Samuel Touchet (ca. 1705 – 28 May 1773) was an English

cotton Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor pe ...

merchant, manufacturer and politician. Born in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...

, he was himself the son of a cotton trader and manufacturer and he started his career representing his father's business in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. His career importing raw cotton from the

Levant The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is ...

and the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greate ...

was successful to the extent that manufacturers in Manchester began to suspect him of seeking a

monopoly A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situati ...

. In 1742 he became involved with the

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...

inventors

Lewis Paul Lewis Paul (died 1759) was the original inventor of roller spinning, the basis of the water frame for spinning cotton in a cotton mill. Life and work Lewis Paul was of Huguenot descent. His father was physician to Lord Shaftesbury. He may hav ...

and John Wyatt, who had designed the first machinery to successfully spin cotton mechanically, receiving a grant for 300 spindles off Wyatt. In 1744 Touchet and a partner called Bowker set the spindles up at Touchet's Mill in Birmingham in association with Paul and with assistance from Wyatt. Little is known of the fate of this mill, but it was sufficiently successful for Touchet later to secure the lease of Marvel's Mill in

Northampton Northampton () is a market town and civil parish in the East Midlands of England, on the River Nene, north-west of London and south-east of Birmingham. The county town of Northamptonshire, Northampton is one of the largest towns in England ...

, another of the Paul-Wyatt cotton mills, from Edward Cave. As Touchet became very wealthy over the course of the 1750s his business interests diversified into

shipping Freight transport, also referred as ''Freight Forwarding'', is the physical process of transporting commodities and merchandise goods and cargo. The term shipping originally referred to transport by sea but in American English, it has been ...

insurance broking An insurance broker is an intermediary who sells, solicits, or negotiates insurance on behalf of a client for compensation. An insurance broker is distinct from an insurance agent in that a broker typically acts on behalf of a client by negoti ...

and the

sugar Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or do ...

and

slave Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

trades. He partnered up on two ships out of Liverpool, the ''Lydia'' and the ''Favourite'', 1757 and 1761, respectively. In just those two voyages over 1,000 slaves were taken.Voyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, http://slavevoyages.org/voyage/search?submit_val=restore_prev_query&prev_query_num=0 Touchet became the MP for

Shaftesbury Shaftesbury () is a town and civil parish in Dorset, England. It is situated on the A30 road, west of Salisbury, near the border with Wiltshire. It is the only significant hilltop settlement in Dorset, being built about above sea level on a ...

in 1761 but his business foundered that year's financial crisis and was taken over by his creditors in 1763, with Touchet remaining an MP until 1768.

References

Bibliography

* * 1705 births 1773 deaths 18th-century English businesspeople People of the Industrial Revolution British textile industry businesspeople Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for English constituencies British MPs 1761–1768 Businesspeople from Manchester English slave traders {{England-GreatBritain-MP-stub