Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Ludlow, John Malcolm Forbes
LUDLOW, JOHN MALCOLM FORBES (1821–1911), social reformer, second son of Colonel John Ludlow, C.B., of the East India Company's service, by his wife Maria Jane Brown, daughter of Murdoch Brown of Tellicherry, Madras, was born at Nimach in India on 8 March 1821. His father was a younger brother of Edmund Ludlow, head of the Hill Deverell branch of the Wiltshire family, to which Edmund Ludlow [q. v.] the regicide belonged. Major-general John Ludlow (1801-1882), to whom the suppression of widow-burning in Rajputana was chiefly due, was his first cousin. Ludlow's mother was in Boulogne when war broke out after the peace of Amiens, and was detained with her governess, but allowed to reside in Paris for purposes of education. The intimacy with France thus formed led to her living there after her husband's death, and thus her son witnessed the revolution of 1830. He was sent in 1832 to the Collège Bourbon in Paris, where he obtained many prizes, and graduated bachelier ès lettres of the University of France on 10 July 1837. His education inclined him to wish to become a French subject, but his father's wish that he should be an Englishman determined him to leave France. He paid a visit to Martinique, where he acquired a horror of slavery, and thence returned to England, read law in the chambers of Bellenden Ker, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn on 21 Nov. 1843. He practised as a conveyancer from 1843 to 1874, but had many interests outside the law. One of the first of these was the British India Society, an association for promoting reforms in India. At its inaugural meeting he heard and admired Daniel O'Connell. He attended a conference on the abolition of slavery, where Thomas Clarkson [q. v.] presided, and elsewhere became familiar with the speaking of Lyndhurst and Brougham, and heard Carlyle lecture. In 1841 he visited Manchester, where he became acquainted with John Bright [q. v.], Richard Cobden [q. v.], and R. R. R. Moore [q. v.], and a little later he became a member of the anti-corn law league. In the same year he paid a second visit to the West Indies, and in 1844, after an attack of hæmoptysis, spent a winter in Madeira. When the revolution of 1848 broke out he went to Paris to look after his two surviving sisters, who lived there. He mixed with the populace, was struck by the general good-humour, and made one or two speeches from a chair in the streets. From 1847 onwards he sought in London to interest young men in looking after the poor. He had called upon F. D. Maurice, then chaplain of Lincoln's Inn, in relation to work in his district. On 10 April 1848 Charles Kingsley called upon him on the suggestion of Maurice, and Ludlow went with Kingsley to see the Chartists on their way from Kennington Common. They walked back to the house of Maurice to give him the news that Feargus O'Connor [q. v.] had advised the people to disperse quietly. In May 1848 'Politics for the People' was issued, and this was the starting-point of the Christian Socialist movement. The paper only lasted till July, but the founders, with Charles Mansfield, Archibald Campbell, Frank Penrose, and others, continued to meet, generally in Ludlow's chambers, and a result of their discussions was the foundation of a night school in Little Ormond Yard. Thomas Hughes [q. v. Suppl. I] joined in the work soon after it started, and always continued to be a friend of Ludlow. In the last week of Dec. 1849 these associates, with W. J. Evelyn of Wotton and two working men, met together with the object of encouraging work for mutual profit, and co-operative production in certain trades. Ludlow afterwards presented the Labour Co-partnership Association with a table bearing an inscription on a brass plate recording that it was 'the one used by the Christian Socialists when drawing up the first code of rules for a workmen's co-operative productive society,' in 1848. The table is now at 6 Bloomsbury Square, London. He founded and edited in 1850 a penny weekly paper called the 'Christian Socialist.' Lectures and classes were held in 1853 for working men and women in Castle Street East (by Oxford Street), and Ludlow conducted there a successful French class. From these, and partly in consequence of a resolution of a conference of delegates from co-operative bodies, the Working Men's College in Great Ormond Street arose in November 1854. Ludlow was the chief practical worker in its foundation. He lectured there on law, on English, and on the history of India. These last lectures were published in two volumes in 1858. He wrote a pamphlet in the same year on the war in Oude, and in 1859 'Thoughts on the Policy of the Crown towards India' ; several parts of 'Tracts for Priests and People' (1861-2) ; 'A Sketch of the History of the United States' (1862); 'Woman's Work in the Church' (1865) ; 'Popular Epics of the Middle Ages' (2 vols. 1865) ; 'President Lincoln self-portrayed' (1866) ; 'A Quarter Century of Jamaica Legislation' (1866); 'Progress of the Working Classes' (1867); 'The War of American Independence' (1876), besides articles in 'Good Words' (1863-4), on slavery, in the 'Edinburgh Review,' 'Fraser's' and 'Macmillan's Magazine,' the 'Fortnightly' and the 'Contemporary Review,' and other periodical publications. He contributed biographies to the 'Dictionary of Christian Biography' and to the 'Biographical Dictionary' of the Society for the Institution of Useful knowledge. In 1869 two was active in originating the first co-operative congress in London. He was secretary of the royal commission on friendly and benefit societies from 1870 to 1874. On the death of John Tidd Pratt [q.v.] he was made registrar of friendly societies in England on 27 Feb. 1875, and was appointed to the newly created office of chief registrar of friendly societies on 13 Aug. 1875, an office which he held till 1891 and in which he rendered laborious services to the friendly societies of the United Kingdom, the value of which they several times publicly acknowledged. He was created C.B. on 20 June 1887. After his retirement he still continued to take interest in the causes which he had begun to serve in his youth, and a few days before his death signed a manifesto with Lord Courtney and others in favour of the adoption of co-partnership as a remedy for existing disturbed conditions of labour. He died at 35 Upper Addison Gardens, Kensington, of a pneumonic attack, on 17 Oct. 1911. He married on 20 March 1869 Maria Sarah, youngest daughter of Gordon Forbes of Ham Common. She died without issue in 1910.
Ludlow was a small, slightly built man of gentle manners. He had a finely shaped head and brown eyes of peculiar brightness. He was active in mind and body to the end. The 'constans et perpetua voluntas' of Justinian animated his whole life. He was always ready to sacrifice everything in support of his principles. His reputation for knowledge of the part of the law which interested him was high. He was learned in both men and books, and knew more than a dozen languages. His political creed was based on faith in the people. He was firmly attached to Christianity, and his deep religious feelings were apparent in his speeches, writings, and conduct, and are illustrated in a short account which exists in manuscript of seven great crises in his spiritual and moral life.
[The manuscript notes of Ludlow's reminiscences have been kindly lent for the purpose of this life by his executor, Mr, Urquhart A. Forbes; see also The Times, 19 Oct. 1911; Working Men's College Journal, Nov. 1911 and Feb. and March 1912; Co-Partnership, Sept. and Nov. 1911; Commonwealth, Nov. 1911; Co-operative News, 21 and 28 Oct, 1911; Scottish Co-operator, Oct. 1911; F. Maurice, Life of F. D. Maurice, 2 vols., 4th edit. 1885; Charles Kingsley, Letters and Life, by his wife, 1908; The Working Men's College (1854-1904), 1904 (with portrait, p. 13); Sir Henry Cotton, Indian and Home Memories, 1911; personal knowledge.]