Introduction to the Leech Family Diaries

The Leech family lived in Urmston, a village in the suburbs of Manchester, from the 1830’s to the 1850’s. Thomas Leech and his wife Rachel had five children. Leech had business interests in Manchester, including investments in canals and cotton, and the family enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle. Thomas Leech also played a part in the wider community. For many years he was the poor law guardian for Urmston, then part of the Chorlton-on-Medlock Poor Law Union. He was also an active supporter of the free trade movement. His wealth meant that he associated with powerful figures within the Manchester middle-class community. The Leech children were well educated and some of them were to have a major role in Manchester’s business and political affairs later in the century. The most well-known member of the family was the eldest son, Bosdin Thomas Leech, who played an important part in the project to build the Manchester Ship Canal, served as mayor of Manchester and was knighted by Queen Victoria.

The Leech family had a tradition of reporting their daily activities in personal diaries and memorandums. These resulted in a large collection of diaries written by different members of the family in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These diaries were donated to Chetham’s Library in Manchester in 2007. This website provides extracts from three of the earliest diaries in the collection. They were written Thomas Leech, Rachel Leech and Sarah Ann Ellis Leech in the period from the 1830s to the 1850s.

The extracts are exact transcriptions from the original documents.

They provide a fascinating insight into the life of the Leech family during these years as well as being of great value in understanding the Victorian middle-class family in general.