Bradshaw & Blacklock Bradshaw & Blacklock was established in 1838 when George Bradshaw took on his apprentice William Blacklock as a partner in his printing and publishing business.
The company moved to Brown Street, Manchester in 1839, where they began production of Bradshaw's Railway Time Tables, followed in 1840 by a fuller edition under the new title of Bradshaw's Railway Companion, which included sectional maps. In December 1841, the company produced the first issue of Bradshaw's Monthly Railway Guide, which became famous worldwide. Other publications included Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide, known colloquially as ‘the foreign Bradshaw’, and Bradshaw's General Railway Directory and Shareholders' Guide.
The small format and small print of the Monthly Railway Guide led to ‘Bradshaw’ becoming a byword for incomprehensibility: the guide was mocked in Punch and Vanity Fair and was the subject of music-hall jokes. Actress Fanny Kemble was asked what she read to send her to sleep, and replied: ‘Why, the foreign Bradshaw, of course.’ The monthly Bradshaw was published until 1961 and played a large part in making the British time-conscious.
Butterworth, Edwin Edwin Butterworth was born in Oldham in 1812. He began writing as a young man, publishing "A Biography of Eminent Natives, Residents, and Benefactors of the Town of Manchester" in 1829, aged seventeen. He went on to write for local Manchester and Leeds-based newspapers. In 1831, Butterworth became a researcher for Edward Baines' History of Lancashire, travelling extensively through the county and recording vast amounts of information. Upon the death of his brother, he took over his news agency, publishing local histories, maps and sketches. Butterworth was well-respected as a local historian, but died in difficult financial circumstances, having suffered from ill health.
Tait, Arthur Fitzwilliam Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait was an artist who worked as a painter and lithographer. Born in Liverpool in 1819, at the age of twelve he came to work at Agnew and Zanetti’s “Repository of Arts", a fancy goods shop and publishers, based in Manchester. He began to teach himself to draw and paint, spending his time in the Royal Manchester Institution and studying the artworks there. In 1838 he began to teach drawing, having left Agnew and Zanetti. Between 1845 and 1848 he embarked on a series of railway-themed works, including the illustrations for "Views on the Manchester and Leeds Railway, Drawn from Nature, and on Stone, by A. F. Tait; With a descriptive history, by Edwin Butterworth." Through a relative, in 1850 Tait became involved in a venture to tour a painting of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The tour took him to New York, where he made contact with local artists and subsequently settled. Tait's American works frequently depicted wild and domestic animals, and included many commissions for the Currier and Ives publishing company.
