Joseph Baxendale (1785–1872) was an English entrepreneur, known for rebuilding and expanding the Pickfords carrier company in the middle of the 19th century.
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Early life and background
He was born in Lancaster, the elder son of Josiah Baxendale, a surgeon there, and his wife Mabella Salisbury, daughter of Thomas Salisbury of Settle, North Yorkshire. Having worked in Preston, Lancashire and for a linen draper in London, in 1809 he went into business with Charles Swainson of Preston, a textile magnate.
Turnbull in his history of Pickfords traces the family relationships of the three new partners of 1817: Baxendale, Charles Inman and Zachary Langton. He comments on the significance of a close-knit group of families from Kirkham, in the lowland Lancashire area of The Fylde south of Lancaster and west of Preston: the Birleys, Hornbys and Langtons. The links were not just familial, but also a source of capital. Baxendale married into the Birleys. Charles Swainson was in partnership at the Preston cotton mill, distinct from the Bannister Hall calico printing works that Baxendale joined, with William Birley of Kirkham. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography points out that Baxendale was also directly related to Swainson, through the Salisbury family. In fact his mother Mabella, through her grandmother Mary Lister née Swainson, was a second cousin of John Swainson (died 1800), Charles Swainson's father.