Grave - John Edward Taylor (11th Sep 1791 to 6th Jan 1844)

 

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...