[5] Isaac Hodgson (1783–1847), merchant and banker, was Adam's elder brother, and he had four sisters (Elizabeth, Agnes, Mary and Anna).

[6] His aunt Hannah Lightbody married Samuel Greg;[2] the couple established Quarry Bank Mill, a centre of innovation in the cloth business.

[5][24][25][26][27] When John James Audubon visited Liverpool in 1826 with an introduction from Vincent Nolte, Hodgson arranged for him to meet Edward Stanley, a future Prime Minister with ornithological interests.

"[29] A scheme of Hodgson and James John Hornby, rector of Winwick,[30] to set up training for nurses in Liverpool, took place around 1829, and is documented in the correspondence and biography of Robert Southey.

Behind the idea lay the influence of Elizabeth Fry and Amelia Opie, who saw merit in diverting women's voluntary efforts from prison visiting to nursing.

[31] In 1837 Hodgson gave figures on inhabited cellars in Liverpool, at the British Association meeting, prompted by a report of the Manchester Statistical Society.

[32] He gave a testimonial to Kitty Wilkinson (née Catherine Seward), from Caton, who provided a washing-place for Liverpool cellar-dwellers and passed into folklore (see Baths and wash houses in Britain).

[39] This work has been seen, in the matter of indigenous populations, as a link between the thinking of Jedediah Morse in the US, and the Aborigines Protection Society in the UK.

James Fenimore Cooper wrote his Notions of the Americans (1828) to counteract the impression given by Hodgson, and Basil Hall who had travelled in North America in 1827–8.

[48] Parliament reviewed the Bank Charter Act of 1844, passed by Robert Peel's government, in the light of the Panic of 1847.

[50] Henry Booth and the merchant William Pickering, along with Hodgson, defended the 1844 act, and were attacked as a group by a critic, James Harvey.