Julia Bradford Gaskell
1846-1908

“Could you manage to convey a small kiss to that dear but dangerous little person, Julia? She has surreptitiously possessed herself of a minute fraction of my heart, which has been missing ever since I saw her”

Here, writing to her friend, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Bronte describes how the five year old Julia Gaskell had captured her heart when she had paid her first visit to Plymouth Grove.

Julia, the youngest of the Gaskell daughters, was born in 1846, and was according to her mother “witty and wild, and clever and droll, the pet of the house” When she was very young she was often referred to as “baby” in Elizabeth’s letters

As she grew up she seems to have been a very lively, happy, child –a “chatterbox and perpetual singer” She left school when she was 18 years old and her mother reported that she was “full of promise,- the merriest grig, the most unselfish girl by nature that I ever knew---”

There was a special bond between Julia and her elder sister Meta, despite their eight year difference in age. Elizabeth wrote that Julia was most like Meta “except that she doesn’t read as much as Meta” When Elizabeth was away from home the two sisters kept house for Mr Gaskell and were “such happy friends” They shared a love of the countryside and walking, especially in Silverdale, a beautiful area just south of the Lake District, where as children they spent many happy family holidays. When they were older, after the death of Elizabeth, they built a ‘cottage’ there, called The Shealing, a detached house in its own grounds which had beautiful views over the area.

Julia and Meta enjoyed enjoyed mountain climbing and were the first women to cross the Moming Pass in the Alps!

Julia was only nineteen when her mother died, and she along with Meta returned home to Plymouth Grove to take care of their father. The two sisters continued their charitable work at the Cross Street Chapel and the Mosley Street School. Julia was also one of the founders of the Manchester Social Club in Lower Mosley Street and she took a “strenuous part” in the development of the Manchester and Salford Sick Poor and Private Nursing Institution and in the administration of the Manchester Art Museum.

Meta and Julia continued to keep their home in Plymouth Grove as the centre of social and cultural life in Manchester, just as it had been in their mother’s day When Julia died, suddenly, in October 1908 her obituaries recorded her generosity not only to many philanthropic projects but also to many individual cases of distress. Such was the affection and esteem in which she was held by the people of Manchester that on the day prior to her funeral the flags at the Manchester Town Hall were flown at half mast.