﻿Annual Report of tJic^Council. xliii 



The Rev. Brooke Herford, D.D., was the youngest son 

 of John and Sarah Herford, and was born at Altrincham on 

 21st February, 1830. His father was of a Devonshire family, 

 but was a native of Upton-on-Severn. His mother came from 

 Birmingham, and carried on a school at Altrincham, while her 

 husband established himself as a wine merchant at Manchester. 

 On the mother's death the family moved into Manchester, when 

 Brooke Herford was about two years old. He spent some years 

 at the Rev. J. R. Beard's school before being apprenticed to 

 his father's business ; but before long he came under the influence 

 of T ravers Madge at the Lower Mosley Street Schools, where 

 Brooke Herford and his elder brother Charles had become 

 teachers, and he determined to be a minister. This was decidedly 

 in opposition to his father's wishes. He entered Manchester 

 New College (then at Manchester) in October, 1848, and con- 

 tinued as a student there until the spring of 185 1, when, as a 

 young man of twenty-one, he settled as minister of the Unitarian 

 congregation at Todmorden. Five years later he was appointed 

 minister of the Upper Chapel at Sheffield. There he remained 

 nearly nine years, becoming a man of considerable influence, 

 not only in his own denomination, but as a strenuous worker for 

 general social reform. In i860 he began the issue of " Home 

 Pages," a series of popular Unitarian tracts, which he continued 

 until 1867. Towards the close of 1861 he delivered a courageous 

 address at Sheffield on " Trade Outrages," occasioned by some 

 shocking attacks committed by trade unionists on non-union 

 men. In October, 1864, he succeeded Dr. Beard as minister 

 of the Strangeways Chapel, Manchester. His memoir of Travers 

 Madge was published in 1867. He was then joint editor of the 

 Unitariati Herald. On the death of his friend, John Harland, 

 in 1868, he undertook to complete the new and revised edition 

 of Baines's " History of Lancashire," of which only the first 

 volume had been published by Harland. Herford had a keen 

 interest in history and antiquarian subjects, and finished his 

 laborious task of editing the second and concluding volume in a 

 very creditable manner. It was about this time that he joined 



