Through out the late 1840’s and early 1850’s a series of freehold land societies were formed. The first Freehold Land Society was started in Birmingham in 1847 by James Taylor (Junior). At the time Taylor started the Freehold Land Society in Birmingham, he had already achieved regional acclaim as a promoter of temperance, a cause to which he had become committed to only seven years before. By June 1850 there were, according to a conservative critic, 50 societies with 14,281 members which has already purchased 31 estates or as one was described by the members of one society at Smethwick "Votingham".

Clearly the overriding political motive of the movement was to gerrymander the counties for the liberal cause. Often the streets laid out on the estates bore barely disguised names such as Ballot St or Franchise Street to show their purpose. Other names in common use were freetraders like Cobden and Villiers or local worthies who supported the cause.

In 1850, John Merridrew, a conservative in Birmingham published an alarmist tract about the impact of the movement, which actually over stated the resulting impact of the Votingham estates were to have on local voting patterns. Merridrew warned "Conservatives! Are you prepared to see the power you have hitherto possessed, the influence you have long exercised at the Hastings and in the senate wrested from you by a host of mushroom voters manufactured expressly with a view to a future majority".

He also explained how the Conservatives in Birmingham had responded by forming the Victoria Freehold Land, Building and Investment Society. His conclusion was that to meet the " present extringencies it must be society for society vote for vote." Clearly mushroom voters were all right as long as they were likely to vote correctly!

Despite the hatred and venom with which Merridrew inflicted on Taylor and his gerrymandering the constituencies, the only biographical details of Taylor that I have come across is a short sketch of his life printed in the Freehold Land Times - a successor to the The Freeholder – the movements monthly newspaper. Whilst trying to present his father, James Taylor (senior) as a working man, apprenticed at the Soho Works, it lets the cat out of the bag that he is part of either the wealthier working class or the middle class.

At the age of 70, we learn that James Taylor (senior) has built up a business which he runs for the benefit of some of the family. Additionally, the father is describe as an "extreme Liberal in politics and one of the 360 who plumped for Joseph Sturge Esq., when that gentlemen stood for Birmingham a few years ago." His father and mother were strong Baptists, worshipping in the same church in Birmingham for over 50 years.

Maybe the business is the wealth which allows James Taylor (Junior) to spend his days promoting the cause of Freehold Land Societies, day after day travelling to another distant town to thump the tub for his cause. Maybe the motivation behind the promotion of the Freehold Land movement is a direct result of support for Struge’s complete suffrage movement which was a moderate campaign for a fairer franchise. There is much more to learn about Taylor which requires further investigation, however, let us look at what Taylor said at some local meetings.

The main purpose of his talks was to explain the basis on which the Birmingham Freehold Land Society operated. How from small beginnings of two people meeting in Birmingham it had grown into a national movement. By the end of its first year had promoted the formation of six independent societies at Dudley, Stourbridge, Coventry, Worcester, Wolverhampton and Stafford in which with the Birmingham Society 2,108 members had subscribed 2,837 shares. By December 1852 the movement was claiming that there were 130 societies with 85,000 members with 120,000 shares which had purchased 310 estates and had allotted 19,500 freeholds.

Taylor was clearly a good orator and often spoke for an hour and a half to two hours to packed halls throughout the country. Sadly there appears to be no record of his speech at Kidderminster, which he visited on 30th October 1849, prior to the launch of The Freeholder – the monthly newspaper of the movement. After the launch of this paper, there are regular uncritical reports of his appearance at meetings throughout the country.

One local event attended by over 300 people was the Ross and Achenfield Society’s tea to celebrate the purchase of their first estate in Ross on Wye in 1851. His speech covered temperance and the moral influence of people possessing their own homes. Taylor also commented on the political aspect of the movement saying "If we seek to get the franchise without property they tell us we are revolutionary: if we get it with property, then we are revolutionary too!"

On the 11th January 1850 (Freeholder March 1 1850) at Peusnett, near Dudley, our hero attended a meeting of colliers, ironmen, and limestone workers in which he spoke for an hour and a half. The Freeholder reported that " He exposed in a style peculiar to himself, their folly in ‘drinking their freeholds and swallowing their votes’; and not withstanding the sharp rebukes he administered to them, and the time he occupied he sat down amidst cheering and cries of ‘Go on.’"

The great campaigner managed to visit both Leominster and Hereford in April 1850. On the 9th April at a packed public meeting chaired was by the Mayor of Hereford was held, with the Town Clerk officiating at the meeting. The Freeholder claims that between 800 and 1000 attended. Taylor near the beginning of his speech apologises for his profession. "I am nothing more than a working man. The colleges of my country have not been the places of my education; the workshop and the factory have been my school - the vice and the lathe my books - hard and unremitting toil. If, therefore , I use any unpolished expression, any rough saying, I hope you will attribute it to the school in which I received my learning". Taylor also explains the economic principle on which the society works "Now then for a creed, which is simply this, buy land wholesale and sell it to the members retail at the wholesale price (cheers). This is the whole of our creed - the all in all of our operations; this is, in fact, the very essence of the Freehold Land scheme (cheers)."

On the 25th June 1850 we find James Taylor attending what was described as a well attended meeting of the working classes at Wotton under Edge, Gloucestershire. He told them that the freehold land societies had been established with "the view of rendering working men independent, so far as their circumstances would admit of it, improving their social condition." On this occasion he claimed that it was not a party political movement on the basis that as it was open to all classes it could not be said to be party thing. During his speech he gave reasons why the Tories, the Whigs and the "complete suffrage men" could join to obtain for themselves a voice in the election for the county.

At that meeting the prepares of the motion to form the society the unrepentant local Chartist John White spoke of the two classes from whom he expected support - the small band of temperance men and those who ten or eleven years before had united with him in a kind of chartist league. "He, however, was convinced that the only way to obtain their political rights was to reform themselves(cheers); and he would therefore , urge upon them the necessity of prudence, economy and forethought, in order that they might become possessors of the freehold."

February 5th 1851 finds Taylor at Ledbury sharing in the celebration of the Ledbury society’s first estate. He started by declaring that the Freehold Land Society was not a "Snigs End company" - Snigs End being only a short distance from Ledbury- and went on to declare that they the movement had no sympathy with the object of Fergus O’Connor and nor did the societies in any way resemble that O’Connor had brought in to existence.

Looking back the origins of the modern building society movement have their roots in James Taylor. Conventional wisdom implies that the movement was of little importance. George Barnsby, the acclaimed historian of Midlands working class movements at least has the courtesy to mention the Freehold Land Societies, whilst discounting the importance of both the Freehold Land Societies and the Building Societies, appears to suggest that their formation was a result of Chartist agitation.