The Manchester Evening News of February 2nd 1997 carried an article on Anglo Japanese trade relations which referred to ‘The Manchester Seven’, a phrase used to describe a group of men who went to Kagoshima, Japan in the 1860s to equip a cotton mill with textile machinery from Platt Brothers of Oldham.
Whilst a lot has been written about the Japanese men who came to acquire the machinery and ‘know how’ from Platts, little attention has been paid to the men who facilitated, or who travelled with and erected the machinery. Who were they, were they from Manchester, were there even seven, what was their connection to Platt Brothers?
Beginning the search
Our search for the ‘Manchester Seven’ started with a few Japanese artifacts in Gallery Oldham. We hoped to find links to Platt Brothers or Kagoshima. Although we discovered a name we recognized—John Tetlow, whose journal fragment survived in the archives—we didn’t make much headway.
original is, please let us know!
The famous ‘Engineers House’ photo, seen on a Kagoshima World Heritage Site tour guide, provided more clues. We dug into records about technology transfer between Japan and Britain, searching through newspaper archives, databases, and online sources about Platt Brothers, Japan, Kagoshima, and textile exports in the 1860s. We uncovered more names and cross-referenced them with census returns, passenger manifests, and other sources.
One article from 1916 in The London and China Express claimed that 90% of all textile machinery in Japan came from Platt Brothers.
Research challenges
The search wasn’t easy. Spelling variations and translations between English and Japanese added confusion. Secondary sources often quoted each other, making them unreliable. While prominent figures got recorded, the workers who helped with the project were often overlooked. Our investigation also faced setbacks, like the temporary closure of the Oldham archives and a lack of Platt Brothers’ records. This is still an ongoing project with many gaps.
So far, we’ve identified six of the seven names with varying certainty: John Tetlow, Henry Ainley, A.N. Shillingford, Edward Harrison, John Sutcliffe, and Edward Holme. One name remains unidentified. Not all of them were from Manchester, and not all were engineers. It’s likely that other unnamed individuals played a role, but evidence points to these six men traveling to Kagoshima in 1866-67. If you recognise any of these names as your ancestors, we’d love to hear from you.
We’ll keep you updated on the ‘Manchester Seven’ as we continue our research. You can find more information about our Japan research here and here.
Research and blog post by Alison Jones, Gallery Oldham volunteer
