TAYLOR, MICHAEL WAISTELL (1824–1892), antiquary and physician, son of Michael Taylor, an Edinburgh merchant, was born at Portobello in Midlothian on 29 Jan. 1824. He was educated at Portsmouth and matriculated at Edinburgh University in 1840, graduating M.D. in 1843. In the following year he obtained a diploma from the Edinburgh College of Physicians and Surgeons. While at Edinburgh University he made a special study of botany, and was appointed assistant to Professor John Hutton Balfour [q. v.] He was also one of the founders and early presidents of the Hunterian Medical Society. In 1844 he studied surgery at Paris for nine months, and afterwards visited various foreign cities collecting botanical specimens. In 1845 he settled in Penrith in Cumberland, and soon after succeeded to the practice of Dr. John Taylor. In 1858 he achieved distinction by ascertaining that scarlet fever might be caused by contamination of the milk supply—a discovery which has been acknowledged by medical men to be of great service in preventing infection. In 1868 he had a large share in founding the border counties branch of the British Medical Association, and was the second to hold the office of president. He was the author of many treatises on medical subjects, and in 1881 wrote an important article on the fungoid nature of diphtheria.
Taylor was no less known as an antiquary than as a physician. He was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 27 May 1886, and was a fellow of the Scottish Society of Antiquaries, a member of the Epidemiological Society, and a member of the council of the Royal Archæological Institute. He joined the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archæological Society soon after its formation in 1866. He made several important local discoveries, particularly of the vestiges of Celtic occupation on Ullswater, the starfish cairns of Moor Divock, the prehistoric remains at Clifton, and the Croglin moulds for casting spear-heads in bronze. At the time of his death he had completed a very elaborate work on the ‘Old Manorial Halls of Cumberland and Westmorland’ (London, 1892, 8vo). He retired from medical practice in 1884, and, dying in London on 24 Nov. 1892, was buried at Penrith in the Christ Church burial-ground. He married in 1858 Mary, a daughter of J. H. Rayner of Liverpool, and left three sons and three daughters.
[Memoir prefixed to Old Manorial Halls, 1892 (with portrait); Times, 2 Dec. 1892; Carlisle Journal, 29 Nov. 1892; List of Edinburgh Medical Graduates, p. 135.]
TAYLOR, PETER or PATRICK (1756–1788), decorative artist and painter of one of the few authentic portraits of Robert Burns [q. v.], was born in 1756. A house and decorative painter, he occasionally executed portraits of his friends; but he had no great skill. At the time of Burns's visit to Edinburgh in 1786 Taylor lived in West Register Street, where the poet frequently breakfasted with him, and gave him several sittings for a portrait, the earliest which exists. Gilbert Burns, the poet's brother, remarked, when in 1812, with James Hogg and others, he visited Taylor's widow to see the portrait, ‘It is particularly like Robert in the form and air; with regard to venial faults I care not.’ The suggestion that it represented the poet's brother Gilbert seems without foundation. The portrait, which is at present lent by Mr. W. A. Taylor to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, was engraved in line by J. Horsburgh in 1830.
Taylor was also interested in industrial pursuits, and introduced the manufacture of painted waxcloth, ‘the figuring of linen floorcloth for carpeting,’ into Scotland, in consideration of which the board of manufactures voted him a premium of 100l. (13 Feb. 1788) ‘towards the expense incurred by him in erecting the necessary building, machinery, and apparatus for carrying on the work.’
Falling into delicate health, he went to France, and died at Marseilles on 20 Dec. 1788. Taylor was married, and left a widow and an infant daughter.
[Edinburgh Literary Journal, 21 Nov. and 5 Dec. 1829; Cat. of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery; books of the Board of Manufactures; Campbell's Journey from Edinburgh, 1802.]
TAYLOR, PETER ALFRED (1819–1891), radical politician, born in London on 30 July 1819, was the eldest son of Peter Alfred Taylor, merchant, by his wife and first cousin, Catherine, daughter of George Cortauld of Braintree, Essex. He entered, and ultimately became partner in, the firm of Samuel Cortauld & Co., silk mercers, to which his grandfather on his maternal side gave his name, and to which his father belonged. The anti-cornlaw agitation, in which his father took a leading part, enlisted his sympathies, and under its auspices he entered public life; but he first became known as a friend of Mazzini, whom he first met in 1845, and of the Young Italy party. He took a leading part in the agitation against Sir James Robert George Graham [q. v.] in 1844 for permitting Mazzini's letters to be opened in
