which ruined the West Indian sugar trade, and (3) the extortionate rates levied by the Bristol Dock Company, incorporated in 1803. These rates made competition with Liverpool and London impossible, while other tolls were levied by the Merchant Venturers and the corporation. The decline was checked by the efforts of the Bristol chamber of commerce (founded in 1823) and by the Municipal Reform Act of 1835. The new corporation, consisting of 48 councillors and 16 aldermen who elected the mayor, being themselves chosen by the burgesses of each ward, bought the docks in 1848 and reduced the fees. In 1877–1880 the docks at the mouth of the river at Avonmouth and Portishead were made, and these were bought by the corporation in 1884. A revival of trade, rapid increase of population and enlargement of the boundaries of the city followed. The chief magistrate became a lord mayor in 1899.
See J. Corry, History of Bristol (Bristol, 1816); J. Wallaway, Antiquities (1834); J. Evans, Chronological History of Bristol (1824); Bristol vol. of Brit. Archaeol. Inst.; J. F. Nicholl and J. Taylor, Bristol Past and Present (Bristol and London, 1882); W. Hunt, Bristol, in “Historic Towns” series (London, 1887); J. Latimer, Annals of Bristol (various periods); G. E. Weare, Collectanea relating to the Bristol Friars (Bristol, 1893); Samuel Seyer, History of Bristol and Bristol Charters (1812); The Little Red Book of Bristol (1900); The Maior’s Kalendar (Camden Soc., 1872); Victoria County History, Gloucester.
BRISTOL, a borough of Bucks county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the Delaware river, opposite Burlington, New Jersey, 20 m. N.E. of Philadelphia. Pop. (1890) 6553; (1900) 7104 (1134 foreign-born); (1910) 9256. It is served by the Pennsylvania railway. The borough is built on level ground elevated several feet above the river, and in the midst of an attractive farming country. The principal business houses are on Mill Street; while Radcliffe Street extends along the river. Among Bristol’s manufacturing establishments are machine shops, rolling mills, a planing mill, yarn, hosiery and worsted mills, and factories for making carpets, wall paper and patent leather. Bath Springs are located just outside the borough limits; though not so famous as they were early in the 18th century, these springs are still well known for the medicinal properties of their chalybeate waters. Bristol was one of the first places to be settled in Pennsylvania after William Penn received his charter for the province in 1681, and from its settlement until 1725 it was the seat of government of the county. It was laid out in 1697 and was incorporated as a borough in 1720; the present charter, however, dates only from 1851.
BRISTOL, the shire-township of Bristol county, Rhode Island, U.S.A., about 15 m. S.S.E. of Providence, between Narragansett Bay on the W. and Mount Hope Bay on the E., thus being a peninsula. Pop. (1900) 6901, of whom 1923 were foreign-born; (1905; state census) 7512; (1910) 8565; area 12 sq. m. It is served by the New York, New Haven & Hartford, and the Rhode Island Suburban railways, and is connected with the island of Rhode Island by ferry. Mount Hope (216 ft.), on the eastern side, commands delightful views of landscape, bay and river scenery. Elsewhere in the township the surface is gently undulating and generally well adapted to agriculture, especially to the growing of onions. A small island, Hog Island, is included in the township. The principal village, also known as Bristol, is a port of entry with a capacious and deep harbour, has manufactories of rubber and woollen goods, and is well known as a yacht-building centre, several defenders of the America’s Cup, including the “Columbia” and the “Reliance,” having been built in the Herreshoff yards here. At the close of King Philip’s War in 1676, Mount Hope Neck (which had been the seat of the vanquished sachem), with most of what is now the township of Bristol, was awarded to Plymouth Colony. In 1680, immediately after Plymouth had conveyed the “Neck” to a company of four, the village was laid out; the following year, in anticipation of future commercial importance, the township and the village were named Bristol, from the town in England. The township became the shire-township in 1685, passed under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts in 1692, and in 1747 was annexed to Rhode Island. During the War of Independence the village was bombarded by the British on the 7th of October 1775, but suffered little damage; on the 25th of May 1778 it was visited and partially destroyed by a British force.
BRISTOL, a city of Sullivan county, Tennessee, and Washington county, Virginia, U.S.A., 130 m. N.E. of Knoxville, Tennessee, at an altitude of about 1700 ft. Pop. (1880) 3209; (1890) 6226; (1900) 9850 (including 1981 negroes); (1910) 13,395, of whom 7148 were in Tennessee and 6247 were in Virginia. Bristol is served by the Holston Valley, the Southern, the Virginia & South-Western, and the Norfolk & Western railways, and is a railway centre of some importance. It is near the great mineral deposits of Virginia, Tennessee, West Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina; an important distributing point for iron, coal and coke; and has tanneries and lumber mills, iron furnaces, tobacco factories, furniture factories and packing houses. It is the seat of Sullins College (Methodist Episcopal, South; 1870) for women, and of the Virginia Institute for Women (Baptist, 1884), both in the state of Virginia, and of a normal college for negroes, on the Tennessee side of the state line. The Tennessee-Virginia boundary line runs through the principal street, dividing the place into two separate corporations, the Virginia part, which before 1890 (when it was chartered as a city) was known as Goodson, being administratively independent of the county in which it is situated. Bristol was settled about 1835, and the town of Bristol, Tennessee, was first incorporated in 1856.
BRISTOW, BENJAMIN HELM (1832–1896), American lawyer and politician, was born in Elkton, Kentucky, on the 20th of June 1832, the son of Francis Marion Bristow (1804–1864), a Whig member of Congress in 1854–1855 and 1859–1861. He graduated at Jefferson College, Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1851, studied law under his father, and was admitted to the Kentucky bar in 1853. At the beginning of the Civil War he became lieutenant-colonel of the 25th Kentucky Infantry; was severely wounded at Shiloh; helped to recruit the 8th Kentucky Cavalry, of which he was lieutenant-colonel and later colonel; and assisted at the capture of John H. Morgan in July 1863. In 1863–1865 he was state senator; in 1865–1866 assistant United States district-attorney, and in 1866–1870 district-attorney for the Louisville district; and in 1870–1872, after a few months’ practice of law with John M. Harlan, was the (first appointed) solicitor-general of the United States. In 1873 President Grant nominated him attorney-general of the United States in case George H. Williams were confirmed as chief justice of the United States,—a contingency which did not arise. As secretary of the treasury (1874–1876) he prosecuted with vigour the so-called “Whisky Ring,” the headquarters of which was at St Louis, and which, beginning in 1870 or 1871, had defrauded the Federal government out of a large part of its rightful revenue from the distillation of whisky. Distillers and revenue officers in St Louis, Milwaukee, Cincinnati and other cities were implicated, and the illicit gains—which in St Louis alone probably amounted to more than $2,500,000 in the six years 1870–1876—were divided between the distillers and the revenue officers, who levied assessments on distillers ostensibly for a Republican campaign fund to be used in furthering Grant’s re-election. Prominent among the ring’s alleged accomplices at Washington was Orville E. Babcock, private secretary to President Grant, whose personal friendship for Babcock led him to indiscreet interference in the prosecution. Through Bristow’s efforts more than 200 men were indicted, a number of whom were convicted, but after some months’ imprisonment were pardoned. Largely owing to friction between himself and the president, Bristow resigned his portfolio in June 1876; as secretary of the treasury he advocated the resumption of specie payments and at least a partial retirement of “greenbacks”; and he was also an advocate of civil service reform. He was a prominent candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1876. After 1878 he practised law in New York City, where he died on the 22nd of June 1896.
See Memorial of Benjamin Helm Bristow, largely prepared by David Willcox (Cambridge, Mass., privately printed, 1897); Whiskey Frauds, 44th Cong., 1st Sess., Mis. Doc. No. 186; Secrets of the Great Whiskey Ring (Chicago, 1880), by John McDonald, who for nearly six years had been supervisor of internal revenue at St Louis,—a book by one concerned and to be considered in that light.
