On leaving Eton, around 1796, Yates entered the house of a West India merchant, in which he became a partner; he continued in it until a year or two before he died.[1] He had numerous holdings in slave-run estates in Jamaica.[2]
Philanthropic and antiquarian interests
Yates was one of the leading reformers of Liverpool, and a supporter of its literary and scientific institutions. In February 1812 he joined with Thomas Stewart Traill in founding the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society, of which he was president during four triennial periods, and a frequent reader of papers at its meetings. He was also one of the founders of the Southern and Toxteth Hospital in Liverpool. In 1854 he acted as local vice-president of the British Association at the Liverpool meeting.[1]
On Richard Rolle of Hampole's Stimulus Conscientiæ, 1820 (in Archæologia, xix. 314–35). And on the same author's manuscript version of the Psalter.
Geographical Knowledge and Construction of Maps in the Dark Ages, 1838.
Memoir on the Rapid and Extensive Changes which have taken place at the Entrance to the River Mersey, 1840; he brought the same subject before the British Association in 1854, when a committee was appointed to investigate the matter. An elaborate report was printed in the British Association Report, 1856.
