1829, Christopher Cookson was unopposed when he replaced Robert Hopper Williamson. Reformer In the period before the Great Reform Bill, Losh took part in public reform meetings, in Newcastle and Durham. A moderate, he noted the strength of feeling against the bishops, but deprecated it, despite being a Unitarian, and feeling there was some justification. He was deterred from speaking in Durham, on 31 October 1831. His moderation was not shared by all, and the Northern Reform Union, represented by Charles Attwood, John Fife and Charles Larkin, tried to take over a major meeting in 1832, a move Losh countered. Abolitionist Losh spoke at meetings that supported the Anti-Slavery Society's petitions of the mid 1820s, with John Ralph Fenwick M.D. (1761–1855). On 29 January 1833 he was introduced to William Knibb, by the Quaker William Beaumont; their speeches at a meeting the following day, for the abolition of slavery in the British colonies, at the Brunswick Place Chapel in Newcastle, were published together. Education Losh had progressive views on education, and took an interest in many facets of it. During his time in the south-west, he collaborated with Beddoes on religious education (Sunday Schools) and vocational education (Schools of Industry, in the contemporary terminology). In a diary entry for 1814 he dismissed the educational reformers Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster as "very useful but very vain men", anticipated in essentials by Pestalozzi.<ref>Diaries''' vol, 1, p. 34</ref> At the end of his life, in 1832, Losh criticised publicly his fellow coal owners for a short-sighted view, in leaving pitmen illiterate. One owner who heeded him was Robert William Brandling. The context was the rise in the early 1830s of the North-East Pitmen's Union: Brandling who chaired the local coalowners had addressed Losh in the Newcastle Chronicle on the union's power, while Losh had publicly denied the owners were a cartel. Other interests Losh was the first chairman of the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway. In 1824 there was opposition to the idea from Armorer Donkin and William Armstrong, who proposed a canal; but Losh carried the day. Involved as chairman and shareholder in the company from 1825, he led a deputation to London in May 1833 that obtained an exchequer loan to finance ongoing work. He was a member of The Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne from 1799 to 1833, being a vice-president from 1802. The Society had a