John came in at Totnes after the death of Thomas Mills.
John was born in Scotland and became a textile merchant in Glasgow and Manchester.
John is more famous for his pioneering work in laying submarine cables. As a cotton merchant he was keen to improve transatlantic communications and sunk his money into communication ventures. After the failure of a cable in 1865 he had to give personal guarantee to contractors working for his new Anglo-American Telegraph Company. His venture laid a cable from Ireland to Canada in 1866 using Brunel's Great Eastern. . His Eastern Telegraph Company eventually became Cable and Wireless. He went on to develop an almost worldwide monopoly of telecommunications.He also had interests in railways in the Isle of Man and the United States. He was also a major art collector.
John pressed for the development of cotton supplies from India in the light of the American Civil War.
John's election was voided in 1866 when Totnes was disenfranchised by the Tory government to prove its claims to be opposed to rotten boroughs.
John was defeated at Wick in 1885 when a Crofter- Liberal candidate John Cameron unseated him.In 1886 he stood as a Liberal Unionist and was defeated. He was knighted in 1888. He lost heavily at a by-election in Govan in 1889 causing a lot of soul searching among the liberal Unionists. The former MP John McCulloch blamed his outsider status but also said "if Sir John had been able to adopt certain planks of the Liberal policy , which he did not do, , he would have carried a third more of the constituency" . The North British Daily Mail alleged that he had brought in Belfast Orangemen to fill out his meetings in poorer areas.
He resigned his seat on health grounds in 1896 and died a few months later aged 79.
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