John Edward Taylor

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John Edward Taylor (11 September 1791 – 6 January 1844) was the founder of the Manchester Guardian newspaper, later to become The Guardian. He was born at Ilminster, Somerset, England, to Mary Scott, the poet, and John Taylor, a Unitarian minister. He was apprenticed to a cotton manufacturer in Manchester, and later became a successful merchant. A moderate supporter of reform, he witnessed the Peterloo massacre in 1819, but was unimpressed by its leaders, writing:

'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 and comfortable existence.' ^[1]

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 paper closer to Taylor's mill-owning friends.^[2] In 1821 he founded the Manchester Guardian, which he continued to edit until his death.

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.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Spartacus Educational: John E. Taylor
• Works by or about John Edward Taylor in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Media offices
Preceded by Jeremiah Garnett	Editor of The Manchester Guardian 1861 - 1872	Succeeded by Charles Prestwich Scott