Томас Хьюз: Юрист, политик и автор «Дни Тома Брауна в школе»

English lawyer, judge, politician and author

Thomas Hughes (20 October 1822 – 22 March 1896) was an English lawyer, judge, politician and author. He is most famous for his novel Tom Brown's School Days (1857), a semi autobiographical work set at Rugby School, which Hughes had attended. It had a lesser known sequel, Tom Brown at Oxford (1861). Hughes had numerous other interests, in particular as a Member of Parliament, in the British co operative movement, and in a settlement—Rugby, Tennessee, USA—reflecting his values.

Hughes was the second son of John Hughes, editor of the Boscobel Tracts (1830), and was born in Uffington, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire). He had six brothers, and one sister, Jane Senior, who later became Britain's first female civil servant. At the age of eight he was sent to Twyford School, a preparatory public school near Winchester, where he remained until the age of eleven. In February 1834 he went to Rugby School, which was then under the celebrated Thomas Arnold, a contemporary of his father at Oriel College, Oxford. Hughes excelled at sports rather than in scholarship, and his school career culminated in a cricket match at Lord's Cricket Ground. In 1842 he went on to Oriel College, and graduated BA in 1845. At Oxford, he played cricket for the university team in the annual University Match against Cambridge University, also at Lord's, and a match still regarded as first class cricket.

Hughes was called to the bar in 1848, became Queen's Counsel in 1869 and a bencher in 1870. He was appointed to a county court judgeship in the Chester district in July 1882. Hughes gave evidence in 1850 to a House of Commons committee on savings. In so doing he participated in a Christian Socialist initiative, which led shortly to the Industrial and Provident Societies Partnership Act 1852, and the emergence of the industrial and provident society. The Act was the work of Robert Aglionby Slaney, with whom Hughes worked in alliance. Hughes was involved also in the formation of some early trade unions, and helped finance the printing of Liberal publications; and acted as the first President of the Co operative Congress in 1869, serving on the Co operative Central Board. He invested with William Romaine Callender in co operative mills, in 1866.

Hughes was elected to Parliament as a Liberal for Lambeth (1865–68), and for Frome (1868–74). He stood as candidate in 1874 for in 1874, but dropped out just before the election, despite support from Octavia Hill. The context for the end of his political career was the unpopularity with Hughes's Frome constituents of his support for the Elementary Education Act 1870. As an MP Hughes worked on trade union legislation, but was not in a position to have major changes passed. Hughes then worked with Harrison and Robert Applegarth to diminish the effect of some of the testimony from employers. The outcome of this commission was that Harrison, Hughes and Lord Lichfield produced a minority report (1869), recommending that all the legal restrictions should be dropped.

During the invasion scare of 1859, Hughes raised the 19th (Bloomsbury) Middlesex Rifle Volunteer Corps from among the students of the Working Men's College, and commanded it with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel until 1869, when he became the unit's first Honorary Colonel. The battalion was known as 'Tom Brown's Corps'. Hughes estimated that it was the poorest in London, Rifle Volunteer Corps at the time being predominantly middle class. He also served as deputy editor of the Volunteer Services Gazette.

In 1878–9 Hughes began writing The Manual for Co operators (1881), with Vansittart Neale, for the Co operative Congress. As a side product he developed an interest in the model village. In 1880, he acquired the ownership of Franklin W. Smith's Plateau City and founded a settlement in America—Rugby, Tennessee—which was designed as an experiment in utopian living for the younger sons of the English gentry. It followed closely on the failed colony Buckthorn (existing about 1872 to 1879), established by another Englishman, Charles Lempriere, in western Virginia; this settlement had supposedly been suggested by Hughes. Rugby was also unsuccessful on its own terms, but it still exists and is listed on the U. S. National Register of Historic Places. Hughes was also a prominent figure in the anti opium movement, and a member of the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade. At the end of the 1880s Hughes clashed with John Thomas Whitehead Mitchell of the Co operative Wholesale Society, over the vertical integration Mitchell favoured for the Society. Hughes died in 1896 aged 73, at Brighton, of heart failure, and was buried there.

While living at Wimbledon, Hughes wrote his famous story Tom Brown's School Days, which was published in April 1857. He is associated with the novelists of the "muscular school", a loose classification but centred on the fiction of the Crimean War period. Although Hughes had never been a member of the sixth form at Rugby, his impressions of the headmaster Thomas Arnold were reverent. Hughes also wrote The Scouring of the White Horse (1859), Tom Brown at Oxford (1861), Religio Laici (1868), Life of Alfred the Great (1869) and the Memoir of a Brother. His brother, George Hughes, was the model for the Tom Brown character.

In 1847, Hughes married Frances Ford, daughter of Rev. James Ford, and niece of Richard Ford, and they settled in 1853 at Wimbledon. Ludlow already shared barristers' chambers with Hughes, and the arrangement lasted four years. Lilian Hughes perished in the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912. The youngest child Mary Hughes was a well known Poor Law guardian and volunteer visitor to the local Poor Law infirmary and children's home.

A Hughes Scholarship was founded at Oriel College, Oxford. It was a closed award, open only to members, or sons of members, of some Co operative Societies, in which aspect the award reflected Hughes's involvement with the Co operative Movement. The first scholar was elected to Oriel in 1884. It was later combined with an award honouring the social reformer Edward Vansittart Neale. A statue of Hughes (pictured right) stands outside Rugby School Library: the sculptor was Thomas Brock, and the statue was unveiled in 1899.