British journalist and publisher (1791?1844)
John Edward Taylor
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Born
| (
1791-09-11
)
11 September 1791
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Died
| 6 January 1844
(1844-01-06)
(aged 52)
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Occupation(s)
| Editor and publisher
Business tycoon
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Family
| Mary Scott
(mother),
Stanley Jevons
(son-in-law)
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John Edward Taylor
(11 September 1791 ? 6 January 1844) was an English business tycoon, editor, publisher and member of
The Portico Library
,
[1]
who was the founder of the
Manchester Guardian
newspaper in 1821, which was renamed in 1959
The Guardian
.
Personal life
[
edit
]
Taylor was born at
Ilminster
,
Somerset
, England, to
Mary Scott
, the poet, and
John Taylor
, a
Unitarian
minister who moved after his wife's death to Manchester with his son to run a school there. John Edward was educated at his father's school and at
Daventry Academy
. He was apprenticed to a cotton manufacturer in Manchester and later became a successful merchant; Taylor "derived much of his wealth from Manchester’s cotton industry, an industry that relied on firms such as Taylor’s trading with cotton plantations in the Americas that had enslaved millions of Black people".
[2]
His children by his first wife and first cousin
[3]
Sophia Russell Taylor (nee Scott) included a son named after himself and a daughter, Harriet Ann Taylor, who in 1867 married the economist and logician Stanley Jevons.
Membership of the Little Circle
[
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]
A moderate supporter of reform, from 1815 Taylor was a member of a group of Nonconformist
Liberals
, meeting in the
Manchester
home of John Potter, termed the
Little Circle
. Other members of the group included:
Joseph Brotherton
(preacher);
Archibald Prentice
(later editor of the
Manchester Times
);
John Shuttleworth
(industrialist and municipal reformer);
Absalom Watkin
(parliamentary reformer and
anti corn law campaigner
); William Cowdray Jnr (editor of the
Manchester Gazette
);
Thomas Potter
(later
first mayor of Manchester
) and
Richard Potter
(later
MP for Wigan
).
[4]
After the death of John Potter, the Potter brothers formed a second Little Circle group, to begin a campaign for parliamentary reform. This called for the better proportional representation in the Houses of Parliament from the
rotten boroughs
towards the fast-growing industrialised towns of
Birmingham
,
Leeds
, Manchester and
Salford
. After the petition raised on behalf of the group by Absalom Watkin, Parliament passed the
Reform Act 1832
.
Manchester Guardian
[
edit
]
Taylor witnessed the
Peterloo massacre
in 1819, but was unimpressed by its leaders, writing:
[5]
They have appealed not to the reason but to the passions and the suffering of their abused and credulous fellow-countrymen, from whose ill-requited industry they extort for themselves the means of a plentiful and comfortable existence
However, the radical press in Manchester, particularly
Manchester Observer
supported the protests, and it was not until the
Observer
was closed by successive police prosecutions that the road was clear for a newspaper closer to Taylor's liberal-minded mill-owning friends.
[6]
In 1821, the members of the
Little Circle
excluding Cowdroy backed John Edward Taylor in founding the
Manchester Guardian
, published by law only once a week, which Taylor continued to edit until his death.
Death
[
edit
]
John Edward Taylor is buried in the Rusholme Road Cemetery (also known as the Dissenters Burial Ground and now Gartside Gardens, in
Chorlton-on-Medlock
), alongside his first wife Sophia Russell Scott.
[7]
Legacy
[
edit
]
His younger son, also
John Edward Taylor
(though usually known as Edward) (1830?1905) became a co-owner of the
Manchester Guardian
in 1852 and sole owner four years later. He was also editor of the paper from 1861 to 1872. He bought the
Manchester Evening News
from its founder Mitchell Henry in 1868 and was owner, then co-owner, until his death. He had no children; after his death the
Evening News
passed into the hands of his nephews in the Allen family, while the
Guardian
was sold to its editor, his cousin
C. P. Scott
.
At least two grandsons,
Charles Peter Allen
and
Arthur Acland Allen
, became MPs.
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Schofield, Jonathan (July 2009).
Manchester Then and Now: A Photographic Guide to Manchester Past and Present
. Pavilion Books.
ISBN
978-1-906388-36-2
.
- ^
Katharine Viner (28 March 2023).
"How our founders' links to slavery change the Guardian today"
.
The Guardian
. Retrieved
28 March
2023
.
- ^
Alan Rusbridger
, "Two Centuries of 'The Guardian'",
The New York Review of Books
, vol. LXVIII, no. 9 (27 May 2021), pp. 30?32. (P. 31.)
- ^
Head, Geoffrey.
"Before the Welfare State"
.
Cross Street Chapel
. Retrieved
12 October
2020
.
- ^
'Manchester Gazette,' 7 August 1819, quoted in David Ayerst, 'The Guardian,' 1971, p 20
- ^
Stanley Harrison,
Poor Men's Guardians,
1974, p. 53
- ^
'Hooliganism In A Cemetery',
The Manchester Guardian
, May 14, 1947
External links
[
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]
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Subsidiaries and
divisions
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Joint ventures and
shareholdings
|
- Ascential
(50%)
- Development Hell (29.5%)
- Seven Publishing (41.9%)
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Former holdings
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Other
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International
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National
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People
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Other
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