Image: Maney Farm, which stood next to Maney House, where James Motteram was tenant and where he died in 1884. (ref 17)
Reproduced with the permission of Sutton Coldfield Library
At 8 pm on the evening of 19 September 1884 at his home in Maney, a man called James Motteram died. You might well wonder who he was. In truth few people today would recognise his name. Yet Motteram was, for much of his life, a substantial figure in Birmingham and Sutton Coldfield. Motteram lived at Maney House. A very comfortable gentleman’s residence, Maney House has long since been demolished. Mottram’s Close now stands on, or near to, the site – it is not clear why that spelling was used for the new road, but it is certainly not how Motteram spelled his name. James Motteram was, in turn, a solicitor, a barrister and a county court judge – when he was known as ‘the poor man’s friend’ – and he was also a great reformer, the scourge of the unreformed corporation which presided over the affairs of Sutton until 1886. It is time James Motteram’s story was told.
The son of a Birmingham merchant, Motteram was educated at the grammar school in Solihull and then became an articled clerk – a trainee solicitor – in London. He returned to Birmingham in 1835 and became a solicitor in partnership with John Richards (the first of a series of legal partnerships Motteram was involved in). He developed an interest in bankruptcy law, which remained with him for his whole life – he co-authored a pamphlet on the subject in his final years. However, Motteram had ambitions to become a barrister. And so he entered Middle Temple and was called to the bar in 1851, practising on the Oxford circuit. Motteram became known for his excellent skills in cross-examination – and his quick thinking and knowledge of the law made him a formidable performer at public meetings in Sutton Coldfield. Appointed a QC in 1875, Motteram became a judge of the county court in Birmingham the following year.
It was inevitable that, when he settled in Sutton in the late 1860s, a man of Motteram’s calibre would be invited to become a member of the corporation. These twenty five men – known as the warden and society – were not elected by the inhabitants of the town, but instead chose themselves. It was government by the elite and Motteram strongly objected to it. Motteram had no intention of becoming a member of the corporation until it was elected by ratepayers – and these were only a minority of Sutton’s population – and he became a powerful advocate of reform. At one public meeting Motteram was reported to have physically prevented a ‘rough’ – as boisterous working men were called in those times – from entering, but he denied that he had done any such thing. Motteram certainly accused George Bodington, a long serving member of the corporation who raised objections to taking action about Sutton’s growing problem with the disposal of sewage, of ‘living a hundred years behind his time’, but mostly he tried to be courteous and conciliatory. ‘We are not at law with the corporation and you ought not to be at law with us’, he observed. ‘It is that unfortunate spirit of antagonism which exists and which manifests itself on almost every occasion’. Nonetheless Motteram could not disguise his low opinion of some members of the corporation. He reported a discussion that he had with one of them about the schools the corporation had built across the town: ‘One of them told him the other day that he hated their new-fangled scheme of education and that education had done nothing more for him than compelling him to pay 1s a day for frightening rooks when forty years ago 4d was the amount paid. The man who told him that might perhaps be able to write his own name, but it doubtful if he could read it afterwards.’ So Motteram was at the forefront of the campaign in Sutton in the 1870s to replace the warden and society with an elected body; but by the time this happened in 1886, he was dead.
James Motteram married twice – his first marriage lasted from 1839 until 1855 and his second marriage from 1868 until his death. There were no children from either marriage. In his sixties he began to suffer from severe inflammation of the eyes, and in 1878 one eye was removed and replaced with a glass eye. He continued to enjoy riding in Sutton Park, but a few months after his operation fell heavily from his horse and broke an arm. From that point on he became a much weakened man, though determined to carry on his work in the county court and his death was unexpected. The funeral service at Edgbaston Parish Church ‘was of the plainest character and shorn of musical accompaniment.’ Motteram was interred in the family vault at the church. James Motteram of Maney House was remembered as ‘a judge who preferred justice over law’, and the most forcible and learned opponent of the way in which the town in which he lived was governed.
Stephen Roberts, March 2021