Voluntary and Social Work
While he appears to have had little interest in national politics, Fielding Johnson was very active in local politics and social affairs. He was a town councillor between 1861 and 1870 and was also made a Justice of the Peace for the Borough in 1873 and for the County in 1888. Remarkably for a man in his position, he also found time to be a prison visitor.
Like many of the City's emerging middle-class, Fielding Johnson was a religious nonconformist and like John Biggs he attended the Great Meeting Hall in Bond Street (where his marriage to Christiana took place).
Humane in his outlook and a Liberal by conviction, he was nonetheless a firm believer in maintaining law and order and volunteered as a Special Constable during the Chartist riots that followed the 1848 French Revolution.
Fielding Johnson was also ready to take up arms when necessary and was one of the first twelve members of the Leicester Volunteer Rifle Corps. Formed in 1859 and later absorbed into the Territorial Army, they were a reaction to the perceived threat of an invasion from France led by belligerent army officers during the unstable reign of Emperor Napoleon III.
The premature deaths of his first wife and two children must have heightened his awareness that even the wealthy were terribly vulnerable to the effects of illness and poor health in Victorian Britain. He was a trustee of the Sutton's Hospital Charity which provided funds for patients requiring convalescence after hospital treatment. He was also a member of the Board of Governors of Leicester Infirmary (later the Leicester Royal Infirmary) for thirty years, spending most of it as Vice Chairman and the years between 1898 and 1902 as Chairman.
On 10 June 1919 Thomas Fielding Johnson was introduced to King George V and Queen Mary during their visit to Leicester as `the Grand Old Man'. In recognition of his great contribution to the city and its people, he was presented with the honorary Freedom of the City on 30 September 1919 aged 91 years old. A silver casket containing the document is in the possession of Leicester Museum. A memorial tablet commemorating his gift to Leicester University can be seen in the building that bears his name while a bell at Leicester Cathedral was named in honour of his son, Thomas Fielding Johnson Junior.
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