abstained from overt political involvement, but they were active in social work, underpinning the thrust of their laypeople. William Gaskell led the congregation from 1828 to 1884, exercising wide influence within and outside the Unitarian movement. He supported the Manchester Domestic Mission Society, which assisted the poor “in such a way that at no time should any denominational or sectarian name or test be introduced”. He championed the Lower Mosley Street Schools, which the Cross Street Chapel sponsored to serve the areas near the River Medlock. A Fellowship Fund supported congregations in poorer locations. A nurse superintended by a lady of the congregation was financed to visit poor families near the town centre. Gaskell worked for education opportunities for the area's working class, and advocated for the Mechanics Institute movement. Gaskell was legendary in humanitarian efforts. To honor his fifty-year point in the Cross Street ministry, a soirée was held in Manchester Town Hall; it was attended by over one thousand people. The congregation honored him with a gift of silverware, and during the festivities a large sum of money was raised for the founding of a scholarship for ministerial students at Owen's College (now Manchester University). William Gaskell was supported in his educational and humanitarian work by his wife, the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell. He came to be numbered among the most prominent Unitarians in the country; in 1859, he was offered the ministry at Essex Street Chapel in London, the leading post in the British Unitarian ministry, but turned it down, preferring to remain at Cross Street. From 1865, he served as President of the Assembly of Presbyterian and Unitarian Ministers of Lancashire and Cheshire. In 1861 he co-founded the Unitarian Herald, a publication aimed at the working-class audience, and was an editor until 1875. Charitable works Throughout his life, Gaskell worked for numerous local charitable concerns to alleviate poverty, improve living conditions and reduce the transmission of disease, particularly epidemic cholera and typhus. During the 1830s–1860s, some of the worst conditions for the poor in England were to be found in Manchester. In 1845, Engels described one of the poorest slums, not far from the Gaskells' house: 'ruinous cottages behind broken windows, mended with oilskin, sprung doors, and rotten doorposts, [...] dark wet cellars, in measureless filth and stench...' It was also a city of extreme social inequality between the so-called 'millocracy' and the workers; Elizabeth Gaskell once