Port

It was well-known that Crossley was extremely fond of Port, which he consumed at the rate of one post-prandial bottle per day. Here is a letter on the subject from Mr R. F. Wood, of Salford Iron Warehouse, on 3rd January, 1861:

'We have received  an 1844 Port for sale at the very moderate price of 50/- doz, including bottles. If you think anything of it I shall be happy to send for a bottle to taste. I understand it is going very quickly - but I can have no doubt I could secure from 10 to 20 doz.'

A Challenge to the Editor: Conclusion and notes

With that the matter was closed, but the episode raises some fundamental questions. Why did Crossley take the situation to such an unnecessary and potentially dangerous extreme? Why did he not deny authorship in the first place, and force Taylor to apologise? Nowadays, the course of action would be to issue a denial and sue for libel, but Crossley belonged to a different age. For a solicitor practising in the first half of the nineteenth century, an era beset with pettyfoggers and mountebanks, a successful practice depended completely upon an unblemished reputation. A threat to his professional respectability might have been enough to persuade Crossley that extreme measures were justifiable. In a way this affair marked the transition between the old order and the new, because a month later the Manchester Law Association was formed, with Crossley as its president, and the profession took an important step to establish its status as a regional body, rather than an adjunct of a Metropolitan elite. Membership of the MLA was henceforth a guarantee of the professional integrity that was an essential requirement of an expanding and increasingly discerning middle-class clientele.

 

We should perhaps also consider the fact that, as I have already mentioned, the morale of the Manchester Tories was at a low ebb at the time of this dispute, so their sensitivity to any perceived injustices, especially those emanating from the Manchester Guardian, would have been acute. Another explanation for Crossley's actions may be more personal. The notion of a duel would appeal to someone whose mind was steeped in the customs and laws of antiquity, who found the age in which he lived 'arrogant and superficial'.¹² It would also fit with the respect for tradition and 'gentlemanly' behaviour which characterised Crossley's well-publicised conservative viewpoint. It may have been to some extent a lawyer's reluctance to admit or deny involvement before the opponent's cards were on the table.

 

As a journalist and 'modern' thinker, his newspaper always in the vanguard of reforming ideas, it was unlikely that Taylor would have seriously considered taking up such a quixotic and anachronistic challenge as Crossley's. The challenger was therefore fairly safe from potential injury, and we could wonder exactly how serious the motivation for it actually was. Perhaps this was merely a joke that would have been enjoyed at John Shaw’s or any of the Tory clubs of which Crossley was a member. More likely, it was a calculated move to jolt Taylor into providing the information and apology that Crossley sought. This was more or less the outcome, as we have seen, but the decision to publish the whole series of letters indicates the strength of feeling on Crossley’s part when he feared his professional reputation was in danger of being impugned. On a purely practical level, the likelihood of Crossley taking the dispute to its violent and irrevocable conclusion was always remote. William Axon wryly noted that:

To those who remember the corpulent figure of Mr. Crossley in his placid and learned old age, there is something grotesque in thinking of him handling duelling pistols and offering to the adversary a target that even the inexperienced could hardly fail to hit.¹³

 

It is also possible that Crossley may have had in mind the duel in 1821 between John Scott, the editor of the London Magazine, and Jonathan Henry Christie, who was the London agent for John Gibson Lockhart of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Scott had attacked Lockhart following criticisms of the so-called ‘Cockney School’ of poets and particularly of Keats, which had appeared in Blackwood’s. Lockhart responded by calling the Londoner a ‘liar and a scoundrel’, and a challenge ensued. Christie and Scott ‘met by moonlight at Chalk Farm, near London’¹⁴ at about nine o’clock in the evening of 27 February. Scott was fatally wounded, and died later that evening at his lodgings. Christie and his second were tried at the Old Bailey for murder and were acquitted. Crossley was a regular contributor to Blackwood’s in 1820-21 and knew Lockhart quite well, so it is quite likely that he would have been acquainted with the facts of this dispute. Whether or not he was hoping for a similar outcome is less certain.

 

In a separate editorial, headed 'The Nuisance' (the usual description of matters relating to incorporation in this newspaper), the Manchester Courier pointed out that the editor of the Chronicle had confessed that he was in fact the author of the offending article, supporting Crossley's position and further embarrassing the hapless editor of the Guardian. The confession had appeared in the Chronicle editorial of the previous Saturday, in the following unequivocal terms:

Who is the "disreputable lawyer" whose ghost has so disturbed the worthy gentleman's bile:- what single article on any subject has any " disreputable lawyer" written for the Chronicle, and, lastly, what nameless iniquity can that be which justifies the Editor of the Guardian in calling the perpetrator of it "disreputable"?... Before these questions are answered, we will give the worthy ex-Commissioner [Taylor] a piece of information which may perhaps be serviceable to him hereafter. The articles which have produced such a wonderful effect upon him were written by the Editor of the Chronicle, without the intervention, direct or indirect, of any lawyer, reputable or disreputable, or of any other individual; and therefore he has most woefully deceived himself if he believed, as he professed to do, that he was contending with any other individual.¹⁵

Crossley was thus vindicated, and Taylor humiliated. But despite small victories like this, the cause Crossley so fervently espoused was doomed to failure. The new government of Manchester rapidly gained strength and acceptance in the borough and its opponents were left to fight an increasingly desperate rearguard action.

The first municipal election took place in December 1838, and, in the absence of any Tory candidates, resulted in a borough council composed mainly of Whigs, with a sprinkling of Radicals. Prominent among the new aldermen were Richard Cobden and William Neild, and the first day's business saw the election of the Mayor, Thomas Potter.

The next meeting of the Police Commissioners, on 10 January 1839, was a stormy affair, resulting in a decision, by a narrow majority, not to allow the Town Hall to be used for meetings of the new Borough Council. Both Crossley and Oswald Milne, legal clerk to the Police Commissioners, spoke at the meeting (as did Thomas Flintoff, Crossley's messenger in the dispute with John Taylor), which was reported very differently by two major local newspapers representing the opposing sides. The Courier, under the heading DEFEAT OF THE CORPORATORS, referred to Crossley in its editorial, saying:

The truth is, as MR. CROSSLEY remarked at the meeting, they find themselves not only legally, but morally weak; every hour sinking lower, and something like a desperate effort was necessary, to give sanction and authority to that which every body (sic.) had begun to find was not based on legal authority.¹⁶

 

 

As might be expected, the Guardian editorial took a very different view of the proceedings, suspecting that a dialogue had been set up, and executed by Crossley and Milne, in order to disrupt the meeting and focus attention on their speeches:

The interruptions to the speakers in support of the application were violent and incessant ... Any man who knew the prominent part taken by MR. CROSSLEY in getting up the opposition to the charter, and who witnessed the scene between him and MR. MILNE, which, apparently, had been previously rehearsed, was pretty sure to draw this inference.¹⁷

 

Despite these skirmishes, it was apparent that the battle had been lost, and the ‘anti-corporators’ gradually withdrew. Crossley gave up politics shortly afterwards, and his influence on the city of Manchester was henceforth evident in cultural rather than political matters. John Edward Taylor continued to edit the Manchester Guardian until his death in 1844.

 

Postscript

The last fatal duel in England took place in 1852 between two French political exiles. The last between Englishmen was in 1845, between two young army officers.

 

 

This paper was given at a conference at the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, on 6 April 2017: ‘Comment is free but facts are sacred’ The Guardian in Local, Regional and Global History.

 

 

Notes

1  Geoffrey Taylor, ODNB (Oxford: OUP, 2004).

2  Manchester Guardian, 14 Nov 1838.

 

3  Manchester Guardian and Manchester Courier, 24 Nov, 1838. Letter from Crossley to Taylor, 14 Nov 1838.

 

4  Ibid., letter, Taylor to Crossley, 15 Nov 1838.

 

5  Ibid., letter, Crossley to Taylor, 16 Nov 1838.

 

6  Ibid., letter, Taylor to Crossley, 16 Nov 1838.

 

7  Ibid., Taylor's description of events.

 

8  Ibid., letter, Crossley to Taylor, 17 Nov 1838.

 

9  Ibid., letter, Taylor to Crossley, 17 Nov 1838.

 

10  Manchester Courier, 24 Nov 1838.

 

11  Manchester Guardian and Manchester Courier, 24 Nov 1838.

 

12  James Crossley, 'The Retrospective Review', Blackwood's Magazine, x (Dec, 1821), 701-712, at p. 708. Crossley may have had in mind the notorious duel between The Duke of Wellington and the Earl of Winchelsea in 1829, when both protagonists declined to hit their targets.

 

13  Axon, Cobden as a Citizen, p. 113n.

 

14  R. M. Healey, ‘John Scott (1784-1821)’ in ODNB.

 

15  Wheeler's Manchester Chronicle, 17 Nov 1838.

 

16  Manchester Courier, Saturday 12 Jan 1839.

 

17  Manchester Guardian, Saturday 12 Jan 1839.

 

A Challenge to the Editor, Part 3

From this point, the story takes on the characteristics of a comic opera. It is now the evening of Saturday 17 November, and Taylor is again visited by Gibson. According to Taylor, the dialogue proceeds as follows:

Taylor: 'If you have any letter from Mr. Crossley, I am ready to receive it.'

Gibson: 'I have not one to give you, but I have one to read to you.'

Taylor's account continues:

He was then invited into the house, but, finding he had not his glasses with him, he put the letter into the hands of Mr.Taylor, saying 'I believe I must allow you to read it yourself, but you must restore it to me.' ⁷

Gibson feared that, if Taylor had possession of the letter, he might apply to the magistrates for protection against Crossley, for the message that Gibson eventually handed over was nothing less than 'a polite invitation from Mr. Crossley to fight a duel'. After a demand for an apology, Crossley invokes the notion of an ancient code of conduct:

I am sure you do not wish to exempt yourself from the laws which regulate the reparation of injuries amongst gentlemen, that you will name a friend who may arrange with the bearer, on my part, the time and circumstances of a meeting between us with as little delay as possible. ⁸

 

Taylor exempted himself from such laws with great speed, and declined the invitation, pleading that he was a family man and had recently taken out life insurance. He did, however, write out a reply, in Gibson's presence, which went some way towards making the apology sought by Crossley. In a careful statement, bristling with caveats, Taylor pointed out that his remark 'worthy of a disreputable lawyer' was not the same as accusing the writer of being a disreputable lawyer, and that:

Even supposing for a minute that Mr. Crossley was the person he had alluded to, he had no hesitation in saying that he did not consider Mr. Crossley a disreputable lawyer, and had never heard of any disreputable practice on his part. ⁹

 

The correspondence was also printed in the Courier on the same date as it appeared in the Guardian (Saturday 24 November), at the express request of Crossley. Assuming the mantle of the victor, Crossley adopted a high moral tone in his reply, which was copied to Taylor, but only partly reprinted in the Guardian. After requesting that the editor(s) insert the series of letters on the specified date, he continues:

Little interesting to the public at large as may be the circumstances of private disputes, yet to every man the vindication of his own character is important ...To the documents thus placed before the public, I deem it unnecessary to add any further comments of my own; nor shall I now or hereafter bestow the slightest further attention upon the individual to who they refer ... who, refusing either an acknowledgement with an adequate apology or a disclaimer, has not the manhood to justify the course he has adopted by conforming to the only remaining request which can be tendered to him by an honourable man, is surely unworthy of any further notice, as he has forfeited every title to be considered as a respectable editor or a gentleman. ¹⁰

 

This passage appeared only in the Courier, while the concluding sentence was printed in both newspapers: ‘It only remains for me to state in the most distinct and unequivocal terms that I never wrote one word of the articles in the Manchester Chronicle.’ ¹¹

 

A Challenge to the Editor, Part 2

It was clear that Taylor suspected that the article had been written by Crossley, who in turn evidently felt that this was the latest in a series of attacks on him in the Guardian. On the same day the article was published (14 November 1838), a letter from Crossley was delivered to Taylor by Captain William Gibson. Crossley refers particularly to the phrase 'worthy of a disreputable lawyer' and quotes from an earlier article which contains a description of ‘a certain lawyer’, before putting the fundamental question of identification to Taylor. He begins:

someone... who in the Guardian of Wednesday the 31st ult. is described as ‘one connected in no enviable way with the far more important frauds and falsehoods by which it was attempted to bolster up the case of the enemies of incorporation.’ [Crossley goes on …] Viewing these passages ... with the further knowledge that no-one in the profession of the law has been so extensively engaged in the opposition to the charter of incorporation as myself, I consider that I am entitled to inquire from you, as the editor of the Guardian, whether the terms scored under were made use of with any personal reference or application to myself. I trust you are too much a man of honour to insinuate, by innuendo, what you are unwilling to acknowledge or explain. I beg to request an immediate answer. ³

 

The following day, Taylor sent a letter listing three articles which had appeared in the Chronicle in the preceding three weeks, and asking whether or not Crossley was the author of any or all of them, or whether he had any connection with their authorship. Taylor continues as follows, repeating Crossley's emphasis upon honour:

These are questions to which I consider myself clearly entitled to expect full and specific answers, before I make any reply to the inquiry you have made to me ... I trust you are too much a man of honour to write calumnious and offensive articles in newspapers under the idea that, by assuming an anonymous guise, you will be able to divest yourself of that moral responsibility to public opinion, to which I, in common with every other avowed editor of such a periodical, am unavoidably subject. ⁴

 

The reply to this was delivered on 16 November, by Thomas Flintoff, a close friend of Crossley's. The substance was that Crossley objected to Taylor's answering inquiries with questions, and asserted that Taylor should have made some attempt to discover the authorship of the contentious pieces before publishing his Guardian article. Had Taylor made such an inquiry prior to publication, it 'would have found a prompt and explicit reply.' ⁵

 

Taylor responded that same evening, sending his letter to Flintoff, saying:

I adhere to the opinion expressed in my former letter... that your reply to the questions I have put to you ought to be an indispensable preliminary to my reply to the inquiry you have addressed to me. ⁶

Taylor goes on to put the hypothetical case that, if Crossley were not the writer of the offending article, then Taylor would provide not only an explanation, but also an apology. Clearly, events had reached a deadlock with neither of the protagonists willing to take the lead in providing the information that might have eased the situation.

 

A Challenge to the Editor, Part 1

The Manchester Guardian, 1838:

Manchester was the scene of great constitutional change during the 1830s. The Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 allowed householders to petition the monarch for a charter of incorporation to be granted, which would enable them to appoint their own local government administration. Incorporation presented for the first time the possibility that administrative power might be removed from those who felt they had the right to it by virtue of property, position and tradition, and given to elected representatives. Manchester Tories were vehemently opposed to this proposal and any suggestion of reform. Their morale was low at this time, following repeated defeats at the polls, but the move in 1838 to incorporate the borough provided a rallying point and a cause to unify the ailing party.

 

James Crossley was a prominent solicitor, with literary and antiquarian interests, who is probably best remembered for his part in forming the Chetham Society. He was also active in the Conservative cause and towards the end of 1838, when the incorporation debate was at its height and tempers were running high on both sides, a dispute developed between Crossley and the editor of the Manchester Guardian, which culminated in a melodramatic challenge to a duel: A bizarre and anachronistic proposal in the first industrial city.

Among the local newspapers, the Manchester Guardian championed the cause of reform, while most others, including the Manchester Courier, under its proprietor Thomas Sowler (a friend of Crossley’s), and the Chronicle, took the opposite view. Since its inception, in 1821, the Manchester Guardian had reflected the personality and politics of its editor, John Edward Taylor, who was on the Liberal/Unitarian side of the schism which divided Manchester at the time (Crossley was of course a dyed-in-the-wool ‘Church and King’ Tory). Taylor had long interested himself in liberal politics, and had contributed articles to the Liberal-leaning Manchester Gazette since around 1812. He had also been accused of pamphleteering in anti-government causes. When, for example, the Royal Exchange was burned down during a riot protesting against Lord Sidmouth’s appointment as Home Secretary, Taylor was said to have been the author of a handbill ‘which was posted in the town and was held to have provoked the arson.’ In the course of vehemently denying this, he was accused of criminal libel, a charge of which he was acquitted by a jury under the foremanship of – appropriately enough – John Rylands. A little later, in 1819, Taylor again produced an influential pamphlet, this time to counterbalance Sidmouth’s anodyne account of the Peterloo massacre to government.  These early examples show something of the personality of the editor. He has been described as: ‘a small man of louring mien and a priggish temperament “moral indignation came easily to him and he could be infuriatingly patronising”’ ¹

 

 

 

 

 

 

James Crossley (Chetham’s Library) and John Edward Taylor (John Rylands Library).

A series of articles which appeared in Wheeler’s Manchester Chronicle were extremely critical of Taylor, and he published a trenchant reply in his editorial, accusing the 'amateur writer' of falsifying a charge of corruption against himself in the election of Commissioners of Police, and deliberately misquoting an article that had previously appeared in the Guardian. Without actually naming the author, Taylor continued:

These tricks, worthy only of a disreputable lawyer, disentitle the man who is guilty of them from being recognised by us as a controversialist upon whom we can bestow any further notice in the matter. ²

Recent Conference: ‘Comment is free, but facts are sacred’

‘Comment is free, but facts are sacred’:

The Guardian in Local, National, and Global History

 

Thursday 6 April 2017, The John Rylands Library,

 The University of Manchester

 

Keynote speaker: Alan Rusbridger, Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and former Editor-in-Chief of the Guardian.

 

The University of Manchester Library and the John Rylands Research Institute present a one-day interdisciplinary conference on the history of the Guardian newspaper.

 

Abstract of one of the papers to be read:

 

                                  A Challenge to the Editor

 

Manchester was the scene of great constitutional change during the 1830s. Following repeated defeats at the polls, Tory morale was low at this time, but the proposal in 1838 to incorporate the borough, under the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, provided a rallying point and a cause to unify the ailing party in opposition to the plan. Incorporation presented for the first time the possibility that administrative power might be removed from those who felt they had the right to it by virtue of property, position and tradition, and given to elected representatives.

James Crossley, a prominent solicitor with literary and antiquarian interests, played an important part in defending the Tory viewpoint, and resisting any attempts to bring about reform. The Manchester Guardian championed the cause of incorporation, while the Manchester Courier and Wheeler's Manchester Chronicle took the opposite view. When the debate was at its height and tempers were running high on both sides, a dispute developed between Crossley and the founder and first editor of the Manchester Guardian, John Edward Taylor, who has been described as ‘a small man of louring mien and priggish temperament’. Taylor described Crossley, by implication, as a ‘disreputable lawyer … guilty not merely of wilful misrepresentation, but of actual falsehood’ which resulted in Crossley challenging Taylor to a duel. This paper will tell the story of the events leading up to this challenge, and examine its consequences.

Steve Collins

 

                                                     John Edward Taylor