1st Baron Loch of Drylaw Henry Brougham Loch

Title: 1st Baron Loch of Drylaw

Epithet: Reforming Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man (1827-1900)

Record type: Biographies

Biography: From ‘New Manx Worthies’ (2006):

Henry Brougham was the ninth and youngest child of James and Ann Loch of Drylaw in the county of Midlothian in Scotland. As a child, he was for several years an invalid.

Fully recovered, Loch joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman in 1840, but left in 1842. After studying at an officers' school, he enlisted in the army in 1844. He went to India to join the 9th Light Cavalry and was gazetted to the East India Company's 3rd Bengal Light Cavalry. Still only seventeen, he was chosen by Lord Gough as his aide-de-camp in 1845 and then became adjutant and second-in-command of the famous Skinner's Irregular Cavalry Regiment in 1849. He was sent to Bulgaria in 1854 to help organise the Turkish Irregular Cavalry fighting the Russians in the Crimean War.

Captain Loch became attaché to James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin, on a diplomatic and military mission to China in 1857. He was involved in the signing of the Treaty of Tientsin in 1858. Elgin and Loch then moved on to Japan to conclude the Treaty of Yedo. Loch returned to England, entrusted with delivering the treaty to the Foreign Secretary, the Earl of Clarendon. Whilst visiting Clarendon's house he met the Earl's twin niece, Elizabeth Villiers, who would later become his wife.

In 1860 failure to obtain ratification of the Treaty of Tiensin necessitated another diplomatic and military mission to China. Loch and Harry Parkes, the British Commissioner, rode behind the Chinese lines under a flag of truce, but were taken prisoner and tortured. They escaped their captors just before the arrival of the Emperor's death warrant, ordering their beheading. The Treaty of Tiensin was ratified, and Loch was again entrusted to return to England with the new treaty as well as the Convention of Pekin.

Loch resigned from the army in 1861 and was appointed Private Secretary to the British Home Secretary, Sir George Grey. His renewed friendship with Elizabeth Villiers quickly turned to romance, and they were married in 1862. They made a handsome couple, she a beautiful and extremely well-connected 21 year old, he tall and fair, with a long beard which he retained for the rest of his life.

The year after his marriage, aged 35, Henry Loch was appointed Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man. He leased the property on the Bemahague estate which is still the Island's Government House, and the couple's three children were born during his term of office, the eldest being given Douglas as his second name.

Early on in his Governorship, Loch was faced with two important issues. The first was an increased call for reform of the self-elected House of Keys which came to a head in 1864 when James Brown, owner and editor of the Isle of Man Times, attacked the undemocratic nature of the Keys. He was ordered before them and found guilty of contempt. When he refused to apologise, they committed him to prison. A successful appeal saw Brown awarded substantial damages. The case for reform was taken up by Loch the following year, with a confidential letter sent to Sir George Grey in which Loch advised:

"Without interfering with the efficient working of the Constitution of the Island I think a change might be effected that would be agreeable to the feelings of the people and remove a not altogether unfounded grievance. I would suggest that the Life Members of the House of Keys should be gradually replaced by elected Members."

The second controversial issue was the Island's lack of control over its own customs duties, a result of the Revestment Act of 1765. Duties were subsequently fixed by British Acts of Parliament without reference to, and often in spite of, protests made by Tynwald. Tynwald maintained that any surplus should be spent in the Island but the British Treasury claimed the right to use it in any way it pleased. The necessity for additional money to improve the Island's neglected harbours became critical in 1865, when a ferocious storm ruined the ill-designed Douglas breakwater. Loch submitted proposals for an increase in Manx customs duties, the extra revenue to be used by Tynwald exclusively for Manx purposes, though subject to the supervision of the Treasury and the veto of the Governor.

With the British Treasury agreeing to support the necessary changes in revenue control through the Isle of Man Customs, Harbours and Public Purposes Act of 1866, the Keys agreed to become an elected body through Tynwald's House of Keys Election Act of 1866.

Loch was determined that the Island should equip itself for the newly established tourist industry. When he first arrived he had found that the harbours had been woefully neglected. His immediate efforts were directed towards Port Erin breakwater, followed by deep-water landing facilities for steamers at Douglas through the replacement of the breakwater and the construction of the Victoria Pier. Extensive improvements to Douglas harbour were planned directly after the first Manx General Election in 1867 and were finally completed in 1872. A breakwater at Peel, piers at Port St Mary and Ramsey, and improvements at Castletown harbour followed. In 1872 a daily mail service throughout the year was commenced. A railway line between Douglas and Peel was opened in 1873. Lines to Port Erin and Ramsey followed.

The redesign of lower Douglas was a major priority. Loch inaugurated the building of Loch Promenade on land reclaimed from the foreshore. Over the next few years terraces of hotels were erected, with the sale of the plots paying for the construction of the promenade. The new Villiers Hotel, so called after Elizabeth Loch's family name, was the first on Loch Promenade and it made an immediate impression on arriving holidaymakers. The construction of Victoria Street, the new main thoroughfare leading from Loch Promenade and connecting with Prospect Hill, provided a link between old Douglas and its new uptown suburbs.

When Loch arrived on the Island in 1863 the annual number of visitors was about 60,000; the figure reached 90,000 in 1873, 93,000 in 1880, 183,000 in 1884, and rose to 348,000 in 1887.

There was a dramatic increase in legislation during his term of office, including the modernisation of Manx law and the revision of the criminal code. Tynwald undertook direct responsibility for compulsory education in 1872 and in 1881 gave the vote to spinsters and widows aged over 21 who owned property. The absence of local support for proper poor law provision and associated social reforms dismayed and frustrated Loch. Brown's Isle of Man Directory of 1894 records that his ambitions were 'subject to many temporary checks, arising mainly out of engrained conservatism of the native Manx and the intensely parochial feelings which still characterise their politics'.

Henry Brougham Loch was responsible for the movement of government from Castletown to Douglas, which became the Island's capital in 1869. Tynwald Court moved into the former Bank of Mona building on Prospect Hill in 1879. Loch was knighted in 1880.

Loch's aim to secure higher colonial office eventually took him away from the Island. In 1882 he was briefly appointed as London based Commissioner of HM Woods and Forests at a salary lower than the £1200 he had been earning as Governor of the Isle of Man, but this appointment brought him closer to centres of influence. In 1884 he was appointed Governor of Victoria in Australia where he was very well respected. In 1889 he was offered the posts of Governor of Cape Colony and High Commissioner for South Africa. His time in Africa was difficult. He had conflicts with both Cecil Rhodes, prime minister of the Cape, and President Kruger of the Transvaal.

'AK', writing in 9th May 1892 edition of the London newspaper The Echo, saw Loch thus: Of all the holders of place in our great Colonial Hierarchy, Sir Henry Brougham Loch is unquestionably the strongest. He is an autocrat, his autocracy scarcely leavened by a respect for tradition. It is purely a personal despotism, born of a Desire to have his own way; and this love of personal rule came into existence in the Isle of Man.

Loch returned to England in 1895 and was raised to the peerage, voting with the Liberal Unionists. He died of heart disease at the age of 73.

Biography written by Kit Gawne.

(With thanks to Culture Vannin as publishers of the book: Kelly, Dollin (general editor), ‘New Manx Worthies’, Manx Heritage Foundation/Culture Vannin, 2006, pp.286-9.)

Culture Vannin

#NMW

Gender: Male

Date of birth: 23 May 1827

Date of death: 20 June 1900

Name Variant: Loch, H.B.

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