In July 1820 Hick joined other leading industrialists Isaac Dobson, Thomas Hardcastle and Peter Rothwell together with engineer Joshua Routledge to form the Bolton Gaslight and Coke Company, providing gas for public buildings, street lamps and industrial lighting. With the inevitable fire risk of naked flame, the Great Bolton Trustees and a number of mill owners bought horse-drawn fire engines; Hick became a Trustee of Great Bolton during the early 1820s, he was an Anglican and prominent member of Bolton's Pitt Club, formed 1809 as a "political organisation composed of the admirers of William Pitt", that helped Hick move amongst the middle class social elite of the time.