Sir Arthur Fell (7 August 1850 – 29 December 1934) was an English solicitor and Conservative Party politician. After a notorious legal case in 1906 where a biased judge dismissed an election petition against him, Fell sat in the House of Commons from 1906 to 1922 for Great Yarmouth. He was noted as an opponent of free trade and as a persistent advocate of a Channel Tunnel.
Early life
Fell was born in the city of Nelson, New Zealand, the fourth son of Alfred Fell and brother of Charles Fell, mayor of Nelson. He was educated at St John's College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1871 with a B.A. degree. He qualified as a solicitor in 1874, becoming a partner in the firm of Hare and Fell, agents to the Treasury Solicitor.
Career
Fell moved from law into business, becoming involved in a range of companies including three of which he was chairman: the African City Properties Trust, the Siberian Syndicate and the Spassky Copper Mine. He travelled in Europe and in the British Dominions.
1906 election
In July 1904, Fell was selected as the Conservative candidate for the borough of Great Yarmouth, where the sitting Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Sir John Colomb was retiring and had recommended Fell to the Yarmouth Conservatives. At the general election in 1906, Fell won the seat with a majority of 236 votes (3% of the total).
An election petition was lodged against the result by the defeated Liberal Party candidate Martin White, alleging a range of illegal practices including bribery and treating of voters by Fell and his agents. The hearings began on 26 April at the town hall in Yarmouth, before Justice Grantham and Justice Channell. Both Fell and White employed King's Counsel, assisted on Fell's side by four junior counsel.
The case concluded in May, and the petition was dismissed. The judges found that there had been systematic treating of voters on Fell's behalf, with a series of meetings in public houses, including one in Yarmouth Town Hall on 19 October 1905 which was described as an "orgy"; Fell had sought a drink-free meeting, but unknown to him Colomb had provided two dozen bottles of whisky, and the judges found that the drinking had not been provided on Fell's behalf and was not designed to influence voters. They also dismissed White's complaint that Fell's return of expenses had been incomplete.
However, the judges found that on election day a Mr John George Baker had give some fifteen people a small amount of money, usually a shilling or a half-crown. Baker, who was unknown to Fell's election agent, took a vehicle used by the Conservatives and delivered voters to the poll; he told the election court that he had no politics and had given money to men because they were unemployed. Both judges agreed that Baker had been bribing voters, but differed on the crucial point of whether he had done so on behalf of Fell: in legal terms, whether Baker was acting as Fell's agent. Justice Channell decided that Baker was indeed an agent of Fell, ruling that Baker's action fell clearly within the normal principles of agency; but Justice Grantham disagreed. The law required that both judges had to agree, and so the petition was dismissed. The judges were unable to award costs to Fell, and Channell observed that Fell had "escaped by the skin of his teeth".
The Times newspaper described the decision as a "curious conclusion". Justice Grantham was himself a former Conservative MP, and this was the third petition hearing at that year in which he had been seen to express political partisanship, having previously heard petitions relating to the 1906 election in Bodmin and Maidstone. After an outburst in court in Liverpool, where he claimed the right to hold and express his political opinions, a motion was tabled in the House of Commons on the Great Yarmouth petition, which sought to begin the a formal process of examining "complaints that have been made of the partisan and political character of the conduct during the trial of that petition of Mr. Justice Grantham." The motion, which had been signed by 347 MPs, was moved by South Donegal MP J. G. Swift MacNeill, who attacked Grantham to repeated cheers in the House. Baker, he pointed out, was a boatman whose wife was being sued for non-payment of her milk bill; and Grantham had described Colomb as "my fear friend". In a lengthy debate, the Attorney-General Sir John Walton described Grantham's conduct as "most unfortunate", but warned the House that proceeding to ask the Crown to remove a judge was an extreme step, and one he advised against. MacNeill withdrew the motion.