Marshall was born at 1,
Briggate, Leeds, the son of Jeremiah (1731–1787), a linen draper, and his wife Mary (1728–1799), whose father was John Cowper of
Yeadon. He was their only child who survived infancy. Marshall joined the family business when he was seventeen. Five years later his father died and Marshall became the controlling partner in the company. He inherited a new house, a warehouse, and £7,500. Shortly before his father's death, Marshall heard that two men from
Darlington,
John Kendrew, a glass-grinder, and
Thomas Porthouse, a watchmaker, had registered a
patent for a new
flax spinning machine. Marshall visited the men and purchased the right to make copies of their invention. He spent much of the next decade trying to improve the performance of the machines but found little success until he recruited engineer
Matthew Murray. In 1790, he bought the
freehold of an
acre of land on Water Lane in
Holbeck near
Leeds. This was an ideal location for a mill because of its proximity to the
Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the
Aire and Calder Navigation. Here, between 1791 and 1792, he constructed
Marshall's Mill, a six-storey water-powered mill using water drawn from the nearby
Hol Beck to spin
yarn. Marshall was able to create enough power to run 7,000
spindles employing 2,000 factory workers. Only a generation earlier, the making of hand-spun yarn had been a traditional
Yorkshire cottage industry. In 1796, he was a partner (with Thomas Benyon, Benjamin Benyon, and
Charles Bage) in building a
flax mill at
Ditherington near
Shrewsbury, which was the first iron framed building in the world. Adjacent to Marshall's Mill, he built his most ambitious project:
Temple Works flax mill between 1836 and 1840. Temple Works was based on the
Temple of Edfu at
Horus in
Egypt, with a chimney designed in the style of an
obelisk; at the time, it was said to be the largest single room in the world. Employees at Temple Works worked 72 hours a week, 40% of the people employed by Marshall were young women aged thirteen to twenty, and about 20% were under thirteen. Conditions in the flax mills of that era were extremely hot and humid because of the number of workers and the fact that humid conditions made the flax easier to work. Despite the age of his workers and the conditions in his factories, Marshall is considered to be one of the most liberal factory owners of the
Industrial Revolution. In his factories, overseers were not allowed to use
corporal punishment on the workers. Younger children were encouraged to attend day school, and older children were given free education on Monday afternoons. Marshall was involved in the founding of the Leeds
Mechanics' Institute and the
Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society. In 1826, he began a campaign to establish
Leeds University. Marshall also gave money to the
Leeds Library. In 1821 Marshall was appointed
Sheriff of Cumberland and in 1826 was elected a
Member of Parliament for
Yorkshire in the
House of Commons. In 1830, he resigned his seat due to ill health and retired to the country home he had built in 1815, Hallsteads, near
Watermillock on the shore of
Ullswater in the
Lake District. The house is currently used as the Ullswater
Outward Bound Centre. Marshall's estate, after his death at Hallsteads in 1845, was assessed variously as between £1.5 million and £2.5 million. He was buried in the church adjoining Hallsteads. ==Family==