He was born at Winstanley, Lancashire into a Quaker family, the son of Thomas Cropper and his wife Rebecca Winstanley. He was intended by his father for the family farm, but he left home at 17 and became an apprentice in the mercantile house ofRathbone Brothers. Successful in business, Cropper became the founder of Cropper, Benson, & Co., merchants, and made a personal fortune. He worked for the repeal of the orders of council which, up to 1811, restricting British commerce with the US, He became an abolitionist, active against slavery in the Caribbean. He also was concerned at poverty in Ireland, made a series of visits there, and established cotton-mills. He also became involved with the port of Liverpool. Cropper was an active director of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway from 1830. In 1833 he decided to start an industrial school for boys, in the area of agriculture; and after visiting Germany and Switzerland, he built a school and orphan-house on his estate at Fearnhead, near Warrington, with a house for himself. Here he resided until his death, in 1841. He died in 1841, and was buried in the Quaker burial-ground at Liverpool by the side of his wife. The house at Fearnhead bore the following inscription:
"In this house lived James Cropper, one, and he not the least, of that small but noble band of christian men who, after years of labour and through much opposition, accomplished the abolition of West Indian slavery; and thus having lived the life of the righteous, he died in the full assurance of faith on the 26th of Feby. 1840."
Works
Cropper published many pamphlets on the condition of the West Indies, and on the sugar bounties and other protective duties. His major publications were:
Letters to William Wilberforce, M.P., recommending the cultivation of sugar in our dominions in the East Indies, 1822. Against protectionist duties imposed on sugar from the East Indies or elsewhere, in the interests of the West India slaveowners.
Cropper married in 1796 Mary Brinsmead, and outlived her by two years. They had two sons, John and Edward, who survived him, and a daughter, who married Joseph Sturge of Birmingham, and died in giving birth to her first child.
