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RABI - the first 150 years - part 1

In the build up to our 150th anniversary in 2010 we will be tracing the development of the charity. Where better to start than with the man credited with its foundation.

Like so many of agriculture's pioneers, John Mechi was a first generation farmer who came into the industry without preconceived ideas, treating it as a business rather than a way of life and with a willingness to embrace new concepts. While the more enlightened farmers considered his ideas to be the way forward many regarded him with suspicion.

The fact that he was both the son of an emigrant and had made fortune in commerce, which enabled him to invest large sums of money into his farming enterprise, did not endear him to traditional farmers struggling to make ends meet. But he was not a man to be deterred by criticism, rather he encouraged his critics to visit the farm, published accounts of what he was doing and travelled the country adderssing meetings.

His father, Giacomo, a citizen of Bologna, Italy, was employed in business in France but took refuge in England during the "Reign of Terror" and found employment in the household of George III at Kensington Palace. He married Elizabeth Beyer of Poland Street, London and John was their third son.

After completing his schooling in France, at the age of 16 he became a clerk in the City, working in a mercantile house in the Newfoundland Trade.

At 21 he married Fanny Frost and by 26 he had saved sufficient to set up on his own account as a retail cutler at 130 Leadenhall Street. Three years later, in 1830, he was admitted to the Loriners' Company and became a freeman of the City of London. The same year he moved to larger premises in 4 Leadenhall Street.

Over the next ten years his business supplying scientific instruments, pencils and quill cutting penknives prospered as did his ability to "set and ground razors with more than ordinary skill". But the item which made his name known across the country was his patent 'Mechi's magic razor strop'.

Some accounts suggest that he designed the strop but the two patents registered in his name concerned lighting, so he probably purchased the design. Either way it was the product that made his fortune, enabling him to develop the business and turn his thoughts to farming.

After an intensive study of English farming writers he ersolved to practice and publicise improvements in agriculture. To this end, in 1841, he paid £3,250 for 130 acres with a lath and plaster farmhouse known as Sadlers or Bigmores, at Tiptree in Essex.

The land, variously described as "poor marshy land" or "poor clay soil", was in an area where "the poverty stricken grass struggles, in patches, for a precarious existence amongst the monopolizing furzes" and "the few half-starved cattle that search there for a living, walk many a mile ere their cavings are satisfied."

He demolished the house, replacing it with a 'modest mansion' - renaming it Tiptree Hall - and added new farm buildings designed according to his theories, introducing the idea of keeping cattle of slatted floors. A further 42 acres were added to the farm; old hedges were replaced by new hedgerows, banks and fences; some 300 trees were cut down; andbetween 80 and 90 miles of drainage was laid.

In the first five years he spent over £13,500 creating a model farm, which was to attract hundreds of visitors each year to demonstrations of new machinery, methods and ideas. His "annual July agricultural show", which included a speech about his ideas and an ample luncheon, became well known. In 1852 it was the subject of a six page report in Charles Dickens weekly journal Household Works; the following year it featured in the London Illustrated News, which described it as "Mr Mechi's annual lecture and annual feast"; in 1854 it was reported in The Times. By 1856 he was entertaining some 600 people at his annual gathering.

A constant theme of John Mechi's speeches was that the old ideas and time-honoured methods would have to be abandoned if farming was to be made to pay. However, it was many years after his death before his 'meat per acre theories' were accepted and his prediction that ploughing would be done by machine was 60 years ahead of its time.

With the industrial revolution gaining force, he warned that farm labourers would have to be paid more and housing conditions improved to prevent the drift from the land. Something which he certainly practised, housing his own labourers in neat, red bricked cottages and helping to finance the building of the village school and the local church, St Luke's, where he and his second wife Charlotte are buried.

Hi first wife, Fanny died in 1845, reportedly giving birth to a son who "predeceased him"  although one account of John Mechi's life states that his first marriage was childless. The same year his farming achievements and business acument were recognised by his appointment as a council member of the Royal Agricultural College, which was going through a difficult period, and he became a member of the committee of management which was to restore the college's fortunes.

He remarried in 1846, to Charlotte Ward of Chillesford, Suffolk and between 1850 and 1859 they had five children - Louisa, Isabella, Joseph, Alice and Florence, only one of whom, Louisa appears to have married.

Meanwhile he maintained his interest in the life of the City. He was both an exhibitor and a juror at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and, at the recommendation of Queen Victoria,  a juror at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1855. In 1856 he became a sheriff of the City of London and Middlesex.

His commercial business prospered and with the purchase of another cutlery business in 1855 he expanded into extensive premises in 112 Regent Street. He advertised widely, stating that his stock included the "the finest specimens of British manufactures" in a wide range of items including dressing cases and bagatelles as well  as "other articles of utility or luxury suitable for presentation" with a "separate department for papier mache manufactures."

1859 was a busy year for John Mechi. He became alderman for the ward of Lime Street; he published the first edition of 'How to Farm Profitably' which sold 10,000 copies and had run to four editions by 1864; and he took on a partner, Charles Bazin, restyling the business "Mechi & Bazin". In 1869, after Bazin's death the business erverted to John Joseph Mechi with an announcement that he would be "assisted by his son".

It was also the time when his thoughts turned to the plight of fellow farmers and the lack of any organisation to help those who had fallen on hard times, leading to the formation of the Agricultural Benevolent Institution in 1860.

John Mechi continued to flourish as a man of substance, writing numerous letters about a whole range of subjects, often having his ideas caricatured in publications such as Punch. He had a hsip (the SS Tiptree) and a fuchsia (Alderman Mechi) named after him as well as a farm scheme in Blennerhasset, Cumbria. The scheme lasted just ten years (1862-72) but Mechi Farm is still there. Between 1860 and 1863 he was master of the Loriner's Company and by 1866 he was in line to become Lord Mayor of London.

Then, reminiscent of a Thomas Hardy tragedy, events beyond his control conspired to bring about his downfall. The failure of the Unity Joint Stock Bank, of which he was a governor, and the Unity Fire and General Life Insurance Company, cost him £30,000, but he was proud of the fact that "his only bank to pay all its creditors". He felt compelled to resign as an alderman and remove himself from the running to become Lord Mayor.

His fortunes were not helped by plummeting sales of razoe strops, the result of a vogue for beards, following the Crimean War. However, he determinedly pursued his farming activities, becoming chairman of The Farmers Club in 1877. The following year ill health prevented him from working on the estate and the culmination of a succession of bad farming years in 1879, when so many farmers failed, finally brought an end to his fortunes.

On Boxing Day 1880, just 12 days after having to place his affairs in liquidation, John Mechi died of diabetes and, it is said, a broken heart.

It is a fitting tribute to the man who gave so much to agriculture that in his last months the farmers of England subscribed £5,000 to help out his financial insolvency. He died before he could receive it but the money went to his wife and family.

Tiptree Hall Click on image to enlarge.

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Alderman Mechi