Mr James Heywood
(1810-1897)
27 May 1861

Volume 3, page 320, sitting number 3962.    

[A Silvy portrrait of Mrs James Heywood appears on page 68 of this section.]

James Heywood was a Fellow of the Royal Society and from 1847 to 1857 the Member of Parliament for North Lancashire.

On 11 June 1853 at Chorlton in Lancashire he married Anne, widow of Gustav Albert Escher of Zürich and daughter of John Kennedy, cotton manufacturer, of Ardwick Hall in Lancashire. They had one daughter, Anne Sophia, born in Pimlico in 1855.

Mr and Mrs Heywood appear on the 1861 census, living at 25 Kensington Palace Gardens in London. James Heywood described himself as ‘Funderholder, JP and MP.’ Also present on the night of the census were their daughter, Anne Sophia, and Mrs Heywood's daughter by her first marriage, Mary Olga Escher, born in Switzerland in or about 1844.

According the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the university reformer and philanthropist James Heywood was resident in Kensington from 1859, where he was ‘active in the Notting Hill Unitarian congregation. He was an early promoter of the free public library movement, speaking in favour of the Public Libraries Act in 1850 and maintaining at his own expense a public library in Notting Hill High Street from 1874 until 1887 when he donated it to the parish of Kensington and Chelsea. He was a founder member in 1875 of the Sunday Society to promote the opening of museums, art galleries, and public libraries on Sundays.’

James Heywood died on 17 October 1897 at 26 Kensington Palace Gardens, London. He left an estate valued at £61,745. 

[From an album compiled by the sitter's sister-in-law, Margaret Tootal, wife of Edward Tootal of Weaste near Manchester, formerly a cotton manufacturer, and second daughter of James Kennedy of Ancoats near Manchester, also a cotton manufacturer.]