Biography

Walker operated a family factory in Leeds, which William Seward visited in 1859. Seward also stayed with Walker during his trip. He wrote to his daughter Fanny on July 10, 1859, "I passed into the factory where Mr Walker employs three thousand human pairs of hands in merely regulating the machinery two thousand times twenty times greater in force in making woolen threads yarn, and fabrics which clothe whole Kingdoms. Leeds has many and various other manufactures and within a single lifetime has risen from ten thousand to a population of two hundred thousand. Best of all I find the manufacturers studying how to improve and educate and train to independence and virtue the laborers to whom England owes her renovation in this century. The children are not allowed to be employed if their physical constitution cannot endure the toil and confinement, and every employer is obliged to see that each child is at school half of his time, working only the other half. Here in one establishment found a thousand children at school. Mr Walker took me home with him for the night. He has a villa eight hundred years old ten miles from the city. We talked late, building up strong mutual sympathies. After I had retired I was disturbed by the rattling of wheels and roused myself to hear that a messenger had arrived bringing bad news from yourself on some other of my dearly loved friends or relatives. In the morning I found that the young lady wife of a son of Mr Walker who had presided at dinner the day before had brought joy into the house by giving birth to an heir of a well gotten estate."