John Edward Taylor


John Edward Taylor was an English business tycoon, editor, publisher and member of The Portico Library, who was the founder of the Manchester Guardian newspaper in 1821, which was renamed in 1959 The Guardian.

Early life

He 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.

Membership of the Little Circle

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: John Brotherton ; Archibald Prentice ; John Shuttleworth ; Absalom Watkin ; William Cowdray Jnr ; Thomas Potter and Richard Potter.
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

Taylor witnessed the Peterloo massacre in 1819, but was unimpressed by its leaders, writing:
But the radical press in Manchester, in particular the Manchester Observer did support 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.
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.
Taylor used profits he made trading cotton that was acquired from plantations that used slave labour to found the newspaper.
The Manchester Guardian on the liberator of America’s slaves Abraham Lincoln.
“It was an evil day both for America and the world when he was chosen President of the United States” Manchester Guardian, 10th October 1862
On news of his assassination, the Guardian described Lincoln’s Proclamation of Emancipation – the act that declared “all persons held as slaves are, and henceforward shall be free.” as abhorrent
The newspaper’s founder, John Edward Taylor, made his money in the cotton trade – an industry that prospered on the backs of cotton-picking slaves. After his death in 1844, the paper continued its relationship with its cotton merchant advertisers, going as far as demanding Manchester’s cotton workers, who refused to touch cotton picked by US slaves, should be forced back into work.

Death

John Edward Taylor is buried in the Rusholme Road Cemetery, alongside his first wife Sophia Russell Scott.

Legacy

His younger son, also John Edward Taylor 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.