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Candlish, John

(1816–1874)

John Candlish, glass bottle manufacturer and politician, was born at Tarset, near Bellingham in Northumberland, and baptized on 28 April 1816, the eldest son of John Candlish (b. 1793), farmer, and his wife, Mary, née Robson. Following the death of his wife about 1820, the elder John Candlish moved to Sunderland, where his brother Robert was the manager of Ayres Quay bottle works. Here he found work as a labourer.

The family was Presbyterian, of Scottish descent. Candlish received an education at dissenting schools, first locally, but then at the well-regarded Dr Dodd's academy in North Shields, before returning to Sunderland at the age of eleven to work in the bottle works. When he was fourteen his uncle's influence secured him an apprenticeship with a draper, Robert Tate, a position that gave him opportunities to continue his education by studying French and joining a debating society. During this period Candlish joined the Baptists with whom he continued to worship throughout his life. In 1836 he began his commercial career as a partner in a drapery business.

Candlish's early career was varied. He moved from enterprise to enterprise with a restlessness that seems to bear out one contemporary verdict which named his only failing as ambition. Various drapery undertakings were followed in 1836 by the purchase of a newspaper, the Sunderland Beacon, which failed within six months; this was followed by other short-lived ventures into coal exporting, and, in 1844, shipbuilding. Candlish's yard at Southwick was said to have produced some fine ships but few profits. In 1845 he married his cousin Elizabeth Candlish, of Ayres Quay, and in July 1851 returned to publishing by founding the Sunderland News, a move which reflected his growing political ambitions. Other interests in the early 1850s included the Sunderland Gas Company and a small glassworks.

The turning point of Candlish's commercial career came in 1855 when he acquired the lease of a glass bottle works at Seaham harbour on the co. Durham coast. This coal-fired works manufactured the traditional black bottles used for wine and beer under the name the Londonderry Bottle Works. Under Candlish's ownership production expanded and large contracts were secured with brewers and government departments. In 1858 Candlish purchased a second site, at Diamond Hall in Sunderland, and by 1872 had six glasshouses at Seaham and four at Diamond Hall, making him one of the largest manufacturers of black bottles in Europe. The Londonderry Bottle Works was justly celebrated in its day for its good labour relations.

Candlish entered public life in 1848 when he was elected to Sunderland council, representing the west ward. By upbringing and early inclination he was Conservative but transferred his loyalties to the twin causes of radicalism and free trade during the campaign against the corn laws. He was an energetic advocate of reforms in sanitary and financial administration, became mayor in 1858 and 1861, and filled a number of other public offices in Sunderland, notably chairman of the board of guardians. He was made a JP in 1862 and subsequently a county magistrate and deputy lieutenant of the county. During the early 1860s he extended his business interests to a Middlesbrough iron shipbuilding firm, Candlish, Fox & Co., and the Thornleigh Colliery Company. Both these ventures failed and for the last ten years of his life Candlish's energies were taken up by national politics.

Candlish's first attempt to secure one of Sunderland's two parliamentary seats ended in disappointment when in 1865 he was beaten into third place by two tory candidates. The following year a by-election brought success, which was consolidated in the general election of 1868 when the newly enfranchised electorate of Sunderland threw its weight firmly behind the radicals. In parliament Candlish had a high attendance rate and a record of interventions in most of the discussions on major legislation of the period. The activity which brought him most public attention was his criticism of the cost and management of the Abyssinian expedition, which led to his chairmanship of two select committees on the subject between 1868 and 1870. Candlish's record in national politics attracted some criticism in Sunderland for not being sufficiently radical and in April 1871 a meeting in his home town passed a vote of confidence in him despite, according to The Times, ‘considerable opposition’. His parliamentary connections led to the marriage in 1869 of his only daughter, Elizabeth Penelope, to William Shepherd Allen, MP for Newcastle under Lyme.

Candlish had visited India in the autumn of 1870 and this event was blamed for the subsequent breakdown of his health. He died on 17 March 1874 in Cannes, France, and was buried in Ryhope cemetery in Sunderland. He was commemorated in his home town by a statue, erected in October 1875.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biographies

Sources

W. Brockie, Sunderland notables: natives, residents, and visitors (1894), 321–33 · Newcastle Daily Chronicle (19 March 1874) · Political life and speeches of John Candlish, member for Sunderland from 1866–1874 (1886) · G. E. Milburn and S. T. Miller, eds., Sunderland: river, town and people (1990) · The Times (18 April 1871), 11 · IGI · m. cert.

Likenesses

cartoon, 1868, Sunderland Museum; repro. in Milburn and Miller, eds., Sunderland · C. Bacon, statue, 1875, Mowbray Park, Sunderland

Wealth at death

under £40,000: probate, 22 July 1874, CGPLA Eng. & Wales