17 The man who arrested Frost

THOMAS JONES PHILLIPS (1790-1843)

The man who arrested John Frost.

“One of the great men of his Newport was Thomas Jones Phillips, the magistrates’ clerk, a man of giant build with huge hands, the terror of all the naughty boys of that sleepy little Newport. He it was who went at night to Partridges’s cottage on the Gold Tops and arrested John Frost.” (obituary of Henry Mullock (1826-1914) , Weekly Argus 2nd January 1915)

Amazingly, 75 years after the Chartist Rising, John Frost’s nemesis remained the ‘bogeyman’ for many a Newport child. His dramatic 'police snatch' of Frost, Partridge and Waters, in the evening of the day of the Westgate attack, was the talk of the newspapers at the time. It was a story deeply embedded in popular imagination.

Yet this ‘snippet’ from the Argus is the only descriptive ‘tit bit’ that Peter Strong, Assistant Editor (CHARTISM Mag) has yet found about the magistrate’s clerk who arrested John Frost in Welsh Newspapers Online (NLW).

Three and half years after Frost was transported, this stalwart Tory, attorney and loyal servant of the Beaufort family (until 1832) and thereafter the Morgans, died on Saturday 30th 1843 (aged 53). No portrait has survived and no obituary appeared.

The Monmouthshire Merlin (7 Oct 1843) carried a family notice that “after suffering, borne with exemplary resignation, and to the ineffable grief of a numerous family, Thomas Jones Phillips, Esq., solicitor, who for a long series of years efficiently discharged the duties of legal adviser to the magistrates of the borough of Newport, and the divisions of Bedwelty, Newport, and Christchurch in this county, and was on more than one occasion under-sheriff. Public sympathy is very generally evinced for his bereaved family.”

He was the father of 10 surviving children. None are mentioned in family notice, half were adult. Nor was there any mention that he was the son of the well known ‘Squire’ Phillips of Risca House (died 1835), a role that his elder brother Charles continued until his death in 1860.

Six or so years later when their mother died, a stone tablet was ‘erected by their children’ at St. Woolos, which reads quite simply ‘Sacred to the memory of Thomas Jones Phillips for many years a most respected solicitor in the town who died September 30th 1843. And of Mary his wife who died January 11th 1850 aged 65 years.’

Drawing on Thomas Jones Phillips’ own deposition to the Magistrates (in Chartist Trials papers, Newport Library), Monmouthshire Merlin (9 November 1839) and W.N. Johns The Chartist Riots at Newport, 1889, CHARTISM Mag retells the drama of 4th November 1839 as experienced by Thomas Jones Phillips.

He was not present in Newport when the battle at the Westgate Inn commenced about 9.20 am on Monday 4th November 1839. The battle lasted twenty minutes. When Thomas Jones Phillips arrived by the mail coach from Tredegar at about 10.30, the thirty soldiers were still holding their positions inside the building.

That Sunday night, he had been twenty two miles away from Newport at Tredegar in the turbulent ‘iron country’ of the north Monmouthshire coalfield. Mayor Thomas Phillips had sent him intelligence gathering. He was there in his official capacity as clerk to the Bedwellty magistrates, available for court duties if necessary, consulting with magistrate and ironmaster Samuel Homfray and his chief of police in the district, William Homan.

At 10.30am when he arrived back in Newport, the Westgate battle was over. It had lasted no more than twenty minutes, but Lieutenant Gray, convinced that the Chartist insurgents would counter attack, ordered his troops to stay in position. As Thomas Jones Phillips alighted from the coach, he could see soldiers holding gun positions at the main doorway and windows of the Inn. A few were stationed in the office of Prothero and Phillips situated at the bottom of Stow Hill next door to the Mayor’s House. In all, there were 28 privates and two sergeants defending the building, but none were outside in the street.

At the Mayor’s request, these forces had been brought at 8.30 that morning to the Westgate Inn from their billet at the Stow Workhouse.

Jones Phillips picked his way through the bodies strewn across the entrance steps and within the passageways of the inn. In a somewhat shaken state he “went upstairs and saw Mr. Phillips (the Mayor)... he was wounded. I saw the wound in his arm whilst the surgeon was dressing it. It appeared a bullet wound. I also saw that he was wounded in the side.”

Although the situation appeared dire, he found Thomas Phillips, the Mayor to be conscious and able to talk. Sitting up in bed in one of the bedrooms, he held audience regaling his story to the few individuals who came to see him. The Mayor’s wounds were being attended to by George Brewer, the Coroner, who had been the only fellow magistrate to stay with him all night at the Westgate Inn. For at least another hour, Gray refused to allow anyone to move, or give assistance to the many wounded, who were still lying in the street. George Shell, aged 18, was dying on the steps of the inn.

About noon, Reginald Blewitt, MP turned up. He had waited behind the walls of his home, Llantarnam Abbey. When he could see the Chartists were retreating from Newport, he slipped out of a back gate and cautiously made his way through Caerleon, entering Newport from the east. He was relieved to find Newport bridge and the town were not burnt out. The Monmouthshire Merlin (09.11.1839) reporters faithfully related the story that the newspaper’s founder and part owner told them:

“On quitting his horse at the King's Head, he went towards the Westgate Hotel, on arriving before which, he found the wounded and dying surrounding the door. He raised his hands as a signal of peace to the highly-excited soldiery, and was by them assisted through the window. He went at once to the room where the Mayor was lying wounded who briefly, but with great calmness, informed him of all the dispositions he had made, and of the events of the morning and requested him to take his place. And act as his locum tenens on this trying occasion.”

Blewitt asserted his authority as Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Monmouthshire. He sent correspondence to Bristol demanding military reinforcements and called for all his fellow magistrates to gather at the Westgate hotel.

Thomas Jones Phillips interviewed shopkeepers, inn keepers and other witnesses. Late afternoon, he visited and searched Frost’s home in High Street, taking away a large quantity of his private papers. Blewitt issued orders of arrest and offers of reward for a list of people handed to him by Jones Phillips.

About 7 o’clock that Monday evening, accompanied by armed special constables led by Stephen Rogers, Thomas Jones Phillips arrived at Partridge’s house and knocked. Five days later in its weekly edition, a jubilant Monmouthshire Merlin (9 Nov 1839) reported the

“capture of Frost was extraordinary and unexpected… Mr. Thomas Jones Phillips, solicitor and Mr. Stephen Rogers and another, went accordingly, and forced the door, upon refusal of admission. On entering the house the first person that appeared was Mr. Frost refreshing himself with bread and cheese“.

The reporter did not fail to cast his newspaper’s proprietor as the central player:

“word sent to the magistrates at the Westgate for a reinforcement, Mr. Blewett with some gentlemen, as special constables, went down and brought Frost and a man named Waters to headquarters. Frost was wet, and appeared much fatigued and subdued in spirit. He asked permission to be allowed to go in custody to his home, but this request was of course, at once refused by the magistrates.”

The posse brought by Thomas Jones Phillips awaited the arrival of Blewitt because he brought the appropriate warrant of arrest and stole the scene.

Thomas Jones Phillips sworn before the examining Magistrates said: - I am a solicitor, residing in Newport, and clerk to the borough magistrates. I went, yesterday, to search the house of John Partridge, for papers. I knocked at the door, but no notice was taken it was between six and seven o'clock in the evening I then heard Partridge's voice inside, and said “Partridge, open the door”. He replied “I am gone to bed”. I said, “Get up, and open it, or I will force it open." I then put my shoulder to the door, and forced it open. I was accompanied by Mr. Stephen Rogers. The first person I saw, on entering the house, was the prisoner, John Frost, who stood within two yards of the door. Rogers laid hold of Frost by one side of the collar, and I by the other, and I said “Mr. Frost, you are our prisoner;" to which he replied, “Very well, I will go with you directly." “We are not prepared to take you yet—you must wait.” He then went towards the fire-place, and asked if he would be allowed to eat some bread and cheese. I said "Yes," and he ate some. I then said to Partridge, “I have come to search your house, I want your manuscripts.” I got a candle, and went into the adjoining room, where I found the papers contained in this bag, [Mr. Phillips here laid a sealed bag on the table.] Waters was also in the house, when we entered. I brought the papers into the outer room, and was examining them, when Frost came up to me, and asked by what authority I took the papers, and I replied, that I would not satisfy him as to my authority. He said, if you expect to find any of my manuscripts, you will be disappointed.

I replied, that I did not expect to find them there, as I had them already. I had been at Frost's house, before I went to Partridge’s and had taken away his manuscripts. I took possession of the papers, and told Partridge he was a prisoner. I sent a young man who accompanied us, to the Westgate, to state what had taken place and we remained at Partridge's till Mr. Blewitt and a party of special constables arrived, when Frost, Waters, and Partridge were brought down to the Westgate, where they were searched and the things produced by Hopkins were found on them. - The witness was not cross examined.

Frost was without trousers. He had taken them off to dry. That’s why Frost moved closer to the fire. As they followed Frost into the room, they could see a third man - Charles Waters, a ship’s carpenter aged 26, originally from Chepstow, now working on the river front at Newport and Secretary of the Newport Working Men’s Association. After the morning’s battle, Partridge and Waters had both sought refuge in a beer house located in the ‘Friars Field’ district off Llanarth Street. This was a rabbit warren of a slum land tucked away between Commercial Street and the Usk river.

Frost had spent a miserable day on the run and not daring to return to his own house, had arrived at Partridge’s house seeking food and shelter. How long he had been at Partridge’s home is uncertain and it is not known whether he was seen by his wife and daughters. Later Partridge’s daughter, Amelia, stated that Frost had provided her with a shilling to go out and buy bread and cheese.

At the Westgate hotel, Frost handed from his pockets three new pistols, about fifty bullets and a flask of powder. Four pistols were found on Waters and an immense quantity of bullets and powder. The prisoners were immediately placed under a strong guard of special constables in a well secured room. Lieutenant Gray and his ‘brave fellows’ remained vigilant and well armed throughout Monday night.

What happened to the documents confiscated from John Frost?

It was a matter Frost raised on his return home in 1856.

The papers were never produced at his trial. Clearly, they contained no incriminating evidence, at least as judged by W.T.H. Phelps, the Magistrates’ Prosecuting Solicitor and by Sir John Campbell, the Attorney General. Frost’s papers must have been stored in the library of Thomas Jones Phillips at his home in High Street, Newport. What happened to them after his death in 1843 remains an outstanding question.

Phelps’ archive survived and constitutes the trunk of documents passed to Newport museum in 1915 and now housed at Newport Library (25 volumes) digitised by the Cynefin Project (Gwent Archives and National Library of Wales). This collection contains none of the confiscated documents belonging to Frost.

Memorials to T J Phillips at St Woolos Cathedral

Images courtesy of Mark Hewinson