Our Man in Trieste: Henry Bynner from Birmingham, a Nineteenth-Century Vice-Consul

 

“….  as the new Consul is not for the present here resident, and made me such offers as I could not well refuse, I determined to continue a few years longer, as it enables me to lay by £200 to £300 per annum. I am in fact, almost independent of the Consul, for doing all the business, a great part of the Fees fall to my share. I have the sole direction – I sign all the papers, the office is in my house, and being approved by the Government with the title H. M’s. Vice-Consul I am not removable at the Consul’s pleasure, but make my own terms with him. The office however gives me a good deal of trouble and keeps me almost constantly employed, the more so as I act over and above as Writer & Notary for all the English & Ionian & Maltese subjects here, the perquisites of which belong to me … I am subject to be called in my official capacity to witness great misfortunes and distress, and that almost daily. I was last week present at the cutting off of a poor Captain’s leg, which had been shockingly bruised & broken by the fall of a Sugar case on board a ship; I am obliged to attend sick & dying persons as if I were a clergyman, and if not obliged, I should chuse to do it from a sense of duty. It is part of my office to attend at funerals, to arrest and confine refractory Seamen, to assist the distressed, to settle disputes between British subjects, to act as mediator and interpreter between them & the Authority of the country, to assist & supply with necessaries His Majesty’s Ships and to attend Travellers of distinction ….”

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Thus Henry Bynner in an 1821 letter to his younger brother Jeremiah, a Birmingham manufacturer. By 19^th century standards, he would have been entitled to write his Memoirs and have them published; had he put a Life into the public domain there would probably be a Wikipedia page.  Born in 1773 he lived to the age of 94, a more-than competent writer but either not that way inclined or dissatisfied with the result. In an 1830 letter he writes “I am as busy as Cobbett – though I do not & would not chuse to make so much noise in this world”. Except in an official capacity, signing notices which appeared in the press, and leaving aside 1867 Birmingham newspaper obituaries, his name appears just once in contemporary print.

It is there on the title page of a lengthy 1797 pamphlet which secured him recognition as the first person to use shorthand to report a trial. John Binns of the London Corresponding Society was acquitted of sedition at a trial in Warwick. It was one of an array of actions in the 1790s against those who were inspired by the French Revolution to demand constitutional change in Britain. The day long trial, according to the title page of the pamphlet, was “Taken in Short-Hand By Mr Henry Bynner, Birmingham”.

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The son of a man who was self-employed alternately as peruke maker, hairdresser, victualler and inn-keeper, Bynner attended one of the elementary Free Schools established during the 18^th century by the Governors of Birmingham’s King Edward VI School¹. A talented boy he came to the notice of Dr Joseph Priestley of Fair Hill who taught him shorthand in a modified form of John Annet’s method and employed him as an amanuensis. Priestley, who was multi-lingual, is reported to have taught the boy French and German. But in 1791 Priestley’s house, as is well known, was burnt down by a Church and King mob; then aged eighteen, Bynner was one of those who tried to salvage equipment and valuables from the building. Priestley sought refuge in London and then the USA. Bynner remained in Birmingham until the turn of the century when after the death of his mother followed by his father taking a new partner and getting into financial difficulties, he took employment as a traveller with one of Birmingham’s import-export houses and made his way to Trieste, the Liverpool of the Adriatic, and part of the Habsburg empire. Its deep-water harbour received ships coming from both West and East whose cargoes were either transhipped to Venice and other ports or sent overland into Europe. Trieste was also, like Liverpool, a centre for shipbuilding. It did not have the cachet of Venice but thrived while Venice decayed.

Once settled in Trieste Bynner began to write home to his younger brother. The correspondence continued for forty years, with Bynner writing long letters a couple of times a year. I have 18 in my possession (dated from 1814 to 1843) and estimate that around 80 would have been sent. He established a shop (bottega) selling metal goods and earthenware in the contrada del Corso and in 1807 bought a house in the San Vito suburb away from the port. From 1809-1813 Trieste was incorporated into the Napoleonic Illyrian Provinces and mail services to England suspended. In the first letter he wrote after the re-opening of the post and dated 23 April 1814 he writes “My case is hard to be so long banished from my native land and exposed to danger & vexation in an enemy’s country. Thank God there is now a prospect of a lasting peace …. I have been chiefly in Trieste & Vienna. I have suffered a thousand losses, hardships & vexations but have never been in want”. An archived document in Trieste records that the French had confiscated his merchandise including polished steel buttons, gold buttons, and silver tea sets¹. But the moment of greatest personal danger occurred in 1813 when an English fleet bombarded Trieste, forcing the French to surrender.

Things began to look up; in July 1815 and having received news of the victory at Waterloo he writes, “I am doing little business at present, and have no certain plan (who can?) for the future but the proceeds of the British Consulate (I am acting as Vice Consul here) afford me sufficient to live genteelly & even to save something”. He continued in post until 1845, assisted for the final decade by his adoptive son James. He was pleased when given an additional title in 1831, “I was rather surprised to receive a little while ago a Commission from King William IV signed by the Duke of Cambridge, appointing me Hanoverian Consul at Trieste. This honor (such as it is) was quite unsolicited on my part and I am indebted for it to the favorable reports made of me to Government by our Consul General in Venice and by the Hanoverian Envoy at Vienna”.

At this period of political turmoil in England, he contrasts his views with those of his brother, “I see you are attached to the old system of Government, believing it has worked well. But for whom (asks the Gravedigger in Hamlet) for whom does it well? For them that work ill. Therefore says he it is like the Gallows, which does well too for certain characters. I certainly would not hang a Borough monger I would only suspend his illegal functions. I have all respect for Bishops as ecclesiasticks, but not as politicians. They might do some good in the Pulpit – and let them stick there – and look to their Sees; but they have certainly done ill in Parliament”.

Though he kept up with affairs in Britain, in the 1820s he developed another interest for which he has been remembered by local historians of Trieste². The English-speaking community was already quite large in the 1790s and after the defeat of Napoleon expanded rapidly. Bynner thought this community deserved its own Protestant church and he became the driving force in securing one. 

Trieste, unlike Venice, enjoyed both the status of free port and a generous dispensation of religious freedom but it took some time to get the results Bynner wanted. In an October 1827 letter Bynner writes that he has “been labouring some time to establish an English Protestant Church in the city”. In preparation, he solicits his brother “to purchase for me a Book or two containing instructions for singing, especially Psalmody and Sacred Music, with a selection of the most modern, customary and approved tunes for Psalms, Hymns, Anthems and the like, and I should have no objection to receiving a few songs, Catches and other profane (but not immoral) subjects set to music for the Voice with accompaniments, also instructions for the Organ …”, though getting the right organ proved problematic - he doesn’t want a chamber organ but  the organ loft will be quite small, and so on; he has a very clear conception of what he wants and is prepared to pay for it. He reckons £100 should do it, call that £9000 in today’s money.

In a letter of July 1830 he believes his task largely completed, “…. after much difficulty and no little opposition I have at length succeeded both in obtaining permission and raising the Funds (to which I of course contribute) and I shall now commence the Building in a few days – We have an English Chaplain and public service for nearly a year & during this time we have hired the Chapel of the Swiss Community³. I have not only obtained the permission of the Austrian Government, but the sanction of the English government with a pecuniary Aid of £200 per annum, the whole expense being £400 annually, the half of which we raise here by subscription. The expense of the building and furniture will be about £1500 [£135,000] which we also raise among us, so that it will remain the freehold of the Community. I am considered as the founder and principal support of the undertaking, and am neither proud nor ashamed of it. It occupies perhaps too much of my time … You would laugh to see me not only official as Clerk, but as Leader of the Choir and principal Singer …. I am also Secretary and permanent First Elder or Warden of the Church & Community”.

The building still stands and functions in the via San Michele and is now denominated an Anglican church, though Bynner never uses the words “Church of England”. In a letter of December 1831 Bynner signs off his project, “I have finished my Church and have the pleasure to see it regularly attended. It is the first and only English Church on the continent of Europe that enjoys parochial rights”, which is to say that its baptism, marriage, and burial certificates will be valid in Britain and Ireland.

Bynner returned to Birmingham in 1846 aged 73 accompanied by his Austrian wife Caroline and their adoptive son born in 1812; his brother Jeremiah was still alive, the manufacturer of a Solar Lamp which improved on Argand’s table lamp⁴; he had sent one to his brother in Trieste who was very pleased with it.

At the age of ninety he sat for a carte de visite photograph in a Birmingham studio and now in the possession of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust⁵.

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Further reading

Kenneth H. Baker and Sergio degli Ivanissevich (2004), La presenza Britannica a Trieste: appunti, Trieste: Edizioni Università This scarce book is in practice only available as a free download at https://www.openstarts.units.it/entities/publication/d9fed078-2283-4f5e-8746-5e773030ed09/details

Zeno Saracino (2018), Trieste Asburgica, Trieste: Centoparole

References

1.                    https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/warks/vol7/pp549-555.

2.                    There is a detailed account in Baker and Ivanissevich.

3.                    In 1785 the Swiss community in Trieste purchased the Austrian Catholic Basilica of San Silvestro and stripped its interior to arrive at a semblance of Calvinist austerity. The building still stands, now less austere.

4.                    Wikipedia: Argand Lamp.

5.                    The British Library bought some papers of Henry Bynner’s at a May 2018 Forum auction in London where they were described as a “Letter Book, manuscript, slightly browned, 2 lithographed circular letters from the Foreign Office loosely inserted (1 signed by Canning), original half calf, worn, paper label on upper cover, 1818-26; Report on the Trade and Navigation of the Port of Trieste, in answer to a Set of Queries proposed by the... Lords of the Committee of His Majesty's Privy-Council for Trade, manuscript, title and 124pp. excluding blanks, pencil inscription on front free endpaper: "from the library of the late W Salt Brassington ex Chief Librarian Stratford upon Avon" ”.

I have not been able to study this material. After the death of his first wife Bynner married Sarah Salt whose surname suggests the route by which these papers came into the possession of W. Salt Brassington. There are opportunities for further research here.

 

Acknowledgment

Mike Sharpe of the Association of Genealogists and Researchers in Archives delved into Birmingham archives for me.