Established in 1833, David Moseley & Sons of Manchester manufactured a range of india rubber and gutta percha goods. The company is notable as one of the first in Britain to be involved in telecommunications. In November 1877 Charles Moseley recruited the engineer William Fereday Bottomley, who had worked for the Magnetic and Indo-European Telegraph Companies. The company began providing private telephone services to local customers as a telephone agent. Wishing to connect his premises on Dantzig Street and Shudehill by telephone, hardware merchant Thomas Hudson became the first customer. The next step for David Moseley & Sons was to become telephone manufacturers. Alexander Marr joined the company as head of the construction department, patenting a granular carbon transmitter in 1879. The company began supplying apparatus to the Post Office, railway and private companies. Marr soon developed another granular carbon transmitter especially for the transmission of opera, which was used in Manchester theatres in 1880 to 1881. In 1880, Charles Moseley, William Bottomley and William Edwin Heys (local consulting engineer and electrician), patented a system for erecting telephone wires, called the ‘twist’ system, which was designed ‘to diminish or prevent the results of inductive action’. Although the patent was never enforced (Professor Hughes having previously described the same principle), the ‘twist’ system was adopted universally in Britain. Moseley patented another three types of telephone apparatus in 1881 and 1882. As well as in-house designs, the company also made telephone equipment under licence, such as the Gower-Bell wall telephone. David Moseley & Sons advertised plans to open a telephone exchange at its offices and warehouse in New Brown Street. The business received a licence in August of that year, but by October the Lancashire & Cheshire Telephonic Exchange had bought the licence to head off its competitor. Moseley & Sons continued to trade as telephone constructor and erector until around 1890, but by 1897 its entry in the Manchester street directory no longer listed these activities. The Moseley company maintained its original business of manufacturing india rubber and gutta percha, branching out into plastic products. David Moseley & Sons moved to the Chapelfield Works in Ardwick in 1845, and kept a warehouse in New Brown Street. From 1906 to 1961 there was also a separate waterproof clothing factory on Dolphin Street in Ardwick. In 1964 David Moseley & Sons was taken over by Avon Rubber and was renamed Avon-Moseley in 1968. In 1981, economic recession led Avon Rubber to rationalise its operations, and the Avon-Moseley factory was closed.

Sir William Mather was born in Manchester in 1838. He became assistant manager at Mather & Platt in 1858, and was made partner in 1862 and took over running of the business in 1868, on the retirement of his uncle Colin Mather and co-founder William Wilkinson Platt. First elected as a Liberal MP in 1885, for the sourthern division of Salford. In 1892, Mather & Platt became a limited company and Sir William Mather was appointed as Chairman. He was knighted in 1902 and retired in 1916. He died at his home in the New Forest in 1920. During his working life, Sir William Mather was noted for his concerns on the conditions and the welfare of workers. He undertook research on trips abroad, most notably to America in the late 1800s, and compiled notes for various publications and lectures on the subject. In 1873, he established the Salford Iron Works' Evening Science School and in 1893, he introduced an eight hour working day for his employees.