Edward Fisher Bodley
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Edward Fisher Bodley (1815–1881) was an English businessman, owner of a Staffordshire pottery. It operated on several sites in what is now Stoke-on-Trent. He had been a Congregationalist minister, and retained religious interests.
In early life, Bodley was an nonconformist minister. He trained at Highbury College, and ministered at Steeple Bumpstead, Essex, as successor to Ebenezer Temple.[1][2] He moved south within Essex, to a congregation at Rochford, where he was in 1842.[3][4] In 1843 he published Three Sermons on Revivals of Religion.[5]
Potter
Bodley spent time as a commercial traveller. In business on his own account, he was successful as a pottery owner.[6]
The pottery company E. F. Bodley & Co. was set up in the early 1860s. A table service used on CSS Alabama was manufactured by it.[7][8] It was established manufacturing earthenwares at the Scotia Pottery in Burslem in 1862. In 1863–7 its activities or trading are not easily distinguished from those of Bodley & Harrold;[9] Bodley and William Harrold dissolved a partnership in 1865.[10] The parting was not amicable.[11]
The business continued to expand, and came to occupy three sites.[11] The Hill Top Pottery in Burslem was a legacy of Samuel Alcock. It came via Alcock & Diggory to Bodley & Diggory in 1870, and to E. F. Bodley & Co. in 1871.[12] Thomas Richard Diggory, partner for a short time with Bodley, was declared bankrupt in 1872.[13]
Bodley was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 1872.[14] He was mayor of Hanley in 1873, and presided over a meeting in 1874 to celebrate the foundation of the Town Mission Hall there.[15][16] He retired from business in 1875, and his son Edwin James Drew Bodley took over the running of part of the Hill Pottery (from 1882 the Crown Works).[17]
In 1876 Bodley laid a chapel foundation stone in Congleton.[18] His residence is given as Shelton, Staffordshire, near Hanley, and Dane Bank House. He died in 1881.[19]