Robert Verdin - MP and Salt Manufacturer

A dominant figure in the salt trade in the 19th century was Robert Verdin who rose to be senior partner in the firm of Joseph Verdin and Sons, salt manufacturers of Winsford, Northwich and Liverpool. He ended his highly successful career as Member Parliament for the Northwich Division of Cheshire. Verdin entered Parliament at a time of great controversy. Verdin was a convinced Liberal. In 1885, however, Liberal Premier William Ewart Gladstone, had become convined that the only way to solve the problem of Ireland was to grant Home Rule.

The bill had been introduced in 1886 and the liberal Party split from top to bottom. Those who opposed the proposals for Home Rule decided to form a Liberal Unionist party which later was to work closely with the Conservatives. Verdin was opposed to Home Rule for Ireland like Liberal/stalwarts of the calibre of John Bright and Joseph Chamberlain, once a republican. It was as a Liberal Unionist he sat for Northwich. He was elected in the 1886 General Election.

Verdin served as Chairman of the Salt Chamber of Commerce when Northwich salt mines were booming, due to the increasing use of salt for the manufacture of chemicals. He was also a local benefactor. He presented Northwich with a park, opened on July 25 1887. He also gave Northwich its public baths. Living at the Brockhurst, Northwich he was only too well of the problems which then faced Northwich through salt mining.

Michael Drayton in Elizabethan times had known the importance of the salt trade and written: "The Nant-Wych and the North whose either brynie well for store and sorts of salts make Weaver to excell". The growth of the industry, however, had earned Northwich the reputation of being in the eyes of a Victorian traveller, "One of the busiest and dirtiest towns in Cheshire." The same writer continues: "For there is an air of desolation and untidiness which one usually finds in a coal mining district.

Many of the houses are screwed and bolted together to keep them secure". Local administrators like Verdin had to face up to the constant problems caused by subsidence. Gloomy prophets were arguing: "If the salt works continue to be prosecuted with their present vigour, the time will come, when a great portion of the town and the neighbourhood of Northwich will be sunk beneath the waters of the Weaver. Witton corn mill fell some years ago.

Adjoining its site is the "Leicester Arms" public house, in which a gradual subsidence of the earth has converted the sitting rooms and tap room into cellars and the apartments used as sleeping rooms at that period are now the sitting rooms and the tap room. “ In Verdin's time Northwich was producing enormous quantities of rock and white salt. The rock salt was going the Belgium and Prussia. The white salt was being exported to the United States.

Rock salt had been discovered at Marbury by accident over three hundred years earlier but it was not till the mid-19th century, when the railway network was largely complete that firms like Messrs Verdin made the really big profits from the industry. In his day the most visited of the local mines was the Old Marston mine. This had then been worked more or less for a century and Verdin had vivid memories of the visit of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia in 1844.

In Verdin's day the main cutting in the mine, when illuminated with farthing candles along its walls of rock salt was known by the miners as "Piccadilly". Northwich's prosperity and dirty appearance was also increased by its docks and boat building establishments. Winsford was similarly shrouded often in smoke. There 600 pans were used, keeping 2,000 men employed. There 500,000 tons of white salt were being shipped every year.

Verdin was keenly interested in securing good access to the Winsford and Northwich area by water and was made a Commissioner for the Upper Mersey. For some years he was President of the White Salt Trade Association. Chairman also of Winsford Local Board, responsible for providing proper drainage and sanitation, he found time to as a magistrate for Cheshire. Educated by private tutors, he had entered as a young man the family business of Verdin Brothers, merchants of Liverpool.

Verdin himself died young and was Northwich's Member Parliament for little over a year. He died at the Brockhurst, Northwich on July 27 1887. In the short time he had been in Parliament he had however taken full opportunity to express in Parliament the special problems salt merchants were experiencing.


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