THOMAS SELBY was born in November 1791 in Gillingham, Kent. At the time of writing, we know little about his early life and any additional information would be gladly welcomed. What is known, however, follows.
His parents were Thomas and Mary Selby who were living in the Bishop’s Palace, Otford around the time of his birth. In 1817 he married Louisa Cline at Hythe, but sadly she died in 1831 and in the same year he married Marie de Loecker (a Belgian) in Lambeth. Basic information on Thomas Selby can be found here, although the mention of a third wife is believed to be incorrect.
In 1828 he went into partnership with his younger brother George, who was a solicitor practising in London, and his cousin Silas Norton joined as well. (There is a separate plaque in West Malling to Silas Norton.) Thomas continued to practise in West Malling, but in the 1850s the practice ran into financial difficulties. What actually went wrong is very complex, but it seems that he and his brother had accumulated enormous debts, amounting to over £20M in 2021’s value. The partnership dissolved in 1844 and all three went bankrupt. Thomas Selby and Silas Norton applied for discharge certificates in November 1855, and George Selby followed soon after in December of the same year. Perhaps Thomas was already thinking of retiring, but in the middle of 1855, he sold off his considerable assets (probably including Abingdon House) and a little later moved to France. His wife Marie died in Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1858, and Thomas died there in 1874 leaving less than £200 to his son Thomas.
The story of the bankruptcies is a very complex one and they were no doubt very notable and scandalous events of the time. There is more information with links to external documents here.
In 1827, while he was living in West Malling, he and two others, Silas Norton and Lord Harris, founded the West Malling, then Town Malling, cricket ground (see the blue plaque for Norton). In 1835 Selby enticed Fuller Pilch to move to Kent (see the blue plaque for Pilch), and in 1836 Selby inaugurated a new Kent County Cricket Club with the West Malling ground as its headquarters, and he became the team selector for matches.
Thomas Selby was also a cricketer himself, and played on the Kent cricket team from 1839 to 1841. In this period West Malling was the centre of Kent cricket. Here Kent played the Town Malling Club itself as well as sides from Sussex, Nottinghamshire and England. Crowds of over 6,000 spectators would gather for these matches, in an outer circle surrounding only about half the current ground, in the pavilion corner. The circle would contain carriages of the nobility and gentry, hop wagons covered with awnings made of hop cloths, marquees and booths. Order was kept by the cracking whip of a “ringmaster”. The mower was a scythe, and players changed in hop oast houses.
Thomas Selby was part of a very ancient Kentish family of worldwide influence, and it is thought that he was part of the family that owned Ightham Mote. The Bodleian Library holds documents relating to the Selby family including 24 catalogued documents dating from 1450 concerning property in West Malling, still with their original seals.
The Selby name
It is very likely that Thomas Selby (and George) were linked to the Selbys of Ightham who owned Ightham Mote for a long time – but the link has not yet been established. Information on Thomas Selby and his immediate family can be found here. The early part of the family tree of the Selbys of Ightham can be found here.
Another tantalising Selby has also emerged. Dorothy Selby (1572-1641) married William Selby III, and she was a daughter of Charles Bonham of West Malling. The marriage was brokered by Walsingham, the Tudor spymaster. There is a bust of her in Ightham church which is said to have been carved by the Master Mason to the Crown, Edward Marshall, and as she was childless, several children feature on the memorial. Her claim to fame is that it is said that she exposed The Gunpowder Plot. Her love of needlework was her downfall, as she pricked her finger and died of blood poisoning.
The bankruptcies
Thomas Selby, Silas Norton and George Selby dissolved their partnership on 25 March 1844. This was almost certainly caused by the enormous debts they had accumulated, and they all became bankrupt. They applied for their certificates (of discharge) late in 1855, George on his own account as he worked out of London, and Thomas and Silas jointly. The court hearings were reported in detail in the Maidstone Advertiser and Kentish Advertiser, Thomas and Silas on 6 November 1855 and George on 11 December 1855. The reports can be found in the British Newspaper Archive, but readers will need to set up an account.
In the judgement on Thomas and Silas given on 23 November, the judge allowed Silas his certificate (although with a one year suspension), but denied any certificate for Thomas. He was judged to have committed fraud and a breach of trust in dealings with George and a Mr Hodges, George’s business partner in a manufacturing venture. Thomas had a deficit of funds of over £34,000. This was after he had sold his private property. He went to appeal, but lost that as well. The appeal court judges said Thomas’s conduct was “a breach of every duty which he owed as a solicitor to his client, and amounted to a malversation of the most serious character.”
George was not so harshly punished as his brother. He was judged to have been an accessory after Thomas’s fraud, and was granted his certificate, but suspended for two years. In giving his judgement, Commissioner Evans said this was the “case of a man who had once filled a most respectable position, and had carried on business in London as a solicitor. Like many others, he was not satisfied to let well alone, but had resorted to a variety of speculations, had entered into various partnerships, and had carried on several schemes until he had left himself in the court in the melancholy position of owing debts and liabilities to the amount of nearly £200,000, and had not sufficient to pay his creditors a farthing in the pound.”
As well as being a solicitor, one of George’s “speculations” was in the manufacture of iron and brass tubes, with his client and partner Mr Hodges. There is a lot of information on them here, but refer to pages 65, 74, 76-80, 92, 93, 129-133. The author describes George as “a very clever but dishonest solicitor: a fraudster and an archetypal Dickensian villain. Hodges, his client since at least 1828, was possibly just one of many that [George] Selby had defrauded during his, seemingly, successful career as a lawyer and businessman.”