Joseph Craven (14 December 1825 – 29 November 1914) was a British worsted manufacturer and a Gladstonian Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1885 to 1892.
Early life Born on 14 December 1825, he was the elder son of Joshua and Ann (Briggs) Craven of Close Head in Thornton, near Bradford, Yorkshire. His father was a worsted stuff manufacturer, one of the "old masters" who gave out work to cottage-based weavers and sold their finished pieces on the Bradford market. Joseph was educated at the Manor House Academy, Hartshead Moor, and expected to progress to study medicine but, when he was aged fourteen, his father's ill health obliged him to leave school and take over management of the family business, in which he became his father's partner in 1845.Shipley Times and Express, 24 October 1885; Bradford Weekly Telegraph, 4 December 1914.
Commercial activity Craven persuaded his father that their hand-loom based enterprise could not compete with the economies of power-loom production and the pair commenced weaving with steam power in rented premises at Lower Globe Mill, Bradford. In 1847 they transferred production to Thornton's Prospect Mill, of which Craven had laid the foundation stone on his twenty-first birthday and where 300 looms and 420 employees were busy by 1851.William Cudworth, Round About Bradford, Thomas Brear, 1876, p. 148; 1851 Census. In that year the Cravens displayed examples of their plain-backs and shalloons at the Great Exhibition,Leeds Mercury, 3 May 1851. and in 1854 they added spinning to their weaving operation, more than doubling the size of Prospect Mill.Wharfedale and Airedale Observer, 30 October 1885; Colum Giles and Ian H. Goodall, Yorkshire Textile Mills 1770-1930, HMSO, 1992, p. 220; Historic England entry for Prospect Mill.
Craven was an influential figure in the Bradford textile trade from the early 1850s and supplied Richard Cobden with particulars of the trade in preparation for the Cobden–Chevalier Treaty negotiation.Bradford Review, 12 November 1868. He was instrumental in establishing the Bradford Chamber of Commerce in 1851 and was a member of its council for many years.Bradford Observer, 15 April 1851. He was later also a member of the Executive Council of the national Association of Chambers of Commerce.Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 12 March 1892.
His father retired in 1862 and died on 2 December 1874 "full of years and honour".Cudworth, p. 164. Six days later Joseph Craven's only son, who had joined the family business and was "in the bloom of youth and full of promise", also died.Wharfedale and Airedale Observer, 30 October 1885; Cudworth, p. 148. In the following year a portrait of Craven’s son, Joshua, was unveiled at Thornton Mechanics’ Institute by Joshua’s close friend, Swire Smith, who paid tribute to Joshua’s "purity of character" and lamented the loss of his "grand and earnest life": Bradford Observer, 19 October 1874 (the portrait is now held by Bradford Museum and Galleries ). The double bereavement sent Craven into temporary decline and in 1875 he sold the business, which was then employing between 500 and 600 people.Wharfedale and Airedale Observer, 30 October 1885. The business, which initially continued to trade under the Craven name, was acquired by a partnership that included two of Mrs Craven’s nephews, one of whom, Henry Edward Foster, later obtained sole ownership and was declared bankrupt in 1889: Yorkshire Gazette, 18 May 1889. His wife died in the following yearYork Herald, 22 March 1876. after a long illness,Monumental Inscription, Kipping Chapel, Thornton. and he remained a widower for nearly four decades, continuing to live at Ashfield, the Italianate villa he had built overlooking Prospect Mill.Giles and Goodall, pp. 191, 192, 220; Historic England entry for Ashfield House. Following Craven’s death Ashfield was purchased by Bradford Corporation for use as a Mental Deficiency Hospital: Bradford Weekly Telegraph, 12 May 1916.
Work in the community Craven took an active part in the development of amenities for the rapidly growing township of Thornton. He facilitated improvements in its water supply and reduction in the local cost of coal, donated the site of the Mechanics’ Institute, funded the nucleus of its library, and paid for the construction and furnishing of the associated lecture-hall and gymnasium.Bradford Observer, 22 April 1858; Leeds Times, 11 August 1888; Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 7 December 1880. He laid the foundation-stone of the Mechanics’ Institute and presided at the opening of the completed building: Yorkshire Post, 17 July 1871. He was Chairman of the Thornton Local Board from 1867Bradford Observer, 20 June 1867. and a member of the Bierley Board of Guardians from 1873.Bradford Observer, 1 April 1875. He served as a governor of Thornton Grammar School and endowed the Craven Scholarship Trust which enabled boys and girls to proceed through elementary education to advanced evening classes at the Mechanics’ Institute and then to Bradford Technical College (on the Council of which Craven sat).Bradford Observer, 29 March 1877; Bradford Daily Telegraph, 15 April 1885, 21 June 1887; Leeds Times, 1 September 1888. Twenty-nine scholarships were being funded at the time of Craven’s death: Bradford Weekly Telegraph, 9 October 1914.
Political beginnings As a Liberal Radical he was active in local politics from the late 1840s, advocating civil and religious liberty, peace, retrenchment and reform.Bradford Observer, 28 April and 20 October 1853; Leeds Times, 5 December 1885. In 1885 Craven was introduced to the newly enfranchised voters of Shipley as "a man who had worked for forty years to secure them the vote": Wharfedale and Airedale Times, 20 November 1885. He was, with Titus Salt, one of the two Bradford signatories to the National Address of January 1858 setting out a proposed agenda for Parliamentary Reform, and he supported the objectives of the Liberation Society, acknowledging its founder Edward Miall as "one of his political fathers".The Times, 5 January 1858; Leeds Times, 20 February 1869.
In 1868 he led a public call for amicable resolution of the disputed result of the election for Bradford Borough's two Parliamentary seats. In a three-cornered contest, W. E. Forster and Henry Ripley (Liberals of different stripes) had topped the poll, whereupon the unsuccessful Edward Miall (for whom Craven had spoken during his campaign) petitioned for Ripley's election to be overturned on the ground of corrupt practices.Bradford Daily Telegraph, 28 August, 17 November, 10 and 29 December 1868.
Commenting on Craven's intervention, the Bradford Review observed he "is a good Liberal, no doubt, but surely has never been identified with the advanced Liberals of Bradford such as to warrant him assuming to represent the party on so grave a matter".Bradford Review, 2 January 1869. The intervention failed to produce an amicable outcome but Craven's initiative in the matter, coupled with his subsequent publication of an appeal for party unity following the success of Miall's petition, served to raise his political profile.Bradford Observer, 2 February 1869. By 1877, when he appeared on the same platform as John Bright, he was described as one of the leading Liberals of the Bradford district.Leeds Mercury, 25 July 1877.
During reform of the Liberals’ local organisation in readiness for implementation of the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885, he was elected a vice-president of the party's Keighley associationBradford Daily Telegraph, 28 April 1885. The other Vice-President then elected was John Brigg, later MP for Keighley. and was invited to become the Liberal candidate for the new Spen Valley constituency. He accepted the Spen Valley invitation subject to it having the constituency association's unanimous support. This was withheld by the association's teetotal faction when Craven would not endorse the Local Option policy (whereby districts could vote to make abstinence compulsory within their boundaries).Manchester Weekly Times, 6 June 1885; Leeds Times, 13 June 1885; Shipley Times and Express, 24 October 1885.
MP for Shipley In May 1885 the Liberals of the new Shipley constituency adopted as their Parliamentary candidate W. E. Gladstone, who was then Prime Minister but whose government fell in the following month. Gladstone was promised Shipley would give him a secure majority at the forthcoming General Election but, confident of holding his Midlothian seat, he declined Shipley's nomination. In his place the local Liberals selected Joseph Craven, who was reported to have "required a good deal of pressure" to accept the nomination but was ultimately persuaded by its enthusiastic unanimity.Bradford Daily Telegraph, 20 October 1885.
At the 1885 election, he was duly elected Shipley's first Member of Parliament (MP) with a majority of 2,197 and a total number of votes, 7,022, which was the largest cast for any candidate in England's non-borough constituencies.Leeds Times, 5 December 1885. According to the paper's report, "Had Mr Gladstone not retired from the Shipley Division the contest could hardly have been more decisive." The subsequent split at national level between Home Rule and Unionist Liberals resulted in a further general election in 1886 which condemned the party to six years in opposition but at which Craven, who was described as having kept his seat "warm and cosy",Leeds Times, 26 June 1886. was returned unopposed.London Evening Standard, 10 July 1886.
It was his vote rather than his voice that Craven brought to the Commons debating chamber. He almost invariably supported the policies and positions adopted by Gladstone but had the reputation of voting out of conviction rather than simple loyalty, requiring persuasion on every issue. He was always eager to obtain personal insight into matters and in this respect often worked closely with his fellow West Riding MPs Alfred Illingworth and Briggs Priestley: with them he made fact-finding tours of Ireland in 1887Freeman’s Journal, 18 November 1887. and South Africa in 1889,The Scotsman, 30 October 1889. and with Priestley he had visited India in 1885.Pateley Bridge and Nidderdale Herald, 5 December 1885. He was an attentive constituency member, consulting his association committee on policy issues and regularly reporting on Parliament's proceedings either in person or in writing.
He experienced bouts of ill health, usually from gout or bronchitis, and in early 1891 was confined to London's Hotel Metropole with pleurisy, his condition occasioning "great alarm".Bradford Daily Telegraph, 6 May 1891. When adopted at Shipley he had warned the constituency that he was "unfitted for the work bodily": Wharfedale and Airedale Observer, 29 November 1885. On returning to England from Egypt in May 1890 he had advised his constituency executive he did not intend to seek re-election; he attributed this resolve to poor health but, when his decision was made public in 1891, the Shipley Times observed "It is understood that Parliamentary life has never had very great fascination for him".Yorkshire Post, 26 March 1891; Leeds Mercury, 23 March 1891; Shipley Times and Express, 28 February 1891.