ABSTRACT
Robert Owen lived with the Mr. McGuffog, who had no children, but only a nephew and niece of their own, and was treated, he says, “more like their own child than as a stranger come from afar”. McGuffog was a Scotsman, who had begun business as a hawker, with a capital of half crown. Gradually he had worked up an extensive connection, and, at length, had opened shop in Stamford as convenient centre. The business was well managed, and Owen got an excellent and thoroughly methodical training in all its branches. Mr. Satterfield’s, Owen found, was not much as wholesale workhouse, but excellent as a retail shop, with good business among the wives and families of the well-to-do Manchester merchants and manufacturers. The job suited Owen well; and with Satterfield he remained until he was eighteen years old. From being a boy he had reached manhood. At eighteen, he was ready to launch out on a new and daring adventure.
