Biography
Bradshaw was born at Windsor Bridge, Pendleton, in Salford, Lancashire. On leaving school he was apprenticed to an engraver named Beale in Manchester, and in 1820 he set up his own engraving business in Belfast, returning to Manchester in 1822 to set up in that city as an engraver and printer, principally of maps.
He was a religious man. Although his parents were far from wealthy, when he was young they enabled him to take lessons from a minister devoted to the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg. He later joined the Society of Friends (the Quakers) and gave a considerable part of his time to philanthropic work. He worked a great deal with radical reformers such as Richard Cobden in organising peace conferences and in setting up schools and soup kitchens for the poor of Manchester. It is his belief as a Quaker that is quoted as causing the early editions of Bradshaw's guides to have avoided using the names of months based upon Roman deities (i.e. a "pagan" usage). (Quaker usage was (and sometimes still is) "First month" for January, "Second month" for February and so on. Days of the week were "First day" for Sunday and so on.)
In 1841, he founded a high quality weekly magazine, edited by George Falkner, called Bradshaw's Manchester Journal, described as "a 16-page miscellany of art, science and literature, to sell at the cheap price of a penny-halfpenny a week. ... After the first six months, the Journal was renamed Bradshaw’s Journal: A Miscellany of Literature, Science and Art, and the place of publication moved to London, where the title was taken on by William Strange", but the journal survived only until 1843.
He married on 15 May 1839. While touring Norway in 1853 he contracted cholera and died in September of that year without being able to return to England. He is interred in the cemetery adjoining the cathedral in Oslo.
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