The Guardian daily newspaper is still going
today having been started in 1821 by wealthy cotton merchant John Edward
Taylor. I was surprised to read he’d been buried in Manchester (and not in
London as most of them are.) A flat grass field with blossom trees now hides
the cemetery but I'm inquisitive and went to have a look at the former cemetery
anyway.
John ended life as a business tycoon, editor and
publisher but he was born into threadbare circumstances in Somerset. His mum
was a poet and his dad was a Unitarian minister. After his mum died he moved up
to Manchester with his dad who ran a school. John attended the school himself
before starting in the cotton manufacturing business. Due to the north’s
terrain and weather conditions Manchester became the centre of the world’s
cotton industry and John's company was immensely successful.
He was a bit of a non-conformist and married his
cousin Sophia (they had two children.) He was a member of a radical group of
Nonconformist Liberals who campaigned for parliamentary reform (called the
Little Circle.) When John was 30 the powerful members of the radical group backed
him in founding the Manchester Guardian to be published once a week. It was a
vehicle to broadcast their liberal message and garner political change. The
first edition - just four pages long - appeared on Saturday 5th May 1821 and
cost 7d. Over the next two years circulation rose to 6000 daily sales
(newspapers based outside of London could only publish once a week.) Soon it
reached 3,000 due to the fast-growing population of Manchester.
John remained editor of the Manchester Guardian until his death on 6th January 1844 at 52 years
old (not sure what he died of.) He'd spent most of his later life in London but
died at home in Manchester. Fitting with his activist views he was buried in
the Dissenters Burial Ground (now Gartside Gardens)
alongside his wife Sophia. The newspaper was passed down to their son John
junior who went onto buy the Manchester
Evening News (still going strong.)
That sunny Sunday morning there was little to see
in Rusholme - a field, various trees, bending paths.
On the edge of the field near a busy road was a smattering of headstones which have
somehow survived the bulldozers. There were so few I read the names carved into
every one but not one had Taylor under it. I strolled onto the field where some
Asian lads were having a game of cricket (their fast-delivered Urdu sounded
like a machine gun.) I strolled around the perimeter but there wasn't much to
see. I'd preferred to have seen thousands of headstones all beautifully
decaying while giving way to a jungle of plants and weeds.
Two girls were sat on a wall taking selfies. Did they - or the Asian lads - know 66,000
thousand bodies lay a few feet under their feet? Probably not. The former cemetery
had been popular amongst the Manchester middle and upper classes. After a
severe influenza outbreak in 1837 burials increased drastically (one day there
were 36 burials.) Soon it was full and only existing family graves or vaults
were allowed to take new cadavers. In 1954 Manchester council took over and
informed anyone who had relatives in the cemetery that if they did not claim
any of their memorials or headstones they would be removed and disposed of. The
place was cleared, grassed over and renamed Gartside
Gardens.
I returned to the copse of graves still intact -
how did they survive the cull? I hoped to find perhaps a dazzling bouquet of
flowers on one - or perhaps a teddy bear. Nothing - they were that old. Again I
cut across the field where the Asian lads were having a break and wondered if
I’d passed within a few of John’s bones (now minerals after 180+ years.) Perhaps
if John's grave had survived it would have been vandalised. Much of his wealth
from the cotton industry sprung from American cotton plantations that enslaved black
people.
Somewhere nearby John, his wife, daughter and brother
were buried. A rags-to-riches if ever there was one. Nowadays the
phrase “Guardian reader” refers to someone with left-wing, liberal wishy-washy
viewpoints. What would he think of this? Would he be surprised that newspaper
is still going?
Oh well, time to go for I was walking into
central Manchester to look for some blue plaques. I did a salute, had a coffee
and half a Twix in the car and left.
Gartside
Gardens which was Rushholme's main cemetery...