A year later, in May, he moved to Manchester to take a position in the Lloyd Street Presbyterian chapel, with which he remained associated for the rest of his life.
"[1] Sellers says that McKerrow was "moved by a sense of political and social injustice", perhaps inspired by the environs of Lloyd Street Chapel, which occupied a site in a deprived area opposite Manchester Town Hall.
He was later involved in the establishment of the Manchester Voluntary Church Association in 1839, which was initially based at Lloyd Street Chapel and went on to support Edward Miall and The Nonconformist newspaper.
[1] During the earlier part of the 1840s, McKerrow campaigned against proposals in Sir James Graham's 1843 Factory Education Bill and also against the Maynooth Grant.
[1] He was among the co-founders of the Manchester Examiner newspaper in 1846, with his colleagues including Thomas Ballantyne, John Bright, Alexander Ireland, and Edward Watkin.
He was among the founders of the Lancashire Public School Association in 1847, which also began in the Lloyd Street Chapel building and in December 1850, with the assistance of Richard Cobden, became a national body.
[1] In 1857, McKerrow stood in for Cobden, who was ill, to lead the unsuccessful election campaigns of Bright and Milner Gibson, both of whom were radicals and pacifists.
He also established a scholarship to enable board-school children to attend secondary schools, funding it with money given to him at a dinner celebrating his jubilee in the ministry.