[1] Craven persuaded his father that their hand-loom based enterprise could not compete with the economies of power-loom production and the pair commenced weaving with steam power in rented premises at Lower Globe Mill, Bradford.
[2] In that year the Cravens displayed examples of their plain-backs and shalloons at the Great Exhibition,[3] and in 1854 they added spinning to their weaving operation, more than doubling the size of Prospect Mill.
[10] His wife died in the following year[11] after a long illness,[12] and he remained a widower for nearly four decades, continuing to live at Ashfield, the Italianate villa he had built overlooking Prospect Mill.
He facilitated improvements in its water supply and reduction in the local cost of coal, donated the site of the Mechanics’ Institute, funded the nucleus of its library, and paid for the construction and furnishing of the associated lecture-hall and gymnasium.
[18] He was, with Titus Salt, one of the two Bradford signatories to the National Address of January 1858 setting out a proposed agenda for Parliamentary Reform, and he supported the objectives of the Liberation Society, acknowledging its founder Edward Miall as "one of his political fathers".
[21] The intervention failed to produce an amicable outcome but Craven's initiative in the matter, coupled with his subsequent publication of an appeal for party unity following the success of Miall's petition, served to raise his political profile.
In his place the local Liberals selected Joseph Craven, who was reported to have "required a good deal of pressure" to accept the nomination but was ultimately persuaded by its enthusiastic unanimity.
[27][28] The subsequent split at national level between Home Rule and Unionist Liberals resulted in a further General Election in 1886 which condemned the party to six years in opposition but at which Craven, who was described as having kept his seat "warm and cosy",[29] was returned unopposed.
He experienced bouts of ill health, usually from gout or bronchitis, and in early 1891 was confined to London's Hotel Metropole with pleurisy, his condition occasioning "great alarm".
[34] On returning to England from Egypt in May 1890 he had advised his constituency executive he did not intend to seek re-election; he attributed this resolve to poor health but, when his decision was made public in 1891, the Shipley Times observed "It is understood that Parliamentary life has never had very great fascination for him".
[42] The people of Thornton were reported to regard him "as a philanthropist with no equal", there being many villagers to whom he paid weekly allowances that were their only means of subsistence,[43] and at New Year he was in the habit of sending out suitable gifts to those in need, identifying himself only as "AT" (a Thorntonian).