Joseph Adshead (1800–1861) was an English merchant, reformer and pamphleteer from Manchester.
Born in Ross, Herefordshire, Adshead worked as an estate agent and merchant. [1] He settled in Manchester around 1820. [2]
In 1835 he was part of the consortium developing Victoria Park, Manchester. [3] He was declared bankrupt in 1839, described as a "wholesale hosier". [4] [5] In 1839 also, he went onto the Council of the Anti-Cornlaw League. [6] In 1838 the Night Asylum, a homeless shelter in Henry Street, Manchester, was founded by Adshead and George Wilson of the League, and Adshead continued to act as its treasurer. [7] [8]
In 1840–1 Adshead was involved with the British India Society, and moved in abolitionist circles. He became secretary of a branch, the Northern Central British India Society, after a visit to Manchester by Joseph Pease. He had worked with George Thompson at the end of 1840 to see its journal The British Indian Advocate issued. [9] He was in the US shortly afterwards, calling on James and Lucretia Mott in Philadelphia on 16 February 1841. [10] In March he sailed back from Boston, where he knew William Lloyd Garrison, with a letter destined for Elizabeth Pease. [11]
Adshead was one of the defendant directors in the landmark case Foss v Harbottle (1843) 67 ER 189, which established the precedent that where a wrong is alleged to have been done to a company, the proper claimant is the company itself.
Adshead became a member of Manchester Corporation, serving as Alderman for St. Anne's Ward. [2] [12] He also took up public causes in the health sector. He supported the Health of Towns Association, and homoeopathy. [13] He advocated the rebuilding out of town of the Manchester Lunatic Asylum, in the early 1840s when its future was in play. [14] At the end of his life he was lobbying for a convalescent hospital in the Manchester area. [15] He died on 15 February 1861, at Withington. [16] He was a correspondent of Florence Nightingale, a contact through Richard Cobden, and after his death she wrote in a letter that he was "my best pupil". [17] The Bottle, George Cruikshank's set of eight temperance engravings, was dedicated to Adshead. [18]
As a penal reformer, Adshead supported the system of Francis Lieber, [20] and defended the separate system. [21] In Prisons and Prisoners (1845), [22] he described the Eastern State Penitentiary. [23] This work also contained an attack on the views of prisons expressed by Charles Dickens. [24] Adshead argued, influentially, that what Dickens had written in his American Notes (1842) on the "Pennsylvania system" was fiction, and could not be taken seriously as commentary. [25] He also characterised the Eighteenth Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Boston Prison Discipline Society (1843) on the matters at issue as a "flagrant instance of trickery". [26] A sequel was Our Present Gaol System Deeply Depraving to the Prisoner and a Positive Evil to the Community: Some Remedies Proposed (1847). [27] In it Adshead commented favourably on the positive effect of the separate system on prisoners who were then to be transported to Port Phillip in Australia. [28]
On Juvenile Criminals, Reformatories, and the Means of Rendering the Perishing and Dangerous Classes serviceable to the State (1856), paper given to the Manchester Statistical Society. [29] Adshead gave a further paper to the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science meeting in Liverpool in 1858 on "Reformatory and industrial schools, their comparative economy". [30] He considered the finances of ten each of reformatories, ragged schools and industrial schools. [31] Adshead was critical of Parkhurst, the prison for young offenders, though he did not take the same view of it as Mary Carpenter. [32]
Adshead wrote an introduction to George Catlin's Steam Raft: Suggested as a means of security to human life upon the ocean (1860). [39]
This article needs additional or more specific
categories. (July 2021) |
Joseph Adshead (1800–1861) was an English merchant, reformer and pamphleteer from Manchester.
Born in Ross, Herefordshire, Adshead worked as an estate agent and merchant. [1] He settled in Manchester around 1820. [2]
In 1835 he was part of the consortium developing Victoria Park, Manchester. [3] He was declared bankrupt in 1839, described as a "wholesale hosier". [4] [5] In 1839 also, he went onto the Council of the Anti-Cornlaw League. [6] In 1838 the Night Asylum, a homeless shelter in Henry Street, Manchester, was founded by Adshead and George Wilson of the League, and Adshead continued to act as its treasurer. [7] [8]
In 1840–1 Adshead was involved with the British India Society, and moved in abolitionist circles. He became secretary of a branch, the Northern Central British India Society, after a visit to Manchester by Joseph Pease. He had worked with George Thompson at the end of 1840 to see its journal The British Indian Advocate issued. [9] He was in the US shortly afterwards, calling on James and Lucretia Mott in Philadelphia on 16 February 1841. [10] In March he sailed back from Boston, where he knew William Lloyd Garrison, with a letter destined for Elizabeth Pease. [11]
Adshead was one of the defendant directors in the landmark case Foss v Harbottle (1843) 67 ER 189, which established the precedent that where a wrong is alleged to have been done to a company, the proper claimant is the company itself.
Adshead became a member of Manchester Corporation, serving as Alderman for St. Anne's Ward. [2] [12] He also took up public causes in the health sector. He supported the Health of Towns Association, and homoeopathy. [13] He advocated the rebuilding out of town of the Manchester Lunatic Asylum, in the early 1840s when its future was in play. [14] At the end of his life he was lobbying for a convalescent hospital in the Manchester area. [15] He died on 15 February 1861, at Withington. [16] He was a correspondent of Florence Nightingale, a contact through Richard Cobden, and after his death she wrote in a letter that he was "my best pupil". [17] The Bottle, George Cruikshank's set of eight temperance engravings, was dedicated to Adshead. [18]
As a penal reformer, Adshead supported the system of Francis Lieber, [20] and defended the separate system. [21] In Prisons and Prisoners (1845), [22] he described the Eastern State Penitentiary. [23] This work also contained an attack on the views of prisons expressed by Charles Dickens. [24] Adshead argued, influentially, that what Dickens had written in his American Notes (1842) on the "Pennsylvania system" was fiction, and could not be taken seriously as commentary. [25] He also characterised the Eighteenth Annual Report of the Board of Managers of the Boston Prison Discipline Society (1843) on the matters at issue as a "flagrant instance of trickery". [26] A sequel was Our Present Gaol System Deeply Depraving to the Prisoner and a Positive Evil to the Community: Some Remedies Proposed (1847). [27] In it Adshead commented favourably on the positive effect of the separate system on prisoners who were then to be transported to Port Phillip in Australia. [28]
On Juvenile Criminals, Reformatories, and the Means of Rendering the Perishing and Dangerous Classes serviceable to the State (1856), paper given to the Manchester Statistical Society. [29] Adshead gave a further paper to the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science meeting in Liverpool in 1858 on "Reformatory and industrial schools, their comparative economy". [30] He considered the finances of ten each of reformatories, ragged schools and industrial schools. [31] Adshead was critical of Parkhurst, the prison for young offenders, though he did not take the same view of it as Mary Carpenter. [32]
Adshead wrote an introduction to George Catlin's Steam Raft: Suggested as a means of security to human life upon the ocean (1860). [39]
This article needs additional or more specific
categories. (July 2021) |