He supported several novel initiatives to enhance British manufacturing quality and international trade while improving life for working people during the Industrial Revolution – particularly in Spitalfields where his business was centred.
[2][3] His paternal grandfather (another Thomas Gibson – a laceman and banker) was associated with Sir Richard Arkwright’s commercialisation of mechanised cotton spinning through his brother-in-law Samuel Need.
[5][6] In adulthood he resided in Bloomsbury; Hanger Lane, Wood Green; Elm House in Walthamstow (the birthplace of William Morris); Westbourne Terrace, Paddington; 10 Broadwater Down, Royal Tunbridge Wells; and finally in Fitzjohn's Avenue, Hampstead.
He was an active member of the Anti-Corn Law League and supported Richard Cobden again in negotiating the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty in Paris, both of which had the goal of reducing import duties and promoting international trade.
Father and son also helped open and support a mission in Spitalfields with day and evening schools, adult education, a library, savings bank and benevolent fund, as well as pastoral visits to those in need.
Studied by Joseph Dalton Hooker, Director of the Kew Gardens, John Morris, the geology professor at University College London, and Unitarian scholar James Yates, it was then characterised by William Carruthers of the Natural History Museum, and later named Cycadeoidea gibsoniana after the finder.
Gibson helped his friend and third cousin Edwin Wilkins Field[2][3] as a trustee of the Hibbert Trust for the first 25 years of its existence; its purpose was to support Nonconformist scholarship.