John Hardman (MP)
British Member of Parliament (died 1755)
John Hardman (c.1694 – 6 December 1755) was an English merchant and slave trader from Lancashire, England, who was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Liverpool in 1754. He and his brother were the owners of Allerton Hall during the 17th century and are believed to have been involved in 46 slave voyages from 1729 to 1761.
Biography
John Hardman was the son of Richard Hardman, merchant, of the manor of Rochdale, by his wife Elizabeth Fernyside. His brother, James Hardman (c.1692–1746) was also a slave trader and married to Jane Leigh (painted by Joseph Wright of Derby). The Hardmans were an old Lancastrian landed gentry family.
While some contemporaries described Hardman as a mere 'West India merchant', he was known to have become engaged in the transatlantic slave trade by c. 1729. Indeed, the Hardman family were involved in 46 slave voyages from 1729 to 1761. A slave ship-owner, he was said to have had considerable knowledge of African and American trade.
In 1736, Hardman and his brother James purchased Allerton Hall and rebuilt it in the Palladian style.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “John Hardman (MP)” as british Member of Parliament (died 1755). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q26857702. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1694, 1755, 1754 and 1729.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Hardman (MP)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.