John Lewis Phipps (1801–1870), of Leighton House,

Westbury, Wiltshire Westbury is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in west Wiltshire, England. The town lies below the northwestern edge of Salisbury Plain, about south of Trowbridge and a similar distance north of Warminster. Westbury w ...

, was a merchant trading with Brazil, who was briefly

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...

MP for Westbury (1868) and

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(1864). He was the second son of Thomas Henry Hele Phipps (1777–1841), of Leighton House, Westbury, Wiltshire, and Mary Michael Joseph Leckonby (1777–1835). In 1837 he went into partnership with his younger brother, Charles Paul Phipps, buying out the Brazilian coffee business of Heyworth Brothers. Despite a number of alarms, the business eventually flourished, becoming for a while one of the largest coffee exporters from Brazil. Phipps was part-owner of a cargo of coffee shipped from

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in the ''Amy Warwick'', a merchant vessel that was captured by Unionist forces on 10 July 1861, at the outset of the

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. The resulting legal case ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court in 1862. In 1868, Phipps was elected as the

Member of Parliament (MP) for Westbury, but the election result was declared void as a result of a petition brought by the unsuccessful

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candidate, Mr Abraham Laverton. Willes J held that, although Phipps himself was personally innocent of any corrupt practice, his agent, Harrop, had carried out acts of

intimidation Intimidation is a behaviour and legal wrong which usually involves deterring or coercing an individual by threat of violence. It is in various jurisdictions a crime and a civil wrong (tort). Intimidation is similar to menacing, coercion, terro ...

on voters.Law Times Reports relating to Magistrates, Municipal, Parichial, Ecclesiastical and Election Law, vol.5, 1870 Phipps had hoped that his son, Richard Leckonby Hothersall Phipps, would succeed him in the seat. His replacement instead by his brother, Charles Paul Phipps, and (after a Liberal interlude, with the short-lived success of Laverton in 1874) by his nephew, Charles Nicholas Paul Phipps, added to family tensions arising from the conduct of the partnership's affairs. In 1834, Phipps married Mary Anne Barney, by whom he had a son and three daughters. He died in 1870.

References

Sources

*''Notes on the 'Westbury' Phipps Pedigrees'', John C. Phipps (1983, unpublished)
Papers of the Phipps family of Leighton and Chalcot (Ref. 540)
at the

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(National Archives catalogue)

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Phipps, John Lewis Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies 19th-century English businesspeople Businesspeople in coffee UK MPs 1868–1874 High sheriffs of Wiltshire 1801 births 1870 deaths People from Westbury, Wiltshire