Other Activities
Gaskell served as a magistrate in Widnes, was an active liberal and a member of the Liverpool Reform Club, supporting causes including the extension of the franchise. He endowed a chair of botany and provided chemistry laboratories at University College, Liverpool. He paid for public baths in Widnes and supported convalescent homes in Heswall and Southport. He was involved with the Liverpool Daily and Weekly Post and Echo and when this amalgamated with the Liverpool Mercury in 1904 he became its chairman. He owned a fine art collection which included works by Turner and Constable which was loaned to the Walker Art Gallery in 1885.
With his accumulated wealth Holbrook Gaskell moved to Woolton Woods in Much Woolton. He became a renowned collector of orchids. Frederick Sander, an orchid dealer, received a new Cattleya species in 1883 from his collector Seidl and named it Cattleya gaskelliana after Holbrook Gaskell in recognition of a good customer and someone who "by great diligence has acquired one of the finest collections of orchids in the North of England".
When he died in 1909 at Woolton Woods his probate was almost £500,000. He was buried in the churchyard of Cairo Street chapel, Warrington. The estate of Woolton Woods passed to his sons who sold it to Col James P. Reynolds, who in turn sold it to Liverpool City Council.
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“As life developed, I faced each problem as it came along. As my activities and work broadened and reached out, I never tried to shirk. I tried never to evade an issue. When I found I had something to do—I just did it.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)