Archibald Prentice

Archibald Prentice (1792–1857) was a Scottish journalist, known as a radical reformer and temperance campaigner.

Life The son of Archibald Prentice of Covington Mains in the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire, and Helen, daughter of John Stoddart of The Bank, a farm in the parish of Carnwath, he was born in November 1792. After a scanty education, he was apprenticed at age 12 to a baker in Edinburgh; but then the following summer (1805) to a woollen-draper in the Lawnmarket. Here he remained for three years, then moved to Glasgow as a clerk in the warehouse of Thomas Grahame, brother of James Grahame the poet. Two years later he was appointed traveller to the house in England, and in 1815 Grahame, acting on his advice, moved his business from Glasgow to Manchester, and at the same time brought Prentice into partnership in the firm.

He was elected to membership of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society on 22 January 1819

Journalism Prentice took an interest in politics, and contributed to Cowdroy's Gazette, a weekly. In May 1821 the Manchester Guardian was founded as an organ of radical opinion. Some, including Prentice, found John Edward Taylor as editor insufficiently advanced; Prentice purchased Cowdroy's Gazette to start an alternative paper. In June 1824, the first number of the renamed Manchester Gazette appeared under his editorship.

George Wilson came to play a role as moderator of the radical tactics of Prentice, who did not hold a prominent official position in the League, and who fell out with Richard Cobden. A company was formed in 1845 to run another radical paper, the Manchester Examiner, at the initiative of William McKerrow. The new venture had a major impact on the Manchester Times; and in 1847 Prentice sold out his stake in the paper. In the following year the two publications became the Manchester Examiner and Times. John Childs regarded Prentice as unfairly treated, as a committed activist.

Later life Prentice visited the United States in 1848. On his return he obtained an appointment in the Manchester gas office, and continued to write. An advocate of temperance principles, he became latterly an ardent apostle of total abstinence, and on the formation of the Manchester Temperance League in 1857, he became treasurer. One of his last lectures was on the bacchanalian songs of Robert Burns.

Prentice became paralysed, on 22 December 1857, and died two days later in his sixty-seventh year.

Works Prentice published Tour in the United States, in a cheap form in order to promote emigration. He edited in 1822 The Life of Alexander Reid, a Scotish Covenanter, and was the author of Historical Sketches and Personal Recollections of Manchester, published in 1851, and A History of the Anti-Corn-Law League, London, 1853.

Family Prentice married, on 3 June 1819, Jane, daughter of James Thomson of Oatridge, near Linlithgow. She survived him many years, and was buried by his side in the Rusholme Road cemetery, Manchester.