Thomas Walker (merchant)
[3] He had a town house and warehouse on South Parade, adjacent to St Mary's Church, Manchester, and a country place at Barlow Hall, rented from William Egerton.
After some confusion during the spring, the House of Commons voted to repeal the tax in April, and the Manchester men returned north as heroes.
[6] In 1788, at a meeting of fustian manufacturers and calico printers about the East India Company, Robert Peel spoke, and the unpopular Walker clashed physically with his brother Laurence.
Himself an Anglican of latitudinarian views, he supported the campaign against the religious disabilities of dissenters, and was a founder member of the Unitarian Society set up by Theophilus Lindsey.
[13] Among his friends and correspondents were Charles James Fox, the leading Whig Lord Derby, John Horne Tooke and Thomas Paine.
[3][14] He took on as apprentices the sons of both Joseph Priestley and James Watt; other business connections were with Matthew Boulton and Josiah Wedgwood.
[14][15] At the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society he associated with like-minded men: John Ferriar the physician, Joseph Collier the surgeon, Samuel Jackson the merchant, and Thomas Cooper the barrister.
[20][21] Walker was a pivotal figure for Manchester abolitionism, took shares in the Sierra Leone Company,[22] and was in touch with the London Abolition Committee.
[24][25] The committee, however, had by then shed some Tory members, including the prominent Loyalist Nathan Crompton, and others remained as nominal supporters only.
[34] The Whig and dissenter political leaders had little access to the manorial positions;[29] the manor of Manchester ran in the family of the Mosley baronets, and in 1790 the title was held by a minor.
[38] Place had called a public meeting on 3 February 1790, at which resolutions had been passed including one stating that Dissenter agitation should be viewed with "alarm".
[3][42] It was founded by Cooper and Walker, as an alternative to the conservative Manchester Mercury run by Joseph Harrop, was abolitionist, and wrote positively about the French Revolution.
[46] On 4 November 1791 Walker attended the Revolution Dinner at the London Tavern, with Priestley, Tom Paine, and Jérôme Pétion de Villeneuve.
[14][49] Archibald Prentice's account of these events regards the formation of a "Church and King Club" in Manchester as a result of the rejection in 1790 of nonconformist pressure to relax religious tests.
[51] On Walker's published account, the violence that began on 10 December 1792 lasted for three nights, and occurred in four locations, with the constables not intervening.
[52] It affected his house, which was on South Parade; that of Joseph Collier; and that of Matthew Falkner, with the Manchester Herald office being broken up.
[59] At that point, Walker was in London: he asked his brother Richard and solicitor to make enquiries of Griffith, while he himself contacted Henry Dundas, the Home Secretary.
Edward Law led for the prosecution, with four juniors; Thomas Erskine for the defence had four other counsel also, including Felix Vaughan.
[59][60] The jury heard testimony about the attack on Walker's warehouse, and his subsequent collecting of arms, which were later fired over the head of a crowd.
[59] Walker withdrew from political activity after the trial, but in 1795 was a signatory to a petition criticising government measures, with other members of the anti-slavery committee including Samuel Greg, Lloyd and Percival.
