ATKINS, John (c.1754-1838), of Halstead Place, nr. Sevenoaks, Kent

Atkins, a London alderman for Walbrook ward, had risen from obscure origins to make a fortune from commerce: a local history records that ‘having in early life been a tide waiter he was by no means remarkable for his polished manners’. J.G. White, Hist. Walbrook Ward, 273-6. A convert to ministerial politics by 1812, his reputation among Whigs and radicals was scarcely enhanced by his stewardship of the lord mayor’s office. Following a meeting at Smithfield in July 1819 Lord Holland noted how

Atkins ... a foolish and violent man, at the risk of provoking a real riot, arrested a brawling parson of the name of Harrison in the very act of talking nonsense to a multitude. This silly zeal was magnified as a feat of prodigious vigour and decision. Many a justice of the quorum waxed emulous of the fame of a lord mayor who ... modestly reported that he had defeated a conspiracy ‘to burn the metropolis and murder the inhabitants’.

Such alarmism won him the nickname in radical circles of ‘Hell-fire Jack’, among others. He suffered another humiliation when a court of aldermen found him guilty of malpractice in an election for the common council of Walbrook ward, which had allegedly resembled a rotten borough during his mayoralty. On his retirement in October 1819 he declined the offer of a baronetcy. At the new lord mayor’s parade it was reported that Atkins received an ‘uncourteous reception’ from the populace: ‘hisses and cries resounded on all sides and some miscreant threw a brickbat into his coach as he passed along Bridge Street’. Holland, Further Mems. 269; W. Carpenter, People’s Bk. (1831), 131; Gent. Mag. (1819), ii. 454. Having lost his London seat in 1818, he offered for the venal borough of Barnstaple in 1820 as a supporter of Lord Liverpool’s ministry but withdrew before the poll; at a by-election for the same borough in 1824 he was beaten into third place. Shortly before this, when ‘a monied man’ was being sought to fill a vacancy at Sandwich, the premier Lord Liverpool mentioned Atkins as a suitable candidate, ‘if a better man cannot be found’. Add. 38458, f. 310; 57367, f. 31. In the event, he was returned unopposed for Arundel on the independent interest in 1826 but, doubtless mindful of the influence of the Whig duke of Norfolk, he reportedly undertook not to oppose Catholic relief (which he had done when previously in Parliament). W.D. Cooper, Parl. Hist. Suss. 9.

He duly abstained on Burdett’s relief motion, 6 Mar. 1827. He spoke in favour of the ministerial plan for moderate reform of the corn laws, 9 Mar., and opined that the duty on warehoused corn should be levied with reference to its price when it entered the country, 6 Apr. He defended the grant for a refuge for delinquent orphans, 15 Mar., The Times, 16 Mar. 1827. and voted for the duke of Clarence’s annuity, 16 Mar. 1827. He rebuked Hume for feigning non-comprehension of a vote for a grant to the king, 6 Feb. 1828. He presented a petition from the Protestant Dissenters of Arundel for repeal of the Test Acts, 19 Feb., but voted against this, 26 Feb. He divided with the duke of Wellington’s ministry against the motion accusing a witness of lying before the East Retford disfranchisement committee, 7 Mar., and that condemning delays in chancery, 24 Apr., for the ordnance estimates, 4 July, and against the corporate funds bill, 10 July. He spoke against a renewed attempt to move Smithfield market, 13 June. He defended the existing law on a ship’s captain’s stoppage rights on freight, 10 July 1828, when he replied to an objection to the warehousing of foreign corn by pointing out that merchants would merely store it in Holland if not permitted to do so in England. In February 1829 Planta, the patronage secretary, predicted that he would side ‘with government’ for Catholic emancipation, but he voted against it, 6, 18 Mar. He criticized the bill relating to poor rates in Rotherhithe, where he owned property, for giving too much power to overseers, 28 May 1829. He divided against Lord Blandford’s reform plan, 18 Feb., the enfranchisement of Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb., and Jewish emancipation, 5 Apr., 17 May 1830. He presented and endorsed an Arundel petition against the Shoreham road bill, 9 Mar. He introduced a bill to exempt occupiers of almshouses from poor law assessment and other parochial rates, 17 May, but objections were raised to such a blanket scheme and the bill foundered in committee. He voted against amendments to the Galway franchise bill, 24 May. He divided against reduction of the grant for South American missions and abolition of the death penalty for forgery, 7 June. Speaking as a West Indian proprietor, 30 June 1830, he felt ‘compelled against my inclination’ to support Lord Chandos’s amendment for a larger reduction in the sugar duties, which was ‘urgently required’. At the general election that summer a threatened opposition to him at Arundel on account of his anti-Catholic votes failed to materialize and he was returned unopposed. Brighton Guardian, 28 July, 4 Aug. 1830.

The ministry regarded Atkins as one of their ‘friends’, and he voted with them in the crucial civil list division, 15 Nov. 1830. He presented an Arundel petition for repeal of the coastwise coal duty, 3 Feb. 1831. He divided against the second reading of the Grey ministry’s reform bill, 22 Mar., and for Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. 1831. At the ensuing general election there was only a token opposition to him at Arundel, despite dissatisfaction with his vote on the civil list, and he was returned with the reformer Lord Dudley Coutts Stuart. Ibid. 27 Apr., 4 May 1831; Cooper, 9. He divided against the second reading of the reintroduced reform bill, 6 July 1831. He voted to use the 1831 census for the purpose of scheduling boroughs, 19 July, and to postpone consideration of Chippenham’s inclusion in schedule B, 27 July. That day he spoke at length against the partial disfranchisement of Arundel, protesting the borough’s independence and incorruptibility, but he did not force a division. He voted against Guildford’s inclusion in schedule B, 29 July, and the bill’s passage, 21 Sept. He supported a petition from the mayor of Arundel requesting that Members with vested interests be prevented from sitting on private bill committees, 19 Aug. He was one of the four ‘stalwarts’ among the London aldermen who opposed the re-election of the reformer Sir John Key as lord mayor in October. A.B. Beaven, Aldermen of London, vol. ii, p. lviii. He divided against the second reading of the revised reform bill, 17 Dec. 1831, its passage into committee, 20 Jan., the enfranchisement of Tower Hamlets, 28 Feb., and the third reading, 22 Mar. 1832. He cited his own election as proof that Arundel was not Norfolk’s nomination borough, 14 Mar. He voted against ministers on the Russian-Dutch loan, 26 Jan., and paired against it, 12 July 1832. He retired at the dissolution later that year.

Atkins died in October 1838 and left property in Leicestershire to his two surviving daughters and the remainder of his estate, which included property in London, Kent, Essex, Ireland, Jamaica and Bermuda, and all his mercantile concerns and investments in other companies, to his only surviving son John Pelly Atkins; his personalty was sworn under £90,000. PROB 11/1902/677; IR26/1475/812.