Sir John Tobin

He was a merchant seaman who became a sea captain, making voyages both as a slave trader and as a privateer against French shipping.

[8] An important figure for Tobin in his business with the Efik states of Old Calabar was Efiom Edem (died 1834), known to Europeans as "Duke Ephraim".

[12] He was a friend of both Canning and William Huskisson, and connected to the Gladstone family, making him a leading Liverpool Tory.

[1] In the 1819 mayoral poll, Tobin defeated the Whig Thomas Leyland (died 1827), a banker who had stood unsuccessfully for parliament in 1816.

[14] In 1822 he was on the provisional board that founded the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1824, with Joseph Sandars, John Gladstone, William Ewart (1763–1823) and others.

He died at Liscard Hall on 27 February 1851, and was buried nearby at St John's Church in Wallasey.

The Hall was part of the old land of Birkenhead Priory: Tobin acquired it from Francis Richard Price, in 1834–5 High Sheriff of Denbighshire.

It was supposed to be part of his Whiteknights library, put up for auction by Robert Harding Evans in October of that year.

In a letter to William Elford in November, Miss Mitford relayed a story of the Duke having abstracted the manuscript from its locked case.

[21] The diarist Harriet Arbuthnot concluded from this affair, and the melting of gold plate at Blenheim Palace, that the Duke was "little better than a common swindler".

[20] Tobin also owned a noted painting by Giovanni Antonio Canaletto of Eton College, now in the National Gallery, London, which passed there with the Wynn Ellis bequest.

[28] John Bridge Aspinall (1759–1830) who was Tobin's business partner was Sarah's brother; and father of the Rev.