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- Supplement to the Dictionary of National Biography, by Charles Welch
BASS, Sir MICHAEL ARTHUR, first Baron Burton (1837-1909), brewer and benefactor, born in Burton-on-Trent on 12 Nov. 1837, was elder son of Michael Thomas Bass, brewer [q. v.], by his wife Eliza Jane, daughter of Major Samuel Arden of Longcroft Hall, Staffordshire. Educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, he graduated B.A. in 1859, M.A. in 1863. Bass on leaving the university at once entered his father’s brewing business, and was soon well versed in all branches of the industry. By his energy he did much to extend its operations, became head of the firm on the death of his father in 1884, and to the end of his life never relaxed his interest in the active management. The firm, which was reconstructed in 1888 under the style of Bass, Ratcliff & Gretton, Ltd., has buildings covering over 160 acres of land, employs over 3000 men, pays over 300,000l. a year in duty, and has a revenue of over 5,000,000l. per annum.
Bass entered parliament in 1865 as liberal member for Stafford, represented East Staffordshire 1868-85, and the Burton division of Staffordshire 1885-6. He proved a popular member of the house, and was a personal friend of Gladstone. His father having refused both a baronetcy and a peerage, Bass was made a baronet in vita patris in 1882, with remainder to his brother, Hamar Alfred Bass, and his heirs male; Hamar Bass died in 1898, leaving his son, William Arthur Hamar Bass, heir to the baronetcy. Bass was opposed to Gladstone’s home rule policy in 1886, but on other great questions he remained for the time a consistent liberal, and presided on 9 March 1887 when Francis Schnadhorst, the liberal party organiser, was presented with a testimonial of 10,000 guineas. He was raised to the peerage on Gladstone’s recommendation on 13 Aug. 1886 as Baron Burton of Rangemore and Burton-on-Trent, both in co. Stafford.
The growing hostility of the liberal party to the brewing interest as shown in their licensing policy and the widening of the breach on the Irish question led Burton to a final secession from the liberals, and he became a liberal unionist under Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain. After 1903 he warmly supported the latter’s policy of tariff reform, and he led the opposition to Mr. Asquith’s licensing bill in 1908, which was rejected by the House of Lords.
Always genial, outspoken, and good-humoured, Burton was a personal friend of King Edward VII, both before and after his accession. The king frequently visited him at his London house, Chesterfield House, Mayfair, at his Scottish seat, Glen Quoich, and at Rangemore, his stately home on the borders of Needwood Forest, near Burton. The king conferred upon him the decoration of K.C.V.O. when he visited Balmoral in 1904.
He was a deputy-lieutenant and a J.P. for Staffordshire, and a director of the South Eastern Railway Company. An excellent shot, he was long in command of the 2nd volunteer battalion of the North Staffordshire regiment, retiring in August 1881 with the rank of hon. colonel. He built and presented to the regiment the spacious drill-hall at Burton, and gave for competition at Bisley the Bass charity vase and a cup for ambulance work. Burton’s gifts and benefactions to the town of Burton were, like those of his father, munificent; together they presented the town hall, which cost over 65,000l. He gave club buildings to both the liberal and the conservative parties in succession; he constructed, at a cost of about 20,000l., the ferry bridge which spans the valley at the south end of Burton, and afterwards freed the bridge from toll at a cost of 12,950l. and added an approach to it over the marshy ground known as the Fleet Green Viaduct in 1890. As an acknowledgment he accepted a piece of silver plate, but he declined the proposed erection of a public statue. As a loyal churchman he generously contributed towards all diocesan funds, but will chiefly be remembered as a builder of churches. St. Paul’s Church at Burton, built by him and his father, is a miniature cathedral; its cost in first outlay was 120,000l., a sum of 40,000l. was provided for its endowment, and large sums in addition for improvements and embellishments. Another fine church, St. Margaret’s, Burton, was also built by father and son, and they erected St. Paul’s Church Institute at a cost of over 30,000l.
Burton had a cultivated taste as an art collector, and Chesterfield House, his residence in Mayfair, which he bought of Mr. Magniac, was furnished in the style of the eighteenth century and contained a choice collection of pictures by English artists of that period, which became widely known owing to his generosity in lending them to public exhibitions; Gainsborough, Reynolds, and Romney were represented both numerously and by masterpieces. His more modern pictures were at Rangemore, and included some of the best works of Stanfield, Creswick, and their contemporaries.
Burton died after an operation on 1 Feb. 1909, and was buried at Rangemore church. He married on 28 Oct. 1869 Harriet Georgiana, daughter of Edward Thornewill of Dove Cliff, Staffordshire, by whom he had issue an only child, Nellie Lisa, born on 27 Dec. 1873, who married in 1894 James Evan Bruce Baillie, formerly M.P. for Inverness-shire. In default of male issue, the peerage, by a second patent of 29 Nov. 1897, descended to his daughter.
By his will he strictly entailed the bulk of his property to his wife for life, then to his daughter, then to her descendants. The gross value exceeded 1,000,000. He requested that every person and the husband of every person in the entail should assume the surname and arms of Bass, and reside at Rangemore for at least four months in every year.
Obituary Notice
Lord Burton
Lord Burton died on the 1st of February at Chesterfield House, and the Institute of Brewing loses a Vice-President who was also the acknowledged and the honoured leader of the Brewing Grade in this country. He had been in delicate health for some time, and four days before his death he underwent a serious operation. This was successfully performed, and hopes were entertained of a restoration to health, but they were not to be fulfilled, and Lord Burton passed away at the age of seventy-one.
Michael Arthur Bass was the son of Michael Thomas Bass, M.P. for Derby. Educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, he subsequently entered the business which his grandfather had founded at Burton-on-Trent, and until his death he was closely associated with its management. He took an active share in the supervision and development of all its departments, and undoubtedly contributed largely to the success which the vast undertaking has enjoyed.
He was always foremost in promoting the interests of the Brewing Trade as a whole, and his services to the Trade, both in and out of Parliament, will long be remembered. He sat in the House of Commons for twenty years, representing his native county and, later, his own town until, in 1886, he was raised to the Peerage. The last year of his life was occupied in opposing the Government’s Licensing Bill with all his old energy and plain-spoken, straight-forward force.
A Liberal in politics, Lord Burton was a follower and friend of Mr. Gladstone until the split in the party on the Home Rule question occurred, and although he remained for a time with that party, he was ultimately driven from it by the hostility of that party to the Brewing Trade, and he joined the Liberal-Unionist ranks, in which he remained an active worker till the end.
Lord Burton was exceedingly popular. His fine character, his transparent honesty, his charm of manner - perfectly natural, simple and cordial to all alike - made him welcome everywhere, and brought him a rich harvest of regard and affection, freely yielded by all with whom he came in contact - by his Sovereign and, equally, by his humblest neighbours. These same qualities ensured his success as a business man, as well as his general popularity. His shrewdness, which was undoubted, was coupled with an extreme generosity of mind and a breadth of view which prevented it over for a moment degenerating into sharpness; and he won the highest respect of all who did business with his farm. His ready sympathy and encouragement never failed to inspire those who worked under him.
The huge crowd of mourners who thronged the church and its precincts where he was buried, and the neighboring churches in the town of Burton, where simultaneous services were held on the day of his funeral, and the large congregate in Christ Church, Devon Street, in Lond, testified to the sense of loss which his death has caused. It is a personal loss to a very unusually large number, and many members of the Institute of Brewing will feel it in that sense.
The sum of Lord Burton’s benefactions and generosities, public and private, can never be known. That they were immense is obvious to the eye of anyone who has ever been to Burton and made inquiry as to the origin of what is noble in the public buildings and public institutions of that city. He was a discriminating patron of the arts, and his collection of pictures and other works of art at Rangemore and at Chesterfield House are well known.
Lord Burton was not a man of science himself. In his younger days the application of science to the Brewing Industry was little thought of. But he readily saw the necessity for that application when it began to be made clear, and it should always be remembered to the hounour of his firm that it was from Messrs. Bass’s Laboratory that Cornelius O’Sullivan published his epoch-making researches. His interest in O’Sullivan’s work outside the brewery proper was always keen, and if his business acumen and caution made him unwilling to adopt the discoveries of science until their application to practical brewing had been carefully tested, no friend of the Institute will condemn that caution, nor desire that it should not be a guiding and unbroken rule in every brewery.
Lord Burton married, in 1869, the daughter of Mr. Edward Thornevill, of Dove Hall, Burton-on-Trent. Their only child, the Hon. Mrs. Baillie of Dochfour, succeeds to the Peerage, whilst his Baronetcy devlolves upon his nephew, Mr. William Arthur Hamar Bass. C.H.B.
The Western Brewer: and Journal of the Barley, Malt and Hop Trades
April 1909
The Late Michael Arthur Bass, London (Includes Picture)
In our March issue we made short mention of the death of Michael Arthur Bass (Lord Burton), which occurred in London, February 1. Lord Burton was the active head of the great brewing business of Messrs. Bass, Tarcliff & Gretton, Ltd., and was mainly responsible for its being built up to its present proportions. In the affairs of the trade he took a leading part and was proud of being a brewer. He was senior vice-president of the Brewers’ Society and occupied several honorary positions in the trade organiziations.
Brookston Beer Bulletin
Historic Beer Birthday: Michael Arthur Bass (Picture included)
November 12, 2019 By Jay Brooks
Today is the birthday of Michael Arthur Bass, (November 12, 1837 - Feburary 1, 1909). He was the oldest “son of Michael Thomas and the great-grandson of William Bass, the founder of the brewery firm of Bass & Co in Burton,” England.
He was “known as Sir Michael Bass, 1st Baronet, from 1882 to 1886, was a British brewer, Liberal politician and philanthropist. He sat in the House of Commons from 1865 to 1888 when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Burton. He was a Director of the family firm of Bass, Ratcliff, Gretton and Co. from 1863, and Chairman of the Directors upon his father’s death in 1884. He also sat as a Member of Parliament for Stafford from 1865 to 1868, for East Straffordshire from 1868 to 1885 and for Burton from 1885 to 1886. As a brewer, it was uncomfortable to be a Liberal MP as there was a strong temperance element to the Liberal party at the time.”
Repository, Canton, Ohio, Thursday, Mary 1, 1884
Death Of Sir Michael Arthur Bass, M.P.
Sir Michael Arthur Bass, M.P. for East Staffordshire, and the head of the famous brewing establishment at Burton-on-Trent, died today at his country seat, Rangemoor Hall, Staffordshire, aged forty-seven years. Sir Michael was known as one of the most philanthropic and liberal of English millionaires, and, as all the members of his family are well provided for out of the profits of the vast business established by his grandfather, it its believed that his will will be found to contain some very important bequests to charitable institutions. He laves a widow and one child, a daughter, now in her eleventh year. As the baronetcy, which was created in 1882, descends only in the male line, the title will now go to the next oldest brother, Hamur Alfred Bass, M.P. for Tamworth, who received his unusual baptismal name from his maternal grandfather, the late Rear Admiral Joseph Hamar.
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Bassett Family Association Database
1837 - 1909 (71 years)