William Allen (banker)

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William Allen (1736–1792) was an English banker who helped start Manchester’s first bank. He was the youngest of six sons; his mother died when he was six, and he was raised by his father. When his father died, Allen inherited the family home and property.

In 1760 he married the daughter of Tomas Clowes and in 1765 bought Davyhulme Hall near Urmston. A year later his wife died, and in 1768 he married Ellen Livesey, the daughter of John Livesey, a Blackburn cotton mill owner. Their son Joseph was born in 1770 and would later become a bishop; they also had a daughter Ellen born in 1774.

Allen co-founded the Bank of Byrom, Allen, Sedgwick, and Place, Manchester’s first bank, which opened on 2 December 1771. Other founders were Edward Byrom, Roger Sedgwick, and Edward Place (who left after a few months). After Byrom died in 1773 and Sedgwick in 1779, Allen became the bank’s sole director.

The bank loaned money to Livesey, Hargreaves and Company. The company went bankrupt in 1788 with large debts, and two days later the bank collapsed. Allen was declared bankrupt and had to sell his property. He and his family moved to live with his friend Robert Wainwright Ashley at Park Place in Frodsham, Cheshire, where he died in 1792.

Their daughter Ellen married Wainwright’s son Daniel in 1794, and Joseph later married Daniel’s sister, Margaret, in 1807. Joseph studied in Manchester and at Trinity College, Cambridge, and became Bishop of Bristol in 1834, then Bishop of Ely from 1836 until his death in 1845. Ellen Allen died in 1825. William Allen and his wife Ellen are buried in St. Laurence’s Church, Frodsham, where a wall monument marks their memory.