William Gaskell (24 July 1805 – 12 June 1884) was an English Unitarian minister, charity worker and pioneer in the education of the working class.

His personal theology was Priestleian rationalism; he rejected the doctrine of original sin, believing humans to have an innate capacity for good, and this belief seems to have underpinned his lifelong commitment to charitable and educational projects.

[1][2] Unlike many of his Manchester contemporaries, Gaskell always favoured social and educational work above political lobbying for free trade or factory reform.

[1] His personal philosophy can perhaps be summarised in his dedication which he penned at the publication of his poetry collection Temperance Rhymes: 'to the working men of Manchester ... in the hope that they may act as another small weight on the right end of that lever which is to raise them in the scale of humanity.

His father, also William, was a sailcloth manufacturer with a business on Buttermarket Street[3] and also a Unitarian theology teacher;[2] according to one source, his mother, Margaret Jackson, was a housemaid.

He then trained for the Unitarian ministry at Manchester New College (1825–28), at that time located in York, where his tutors included Charles Wellbeloved and James Turner.

[5][6] Founded in 1694,[7] Cross Street was the major Unitarian chapel of the city, and its congregation contained many influential Manchester figures, at one time including five MPs.

To honor his fifty-year point in the Cross Street ministry, a soirée was held in Manchester Town Hall; it was attended by over one thousand people.

The congregation honored him with a gift of silverware, and during the festivities a large sum of money was raised for the founding of a scholarship for ministerial students at Owen's College (now Manchester University).

[2] Throughout his life, Gaskell worked for numerous local charitable concerns to alleviate poverty, improve living conditions and reduce the transmission of disease, particularly epidemic cholera and typhus.

[8] In 1845, Engels described one of the poorest slums, not far from the Gaskells' house:[9] 'ruinous cottages behind broken windows, mended with oilskin, sprung doors, and rotten doorposts, [...] dark wet cellars, in measureless filth and stench...' It was also a city of extreme social inequality between the so-called 'millocracy' and the workers; Elizabeth Gaskell once described an acquaintance attending a ball wearing £400 of lace and £10,000 in diamonds.

[11] From the first, however, Gaskell seems to have embraced the idea of a broader education: his initial lecture series was entitled 'The Poets and Poetry of Humble Life'.

Elizabeth wrote that her husband's lectures aimed to increase appreciation of 'the beauty and poetry of many of the common things and daily events of life in its humblest aspect'.

[2] In addition to his tutoring and lecturing, Gaskell campaigned for better education for the working classes, co-founding the Lancashire Public Schools Association in 1847.

1" (co-written with his wife in the manner of Crabbe), was published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1837, and his poetry collection Temperance Rhymes (1839) won the approval of Wordsworth.

[1] Elizabeth Gaskell's industrial novels Mary Barton and North and South were directly inspired by her experiences as a minister's wife in the cotton-manufacturing city of Manchester.

[1][2] He also supported her when some of her novels, particularly Mary Barton and Ruth, drew strong criticism for their radical views, as well as through the threatened lawsuits over her biography of Charlotte Brontë.