Described in 1862 by his colleague John Bright as ‘rather Palmerstonian’, which was not intended as a compliment, Scholefield’s respectability and moderate manner have obscured his record as a ‘Radical Reformer’.
At a young age Scholefield entered the family firm, Joshua Scholefield and Sons, which had banking, manufacturing and mercantile interests, and it was whilst on business on his father’s behalf in the United States that he met his ‘pretty American’ wife.
After his father’s death, 4 July 1844, Scholefield contested the subsequent by-election, but due to his bereavement took no part in the campaign. This, and the candidature of a rival reformer, contributed to his defeat by the Conservative Richard Spooner, whom Scholefield beat at the 1847 general election. Thereafter he was unchallenged except in 1859, when he topped the poll.
Like earlier Birmingham representatives, including his father and Thomas Attwood, Scholefield was a consistent supporter of radical political reform, and was one of the thirteen MPs who divided in favour of Feargus O’Connor’s motion for the People’s Charter, 3 July 1849. For his efforts in the cause of popular rights, Birmingham non-electors presented him with an Italianate silver vase, 15 Apr. 1853.
Scholefield possessed the qualities of a good private member, being ‘unobtrusive, zealous, hard-working, and thoroughly well-informed’, all of which made him well-equipped to chair private bill committees, which, he explained to constituents in 1865, meant that he worked from ‘early in the morning’ to ‘late in the night’ for two to three months each session.
In debate Scholefield generally limited his contributions to issues of religious liberty and commercial questions. Although he was a Churchman, Scholefield spoke against the ecclesiastical titles bill, 14 Feb. 1851, and was a prominent critic of the repeated attempts of his old adversary Spooner, whom he described as ‘an ever-willing instrument’ of ‘sleepless bigotry’, to end the endowment of the Catholic seminary at Maynooth.
Given his business expertise, Scholefield took a natural interest in commercial questions, but as the first president of Birmingham’s Freehold Land Society, he was also concerned with working-class financial institutions.
Scholefield’s main legislative achievement, however, was the 1860 Adulteration of Food Act, the campaign for which stemmed from a public letter in 1854 by the Birmingham scientist John Postgate, who had exploited chemical advances to reveal the extent of the adulteration of food, drink and medicine. Postgate proposed that local councils should appoint public analysts empowered to test articles for contaminants and punish the guilty.
Scholefield’s deteriorating health, partly the result of his heavy committee duties, precluded his involvement in Postgate’s campaign for a compulsory measure, which was later taken up by the Birmingham MPs George Dixon and Philip Henry Muntz, resulting in the passing of a second Act in 1872.