Halliday was born in Peterborough on 6 July 1818.The Annals of Manchester: A Chronological Record from the Earliest Times to the End of 1885. Manchester: John Heywood, 1886. p. 264Cherrington, Ernest Hurst. (1925). Standard Encyclopedia of the Alcohol Problem, Volume 1. American Issue Publishing Company. p. 275Blocker, Jack S. Fahey, David M; Tyrrell, Ian R. (2003). Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History: An International Enclyopedia, Volume 1. ABC-CLIO. pp. 87-88. As a young man he was employed as a clerk for a wine merchant. He worked for Wood & Westhead warehousemen in Manchester from 1844 to 1851.Boase, Frederic. (1965). Modern English Biography: Containing Many Thousand Concise Memoirs of Persons Who Have Died Between the Years 1851-1900, Volume IV. Frank Cass & Co. p. 267 Then he became an accountant and commission agent at an office on Princess Street, Manchester. He suffered from poor health and converted to teetotalism. In 1837, he signed an abstinence pledge and became secretary of the Spalding Temperance Society.
