a writer and critic publishing in 1840 Past and Present Efforts for the Extinction of the African Slave Trade in which he argued that cotton, sugar and coffee could be grown more cheaply by free labour; Elizabeth Greg (married to William Rathbone V) founded the first public wash-houses in the United Kingdom in the wake of the 1832 cholera epidemic, and later helped William Forster in formulating the 1870 Education Act. Ellen Maria married George Melly and he and their daughter Florence Melly took an interest in improving education. The estate and mill were eventually inherited by Robert Hyde Greg and then by Alexander Carlton Greg, who donated the site in 1939 to the National Trust. Bibliography Rose, M.B. (1986) The Gregs of Quarry Bank Mill: The Rise and Decline of the Family Firm, 1750–1914 References 1758 births 1834 deaths Businesspeople from Belfast People educated at Harrow School 19th-century English businesspeople People of the Industrial Revolution English Unitarians British textile industry businesspeople Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society