Sir Joseph Mawbey, 1st Baronet (2 December 1730 – 16 June 1798) was an English distiller and politician who sat in the British House of Commons between 1761 and 1790.
When about ten years old he was taken to Surrey by his uncle, Joseph Pratt, main owner of a distillery at Vauxhall.
[3] Speeches by Mawbey on the proceedings against Wilkes were later published, in the Debates by Sir Henry Cavendish, 2nd Baronet.
[4][5] In 1774 Mawbey contested the county of Surrey, but was defeated, though with 1,390 votes, by a cross-party agreement brokered by George Onslow who saw no chance of his own re-election; Sir Francis Vincent, 7th Baronet and James Scawen were returned.
[7] He was in the same position in 1780, when he offended some of his Whig supporters through his refusal to coalesce with Admiral Keppel; and in April 1784 he was returned without a contest.
[8] He claimed to be above party, but was in the end a figure of fun and satire: he was introduced by James Gillray into his caricatures.
He died at Botleys, 16 June 1798, and was buried in the family vault in the chancel of Chertsey Church, where his wife and several of his children had preceded him.
A New Ballad (anonymous, 1763), on a meeting convened to return an address of thanks for the recent peace; it was the first production printed by Wilkes at his private press, and it was reprinted for sale at Guildford and in London in the same year.
[12][14] Mawbey married in August 1760 Elizabeth, only surviving daughter of his cousin, Richard Pratt of Vauxhall, and on her brother's death in 1766 she succeeded to property.