College of Physicians in Ireland from 1871; Her Majesty's representative in the General Council of Medical Education; Physician in Ordinary to the Queen in Ireland; and Regius Professor of Physic in Trinity College from 1878 until shortly before his death. The Hudson Scholarship, inaugurated in 1882 at Dublin's Adelaide Hospital, may appear simply to commemorate this distinguished doctor: it in fact resulted from a thousand pound gift made by Robert Hudson through his brother for the purposes of medical education in Ireland (37).
Two of the daughters became wives of Congregational ministers, thus Hannah Elizabeth (born 1814) and Mary Anne (born 1815): the latter's husband, Joseph Fletcher's major work was at Christchurch, Hampshire (38) The eldest Hudson sister Jane (born 1807) was married to George Borwick, founder of the Baking Powder firm bearing his name although this drysalt was quite probably another invention of the West Bromwich chemist (39): their children included Alfred, a Lloyd's Underwriter (40); Sarah, the wife of Morris Hudson; Charlotte whose husband Arnold Thomas became a Gloucestershire Colliery Proprietor, magistrate and one of Robert Spear Hudson's executors; and Robert Hudson Borwick, who with his brother Joseph Cooksey Borwick succeeded their father in the family firm whilst he became in turn Sir Robert (knight in 1902, baronet in 1916) and the first Baron Borwick of Hawkshead (1922) (41). Rebecca (born 1811) and Frances (born 1817) both married West Bromwich men, the former Joseph Cooksey, a Land Surveyor and Mine Agent, and the latter William Henry Phillips, a local grocer (42). The extended Hudson family from West Bromwich thus became a generation later spread across southern Britain from Gloucestershire to Essex whilst sons of Cyrus and Rebecca were respectively in America and South Africa: its members exhibited the range of professional and social success beloved of Victorian business people.
The immediate family of Robert Spear Hudson deserves further exploration, although appearing at times elusive, at others nationally recorded. In February· 1854 and within Congregationalism, Robert Hudson married Mary Bell at the Crescent Chapel, Everton Brow, Liverpool: Mary was born in Chetwynd near Newport, Shropshire, where her father Samuel Bell, later described as an Agent, was in 1841 a farmer. Crescent's March Church Meeting, under John Kelly whose pastorate lasted forty-four years, heard the letter "transferring Mary Hudson to the church at West Bromwich", Revd. W. Creed being its Pastor (43). Mary, the mother of two sons and three daughters, died in the 1860s (44). Hudson then, in April 1868, married Emily Frances Gilroy in Donnybrook, Dublin, his second wife perhaps being sister to Mrs Alfred Hudson (45).
Mary Evangeline, Robert Hudson's eldest daughter born 1855, had by 1883 married Arthur Frederic Fynn and was in 1891 living in Falmouth with a house staff numbering seven (46). The first son was (Robert) William Hudson, born 1856: a Cambridge graduate, he put his scientific studies to business use, first working with, and then succeeding, his father in the family firm whose active leadership he shared with its long-term principal manager Edward Pershouse (47). William married Gerda Johnson at St Paul's Church, Penge, in 1886 (48). Samuel Bell Hudson, born 1857, died in West Bromwich of peritonitis aged 20, two years after his family's removal to Chester: he was perhaps a return visitor or may have commenced work there in the family firm. Both sons were educated until 1874 at the then still new Tettenhall College, the older for four years and his brother for six (49). Twin daughters were born in 1859 and were educated in Christchurch, Hampshire, by their uncle, Joseph Fletcher despite the supposed earlier closure of Fletcher's school (50) in 1880, Annie Elizabeth married Walter Spencer, recently a Deputy Minor Canon of Chester Cathedral and now to become Vicar of Sapiston, Suffolk (51), a decade later, Emily Jane married John MacGillyCuddy, Barrister-at Law; the future owner of Glenflesk Castle, Killarney and the third son of The MacGillyCuddy of The Reeks, County Kerry (52). Chester had remained the home of the two Emily Hudsons throughout the 1880s, when both names are found on the Northgate Church's subscription lists for the County Union, the Zenana Mission and the Dorcas Society. Hudson's widow maintained some contributions in 1897 but Congregational activity by this family may well have ceased before her death in Chester in July 1901, aged 89: she was buried from the local parish church.
As was intended, the Hudson business ultimately descended to (Robert) William Hudson, on the coming of age of his own first son. With no younger family interest in soap, William Hudson in 1908 now sold the firm for one million pounds to the ever-expanding Lever Brothers.
Before this however, William Hudson had already built three major residences: he represented the age of the nouveaux riches, those second or third generation manufacturers, merchants or extractors whose status demanded ever grander country and London houses, wherever were their factories or industrial bases (53). In 1891, Edward Ould of the Liverpool architects Grayson & Ould., planned for Hudson a large Elizabethan-style mansion on the Wirral at Bidston Court, a most notable Victorian essay in half-timbered design (54). From 1891 to 1901, Hudson rebuilt Danesfield near Medmenham in Buckinghamshire in a confident Tudor Gothic at a time when his contemporaries' nearby houses were mostly Classical. Its architect was W.H. Romaine-Walker, whose work over a full half-century included additions and remodelling, of interiors and gardens as well as buildings, at the Tate Gallery, Westminster Cathedral, Chatsworth House and numerous country estates (55). He again deviated from the Classical style by providing for Hudson an appropriate London residence; Stanhope House, Park Lane, was a "fanciful late Gothic mansion" (56).
But Hudson's use of wealth was not simply self-indulgent. He may well have been the "socialist millionaire" or "Radical capitalist in Lancashire" who provided election and other financial support for Henry Hyde Champion, the early, and at times maverick Socialist (57), he certainly had contact with William Morris, the philosopher and designer, regarding both political ideas and artistic commissions; and his artistic connections included Conrad Dressler whose kiln at Medmenham was established with Hudson's support. Although the manner was rather different from that of his father, he significantly benefited others, during his Wirral years by financing the 1894 restoration of Bidston Mill, the first windmill in the country to be thus preserved; and when living ultimately in Monaco, by bearing the maintenance costs of a hospital in Cannes during the First War: he also gave £10,000 for scholarships for the children of his adopted principality.
Robert Spear Hudson, eponymous grandson of the founder, followed Eton and Oxford with a career first in diplomacy and then in politics: this latter, as Conservative M.P. successively for Whitehaven and Southport, brought government office in Agriculture and Fisheries, cabinet rank with the Second World War "Dig for Victory" campaign, and a Viscountcy in 1952. His obituary in The Times ignored the Hudson firm, save to say that he came from a family "which had been enriched by the manufacture of soap" (58).
John Hudson's vigorous Congregationalism was variously shared, extended and abandoned by his succeeding family. Whereas the denomination's manses sheltered three of Robert's siblings, either as minister or minister's wife, not one of his own children seems to have married within Nonconformity. His son William had shown some early Congregational commitment, laying memorial stones at High Street, West Bromwich in May 1878 and for Chester's Northgate Sunday Schools in 1880: he was then listed at least twice as subscribing to the CUCC, was co-representative with his father for the Cheshire Union at the NWECU in 1882 and mirrored his father's wider concerns with aid to or attendance at special functions of the Chester City Mission and the Ebenezer Baptist Chapel. Nonetheless, he was very unlikely to have retained a similar spiritual home, if there were any, when he lived in Monaco: in any event, his marriage was within an Anglican setting. Cyrus and Robert Hudson chose for their sons a Congregational schooling at Silcoates and Tettenhall respectively, placing the family within the nineteenth-century Dissenting aspiration towards an educational and social achievement akin to but different from that of the established middle classes: later Hudsons and also Borwicks preferred more traditional routes for their sons' advancement rather more in keeping with their new social status.
Leaving aside the overt denominationalism of Robert Spear Hudson and his Chester household and that of his ministerial brothers-in-law and the Fletcher daughters, the wider family's continuing Congregational involvement or interest may have been left in their generation to two of his nephews. Alfred Borwick (1836-1897) was amongst new trustees appointed at Walthamstow in anticipation of planning for a new church, John Tarring's Marsh Street building being opened in 1871 (59), the family however was represented in membership there only until 1885. His sister Sarah's husband Morris, both son and grandson to Congregational ministers, maintained contact with his old school, Silcoates, where this Hudson's generosity included endowing prizes for both Scripture and Shakespeare: among his gifts of paintings were some by Charles March Gere, R.A., the stepson of a Cooksey cousin. Correspondence with a headmaster found Hudson, shortly before his death, describing himself as religiously "not orthodox", a reader of the Hibbert Journal and having a keen interest in modem Biblical scholarship. He and his wife maintained a household devotional life and here remained at least a residual Congregational connection (60). Later family Obituary or Reference Book entries to Hudson descendants lack all mention of religious allegiance.
The Congregational life of Robert Spear Hudson reads like a catalogue of distributed aid: to church extension, maintenance, foundation and relief; for evangelism, in even the difficult circumstances of North Wales or Ireland; in provision for the future. He displayed similar characteristics to some fellow Congregationalists: Robert Spear would have recognised in the later man his own generosity towards all sorts and conditions of individuals and institutions, both within and beyond their native denomination; William Lever, less a chemist than a marketing businessman whose involvement in soap post-dated Hudson's death, shared his committed, generous and practical Christianity of both ecclesiastical and ethical activity. Leverhulme's extensive benefactions however, immeasurably enhanced by his successor Trustees, more particularly emphasised the social, communal and educational rather than Hudson's denominational focus (61).
A still unresolved Irish connection spans a full half-century. It starts when both Alfred and Cyrus studied at the University of Dublin, each then proceeding to Glasgow: the Dissenting disabilities were then still in force in England. Alfred's distinguished Irish medical career, his own first and Robert's second marriages to Irish brides and Irish husbands for Emily Jane and perhaps Mary Evangeline may all simply be coincidences rather than connected consequences: in any event, Robert Hudson not surprisingly supported the Irish Evangelical Society. A tangible memorial to those Irish links, and to his feeling for encouragement and reward, remains today in the medical scholarships in Dublin.
Robert Hudson's environment, although surrounded by great wealth, was the first-generation, responsible world of the Nonconformist Conscience: alongside his friendships with Anglican Deans or establishment Dukes, he reportedly followed a simple style of living; in his semi-retirement, he pursued horticultural and agricultural interests in the grounds and farm of Bache Hall, and offered trees for the 1883 landscaping in front of the Northgate Church. His son William, however, followed the second-generation manufacturing or industrialist trend for style, and even continental residence: these successor families had moved away from their roots and from any previous concentration on self-sufficiency or production to become rentiers, no longer active residents within local communities. Robert's Nonconformist identification with Gladstone's Liberalism then passed through William's idealistic Socialism to a grandson's Conservatism, where success was rewarded with national honours: his nephew, Robert Hudson Borwick's peerage appeared to illustrate how more completely had the days of the Nonconformist Conscience passed from the wider Hudson family.
This intriguing story claims one home background in a West Bromwich manse: its numerous children and their various marriages, both within and on the borders of Congregationalism, produced inventiveness in the fields of science, religion and philanthropy that brought major changes to personal and domestic life for millions in Britain and indeed across the world.
References
(1) Readers of this Journal will recall the recent article by C. Binfield: "Tadao Yanaihara and Mrs Cook. III: The Cooks" in JURCHS, 7 (2005), pp. 390-393. See also Idem, "Business Paternalism and the Congregational Ideal: a preliminary reconnoitre" in D.J. Jeremy (Ed.), Business and religion in Britain (Aldershot 1988), especially pp. 128- 133.
(2) For William Hesketh Lever ( 1851-1925), see O.D.N.B.; F.J. Powicke, A History of the Cheshire County Union of Congregational Churches (Manchester 1907), pp.266f.; and C. Wilson, The History of Unilever, Vol. 1 (London 1954), passim. Lever was ennobled in 1917 as the first Lord Leverhulme of Bolton-le-Moors and made Viscount Leverhulme of the Western Isles in 1922: Port Sunlight and Thornton Hough are both now local churches of the Wirral District of the URC Mersey Synod.
(3) C.E. Surman, A Congregational Six-Thousand. Some Representative Congregational Laymen (Typescript Volume in the collection of the Congregational Library at Dr Williams's Library, 1966), p.l99, lists the relevant Congregational references. Two brief articles in The Blackcountryman focus respectively on Hudson's commercial career and his religious activity: thus, H.L. Kershaw, "Mr R.S. Hudson - Chemist - High Street, West Bromwich" in Vol. 22 (1989), No.2, pp.64-5; N. Lemon, "Godly Cleanliness. Robert Spear Hudson - Chemist and Congregationalist" in Vol. 38 (2005), No. 4, pp.36-38. The present author is also preparing for Cheshire History a parallel piece to this JURCHS paper, focusing more on Hudson's local activities.
(4) Robert Spear Hudson lacks an entry in, for example, Dictionary of Business Biography.
(5) Robson's London & Birmingham Directory 1839, Vol. 2. In the Hudson years, West Bromwich was the normal form of this name.
(6) J. S. Hunt, "A Short History of Soap" in The Pharmaceutical Journal 1999, (via PJ Website); Unknown, "Pharmacy- the mother of invention? Robert Spear Hudson" (via Pharmaceutical Society Website). Hudson was not himself a soap-maker, always buying in the raw soap from William Gossage of Widnes.
(7) The names Mares Green, Mare's Green, Mayor's Green and Mayer's Green were all in use in the nineteenth century.
(8) The Baptismal Book of Mares Green Independent Chapel records their baptisms variously from 1807 to 1818.
(9) For John Hudson (1778-1864), see CYB, 1865, pp.248-9. At death, his effects were valued at approaching £14,000.
(10) F.W. Hackwood, A History of West Bromwich (Birmingham 1895; references to Studley, 2001 edition), p.203.
(11) For Robert Spear (1762-1817), see R. Slate, A Brief History of the Lancashire Congregational Union and of the Blackburn Independent Academy (London 1840), pp.l5-22; Joseph Thompson, Lancashire Independent College I843-I893: Jubilee Memorial Volume (Manchester 1893), pp.I0-13; B. Nightingale, Lancashire Nonconformity Vol. 5 (Manchester 1893), pp.133 and 200; Elaine Kaye, For the Work of Ministry (Edinburgh 1999), p.47.
(12) The detail in this paragraph depends on A. G. Matthews, The Congregational Churches of Staffordshire (London 1924); F. W. Hackwood, op. cit.; and M.W. Greenslade (ed.), A History of the County of Staffordshire: Volume XVII (London 1976). A copy of the 1788/89 Indentures relating to the first building, naming the Countess of Huntingdon among others, is retained in the Trustees [Book] of Mayers Green Chapel, 1844-1893.
(13) The most recent direct descendent of Mayers Green Independent Chapel was Hardware Street United Reformed Church: formed in 1971 by uniting the former congregations of Ebenezer, High Street and Mayers Green Congregational Churches and the Woodward Street Mission, it was itself closed in November 2005 in yet another round of town centre redevelopment. I am indebted to Mr J. Hutchcocks, one of the Hardware Street elders, for substantial help regarding its history and records.
(14) F.W. Hackwood, op. cit., p.204, states that Revd John Griffith Jukes resigned his charge at Mayers Green and led the secession, taking some influential members with him: Jukes, who then settled at Newark, attended the May 1878 stonelaying at High Street.
(15) Trustees [Book] of Mayers Green Chapel, 1844-1893.
(16) CYB, 1878, p.415. High Street Church, West Bromwich, closed in April 1963 and was sold for £35,000 to the neighbouring printing company, Kenrick & Jefferson Ltd, also now closed.
(17) For William Creed (1819-1888), see CYB, 1890, p.141. His estate was valued at £15,407.6s.5d.
(18) C. Wilson, op. cit., pp.57 and 120.
(19) A.E. Musson, Enterprise in Soap and Chemicals. Joseph Crosfield & Sons Limited 1815-1965 (Manchester 1965), pp.327 and 330f. The Crosfields were a Quaker family originating in Lancaster: some retained that allegiance in Warrington whilst a related branch in Liverpool included prominent Congregationalists.
(20) Chester Chronicle, 9 August 1884.
(21) e.g., J.H. Price (ed.), The Tramways of South-West England (Broxbourne n.d. but cl990), p.35. No such advertisements have yet been found to post-date 1932.
(22) Manual of the Northgate Congregational Church, Chester, 1884 and 1885, where neither the Members' Lists nor Obituary references to members include Hudson: the Northgate minister, Fred. Barnes, habitually referred to "our friend Mr R. S. Hudson".
(23) For Robert Spear Hudson and the North Wales English Congregational Union (hereafter NWECU), see the account of the Inaugural Meeting in Chester Chronicle, 21 October 1876; NWECU Reports, 1885; and N. Lemon, "Cross-Border Congregationalism" in JURCHS (2006), Vol. 7, No.8, pp.483-494.
(24) NWECU Reports, 1884, pp.12-14.
(25) CYB, 1880, p.416. This Hudson donation unusually, perhaps uniquely, is mentioned in a CYB Architectural Description.
(26) Cheshire Observer, 9 August 1884.
(27) CYB, 1886, p.36.
(28) Chester Chronicle, 22 May 1880 and 26 February 1881.
(29) Cheshire Observer, 16 August 1884. For John Knowles Montgomery (1816-1908), see Inquirer, 1908, pp.614 and 623; and Essex Hall Year Book, 1909: I am indebted to Mr Alan Ruston for these Unitarian references.
(30) An article in The Congregational Magazine for May 1881 notes the Duke's "helpful and liberal hand to nonconformists".
(31) CYB, 1886. p.l2.
(32) Robert Spear Hudson's Will of 31 August 1883 was proved 8 November 1884.
(33) R.W. Hudson is described in some press reports as Mr. William Hudson but not, in any found to date, as Mr Robert Hudson: his second name is used here, not least to distinguish him from his father.
(34) The Times, May 4 1885; NWECU Reports, 1885, p.12; CYB, 1886, p.21f.
(35) For Cyrus Hudson (1810-1871), see CYB, 1872, pp.326-7.
(36) The earliest meeting house antecedent of Marsh Street Church, Walthamstow, was built in 1695 by William Coward, the Coward Trust funding its replacement in 1740. Morris Jones Hudson (1848-1928) had a final address at Bathampton: his funeral service took place at Golders Green Crematorium.
(37) For Alfred Hudson (1808-1880), see The Times, 23 November 1880; British Medical Journal, 27 November 1880; and J. Little, "A sketch of the life and work of the late Dr. Alfred Hudson" in Dublin Journal of Medical Science (1882), Vol.. LXXIV, No. 127, pp.1-9. In the latter, footnote a on p.1 describes the gift to Dr. Hudson as from "his brother, Mr. Henry (sic) Hudson, of Chester". I am indebted to Mr R. Mills of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland for help concerning references to Dr Alfred Hudson.
(38) For Joseph Fletcher (1817-1876), see CYB, 1877, pp.362-4. His father, Joseph Fletcher, D.D. (1784-1843), was first President and Theological Tutor at the Blackburn Independent Academy.
(39) M.M. Meanders, Journey Down the Golden Mile - West Bromwich (West Bromwich, 1991), p.l4. George Borwick (1806-1889), later of Walthamstow, was born in Cartmel and died at Torquay where he was buried: before developing the Baking Powder business, he was the proprietor of the "Heath Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen" in West Bromwich.
(40) Alfred Hudson Borwick's fourth son, Leonard Borwick (1868-1925), studied pianoforte in Frankfurt under Clara Schumann, was a soloist of international repute and is remembered through the prestigious Borwick Prize at the Royal School of Music. See New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Vol. 4 (London 2001), p.48; and H.P. Greene, "Leonard Borwick, Some Personal Reflections" in Music & Letters (1926), pp.17-24.
(41) For Robert Hudson Borwick (1845-1936), see The Times, 29 January 1936. The manner of Lord Borwick's obtaining the title, one of David Lloyd George's alleged "sales" of such honours, was mentioned pejoratively in a Commons debate about proposals for reform of the House of Lords: see Hansard, 16 March 1999, Column 978.
(42) William Henry Phillips and his eight younger siblings were all baptised by John Hudson of Mares Green between 1813 and 1834.
(43) 43 Crescent Chapel, Church Meeting Minutes 1854-1866: Lancashire Record Office, CULi/6/4. For John Kelly (1801-1876), see CYB, 1877, pp.384-7.
(44) An erroneous IGI entry claims her death as in 1860 but she features in the 1861 Census: her death registration, like the burial records for Mayer's Green, has yet to be located. 2019 UK and Ireland, Find A Grave Index, 1300s-Current, death 23 Aug 1864, Leamington Spa, Warwick District, Warwickshire, England, burial Leamington Cemetery.
(45) Emily Hudson's background is confused: J. Little, op. cit., and the Anglo-Celt for 1 May 1846, combine to make Peter Gilroy, M.D., of Meath the father-in-law of Dr. Hudson: an IGI entry names Emily's father as Peter Gilroy. Emily's 1881 Census entry claims her birthplace as Co. Meath, but those for 1871 and 1891 as Clones, Monaghan.
(46) The record of this marriage has yet to be traced: Arthur Fynn was described on both the Birth (1885) and Marriage (1907) Certificates for his elder daughter Daphne as "Gentleman". Daphne Fynn married at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London in 1907 a perhaps unrelated Robert Bertram Hudson from a Kentish farming family.
(47) Edward Pershouse was from West Bromwich and accompanied the 1875 expansion to Bank Hall.
(48) The witnesses included Harold Steward Rathbone (1858-1929), founder of the Della Robbia Pottery, Birkenhead. Gerda Marian Johnson (cl858-1932) was Liverpool born and daughter of a Surveyor: Robert Hudson's reported address appears already to be Danesfield, for which see later.
(49) I am indebted to Mr L.N. Chown for these Tettenhall College details.
(50) The 1871 Census notes seven girl pupils: CYB 1877, p.363 states Fletcher's school closed in 1868.
(51) For Walter Spencer (1849-1922), see e.g. Crockford's Clerical Directory 1921-1922, p.1413. Spencer's following ministry was in Coventry until 1889, after which he held no further church appointments.
(52) Mary Evangeline Hudson was at school in Birkenhead in 1871 with two MacGillyCuddy sisters.
(53) J. M. Crook, The Rise of the Nouveaux Riches (London 1999), passim.
(54) So Edward Hubbard, quoted in J.M. Robinson, Guide to the Country Houses of the North West (London 1988), p.10.
(55) William Henry Romaine-Walker (1854-1940) was for five years articled to George Edmund Street.
(56) This paragraph's architectural descriptions and assessment depend on J.M. Crook, op cit., and N. Pevsner, Buckinghamshire (Harmondsworth 1960).
(57) The Socialist connections mentioned here follow John Barnes, "Gentleman Crusader: Henry Hyde Champion in the Early Socialist Movement" in History Workshop Journal (2005), Vol. 60. No. 1, pp.116-138.
(58) For Robert William Hudson (1856-1938), see The Times, 16 June 1938; for Robert Spear Hudson (1886-1957), First Viscount Hudson of Pewsey, The Times, 4, 6, 7, 11 and 12 February 1957, and O.D.N.B.
(59) Vestiges No. 62, Vestry House Museum Walthamstow (1965). I am indebted to Mrs Winifred Ellingham for help with various items of Walthamstow import.
(60) I am grateful to Mr H. Smith, the Old Silcoatians' Association, for providing much useful information concerning the Hudsons' Silcoates connection.
(61) C. Binfield in D.J. Jeremy (1988), op cit., p.131, notes the range of Lever's Congregational benefactions and also that Lever himself never became the member of a Congregational church.
NIGEL LEMON
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THE JOURNAL of the UNITED REFORMED CHURCH HISTORY SOCIETY
(incorporating the Congregational Historical Society, founded in 1899, the Presbyterian Historical Society of England, founded in 1913, and the Churches of Christ Historical Society, founded in 1979). EDITOR: PROFESSOR CLYDE BINFlELD, M.A., F.S.A.
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