The Engineering Hopkinsons: 2: John Lomax of Manchester (1763/4-1827): the father of John Hopkinson

John Lomax was the father that John Hopkinson never knew – he died before John's third birthday.

John Lomax was born some 10 miles north-west of Manchester in the township of Harwood, which was one of the 17 townships that made up the parish of Bolton-le-Moors.

(The following information is taken from the invaluable booklet Harwood: The Early Years by J Frederick Horridge. I have included from the booklet a part of the projected map of Harwood c1600 and a picture of Lomax Fold. I do recommend buying the booklet, which can be bought from Amazon – see the list of publications on the Turton Local History Society website. And I'm very grateful for the headstart given to me by Tonge's Old Lancashire Wills)

In 1600 – about the time of the first written record of a Lomax at Lomax Fold – some 250 people lived in the township of Harwood.

there wasn't a village – just 16 or so farms and folds and a water cornmill. (A fold is a farmstead surrounded by a cluster of cottages)

about a quarter of the township was common land – cart tracks and bridle ways led between the mill, the common land and the farms

the people had always spun yarn and woven cloth for their own use and by 1600 it was an additional source of income for many. Chapmen acted as agents, supplying the yarn to the farms and cottages and selling the cloth

the farmers were all tenants to absentee landlords. Their houses were built of dry stone with timber-framed internal walls, roofed with thatch or split-stone slate.

In 1610, John Lomax of Owd Jacks Farm married a girl from the neighbouring township of Breightmet – his marriage brought him a farm called Old Nans

not long afterwards, when the farmers of Harwood were able to buy their farms, he bought the freehold to the 18 Cheshire Acres (nearer 40 Statute Acres) of his farmstead. It cost him about £66. This was to be known for more than 200 years as Lomax Fold.

Lomax Fold lay in the south-eastern corner of Harwood township, bordered by the Blackshaw Brook, Nab Moor, and Breightmet

Part of 'Projected map of Harwood c1600'
from Harwood: The Early Years by J Frederick Horridge

the Harwood farmers now built themselves better houses. The outer walls were of random or coursed stonework, and the walls inside were timber-framed with a wattle & daub infill – some had internal walls of riven oak planks.

Lomax Fold must have looked something like Leegate Farm, Bradshaw, which remains an unspoiled example of 17th century South Lancashire rural architecture:

Lee Gate Farm, by Plucas58 CC BY-SA 3.0

On 31 December 1751, Richard Lomax of Lomax Fold married Ellen Knowles in the old church of St Peter's, Bolton

Old Bolton Parish Church

Ellen was the daughter of Robert & Jane Knowles and came from Eagley Bank, a couple of miles north of Bolton

the Knowles family had mining interests going back to Elizabethan times and Ellen's father had started pits in Eagley Bank. Her brother Andrew and his descendants continued the business – by the end of the 19th century it dominated the mining industry in the Manchester area

Richard developed Lomax Fold into a grand Georgian residence for his new bride. A datestone on his extension reads 'L-RE-1757' (Lomax – Richard & Ellen – 1757).

Some time between June 1763 and June 1764, Ellen gave birth to John

Lomax Fold, 1806

so John was the same age as Joséphine de Beauharnais, who married Napoleon Bonaparte, and Fletcher Christian, who led the mutiny on HMS Bounty

he was one of the younger children of a large family – he was only five when his eldest sister Hannah married

he grew up in a family which belonged to a deeply-rooted network of rural kinship groups – these were people who, like their neighbours in the villages and towns around Manchester, had been diversifying into cotton and fustian manufacture for a long while

during his childhood, the inventions of the Industrial Revolution – for example, the Spinning Jenny (1764), Arkwright's water-powered water frame (1769) and Crompton's Mule (1770s), – revolutionised cotton production

when John was 15 or 16, his father Richard Lomax died. He was buried at St Peter's, Bolton-le-Moors, on 15 May 1779

his surviving children were Hannah, Robert, Richard, Ellen, John, Jane and Betty. Betty and Ellen were aged 6 and 11; Jane was probably in her late teens

Richard evidently found he was land-rich and cash-poor when he made his Will. He instructed his executors to put a value on his estate, including Lomax Fold and Old Nans, and offer it to his son Robert at that price. If Robert refused the offer, the executors were to sell the estate. They were to provide for Ellen out of the proceeds of sale, giving her an income for her life and the means to raise the young children. After her death, the estate was to be divided between the children with Robert taking a double share, and Hannah taking £50 less than the others because she had already received that amount on her marriage

Robert was still very young – probably just 21 years old – when his father Richard died. He must have raised the money, perhaps with family help, because he took over the farms

This was the Manchester that John Lomax knew in 1800:

the town had grown rapidly in his lifetime. In 1784, when John was 20, a Monsieur de Givry (a Frenchman engaged in industrial espionage) had described it as a "large and superb town ... which has been built almost entirely in the past 20 to 25 years"

in 1800 – when Napoleon had taken power in France and the war against the French had already
Napoleon crossing the Alps
by J-L David
been going on for 8 years – Manchester's population had increased from over 40,000 to over 70,000. People had come in from the surrounding countryside, from Scotland and from Ireland, and the town now had a high birth rate

the canal system brought in the food for the ever increasing population. Imports included apples from the cider districts – an important part of the diet even of the poor, valued for pies and puddings – salt butter from Ireland; and fish from the Yorkshire and Lancashire coasts (the River Irwell had no fish, being poisoned by liquor from the dye-houses)

but the Lancashire roads were still notoriously bad, except for the famous paved causeways of stones raised above field level, just wide enough for horses but too narrow for wheeled traffic

foreign merchants were coming to live in the town, which was becoming more and more like one of the commercial capitals of Europe

there were many schools. The College of Arts and Sciences was founded in 1783

the town had a theatre, and there were the Assembly Rooms in Mosley Street, with a ballroom with glittering chandeliers and mirrors, an elegant tea-room, a billiard room and a card room

there were Public Baths supplied by a local spring and, for half a guinea a year, subscribers could enjoy the Cold Bath, Hot or Vapour Bath or the 'Matlock or Buxton' Bath

there was a long-established hospital (it was doctors at the Manchester Infirmary in the early 1770s who pioneered cod-liver oil treatment for rickets, a disease which had been well-known in many parts of England in the C17)

there were three weekly newspapers and the town had its own Penny Post

the town had an intellectual life – the Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society had been founded in 1781

Men, however great their learning often become indolent and unambitious to improve in knowledge for want of associating with others of similar talents and improvements. But science, like fire, is put in motion by collision. Where a number of such men have frequent opportunities of meeting and conversing together, thought begets thought, and every hint is turned to advantage. A spirit of enquiry glows in every breast [Manchester Lit & Phil, 1785]

in the early 1790s, when the French Revolution had sharply divided public opinion in the town over political reform, a breakaway group from the Lit & Phil formed the Manchester Reading Society or "Jacobin Library" as it was known (one of the founders was Thomas Cooper, a Radical who later became a prosperous lawyer and slave-owner in the USA)

but the town's local government had barely started and it was still governed like a village. The fire service and police force were both inadequate

the rapid change and newness of the town could appal outsiders – one visitor from Rotherham wrote in 1808 "the town is abominably filthy, the Steam Engine is pestiferous, the Dyehouses noisome and offensive, and the water of the river as black as ink or the Stygian lake"

it was not a clean or safe town! A description of the town in 1799:

during many wet and dark winter months, the streets have remained uncleansed and without lights; for some time no watchmen or patrols were appointed ... and none could pass through the streets in safety. Escaping personal violence, they were still in imminent personal danger, from the numerous unguarded cellars, pits and various obstructions that every where interrupted their passage ... the streets are still crowded with annoyances ... not a street has been widened or laid open

By 1800, John was 27 years old and was a cotton manufacturer in Manchester

Cooper Street and Kennedy Street near Manchester Town Hall
cc-by-sa/2.0 © Andrew Hill geograph.org.uk/p/3803930

the Manchester & Salford Directory 1800 shows that he was living at 9 Cooper Street, a part of Manchester favoured by the prosperous. His office was not far away at 15 Brown Street

cotton manufacture at this time still involved putting out work to handloom weavers – the manufacturers finished and sold the woven cloth

soon the economic recession would enable manufacturers to offer handloom weavers only breadline wages. By 1812, with increasing numbers of power looms in operation, the Luddites were active, breaking the machines that put them out of work. Manchester was growing rapidly and these were restless and difficult times, with a growing gulf between the rich and the poor. There's a good account of the industrial unrest and the increasing desperation of the weavers on the Heywood History website

John Lomax's brother Robert now lived at Lomax Fold – he was a farmer and manufacturer

he is listed in the 1800 Directory as a dimity manufacturer (dimity was a stout cotton fabric, with a raised pattern on one side) with a Manchester place of business at 11 Crow Alley. Harwood: The Early Years records that he became a successful velveteen manufacturer

Robert married Mary Kay of the parish of Middleton in 1782

John Lomax's sisters married yeomen and manufacturers:

Hannah married John Hampson, yeoman, in 1769 at St Peter's, Bolton-le-Moors; their son Richard became one of John Lomax's partners

Jane married Richard Orrell in 1784 at Bolton-le-Moors. He is described in the register as a weaver. They lived at Orrell Fold in the moorland township of Turton, north of Bolton, where his family had lived since the 15th century.

Ellen (known as Nelly) married John Bentley, a Stockport muslin manufacturer in 1794 at Bolton-le-Moors; they were both 26 years old. Their home was at Birch House in the township of Farnworth, near Bolton, which he bought from the previous owner at about this time. Bentley died aged 29, only three years after the marriage, leaving Nelly with one son, John. This engraving shows the mansion house in 1835. (The house was sold by John Bentley junior, who moved to London)
Birch House, 1835

Betty married George Stopford, a muslin manufacturer of Stockport, in 1797 in the Manchester parish church (now the cathedral). Muslin must have been in great demand because of the fashions of the time; by 1808 Stopford had moved to Manchester and was described as a cotton manufacturer

Until 1807, when George Stopford retired from the firm, John Lomax was in business in Stockport & Manchester with George Stopford, John Mather and Samuel Mather

they traded as George Stopford & Company

I think this was almost certainly his brother-in-law George Stopford, but the name of the company suggests it was founded by Stopford's father

John Lomax was also in a separate partnership with the two Mathers in the firm Samuel Mather & Company. Newspaper reports from 1802 and 1804 show that the firm dealt in malt and in coffee from the slave plantations of the West Indies.

It was when John Lomax was in business in Stockport that he was presented with a silver medal as a trustee of the Sunday School built in Stockport in 1805

this medal is referred to by Mary Hopkinson in her memoir of her parents – in fact, all she knew for certain of her grandfather was his name and that he was given the medal

in 1805, £6,000 had been raised for a new building on London Square for the Stockport Sunday School

it was large enough to hold 5,000 scholars – and it was needed to provide the only education available to the children who worked 14 hour shifts in the mills from Monday to Saturday

it was to be inter-denominational but the local Anglican clergy, who felt threatened by Methodism and Calvinism, withdrew their support
Stockport Sunday School in 1855

it seems John Lomax was a Nonconformist, like so many in his close family – they came from an area with a long history of Nonconformity. It had been a Puritan stronghold in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms of the 1640s

Chester Chronicle, 19 July 1805

On Sunday the 16th ult. 3000 children, educated at the Sunday Schools in Stockport, in this county, were conducted by their teachers to a spot of ground in an eligible and airy situation, purchased for erecting a building by voluntary contributions, and capable of holding upwards of 4000 scholars, where they were formed into a semi-circle, with the band of the Stockport Volunteers placed in the centre; in the front a platform was raised for the Committee, and an immense multitude surrounded the whole. The first stone of the building having been laid the preceding night, one of the Committee stepped forward, and, in an audible voice, gave out the following hymn, in which thousands of voices joined:

These walls we to thine honour raise,
Long may they echo to thy praise.

After which another of the Committee read the following inscription, upon a brass plate, to be placed upon the foundation stone, engraved and presented by one of the scholars:- "This foundation stone of the Stockport Sunday Schools, for the education and religious instruction of the children of the labouring poor, was laid June 15, 1805"; and in an animated address, declared, that the building was intended to concentrate the piety and benevolence of all parties in favour of the poor untutored youth, and to be under the exclusive influence and direction of no party; that it was devoted to the rising generation of Stockport, and was to be denominated The Stockport Sunday School. - An appropriate hymn, with prayer, closed this interesting scene.

In late June 1807, George Stopford retired and the remaining partners formed a new firm called Mathers, Lomax & Company, cotton merchants in Manchester

Cotton merchants took regular consignments of cotton from the Mediterranean, from the slave plantations of the West Indies (the anti-slavery campaign in Britain in that year achieved the abolition of the trade in slaves, but not slavery itself), and the plantations of the slave states of the USA

it seems that, generally, cotton dealers dealt in a smaller way, probably buying enough at the quayside for their customers for a fortnight or so

a newspaper report shows that in 1820 Mathers, Lomax & Co was awaiting 45 bales of cotton which had come into Liverpool onboard the Savannah from the USA

some cotton merchants owned plantations, but John Lomax did not, as nothing of the sort is mentioned in his Will

directories show that in the years 1816-20 the warehouse & premises of Mathers, Lomax & Co were at 5 Cromford Court, Manchester.

by 1819 the partnership consisted of John Lomax, John Mather and Lomax's nephew Richard Hampson, who was only seven years his junior

John Lomax took his part in the public life of Manchester. Newspaper reports show him

among the gentlemen inviting the officers of the First Regiment of Manchester Local Militia to a dinner in 1810

on the committee formed to prepare a petition relating to the Corn Laws in 1814

giving a 10 guinea Benefaction to the Manchester Infirmary and Dispensary in 1814

In 1814, his elder Robert died at the age of 56 and was buried at the Independent Chapel at Ainsworth, a mile west of Lomax Fold. It was Presbyterian when founded in 1662 but the congregation moved – as did many in the North West – to Unitarianism, which was finally given toleration when the blasphemy laws were altered in 1813. It was then that Joseph Bealey, the minister who had baptised Robert and Mary's six children, openly announced that he was a Unitarian.

Robert's eldest daughter Ann had married John Kay in 1805, but her four younger sisters and her brother were still at home with their mother – they were aged between 12 and 29

John Lomax was one of his brother's executors and it must have fallen especially on him and his nephew and fellow executor Richard Hampson to decide what to do about Robert's cotton manufacturing business. Robert had said in his Will that they were to keep the business going for his young son Robert if they thought it advisable for the benefit of the estate. Robert jnr was not quite 16 years old

some 5 years later, Robert jnr inherited Lomax Fold and his father's other properties and went on to become a successful manufacturer himself – so it looks as though, during the 5 years of young Robert's minority, John Lomax was involved in running his late brother's business as well as his own

What was John Lomax like?

he was a man of great family feeling, close to his sisters and brother, nieces and nephews. People felt he could be relied on – admittedly I've only seen his brother Robert's Will and a record of the contents of the Will of his uncle John Kinder, but both appointed him as executor

he was able and enterprising in business and made a good deal of money

he was remembered with great affection and gratitude by the three nephews he helped in business

he must have been a man of very definite presence, confidence and personality to judge by the flair of his flamboyant signature. Here it is, from the foot of one of the pages of his Will in 1827. Even when acting as witness to a marriage, his signature looks just the same, comfortably at ease when everyone else is evidently struggling with the space allowed and a scratchy pen.