Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/508

466 466 PROVINCIAL BOOKSELLERS. has also issued the whole of the popular tale, " The Gates Ajar," for the same price one penny giving in a pamphlet form what usually occupies a goodly volume. Abel Heywood, however, was as well known as a distinguished public man as a successful bookseller. In 1835 he was appointed a Commissioner of Police, and during the Manchester riots in 1842 and 1849 ne took a conspicuous part in quelling the disturbances. Elected to the corporation, he became an alderman in 1853, and in 1859 ne was third in the list of candi- dates at the general Parliamentary elections. In 1862 he was elected Mayor of Manchester ; in 1864 he took his son, Abel, into partnership. John Heywood commenced life in the same lowly circumstances as his brother, and at the age of four- teen found employment as a handloom weaver. Within ten years his wages rose from half-a-crown to thirty shillings a week ; and when in receipt of this latter sum he regularly allowed his mother a pound a week. At the age of four-and-twenty he married, and to improve his worldly position, accepted the manage- ment of a small factory at Altrincham, in Cheshire ; but as the speculation proved a failure, he returned to his former occupation of " dressing " for power-loom weavers, at which he remained until his thirty-fifth year. Desirous of rendering even his spare time pro- fitable, he had bought a paper-ruling machine, upon which he worked in the evenings ; and Abel, who was now a successful bookseller in Oldham Street, offered him a situation in his establishment as paper-ruler, with a salary of two pounds a week : and in his brother's employ he remained for seven years. In 1842, however, determined to make a start for himself,