John Joseph Mechi has been likened to a character from a Thomas Hardy novel.  He rose from humble origins to great heights, then lost everything on the wheel of fortune and died bankrupt.  But not before he had become a household name in agricultural circles and left a legacy which continues to help those in need in the farming community.

The son of emigrants (an Italian father and Germany mother), John Mechi, became a clerk in the City of London at the age of 16 and by 26 he had saved sufficient to set up on his own account as a retail cutler.  Over the next ten years his business prospered and sales of his patent ‘Mechi’s magic razor strop’ made him a fortune, as well as a household name across the country.

This enabled him to invest in farming, an interest that stemmed from childhood holidays spent in the Essex countryside.  After an intensive study of published work on English farming he resolved 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 at Tiptree in Essex.  Like many first generation landowners, John Mechi 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. 

However, his ideas for improving the land, which was variously described as “poor marshy land” or “poor clay soil”, in an area where “the poverty-stricken grass struggles in patches for a precarious existence amongst the monopolizing furzes”, were rejected by the tenant, on the grounds that improvements would result in a higher rent.  Not a man to be thwarted, John Mechi bought out the tenant and moved in to supervise the farming himself.

In the first five years he spent over £13,500 rebuilding the house and creating a model farm, added new buildings, designed according to his theories, and introducing the idea of keeping cattle on slatted floors.  He replaced old hedges, cleared some300 trees and laid between 80 and 90 miles of drainage.  

Tiptree Hall, as he renamed the farm, attracted hundreds of visitors each year to demonstrations of new machinery, methods and ideas.  John Mechi’s “annual July agricultural show”, which including a speech about his ideas and an ample luncheon, became well known and by 1856 it was attracting some 600 people.

In 1859 he published the first edition of ‘How to Farm Profitably’, which sold 10,000 copies and had run to four editions by 1864.  At this time John Mechi also became concerned about the plight of fellow farmers and the lack of any organization to help those who had fallen on hard times.  It was his determined campaigning and his canvassing of the nobility and landed gentry which led to the formation of the Agricultural Benevolent Institution in 1860.

Meanwhile, as his commercial business continued to prosper, his standing in the City grew.  John Mechi flourished as a man of substance, speaking and writing on whole range of subjects, often having his ideas caricatured in publications such as Punch. He became a sheriff, then a City alderman and by 1866 was in line to become Lord Mayor. 

Then 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 was the 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 razor strops, the result of a vogue for beards, following the Crimea 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, 1880 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 encephalitis 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.  Unfortunately he died before he could benefit from it but it was kept open for his wife and family, raising £5,000 (equivalent to £500,000 today) including £200 from the Royal Bounty at the express wish of the Prime Minister, William Gladstone.