The parish battle that ran alongside the Common campaign
While John Buckmaster was fighting to save Wandsworth Common, he was simultaneously engaged in a bitter struggle closer to home: the exposure and eventual imprisonment of the parish solicitor of Battersea. The man’s name was Thomas Andrew Fitzgerald Reynolds — known here as Reynolds III, to distinguish him from his notorious grandfather and father.
Buckmaster gives a vivid account of Reynolds in A Village Politician, though without naming him directly:
A low, drunken, unprincipled lawyer, who had represented himself as a person connected with the aristocracy, very influential, with large expectations, began to interest himself about the parish charities… By corrupting the churchwardens and overseers and a few others he was appointed legal adviser to the parish. Everything was litigated, and his bills were cheerfully paid, and the man who questioned them was threatened with a writ… He used to attend the vestry meetings half drunk with a horsewhip, and it was left to me to fight him. I knew he was a scoundrel, and I was not afraid of him.
Buckmaster, A Village Politician, pp. 332–333
The story ends with Reynolds’s imprisonment and Buckmaster’s presentation with a service of plate by a grateful parish — the occasion described as more appreciated by the parishioners even than saving the Common.
Thomas Andrew Fitzgerald Reynolds was born in Copenhagen in 1819, the son of Thomas Reynolds II (born 1798) and grandson of Thomas Reynolds I (1771–1836). The grandfather was one of the most notorious figures in Irish history: an informer who betrayed the United Irishmen to the British government in 1798, was the principal crown witness at the resulting treason trials, and spent the rest of his life in pampered exile on a government pension — his cover repeatedly blown, periodically threatened by mobs, moving between England, Lisbon, Copenhagen, and finally Paris, where he died of cholera in 1836.
The family connection with Kilkea Castle in Co. Kildare — leased from the Duke of Leinster through the influence of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, whose movement Reynolds I then betrayed — was one that Reynolds III continued to parade to the end of his life. His death notice in the London Evening Standard of 10 January 1878 describes him as “late of Kilkee Castle, Kildare, Ireland”, as though the connection were something to be proud of.
Thomas Reynolds II wrote a two-volume biography of his father (750 pages, published 1838, available on Google Books) attempting to vindicate his character. It did not succeed.
Thomas Andrew Fitzgerald Reynolds was born in Copenhagen in 1819 while his grandfather held the consulship there. The family then moved to Paris. He came to London and was indentured in September 1840 to a Queen’s Bench lawyer. He married Anne Raikes at Paris in May 1840; she came from a Yorkshire family.
By 1851 he described himself as a Solicitor’s Fundholder, living at Devonshire Street, Finsbury. By 1856 his office was in Chancery Lane and his home at 3 Farnborough Terrace, Westbridge Road, Battersea — which he called “The Poplars” — where he and his wife and adopted daughter Jessie were living in 1861, described as “attorney-at-law.”
In 1859, the Lord Chancellor appointed him a London Commissioner to administer oaths in the High Court of Chancery — a remarkable rehabilitation given what had gone before. But he could not help himself. Just five years later he was again bankrupt:
Thomas Andrew Fitzgerald Reynolds, Cecil-st. Strand, solicitor, Nov. 14, at 12.
London Evening Standard, 26 October 1864
His wife Anne died in 1864 at Beaumont Street, Marylebone, leaving £7,000 — her sole executor was her brother Robert Raikes of Crickhowell. Reynolds himself died on 1 January 1878 at Milman Street, Chelsea, leaving under £100.
Reynolds III’s difficulties began long before his Battersea days. In 1850 he was an insolvent attorney appearing before the Commissioner’s court:
This insolvent, an attorney, who applied under the Protection Act, was heard a year ago. He had been to France, and was now in prison… The Court refused to grant protection to the insolvent.
Morning Advertiser, 26 April 1850
When he returned to court for his final order in July 1850, matters deteriorated further:
In the course of the case he became excited, applied several offensive epithets to the parties before the Court, complained of his treatment, and expressed his determination to rot in prison rather than again apply. Mr. Commissioner Law, who had bestowed great pains on the case, could not prevail with the insolvent to restore order, and he was remanded to prison for an indefinite period.
Morning Post, 18 July 1850
By 1856 Reynolds had established himself as solicitor to the parish of Battersea, a position from which he proceeded to run up extraordinary bills at the parish’s expense. Buckmaster describes the cemetery land transaction as the most flagrant example — a bill of over £700 paid at a public house the night before the outgoing board left office, covering such items as “supplying ten copies of the agreement, to superintending the drains, to meeting the inspector, to advising as to suitability of the soil.” A subsequent audit disallowed more than half the total charges.
The parish divided sharply: a “white” party, led by Buckmaster, opposed Reynolds, while a “red” party supported him. Vestry meetings became scenes of open conflict. Reynolds attended them, in Buckmaster’s description, “half drunk with a horsewhip.”
In September 1858 Reynolds himself appeared before the magistrate Mr Ingham as a complainant, having summoned a labourer for using insulting language to him in the street — which was, the court heard, a consequence of his effigy having been “carried about in a cart and then burned and buried” by his Battersea neighbours. The defendant was bound over to keep the peace for six months.
The parish audit of June 1859 produced a detailed reckoning:
The amount of bills £17 8 [sic]: reduced by the auditor to £14 4 8; disallowed £17; struck off on the first day of audit £22 16 6; total amount disallowed…
West Middlesex Advertiser, 11 June 1859
Easter 1860 brought one of the most dramatic confrontations. Reynolds and his party attended the select Vestry at the Lammas Hall in the morning — thus acknowledging its legality — then appeared at the subsequent open Vestry to declare the same election illegal. Buckmaster moved, ironically, that Reynolds himself be elected churchwarden “in consideration of the great services he has rendered to the parish,” to great laughter.
The conflict came to a head at the vestrymen’s election of 1862. Reynolds, at the head of the losing “red” party, forced his way into the polling room, declared it was after eight o’clock, sat on the table, attempted to seize the ballot boxes, and obstructed voting for ten minutes. Buckmaster, as an inspector of votes, brought an information against him. The magistrate refused to convict; Buckmaster appealed:
This was an appeal from the decision of magistrates. An information was preferred by the plaintiff, who was one of the inspectors of votes for Battersea, against the defendant, a solicitor, for interrupting and preventing the polling for the election of eight vestrymen for the parish of Battersea, and trying to get possession of the balloting-box… The Court were of opinion that the matter should be remitted back to the magistrate.
London Evening Standard, 15 November 1862
By 1864 Reynolds had been forced out of the parish, pursued for the outstanding debt on the disallowed bills, and imprisoned. Buckmaster had tracked him down by advertising in the Daily Telegraph for information as to his whereabouts, with the result that the house where he was living was promptly besieged by tradesmen demanding payment.
The West Middlesex Advertiser of 13 August 1864 reported the presentation to Buckmaster of a polished oak box containing 64 pieces of plate:
“St. Mary, Battersea. — This box, containing 64 pieces of plate, was presented to Mr. Buckmaster, by a few gentlemen, in acknowledgment of services rendered in the parish during a period of great trouble and difficulty. — August, 1864.”
West Middlesex Advertiser, 13 August 1864
Buckmaster himself describes the parish’s verdict:
The parish thought I had done a greater service in ridding it of their legal adviser than in saving the common, and I was presented with a service of plate. All this was going on during the common agitation, and it was he who had frightened Wrigsby and told him to tell the court all I had said to him.
Buckmaster, A Village Politician, p. 335
— Reynolds III always insisted on his connection with “Kilkea Castle” or “Kilkee Castle” — the spellings vary — despite the fact that the connection was entirely through his grandfather’s notorious lease there, obtained through Lord Edward Fitzgerald, whom his grandfather then helped to destroy.
— The court case that led to Reynolds’s final imprisonment has not yet been traced in the newspaper archive. Buckmaster’s account in A Village Politician is the fullest record currently available.
— Where was “The Poplars”, Reynolds’s house at 3 Farnborough Terrace, Westbridge Road? Can it be identified on contemporary maps?
— There are many more reports of Buckmaster v Corsellis (the second crooked lawyer) than of Buckmaster v Reynolds. Why does Buckmaster not mention the Corsellis affair explicitly in A Village Politician? Was it because Corsellis and family were still prominent here? Was JCB rolling the two lawyers together?