This site celebrates the life and work of sculptor John Cassidy - He was the son of Lee Southern, born in Lymm, Chester c. In the census Lee Southern described himself as a 'chest maker' and is listed in an directory as operating a saw mill in Jackson's Row, off Deansgate in central Manchester. By Lee Southern was listed as 'Joiner and Builder, employing 18 Men and 5 apprentices' living at 2 Field Place, Hulme, Manchester, apparently separated from his wife and family whose home was in Rosamond Street, Chorlton-on-Medlock.
Eliza appears to have made on a new career as a lodging-house keeper in Southport, where she is recorded in at 74 Cemetery Road with her sister Maria Wilson and grandchildren Eliza, Marion, George, and Robert Southern. In ,aged 84, she was residing in Blackpool with her daughter Eliza Mary, son-in-law George Darwent; she died there the following year.
At the age of 18, in , James was enabled to enrol for evening classes at the Working Men's College, which had been founded in Manchester that year, where his teachers included the Rev. William Gaskell. He excelled in the study of English Language and Literature, winning a second prize in that subject after the merger of the college with newly-opened Owens College, forerunner of Manchester University. A prospectus for shares in the company Southerns Ltd.
By he was also serving in his spare time as Sunday School and night school teacher at the Zion Congregation Schools in Stretford Road, and later became a Guardian of the Poor in the Chorlton Union, giving up his Sunday work in order to visit the orphan children boarded out by the Guardians.
This led him into the emerging scene of local government, being one of the founders of the Withington Local Board which administered the districts of Burnage, Didsbury, Withington and Chorlton-cum-Hardy, for which he was chairman of the Building and Highways Committee. Sadly his first wife Sarah Firth Southern died very young, in soon after the birth of their daughter Ada. In he married another Sarah: Sarah Ann Cooper, daughter of a miller, in her home town of Chesterfield, and by he was clearly advancing in the business world as the family, including daughters Ada aged 6 and Mary Eliza 1 was residing in a relatively up-market area at 28 Grosvenor Street, Chorlton-on-Medlock, attended by two domestic servants.
