Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Taylor, John Edward
TAYLOR, JOHN EDWARD (1830–1905), art collector and newspaper proprietor, second son of John Edward Taylor [q. v.], founder of the 'Manchester Guardian,' was born at Woodland Terrace, Higher Broughton, on 2 Feb. 1830. He received a desultory education under Dr. Beard, the unitarian minister, at Higher Broughton, Dr. Heldermayer at Worksop, and Daniel Davies at Whitby, and at the University College School, London. In 1848-9 he went through some journalistic routine at Manchester and was for some months a student at the university of Bonn. He entered the Inner Temple on 25 Jan. 1850, and was called to the bar on 6 June 1853 (Foster, Men at the Bar, p. 459). His father's death in 1844, and that of his elder brother, Russell Scott Taylor, B.A., a young man of great promise, on 16 Sept. 1848, left him sole proprietor of the 'Manchester Guardian,' which in 1855 he transformed from a bi-weekly to a daily, and which he reduced in price from two-pence to one penny. In the interval he made an effort — at first unsuccessful — to obtain independent reports of parliamentary proceedings, the provincial press being then and for some years afterwards entirely dependent on the often inadequate and inaccurate reports supplied by news agencies. After an agitation which lasted some years, and in which Taylor took a very prominent part, the Press Association was started in 1868 and obtained a footing in the gallery of the House of Commons (W. Hunt, Then and Now, pp. 11-12, 129, 132).
In 1868 he acquired the 'Manchester Evening News,' which had been started by Mitchell Henry [q. v. Suppl. II]; in 1874 he was, with Peter Rylands, an unsuccessful candidate in the liberal interest for S.E. Lancashire. An early supporter of Owens College, he was appointed one of its trustees in 1864, and a life governor in 1874. From 1854 till death he was a trustee of Manchester College, a unitarian college, which had been transferred to London in 1853, and thence to Oxford in 1889. He became a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society on 22 Jan. 1856. An ardent educationalist, he helped to found in 1863 the Manchester Education Aid Society. He advocated temperance and free trade, and was deeply interested in the British and Foreign Bible Society. A liberal contributor to party funds, he refused a baronetcy offered him by Lord Rosebery in 1895. At the time of his death he was head of the firm of Taylor, Garnett & Co., newspaper proprietors, senior partner of W. Evans & Co., proprietors of the 'Manchester Evening News,' and a director of the Buenos Ayres Great Southern Railway Co.
Taylor was best known to the public as a connoisseur. He was one of the guarantors of the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition in 1857. For many years he collected pictures and objects of art, some few of which he lent to the Manchester Exhibition of 1887, to the old masters at Burlington House, and to the Burlington Fine Arts Club (of which he was a member). The sale of his collection in 1545 lots occupied twelve days at Christie's in July 1912, and realised 358,499l. 11s. 3d. (works of art, 231,937l. 13s.; pictures, 103,891l. 8s. 6d.; silver, 15,418l. 17s. 3d.; and engravings and books, 7251l. 12s. 6d.), a total only exceeded in this country by the Hamilton Palace sale in 1882 (The Times, 17 July; Nineteenth Century, August 1912).
Taylor presented a large number of pictures and drawings by modern English artists, notably twenty-four drawings by Turner, to the Manchester Whitworth Institute (official catalogue, 1909); in 1893 he was largely instrumental in raising funds for the purchase of a magnificent carpet from the mosque at Ardebil in Persia, for the Victoria and Albert Museum; and he gave a complete set of Turner's 'Liber Studiorum' to the British Museum.
Taylor lived for some time at Platt Cottage, Rusholme, and built The Towers, Didsbury, but never lived there. A few years after his marriage in 1861 he removed to London, and resided at 20 Kensington Palace Gardens. He died at Eastbourne on 5 Oct. 1905, and was buried at Kensal Green. The net value of his estate was provisionally sworn at 354,130l. He married in 1861 Martha Elizabeth, youngest daughter of R. W. Warner of Thetford. She continued to occupy Taylor's London house till her death on 10 May 1912. Many of Taylor's legacies then became payable, including 20,000l. to Owens College.
[Manchester Guardian, 6 Oct. 1905 and 24 July 1912; Manchester Courier, Westminster Gazette, and The Times, 6 Oct. 1905; Sell's Dictionary of the World's Press, 1906, pp. 58-60.]