South Ribble Primary Schools
Local History Project
The Victorians: A Life in the Factory
This document provides additional local material to teachers for the teaching of the
National Curriculum (History) in Primary schools and has been compiled by Dr David Hunt.
These take the form of teaching notes highlighting local links based around a Time Line.
They should be seen as a supplement to the mass of national material available on the
Internet and on CD.
Contents
1 – The Victorians
2 – Local Cotton Industry Time Line
3 – Historical Overview 1780 – 1980
4 – The Handloom Weavers 1780 – 1830
5 – The Factory Apprentices 1780 – 1820
6 – A Life in the Factory 1830 – 1850
7 – Mining: An alternative employment for the Under-Fives
8 – A Life in the Workhouse
9 – Hard Times: The Cotton Famine of 1861-65
1
The Victorians: Why the Cotton Industry first?
The range of topics covered by local schools under the Victorians category is vast. In
addition virtually all general local history projects draw upon it in some way. Although
national figures and issues are superbly covered on the Internet, local detail can be
elusive. It is of course usually the most inspiring for young and old alike. It was decided to
explore the local cotton industry first., both as a subject in itself, and as a useful support
for secondary investigations and local land-use and landscape studies of all kinds. This
booklet will be followed by notes on local celebrities – ‘Eminent Victorians’.
Changing the World: Cloth printing about 1830
The townships of South Ribble were central to the success of the early industrial
revolution, and the factories established at Penwortham and Roach Bridge were among
the first in the world. Many historians now regard the development of the cloth finishing
trades as central to British success. The Claytons of Bamber Bridge were perhaps the first
industrial bleachers in the 1760's, and mechanical cloth printing was perfected at Mosney
near Higher Walton twenty years later.
2
Cotton Industry Time Line
1642 Early importance of Manchester in the textile industry, ‘ the very London of these
parts’.
1690 French refugees introduce cloth printing to London.
1720s Daniel Defoe visits Preston, ‘A fine town and tolerably full of people. Here’s no
manufacture…’. The textile workers are located in the surrounding countryside.
1732 Birth of Richard Arkwright in Preston.
1733 John Kay’s hand operated Flying Shuttle: allowed one weaver to do the work of two.
1735 Over two million pounds of raw cotton imported.
1750 Rev Wm MacRitchie notes that cotton is Preston’s main industry.
1764 Bleaching & printing trade established at Bamber Bridge by Edward Clayton.
1766 Birth of John Horrocks.
1768 Arkwright secretly works on his machine at lodgings in Stoneygate, Preston.
1769 Richard Arkwright patents spinning by rollers, later to be known as the WaterFrame. It produces coarse yarns, suitable for warp.
1770 James Hargreaves patents his hand operated Spinning Jenny with eight spindles
later expanded to 120. It produces fine yarns suitable for weft.
1771 Arkwright’s great mill at Cromford using the power of water to turn his banks of
frames heralds the start of the Factory System. Orphans provide him with the cheapest
source of labour.
1770’s Availability of cheap factory yarns begins the great expansion of handloom
weaving. Looms are inexpensive and it is claimed to take only three weeks to train a
novice to weave coarse cloths by hand.
1777 First mill established in Preston.
1779 Samuel Crompton perfects his Spinning Mule, so-called because it combines the
advantages of both the Frame and the Jenny.
1780 Mosney Print Works, Higher Walton Road. The nearby Bannister Hall Printworks,
and the Shruggs bleachworks at Leyland were also established in the 1780s.
1784 Roach Bridge factory established.
1784 Rev Edmund Cartwright begins to work on his Power Loom.
1790 Both the Water-Frame and the Mule are being powered by water: the fast flowing
Pennine streams prove attractive as early mill sites and so the early factories tend to be
located in the countryside around Preston.
1791 Penwortham factory established.
1791 Horrocks moves to Preston and begins a spectacular programme of mill building.
Hand weavers in Leyland, Penwortham and Longton work for him.
1791 Though the first steam powered Cartwright looms are at work in Manchester the
following year the mill is burned down by Luddites and for 20 years the new technology is
expensive and cannot compete with hand weaving.
1792-9 Moons Mill, Higher Walton established.
1794 The reformer, Joseph Livesey, born at Walton-le-Dale.
1797 There are 900 factories in Britain.
1799 Cuerden Green Mill, Lostock Hall, established.
1804 Death of John Horrocks, he leaves £150,000 and is succeeded as head of the firm
by his brother Samuel.
1804 Bamber Bridge tramway (the ‘Old Tramroad’) links the district to the canal network.
Extended to Kendal by 1797.
1815 The steady introduction of steam power reduces the hold of the Pennine streams.
1816 Development of a mill at Withy Trees, Bamber Bridge, begins.
1816 Horrockses employing 7000 ‘hands’ in and around Preston; 75% of his mill hands
are under 18 years of age.
1821 Marmaduke Tulket estimates Preston to be the second ‘Emporium for the cotton
spinning and weaving business’.
1825 Development of Flatt’s Mill, Walton-le-Dale begins.
Late 1820s the power loom begins to compete with hand weaving which virtually dies
out over the next twenty years.
1833 Abolition of Slavery: Royal Commission on Factories.
1834 Farington Mill established
1836 Report lists 42 cotton mills in Preston.
1838 Railway reaches Preston, Farington and Leyland. There are now 1819 factories in
Britain with 1641of them steam powered.
1842 Fighting in Bamber Bridge and Farington. Troops fire on Chartists in Lune Street,
Preston
1849 346,000 tons of raw cotton imported.
1851 Stone Mill, School Lane, Bamber Bridge established.
1850s Earnshaw Bridge and Mount Pleasant mills established along Leyland Lane,
Leyland. New industries begin to develop with rubber manufacturing established at
Leyland.
1853-54 The ‘Great Preston Lockout’, nearly all the South Ribble mills closed.
1862-4 Lancashire Cotton Famine: mass-unemployment in South Ribble.
1860s Orr’s Mill, School Lane, Bamber Bridge, established. Lostock Hall develops as a
major railway centre.
1870 Brook Mill, Leyland.
1871 Gregson Lane Mill.
1874 Lostock Hall Spinning Co.
1880 James Sumner begins what will become Leyland Motors.
1892 Preston Dock opened.
1898 Walmer Bridge Mill.
1907 Bamber Bridge Spinning Co - product of the frenzy to build enormous factories in
the years before World War One.
1908 Tardy Gate Mill.
1912 Brindle Mill, Gregson Lane.
1913 Lancashire has 800,000 looms and 50,000,000 spindles. A record 7000million yards
of cloth are produced, but 6000million yards of it are sold abroad. As other countries
develop industries of their own its is inevitable that it will have to contract in the decades
ahead.
1914-8 Wartime boom in the cotton industry. The first aircraft built at Preston.
1919 Most profitable year ever is followed by a frenzy of speculation in mill shares.
1921 The boom ends and in a serious trade depression and the long-term collapse of the
cotton industry begins.
1921-32 Ten Preston mills close.
1924 The electrification of the district really gets under way, new houses and new
industries begin to replace the old mill and street landscape.
1925-32 Three mills in Bamber Bridge close;
1931 Calvert’s Flatts Mill, Walton-le-Dale closes, 800 jobs lost.
1932-6 Eight Preston mills close.
1936 The enormous Cuerden Mill closed. The closure of five mills in Walton and Bamber
Bridge has lead to the loss of 2,500 local jobs.
1937-1951 the collapse of the cotton industry slows.
1940 Lancashire has 441,000 looms and 30,000,000 spindles.
1955-58 Revival of foreign competition: 344 mills close in Lancashire and 55,000 people
leave the industry.
1959 Closure of the Bamber Bridge Spinning Company.
1960 After 172 years ‘Horrockses – The Greatest Name in Cotton’ are taken over, their
mills close in 1962. The Preston district is now an important producer of aircraft.
1967 The closure of the super-modern Tulketh Mill indicates that Preston manufacturers
can no longer compete with the low cost producers in the east.
1967 Closure of Farington Mill, Brook Mill and the Broadfield Bleachworks announced. The
Leyland Lane mills follow and the Leyland cotton industry has gone by 1968.
1977 Higher Walton mill closes after over 175 years.
1968 British Leyland established.
1979 The super-modern Orr’s Mill in School Lane, Bamber Bridge closes with the loss of
700 jobs. The closure of Preston Dock is announced.
2007 The entire district’s sole survivor, Penwortham Factory (‘Vernons’) closes after 216
years. Production moved to Leyland.
3
Historical Overview 1780-1980
An edited extract from David Hunt (2003) ‘Preston: Centuries of Change’.
When Robert Lang surveyed Preston for his very detailed map of 1774 he found a
townscape little changed from that of medieval times. The regular fish-bone pattern of
burgesses' houses and gardens set within the broader town's fields would be the outline
on which industrial Preston with its massed barracks of workers housing and canyons of
cotton mills would arise in the next 50 years. If the geography of the town remained
familiar, Preston's economy was undergoing gradual but cumulative changes. The ancient
woollen trade had been all but lost to Yorkshire, and linen manufacture would increasingly
be centred on northern Ireland and the specialised firms around Kirkham. Their place had
been taken by the wonder fabric of the early nineteenth century - cotton.
Parish registers from the country villages around the town suggest that in some
communities cloth production had become the largest single 'employer' as early as 1720.
Production was based on the household unit, with perhaps five hand spinners required to
provide yarn for a single hand loom. With increasing demand for cloth, and simple
improvements to the weaver's productivity, a bottle-neck developed in the process. Once
the success of machine spinning had been demonstrated and the whole system
rationalised by Richard Arkwright, the trade changed rapidly - it underwent an 'industrial
revolution'. The first phase was dependant on water power, and in the 1780s a number of
early mills were built along the deeply incised valley of the river Darwen between Hoghton
and Walton-le-Dale. With the 'perfection' of the steam engine around the turn of the
nineteenth century Preston was free to grow into a manufacturing centre of virtually
unlimited size. Mechanisation of weaving was held back by the trade's low wage costs, but
it too was complete by the mid-1840s.
Although Preston benefited from these developments in the wider district - the
town's 'hinterland' - it was not until 1792 that large-scale mill building got under way in
the town itself. John Horrocks was born at Edgeworth in 1766, and after developing a local
market for his fine yarns he moved to Preston in 1791. With the support of Richard
Newsham and the local banking community the 25-year-old newly-wed erected a spinning
factory each year from 1792-8, and the fourth mill on the Yard Works site in Stanley Street
followed in 1801. Three quarters of his workforce was under 18 years of age. Whole zones
of the town were given over to weaving-shop houses, and Horrocks was exploring the
practicality of power weaving at 'New Preston' on New Hall Lane when he died suddenly at
the age of 36. In just ten years he had transformed the town. The genteel resort of the
local gentry was fast disappearing, making way for a densely packed and predominantly
working class community. Indeed Preston would become the classic mill town of popular
folklore.
A life in the factory.
A life in the factory was an onerous one, made worse by episodic periods of
unemployment which could quickly consume a family's hard won savings. Alan Crosby has
very ably documented the vicissitudes and family problems in the life of diarist and
mechanic Benjamin Shaw. Public health was virtually non-existent before 1850 and
painstakingly slow to develop thereafter, whilst the concept of a balanced diet was virtually
unknown. Horrockses could blandly inform the Royal Commission of 1833 that the firm
had no experience of working long hours, since their works ran only 12 hours for five days
and just nine hours on Saturdays! Yet despite the guarantee of continuous employment
which this model employer could offer, its respectable employees enjoyed just two days
holiday a year; single days at Christmas and Easter. Among the smaller firms competition
was intense, very harsh working conditions often prevailed and entire shifts of workers
could easily be replaced.
It had been clear since at least the American War of Independence that the
industry was constantly passing through a succession of good and bad periods - the Trade
Cycle - though this was as yet little understood. The Lancashire cotton industry had long
outgrown home demand, and when Europe and America developed their own industries
the trade became dangerously concentrated in the Indian and Chinese markets. Any
disruption in these distant parts - such as the failure of the monsoon in India - would lead
to a collapse of demand, and the flooding of secondary markets as merchants unloaded
their stocks there. With more goods than could be sold the price would fall below their
manufacturing cost. Mills in Lancashire would then become uneconomical leading to
closure,
unemployment
and
bankruptcy.
In 1861 disaster struck; failure of the Indian monsoon was quickly followed by the
flooding of all markets with unsold goods, whilst the price of raw cotton soared when the
American Civil War threatened supplies from the Southern states. The long period of
unemployment in the early 1860s became known as the Lancashire Cotton Famine. In
Preston and district it was particularly severe; in December 1862 22,400 people were
relieved by the Board of Guardians, and unemployment peaked at 15,000 in the following
April. It demonstrated very clearly the dangers of Preston's dependence on a single
industry.
In the dying years of the century the industry began its final phase of mill
construction, a process recently traced by Colin Dickinson. Companies were specifically
formed to construct giant mills, and though the phenomenon was more muted in Preston,
Cliff Mill in Dundonald Street, and Tulketh Mill along Blackpool Road were built at this time.
Horrockses erected their £125,000 Centenary Mill on New Hall Lane. The Tulketh Mill
Company's vast spinning works operated 140,000 spindles from its single enormous mill
engine. On the eve of the First World War Lancashire accounted for a quarter of Britain's
trade, exported over seven million yards of cloth, and employed 600,000 people.
Don’t let your children work in the mills!…
This export-led boom in production masked important long term changes. For many years
other countries had been building up domestic industries. Protected in their home market
by tariffs, they moved on to compete with Lancashire abroad. Fed by British know-how but
on local wage-rates production in Japan and India grew steadily. A long term decline was
inevitable, but the slump which some predicted was delayed by the 1914-18 war.
Local historian J.H.Spencer later recalled this process: 'The war of 1914 gave the
death blow to our vast Chinese and Indian trade ...We all know how this affected Preston:
all the mills serving the Indian and Chinese markets closed down'. By 1926 four Preston
mills had closed, and fourteen followed in the next ten years. Others struggled on or ran
part-time. William Calvert & Sons, once 'one of the best known cotton manufacturers in
the world so far as the Eastern trade is concerned', failed in 1931. Their large Aqueduct
Street Mill was sold for £4,500 - just half of the amount Arsenal had recently paid North
End for the services of Mr.Alec James! In the mill community of Bamber Bridge 2,500 jobs
were lost when five local mills closed. By 1929 employment in the cotton industry had
fallen to 25,000 or half of the Employment District's workforce, ten years later it had fallen
to a quarter, and by 1946 it was just 10%. The 1939 war brought some respite however,
with orders for aircraft fabric and parachute material, and the destruction of Japanese
industry led to a return to profitability after the war.
The workforce adapted to the changing times, and after the strikes and lock-outs of
the early-1930s parents and school teachers increasingly urged children to keep out of the
mills. As early as 1934 the number of engineering apprenticeships in Preston exceeded
those in the textile industry. The war economy of 1939-45 concentrated production into
efficient plants allowing the transfer of labour to war industries, and so helped to smooth
the long term shift away from cotton. Brian Harrison's brilliant analysis of wartime
employment trends makes this point very clearly:
1939
1943
Textiles
19,042
8,000
English Electric
1,200
13,400
Leyland Motors
6,900
11,500
Euxton ROF
1,000
28,000
The round of closures in the traditional trade resumed in 1951. These were no
longer the outdated industrial dinosaurs of the 1920s, but modern plants unable to
compete with the much lower foreign labour costs. Queen's Mill closed in 1956, and eight
Preston mills closed in 1958 alone. After 170 years, production at Horrockses Yard Works
ended in 1962 with the ultimate loss of 2,000 jobs. The final death blow to the Preston
trade came with the closure of Tulketh in 1967; one of the world's most efficient plants, its
workforce of just 550 could produce 150,000lbs of yarn per week on three shifts. The
lesson was stark. If mills such as Tulketh could no longer compete the industry in Britain
was finished, and by 1980 virtually all of Preston's mills had woven out, and the local
economy had entered new waters.
4
The Handloom Weavers 1780-1830
Throughout history textiles had been an important local handicraft. By the eighteenth
century many – if not most – local people made at least a part of their livings through it.
The yarn was spun by the women (‘spinsters’), and woven into cloth on simple handlooms
by their men folk. It was laborious, repetitive work, and it took perhaps six spinsters to
provide the thread for a single weaver. Woven lengths of cloth would then pass to the
‘finishers’, who would bleach, dye or print it. Again these were very laborious tasks: cloth
would be spread over hedges for the sunlight to naturally bleach the cloth or it could be
printed by ‘painting’ the colour onto wooden blocks and carefully applying this print to the
cloth. Most people were employed in farming, and textiles work could be undertaken at
home or in an adjacent shed, and was a useful supplement during quiet times of the year.
Accordingly local prosperity had been steadily rising for over three hundred years.
In the 1780s this age-old pattern changed markedly. The perfection of machine spinning
by Arkwright and others meant that cheap yarn was plentiful. Demand for British cloth
soared and by the 1790s few homes in the district did not have their loom, and special
handloom weaver’s houses were built with shops for the looms. Where a number of
houses were built the weaver settlements became small colonies; Club Street in Bamber
Bridge and Union Street (Fox Lane) in Leyland were good examples. ‘New Longton’ started
life as a weaver colony and Top o’th Lane (with pretty much every architectural variation
on a weaver’s house) survives virtually intact at Brindle.
Lawrence Rawstorne of Penwortham described what happened: ‘At the time that weaving
was at its tip-top price… all other considerations gave way to it. A good handloom weaver
would then earn 30/- a week or even more: he would perhaps work half the week and
drink the remainder’.
The weaver’s quickly won quite a reputation for themselves. ‘New Preston’ was a number
of rows of weaver’s houses at the Stanley Street end of New Hall Lane: ‘The male
denizens of ‘New Preston’ were …an exceedingly rough lot. They could earn good wages
after playing 2 or 3 days a week. In their leisure time, or in the time in which they did not
care to work, they used to swagger about in top boots, and extract what, to their minds
was enjoyment, from badger baiting, dog-worrying, cock fighting, poaching and drinking.
A pack of hounds was …kept in ‘New Preston’ for the recreation of the people’.
The golden age of the handloom weavers lasted from 1780 to about 1830. It follows that
the majority of property surviving from this period will have had some connection with the
trade, and great interest can be derived from trying to identify the nature of it.
Central Leyland (1847 6 inch map).
In the early 1800's two long rows of weaving houses had been erected to the west of
Towngate: Bradshaw Steet and Union Street. Each building will have housed at least a
pair of handlooms. Buildings near Leyland Cross housed Horrockses Warehouse, one of
the organisational centres of the local trade.
Having grown up near Manchester, the writer Samuel Bamford left a very clear picture of
the weaver’s home he grew up in. His home:
‘Consisted of one principal room called ‘the house’; on the same floor with this was a loom
shop capable of containing four looms, and in the rear of the house on the same floor,
were a small kitchen and a buttery. Over the house and loomshop were chambers; and
over the kitchen and buttery was another small apartment, and a flight of stairs. The
whole of the rooms were lighted by windows of small square panes, framed in lead, in
good condition, those in the front being protected by shutters’(quoted in Timmins 1978
p.12).
The key is to look for the special architectural traits the trade required; a separate
workshop at the back or more commonly below the house, and/or regular square windows
to maximise the light. If the workplace or ‘loom shop, is in a cellar beneath weaver’s living
accommodation it can often be identified as such by the long flight of steps leading up
into the house proper: this is why many weavers cottages are known as ‘step-houses’.
Regular-cut stonework with square windows is usually a sure sign, though similar brick
buildings away from the Whittle quarries in the rural Western Parishes may prove a bit
trickier to positively identify as weaver homes. Often the property will have been
subsequently altered, with windows and doors bricked-up, even stairs removed but this
just makes the exercise all the more interesting. Every school with have had such
properties close by, the trick is for the children to find them and they will soon get very
skilled at this!
In the early 1800s the orphan Joseph Livesey was learning to weave in the cellar of his
family home on Victoria Road, Walton-le-Dale. In later life he wrote a long autobiography
and recalled his days, luckily the house, cellar, as well as parts of his actual loom still
survive today:
‘The cellar where my uncle and grandfather worked held three looms, and so soon as I
was able I was put to weaving; and for seven years I worked in the corner of that damp
cellar, really unfit for any human to work in – the fact that from the day it was plastered to
the day I left it the mortar was soft – water remaining in the walls, was proof of this. And
to make it worse, the Ribble and Darwen sometimes overflowed their banks and inundated
this and all the cellars adjoining’.
The survey of weaver houses published by J.G. Timmins’ in 1977 (‘Handloom Weaver’s
Cottages in Central Lancashire’) is the natural starting point for a class study. This is
essential and agreeable reading.
5
The Factory Apprentices 1780-1820
Small children had always played a big part in the domestic textile trade, but their cheap
labour became a critical factor in the economic success of the Industrial Revolution. The
mechanisation of spinning reduced the degree of skill required on the part of the spinner
to a level which young children could provide. The next imperative was to find the
cheapest source of young people. The large London workhouses had a plentiful stock of
orphans on their hands…
Up to 1802 Children’s hours of work were generally unregulated. One observer was told
that children were set to work in the very early factories ‘as soon as they could crawl and
their parents were the hardest taskmasters’!
S.J. Chapman (The Lancashire Cotton Industry) concludes:
‘It was no exaggeration to call them white slaves for they were treated merely as sources
of profit; they were sometimes whipped and starved to render them obedient and cases
have been placed on record of their being chained if they attempted to escape’.
The treatment of children in the new factories and mines became scandalous in a ‘civilised
society’. Very slowly and in the face of great opposition from the mill owners Parliament
was forced to extend some measure of protection to these ‘lively elves at play’.
In 1819 Children under nine years of age were prohibited from working in cotton mills.
In 1825 Children under 16 were not to work more than 12 hours per day, and nine hours
on a Saturdays (excluding meal times).
During the early nineteenth century a number of investigations known as Royal
Commissions explored the question of child employment. Advances won in the shorter day
for children were then slowly extended to adults.
These provide a great deal of information about factory and living conditions in South
Ribble and Preston during the Industrial Revolution.
Here are a few local examples:
Some eye-witness accounts of orphan labour: Evidence from the Select Committee on the
State of Children employed in Manufactories of the UK 1816.
In addition to individual testimonies the Commission also produced statistical returns. This
one describes the extent of local children’s employment in South Ribble’s first mills:
Workers Ages
Weekly Wage
Under 8
8-10
10-18
18+
Penwortham Factory
2-8d
3
10
44
59
Moon Mill
2-7d
5
10
44
26
Cuerden Green
2-6d
16
69
60
153
Lostock Factory
3-1d
15
72
38
127
Roach Factory
3-3d
7
36
56
100
‘Penwortham Factory’ – Factory Lane, Middleforth Green. Closed in 2006.
‘Moon Mill’ – Higher Walton Mill. Closed in 1977.
‘Cuerden Green’ – Formerly known as ‘Walton Factory’ and subsequently as ‘Ward St Mill’,
and Thomas Moss & Sons Lostock Hall. Closed 1968.
‘Lostock Factory’ – Close by the present St. Catherine’s Hospice site. Closed 1850s?
‘Roach Factory’ – converted into a paper works mid-nineteenth century and continued as
such into the present century.
The evidence of witnesses with direct experience of life and conditions in our locality in
the early 1800s is of particular interest:
Mr.Tomlinson was a Preston surgeon who had attended the Penwortham mill 'four or
five times a week when in the possession of Mr.Watson'. He found 'That the children were
in a wretched condition from being overworked; a great number of them had crooked
legs; that they used to work night and day; that he had seen children sleeping over their
supper, who were to go to work in about ten minutes for the whole night, owing to their
having got up so early in the day, and tired themselves'. Most specifically and shockingly,
Tomlinson 'Recollected very well the circumstance of the parish apprentices from Mr.
Watson's factory ... when he failed, having been turned out upon the common to find their
way home as they could'. Dutton claimed to have been 'Motivated by feelings of humanity
to look into the mills', and to have found 'A system of oppression incompatible with the
principles of our constitution'. Conditions at Roach, Moons Mill and Hoghton Bottoms may
have been no better.
John Swainson a man with extensive interests in the Preston and Walton-le-Dale cotton
trade. He thought that the people worked too many hours. In contrast to William Taylor he
did want the state to intervene:
‘The hours of work are too long, the operatives appeared to me to be much older than
they were… Only Parliament can bring about a shortening of hours… Opposes a limit on
hours per day, prefers to reduce the number of hours per week by allowing an early finish
on Saturday’.
Joseph Dutton a gentleman resident of Liverpool, with much experience of factory
conditions in Preston. He thought that the employment of children was ‘A system of
oppression incompatible with the principles of our constitution’. He had spent a great deal
of time ‘earnestly enquiring into factory conditions’, he knew the local medical men and
was clearly an important witness. There was ‘so much dust in Messrs Ainsworth &
Catterall’s ‘scutching room’ (in which the bales of raw cotton were broken up) that I could
scarcely see the women who worked the engine’. The dust was an important cause of lung
cancer.
He recounted the recent scandal at John Watson’s mills (Penwortham Factory and the
Roach Bridge watermill); when his firm failed in 1809 the funds to pay for the children’s
food and lodgings were cut off and accordingly the infants were turned out to fend for
themselves, living under trees etc.
William Taylor the mill manager at Horrockses of Preston. A former apprentice at the
works he had risen to Spinning manager and opposed State interference:
‘The condition of the people would not be improved by working shorter hours… Employing
young people aids the parents… (if hours are reformed) I know many cases where the
parents would be obliged to have relief from the parish… (for the Trade) I should really
think that it would be hazardous and injurious’.
Critically, he stated that employment of orphan ‘Apprentices’ had ceased in the Preston
area. This seems to be contradicted by John Moss’s evidence given below.
John Moss governor of the Preston Workhouse (1815-), his wife was governess. For
many years he had been master of the ‘Apprentices’ house’ at the mill of the Preston firm
Ainsworth, Catterall & Co at Backbarrow in the Lake District (1814-5). The firm employed
130 ‘Apprentices’. His evidence is very frequently quoted, and provides a harrowing
account of conditions in a rural mill. He was bitterly attacked at the time by the reformers,
but took pains to present a favourable picture of his masters.
He blamed the mill ‘overlookers’ (the men who directly supervised the children and were
responsible to the owner for the quality of their work) for the atrocious conditions.
He describes the system of bringing orphans from London to Backbarrow, their long hours
of work (including Sundays), injuries they suffered and their poor living conditions. When
the mill had been closed by a strike the children had been ‘turned out to go begging’.
The children were punished by the overlookers, and the younger children were also
beaten by the older ones.
Moss was examined at length by the Commissioners about conditions in the Preston mills,
claiming ‘to know nothing ill of them’.
Were any children employed in those mills (at Backbarrow)?
There were 11 children employed when I first went there, and as many as 150 when I left.
All parish apprentices, chiefly from London – the parishes of Whitechapel, St.James’ and
St.Clements’ I think. There was a few from Liverpool workhouse. Those that came from
London were from seven to eleven; those from Liverpool were from eight or ten to
Fifteen’.
Up to what period were they apprenticed?
One and Twenty.
What were the hours of work?
From 5 o’clock in the morning till 8 at night.
Questioned on the meal times Moss gave the following times:
Breakfast 7 to 7-30am (in the Apprentice House)
Lunch 12 to 12-30pm (in the Apprentice House)
‘Afternoon Refreshment’ (Tea) They ate whilst working.
Did they beyond working those 15 hours, make up for any lost time?
Yes, always. They continued working till 9 o’clock.
What time did they rise from their bed?
I always got them up at half past four to get them ready for the mill by five…and never
later’.
Did the children work on the Sundays as cleaners?
Yes, generally every Sunday (6am to noon); I do not know that ever they missed one
Sunday while I was there.
Did the masters ever express any concern for such excessive labour?
No.
William Travers was an Overlooker who had worked at Backbarrow since the 1780s, and
had been sent to the Commission by the mill’s owners to counter John Moss’s claims.
He duly stated that the children did not work the long hours that Moss had claimed, and
accidents were few. He claimed that conditions were much improved in recent years, but
when questioned had to admit that the children in the Apprentices’s House had no sheets
on their beds, and the expulsion of the children during the strike had clearly caused a
great scandal in the district.
Travers attacked Moss directly: ‘he took liberties with the children…’.
The Royal Commission reported back to Parliament and in 1819 it duly forbade children
under nine years of age to work in cotton factories.
In 1823 a party of Blackburn magistrates visited Higher Walton Mill (‘Moon’s Mill) during
subsequent enquiries into the local employment of children:
'Mr. James Livesey's cotton factory, at Moons Mill, in Walton-le-Dale: There are about 130
persons employed here, and several under 9 years of age. One boy stated to us that his
mother told him to say that he was nine years old, though he admitted to us that he was
not so much. Half an hour is allowed for breakfast, and an hour for dinner. This factory is
worked by water, and in case of a loss of time is made up for by working an hour per day
extra. The interior walls are whitewashed twice a year. There is a Sunday School attached
to the factory at which the children are taught gratuitously'.
Old men remember…
Joseph Livesey
Writing in 1858 the Walton-le-Dale reformer recalled the orphan apprentices of his
childhood at Penwortham in the 1800s. Joseph was himself an orphan but was lucky to be
brought up by a loving grandfather:
‘Every Sunday, ‘Watson’s Apprentices’, as they were called, attended Walton Church. They
were workers in the cotton mill, known as ‘Penwortham Factory’ (latterly ‘Vernon’s’ in
Factory Lane, Middleforth Green), and came in order, under suitable superintendence,
wearing a uniform of brown coats, with cuffs and collars of yellow. It was said they were
obtained from a Foundling Hospital in London. Many of them were crooked-legged,
becoming deformed with having to stop the machinery by placing their knees against it’.
An identical system seems to have been operated by Watson at Roach Bridge Mill,
Samlesbury. A special gallery was erected across the back of Samlesbury church to hold
them: it stood at the side of the mill owner’s pew – he could keep a close eye on them.
The masters thus went to some trouble to present a comfortable picture of their care for
the children’s moral welfare and dressed them smartly on their outings.
Why?
The bright clothes made them easier to catch when they ran away – as they frequently
did!
When Watson’s firm went bankrupt in 1809 the orphans were turned out of their house at
Samlesbury and found to be living as best they could under the hedges.
A Child’s Walking day in 1835.
From John Fielden (1836) The Curse of the Factory System
Factory workers from the mill towns (including Chorley and Preston) discussed this point
at a meeting in Manchester. One delegate shocked the audience by estimating 25 miles.
Another calculated 24 miles, but added ‘If the distance that the child frequently has to
walk to and from home be thrown in, it makes a distance of nearly thirty miles’.
Mr Swindlehurst recalls working nights as a six year-old.
Mr Swindlehurst became a friend and supporter of Joseph Livesey. In 1835 one of the
Preston papers reported a speech in which he had described his early working life:
‘My father was a blacksmith in the Forest of Bowland with six children who being unable to
maintain them by his own exertions was obliged to send him and his two little brothers to
a factory when he was only six years old. He had for six years worked night work from
seven at night till six in the morning. When he left the mill he went home and got what he
called his supper at six o’clock in the morning. They worked there to keep their little sister
out of it… Many children were driven to the factory, who need not go there, by the
interference of their parents’.
Finally a ‘Watt’s Apprentice’ has the last word…
Eventually the apprentices were able to speak for themselves and the whole horrific story
came out.
Samuel Davy had been one of ‘Watt’s Apprentices’ at Penwortham. He escaped a posse of
pursuers with his brother, reached London and told his harrowing tale to the press in
1828.
‘Samuel Davy, a young man now employed in the Westminster Gas Works, has called on
the Publisher of Blincoe’s Memoir, and has said, that his own experience is a confirmation
of the general statement in the memoir. Samuel Davy, when a child of seven years of age,
with thirteen others, about the year 1805, was sent from the poor-house of the parish of
St.George’s, in the Borough of Southwark, to Mr.Watson’s mill at Penny Dam
(Penwortham), near Preston in Lancashire, and successively turned over to Mr.Birch’s mill
at Backborough (Backbarrow), near Castmill (Cartmel), and to Messrs David and Thomas
Ainsworth’s mill near Preston. The cruelty towards the children increased at each of these
places, and though not so bad as that described by Blincoe, approached very near to it.
One Richard Goodall, he describes, as entirely beaten to death! Irons were used, as with
felons in gaols, and these were often fastened on young women, in the most indecent
manner, from the ancles (ankles) to the waist! It was common to punish the children, by
keeping them nearly in a state of nudity, in the depth of winter, for several days together.
Davy says, that he often thought of stealing, from the desire of getting released from such
a wretched condition, by imprisonment or transportation; and, at last, at nineteen years of
age, though followed by men on horseback and on foot, he successfully ran away and got
to London. For ten years, this child and his brother were kept without knowing anything of
their parents, and without their parents knowing where the children were. All application
to the Parish officers for information were vain. The supposed loss of her children, so
preyed upon the mind of Davy’s mother, that, with other troubles, it brought on insanity,
and she died in a state of madness! No savageness in human nature, that has existed on
earth has been paralleled by that which has been associated with the English cottonspinning mills’.
6
A Life in the Factory 1830-1850
Though these early Factory Acts did a little to address the worst excesses of child labour
many evils remained in the factory system. Indeed by today’s standards it was virtually
unregulated. The problem was explored by a series of further Royal Commissions which
provide a mine of information about conditions in the local mills. This is the preamble to
that of 1883:
‘His Majesty’s Commissioners appointed to collect information in the manufacturing
Districts, as to the employment of children in factories, and as to the propriety and means
of curtailing the hours of their labour…
Particularly to enquire into the state and condition of such children, and as to the effects
of such employment, both with regard to their morals and bodily health… how the laws
are insufficient and might be improved…’.
Mill owners were required to respond to a set list of questions.
The evidence to the Commission of Horrockses, Miller & Co, Preston’s largest
employer.
Answer 10 We have always strictly adhered to the provisions of the different Acts of
Parliament, and now employ no children under nine years of age; and when they are
employed so young, their labour (if it may be so called) is very light, and by no means
constant.
Answer 11 We prefer having the children at some descriptions of employment in our
factories younger than twelve years of age, but we do not like to take them under ten;
and we never do so, although allowed by the existing law to take them at nine years old,
unless at the earnest request of their own parents, under whose superintendence they
have to work.
When introduced about ten they have …little labour to perform, but become more expert
at the subsequent and more constant operations than if taken in later.
To show the anxiety there is on the part of the parents to get their children introduced into
cotton factories where proper order and discipline are observed, we can produce several
instances of children above ten years of age, having worked six, seven and even nine
months, without any wages, to insure the first vacant situation.
Answers 17 & 18
Our time of working for all ages in the cotton manufactory is sixty-nine
hours per week ie twelve hours for five days, and nine hours on the Saturday. The
mechanics work only sixty hours per week.
Answer 20 We work three hundred and eleven days in the year.
(This works out at two days holiday a year apart from the Sabbath, and this was Preston’s
model employer)
Answers 53-6
Our people have the time for meals allowed by the Acts of Parliament,
ie half an hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner, both of which they take out of the
works.
Answers 57-61
We have never, during the forty years that we have been in business,
given any orders to any of our overlookers respecting the infliction of any sort of corporal
punishment. We, however, do permit it in a trifling g]degree for small offences with the
younger children; our instructions to the overlookers are at once to discharge those who
will not perform their duties without corporal punishment being repeated.
There have been several instances of parents who have had children thus discharged
praying to have them reinstated, and saying, ‘Do what you think proper with them in the
way of coercion, but do not put them from their employment’. We have always, however,
declined reinstating them.
Answer 62
We have discharged overlookers for being too intemperate in their bodily
coercion of children under their charge, and we also discharged parents for the improper
chastisement of their own children, who have both been employed in our own works.
Individual witnesses:
William Sharrock, the Master 'of Roach Mill in Samlesbury'. He reported that his works
was powered by a water wheel of 25hp, and manufacturing depended on the steady flow
of the river.
Most of the work people lived within 100 yards of the mill, in his 22 houses, 'and if not
cleanly are discharged'.
He claimed that no children under nine were employed, and that the mill worked 12 hours
per day, and just nine on a Saturday, except when time 'had to be made up' due to
'accidents to our water wheels ... and when we have lost time through a deficiency of
water'. In the 12 months of 1832 the factory had worked for 310 days 7 hours. A half hour
was allowed for breakfast and an hour for dinner, during which the entire workforce left
the factory.
He opposed the shortening of the hours of work, which could not be achieved 'Without
incurring great loss to myself in respect of capital rendered unproductive, and to the
workpeople in a deduction of their wages by reason of their having performed less work'.
No corporal punishment was inflicted on the children, who, he claimed, were reprimanded
and then dismissed. The mill had no long serving hands, 'owing to a turnout some time
ago'. This strike had been associated with extreme violence including attempted bombings
and acid throwing.
Samuel Coulson of Preston, was the father of two mill girls.
At what time in the morning, in the brisk time, did those girls go to the mills?
At 3 o’clock in the morning and ended at 10, or nearly half past at night.
Had you not great difficulty in awakening your children to this excessive labour?
Yes, in the early time we had them to take up asleep and shake them, when we got them
on the floor to dress them, before we could get them off to their work.
So they had not above four hours sleep at this time?
No they had not.
The common hours of labour were from six in the morning till half past eight at night?
Yes.
Were the children excessively fatigued by this labour?
Many times; we have cried often when when we have given them the little victualling we
had to give them; we had to shake them, and they have fallen to sleep with the victuals in
their mouths many a time.
Did this excessive term of labour occasion much cruelty also?
Yes, with being so very much fatigued the strap was very frequently used.
What was the wages in the short hours?
Three shillings a week
When they worked those very long hours what did they get?
Three shillings and seven-pence-halfpenny.
For all the additional hours they only had seven-pence-halfpenny additional?
No more.
Had your children any opportunity of sitting during those long days of labour?
No.
Stephen Binns, the manager of ‘Mr Leighton’s Factory’ in Preston.
He had begun working at the age of six in a cotton mill in Keighley (Yorks) and had risen
to be a cotton mill manager, a spectacularly successful career. He had taught classes at his
mills and clearly believed in the power of ‘education’.
He described how he ‘prepares his mill for visits and inspections, on one occasion
preparing for a fortnight’, and despite their actions had never known an overlooker to be
dismissed for cruelty to the children. He described the deformity to the children caused by
factory work.
‘I think I ought to be an advocate for only 10 hours labour, whatever the consequences
might be, because the present system is ruining the rising generation: it is sacrificing the
children for a paltry consideration’.
Shorter hours would require more workers and so cut unemployment.
He also describes the dust in the factory which he thought ‘as big an evil as long hours’ to
the workers’ health.
Robert Hyde Greg
This Gentleman, of the firm of Samuel Greg & Co Quarry Bank Mill, Styall put the master’
point of view. He thought that the restriction on the hours of work was an infringement on
personal liberty, that children’s health was better in the mills than outside of them, and
that twelve hours work per day (excluding mealtimes) wass ‘not strictly detrimental to the
children’s health’.
Life in the Mills in the 1830's
Charles Swainson's 'Big Factory' at Fishwick.
The Carding Room. Dust in the carding room was often so bad that visitors could not see
across the room. Note the extensive use of children for fetching and carrying.
Life in the Mills in the 1830's
Mule spinning in a local mill. The carriage moves backwards and forwards drawing the
thread out and winding it onto bobbins. Note the small child sweeping on his hands and
knees as the carriage moves.
Power Loom weaving. Great rows of looms are powered by belts from overhead drive
wheels. The belts are unguarded.
The Scandalous Wigan Case:
Ellen Hootton, was a ten year-old piecer at Mr Eccles’s mill at Wigan who became known
as the ‘Wigan Case’. Her experiences had been reported by the reformer James Oastler in
a letter to the ‘Times’. The Manchester Courier compared her life to that of the recently
emancipated ‘Black Slaves’.
She had claimed to have been ‘weighted’ for her bad behaviour in the mill. That is, she
was beaten and was made to work with heavy weights tied to her by an overlooker called
William Swanton. Great efforts were made to discredit her evidence.
She was questioned at great length by the Commissioners, and found to have lied and to
be a thief. But then her mother was called to give evidence…
Mary Hootton was Ellen’s mother. Aged 41, she was a weaver earning three shillings a
week and saw her daughter as a source of income. She described her as ‘A very naughty
stupid girl’ who had run away ‘ten times’, had stolen and told lies. But she did confirm that
she had been ‘weighted’. The ten-year-old ‘had deserved it’, ‘I cries many a time…’.
William Swanton described her as ‘very idle and a bad behaved woman too!’. But then he
himself was called to account…
William Swanton was an overlooker at Mr Eccles’s mill. He had previously worked at
Catterall’s mill in Preston and was strongly suspected of threatening the Hoottons over
their evidence. Himself, he blamed the children’s parents who asked him to punish their
kids.
He had been told by Ellen’s mother to punish her daughter. He had put a weight on her
two or three times. It was made of cast iron weighing ‘8 or 10 lbs’ and went on the top of
her back. She was given a cap and a stick and was made to walk around for an hour to
frighten the other children. They teased her and pushed her over, but she defended
herself with her stick. This had been done ‘2 or 3 times’ and two other children had been
‘weighted’ one by leg irons.
Swanton claimed that the parents ‘told him to ‘lick’ their children’.
John Finch, book-keeper and manager to Mr Eccles at the Brook House Mill, Wigan. He
had only two reports about Swanton, weighting the child’s back and a boy’s leg: the boy
had deserved it. He had ordered Swanton not to repeat it. The mill ran 69 hours per week
exclusive of meals. Mr Eccles disapproved of severe punishment and one overlooker had
been dismissed for using the strap. But what did he think was comprised severe
punishment?
The Inspector sent by the Commission concluded that ‘The girl is certainly a very bad
girl, I hardly know what to say of the mother, Swanton meant no harm… I am unable to
understand the workpeople’s dialect’.
Conclusions of the Commission Investigating Child Labour 1832.
From the whole of the evidence laid before us we find:
1. That the children employed in all the principal branches of manufacture throughout
the Kingdom work during the same number of hours as the adults.
2. That the effects of labour during such hours are, in a great number of cases,
• Permanent deterioration of the physical constitution,
•
•
The production of disease often wholly irremediable…
Partial or entire exclusion from the means of obtaining adequate education…
3. That at the age when children suffer these injuries…they are not free agents…the
wages they earn being received and appropriated by their parents and guardians.
We are therefore of the opinion that a case is made out for the interference of the
Legislature on behalf of the children employed in factories.
The outcome of these deliberations was…
The 1833 Factory Act
The employment of children under nine in textile mills was already forbidden.
Children aged between nine and thirteen were not to work longer than 48 hours per week,
and no-child under 11 years was to work more than nine hours in a single day.
They were to have two hours per day at school.
They were to have eight half-day holidays per year.
Every child restricted to working 48 hours per week shall attend some school.
Four Inspectors to be appointed to enter any factory in which children are employed and
ensure that the Act is being obeyed.
Despite its many weaknesses the Act marked a significant lurch forward in reform of the
workplace.
The shrinking working week:
1833 69 Hours in cotton mills
1844 Women included in the same classification as young persons to try to enforce a ‘Ten
Hours Act for men.
1874 56.5 hours in factories
1914 Usual working week 52 hours
1919 47 Hours
1960 40 Hours
The Reports of the Factory Inspectors
The annual Reports tell us a great deal about life in a factory.
Mr Rickards reported on our area:
1836
‘Your best chance of success will be by being courteous and adopting a conciliatory
demeanour towards the millowners’.
‘Agitators, of whom there are many in these parts, will always be forward to put forth
piteous tales…’.
The last year of prosperity and the start of a trade depression.
Rickards complains of being excluded from workrooms.
1837
Leonard Horner takes over from Rickards in our district. Four Inspectors have to watch
2700 factories. The age of a child can often only be estimated by measuring it: at
Stalybridge on 19 November 1936 Eli Ashton (certified as 13) is only 3’10’’, and John
Crossland(…12) just 3’11’’.
Mills use gangs of children in relays to overcome the restriction in single children’s hours.
In the rest of the time they are ‘educated’, but the children in Preston mills he describes ‘Sir, they are as ignorant as Hottentots’.
1838
Prosecution for employing under age children at Preston.
1839
‘I think I may say with confidence that the main provisions of the Act… are very commonly
observed’.
1840
Growing economic depression, mills closing down.
1842
Due to the trade crisis and mass unemployment the masters can employ older children as
cheaply as very young ones.
Working children in relays does not reduce the hours of adults.
Wage reductions are general, and labour is being increasingly replaced by machinery.
Burnley: ‘On former visits I found the state of the operatives bad; it is now wretched, and
the misery and distress which prevail beyond precedent’.
1843
‘The improvement of the cotton trade, which began towards the close of last year, has
been going on progressively since that time’.
Prosecutions at Chorley.
1844 Graham’s Act (brought women under the Act)
‘I have reason to fear there is a great deal of overworking: that is that many under
18years of age are working more than 12 hours a day’. Very young children being worked
again, and women are an increasing majority of the workforce with men underemployed
and underpaid.
Prosecution of a parent at Farington for forging a child’s certificate.
Prosecution at Samlesbury.
1845
‘I hear everywhere that hands are scarce’. New factories being built at Blackburn and
Preston.
Sensation! – At Robert Gardner’s Preston mill the day is reduced from 12 to 11 hours, for
the ‘same wages, same production, same profit!’.
1846
Horner reports 529 new mills built since Feb 1839, with over 140,000 power looms
installed.
Charles Catteral of Preston prosecuted for closing his mill to stop an inspection.
1847Fielden’s Act (limited women and children to 10 hours per day in an effort to enforce
the Ten Hours Day for men)
Boom is followed by a great economic depression.
1848
Trade revives and in May mills begin to reopen.
1850
Prosecutions for infringing the Ten Hours Act.
The Lancashire Distress – The soup kitchen, Crooked Lane, Preston.
7
Mining: an alternative employment for the under-fives.
The report of the Royal Commission on Children’s Employment in Mines (1842) revealed
the extent of infant employment deep in the pits, caused an outcry, and led to Lord
Ashley’s Mines Act of August 1842. This made illegal the employment of women, girls and
boys under the age of ten underground and appointed the first Mines Inspector. So that
before 1842 employment of very young children (4 year-olds) was common in the pits.
Amazingly, the young children working in the cotton mills were probably better off than
the children sent down the mines. Luckily for the local children the nearest pits were at
Chorley, though some men from Leyland worked in the ‘Basket Pit’ at Heskin.
Men did the actual digging of the coal, with women and children assisting in various ways.
Children were used as ponies to draw the coal tubs, wagons or baskets along the narrow
passageways. In Lancashire many seams were very narrow and the roof extremely low.
Here only small children lying almost flat could move the coal: ‘These boys, by constantly
pushing against the wagons, occasionally rub off the hair from the crowns of their heads
so much as to make them almost bald’. Large numbers of small boys sat alone in the
remote tunnels opening the air-proof doors to let the trucks pass. One six-year old was
asked if he was ever frightened alone in the dark and damp. He said that he had been at
first, but that now he just sat and smoked his pipe! The children could only leave the mine
when everyone else had left - ie when all the day’s coal had been taken out.
Benjamin Berry (24) told the commissioners that ‘It is the custom at Worsley to consider a
man as divided into eight parts. When first a boy begins to work, he is considered to be
equal to one-eighth part of a man; at ten years he is two-eighths; thirteen, three-eighths;
fifteenth, one-half; a girl at sixteen, one-half; a boy at eighteen, three-fourths. At this age
a boy begins to get coal. Girls and women never get coal, and always remain drawers, and
are considered to equal to half a man’.
Many young children gave evidence:
Henry Jones at Mr.Clegg’s, Pauldin Wood pit, near Oldham, was reported: ‘Is going in six
years old (ie is nearly six) ; is a thrutcher; is the youngest in the pit excepting Jack Jones;
we are working two shifts of eight hours; we stop noan (none); we keep worchink
(Working) all the time’.
William Cooper, aged seven years, Rawlinson’s Bridge, near Chorley: ‘Has worked in a
coal-pit twelve months; there are about 20 wenches, drawers in the pit I work in: they are
nigh naked; they wear trousers; they have no other clothes except shifts and trousers’.
Interviewed 4 March 1841.
What time do you go to work in the morning?
I go down at four o’clock in the morning.
What time do you come out?
At three o’clock, sometimes one, sometimes two, and some times as late as five and six.
James Darby, a pumper at Mr.Almond’s, Lamberhead Green pit, near Wigan. Interviewed
May 19 1841.
What age are you?
Nearly ten-years old.
How does it happen that you are not at work?
I am on the night turn this week. I work at night one week, and in the day the next, week
about.
What time do you go down when you are working the night turn?
I go at five o’clock, and I come out at six in the morning.
Have you been in bed since you came out of the pit this morning at six o’clock?
No, I have not been to bed yet (it was half-past 11 at this time). I shall go towards two
o’clock and sleep till five o’clock.
Have you got another suit of clothes beside those you have on?
Yes, I have.
James Yates, formerly a drawer at a pit in Bolton. Aged 14 years, interviewed 3 February
1841.
‘Was almost six years old when I went to work in Manchester. I shovelled coals into the
tubs, and fetched things for the colliers – boring things and powder. They always sent me
out of the way when they blew up the rock. It was very wet in the pit, it always came up
to my ankles, and I had to wade up to my knee in water and sludge when I went in and
came out of the pit. I had my head hurt badly it kept me in bed ten days; I lost the sight
of one of my eyes by some red water falling on it; cannot see with it at all now’.
The Report
Collecting the information from the mining districts made even the commissioners ill:
‘Such was the severity of the season in which these gentlemen… had to commence their
labours, that nearly all of them incurred serious indisposition… Mr Roper never recovered
during the whole term of his labours’.
Women and very young children (from 4 years) were working very long hours, there were
no ‘safety policies’, and accidents were frequent. Though the miners were very strong men
in the thin Lancashire seams they became crippled, and ‘This class of the population is
commonly extinct at fifty’. The mine roofs were too low, drainage and ventilation needed
to be improved, but even then mining would still be ‘an awful occupation’. Children did
receive money for their work but their food was of poor quality and their clothes were
rags’.
The 1842 report contains a famous set of engravings showing the working conditions of
women and children in the Lancashire Mines.
8
A Life in the Workhouse
If a life in the factory meant unhealthy working conditions, very long hours and a
frequently insecure job, the consequences of unemployment were even more drastic.
People could be unable to work for a number of reasons: they were children or too old to
work, they could be expecting a baby, be ill or simply lose their previous job and be
unable to find another. When most of South Ribble’s mills closed - everyone could be
thrown out of work. With no income they would have to live on their savings. Before 1837
when these were used up they could go to their parish for help. Penwortham, Leyland and
Walton-le-dale had their own workhouses. Thereafter the parishes were grouped into
unions, and our parishes were incorporated into the Preston and Chorley Poor Law unions.
The small workhouses were gradually closed and after 1867 the giant workfhouse on
Wattling Street Road, Preston, was opened for the residents of Preston, Walton and
Penwortham.
So what help might they expect?
The Victorians feared that lazy work-shy people would flock to the workhouses for a
comfortable life. To deter them conditions were to be made as unpleasant as decently
possible. Of course everyone argued as to just what this meant in practice…
So what was a Workhouse?
Before 1834 it was a building in which the parish poor were gathered together and put to
work. By 1800 this meant handloom weaving, and our three main workhouses built loom
shops (Longton, Bamber Bridge, Leyland) Even the prisoners in Preston Gaol were put to
weaving to earn their keep. The workhouses were built close to the mills to supply them
with workers or to serve as a hostel for the orphans imported form the London parishes.
With the building of the large Union workhouse s a more humane approach to poverty
slowly began to make headway.
Rules of the Preston Workhouse in 1827
-No pauper to enter the House or to be discharged therefrom without an order from one
of the Overseers or from the Select Vestry.
-That the Poor in the House be classed both in the day, working, and sleeping rooms, as
far as may be practicable, as follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Old and Young Men, without families.
Old and Young Women, without families.
Married Men, their Wives and families.
Widowers, with Children.
Widows and unmarried Women, with Children.
Women during the month of confinement.
Infants at nurse, and children too young for school.
Boys, if possible, in two classes, according to their age.
Girls the same.
-No Person in the House to go out of it on any pretence whatsoever, without leave from
the Governor of the Workhouse.
-The Males not to enter the apartments of the Females, nor the Females those of the
Males.
-All the Paupers above ten years of age, to go to bed at nine o’clock at night, from Ladyday to Michaelmas (29th September), and eight o’clock the remainder of the year. The bell
to be rung to denote those times. The Children under ten years of age to go to bed at an
earlier hour.
-All the Poor who are able, to attend the prayers, to come clean to the table; and to sit
decently at their meals; not to talk nor leave their places till thanks be returned.
The Diet of the Paupers at Preston in 1827
The authorities went to great pains to try to convince the public of their generosity to their
charges.
Breakfasts: at seven o’clock in summer, and eight o’clock in winter.
Bread, and a sufficient quantity of porridge, made of one gallon of good new milk to two
gallons of pure and clean water, with a proper quantity of oatmeal or flour and salt. When
milk is scarce, beer may be used in stead of it.
Dinners: at half past twelve o’clock.
Sundays – boiled beef.
Thursdays – fried bacon, with a sufficient quantity of other vegetables, and salt.
Monday – soup made from the broth.
Wednesdays – hash or stew.
Fridays – bacon dripping with a sufficient quantity of bread, potatoes or other vegetables,
and salt each day.
Tuesdays and Saturdays – lobscouse, made from a sufficient quantity of the coarse pieces
of the beef, and potatoes, with pepper and salt.
Suppers: at half past six o’clock in the evening throughout the year.
Water porridge, made of good, sound and sweet oatmeal, with sweetened beer, or with
buttermilk, when plentiful as a change.
Everyone to have as much as is required, but no victuals to be taken by the paupers out of
the eating-rooms, after the meal is finished.
The Duties of the Governor of Preston Workhouse in 1827
-To inculcate and encourage religious and moral duties, industrious and frugal habits, quiet
and peaceable conduct, and submissive and obedient behaviour in all the inmates, but
more particularly in children and young persons.
-To read a portion of the scriptures and a short prayer in the chapel-room or dining-room
every morning before breakfast and every evening before supper, and to see that grace be
duly said at dinner and supper, by himself, or a suitable person approved by the
committee.
-To see that all inmates are in their bed-rooms at eight o’clock at night in winter, and nine
o’clock in summer, and that the gates and out-doors are locked every night at the same
hour.
-To keep an account of the offences and misbehaviour of each person, with such
punishments as may have been inflicted by him on any of them, and to lay it before the
committee when they visit the house.
-Punishments
Any adult person, guilty of misbehaviour or breach of Rules, to be punished as follows:
For the first offence, to have dinners or suppers withdrawn for a time not exceeding three
days.
For the second offence of the same kind,
or for drunkenness, fighting, gambling, swearing, wilfully breaking windows, or wantonly
damaging or destroying any part of the House or premises, or the property belonging to
the House, or the tools of work entrusted to them, as a first offence, to be locked up in a
private room, for a time not exceeding twenty-four hours, and to be kept on bread and
water.
For a third offence of the slighter kind, or for a second offence of the more serious kind, to
be taken before a Magistrate, and dealt with according to the law.
Any other person guilty of such offences, to be punished by the Governor, under the
directions of the Committee, in some suitable manner , authorised by law.
Regulations for the Education and Employment of Children in the Preston
Workhouse 1827.
Girls
A separate room to be devoted to the girls, and to be fitted up for their school-room and
sitting room.
Every day in the week (Sunday excepted) the girls under ten years old, to be taught to
read, from half-past eight until twelve o’clock at noon, by a proper teacher.
From twelve to half-past one to be allowed them for dinner and recreation, and from halfpast one to six o’clock to be employed in knitting, sewing etc under the instruction and
superintendence of a suitable mistress.
Boys
The boys under ten years old to be employed at suitable work, from half-past eight until
twelve o’clock at noon, from twelve to half-past one to be allowed for dinner and
recreation, and from half-past one until six in the evening, to be instructed in reading and
writing by a suitable master.
How it all worked out in practice: a letter of 1860…
‘I had the opportunity of inspecting the various workhouse and schools belonging to the
Preston Union.
The ventilation in the old house in the town (Argyll Road, off Deepdale Road) was very
poorly attended to.
The rooms are low, and much crowded with the sick and infirm.
The house and various wards were dirty with the exception of the dining hall and the new
buildings.
The hospital arrangements are very inadequate for the due restoration of the inmates …
the state of the women’s crowded ward and hospital is deplorable.
The school-mistress is a superior person, and deserves a much better room for teaching
the children, some of whom had a sickly appearance.
I do not know that I have seen a schoolroom so defective in Lancashire. The only remedy
is a new Workhouse’.
The new workhouse, Watling Street Road, Fulwood, in 1881.
‘The workhouse will accommodate between 1,400 and 1,500 persons.
Able-bodied men, when dependent on the workhouse, are employed in stone-breaking
and land tilling; partially disabled men pick oakum (pull the best bits from piles of old
naval rope for re-use);; able-bodied women wash and do work of a household character;
partially disabled women pick oakum; boys are taught tailoring, shoemaking, or baking,
according to their fitness; girls are learned to knit, sew and clean, under an industrial
trainer. Tramps have separate accommodation here (the ‘Tramp House’). They have to
work – break stones – for the relief they receive’.
9
Hard Times: the Cotton Famine 1861-5
The cotton industry rapidly became the district’s most important source of employment. It
brought paid-work and by 1900 at least a measure of prosperity. The problem was this;
since nearly everyone worked in the industry any upset to the trade could have disastrous
consequences. At its worst everyone could be thrown out of work. And this is exactly what
happened in 1861-64.
The late 1850s had been extremely prosperous, exports to India and China boomed, the
owners borrowed money to expand their mills and ever more cloth was being produced.
The monsoon failed, markets in the East collapsed and Britain began a steep economic
depression. Heavily in debt many cotton firms failed throwing their workers out of work.
The world was full of Lancashire cloth and in the years it took to sell it most mills closed or
at best ran only part time. The threatening disaster had occurred and virtually everyone
was thrown out of full-time work. South Ribble and Preston now entered Hard Times they were to last to 1864.
People’s savings soon ran out. So many people were thrown out of work that the
workhouses could not hold them so they were given a few shillings a week to stay at
home. This was barely enough to keep body and soul together so committees were
formed to channel charitable funds to the needy. This list shows the number of
unemployed people during the winter of 1863:
Village
No work
Part Time
workers
Full Time
Workers
Number
Relieved
Bamber Bridge
1470
None
80
1569
Walton
1441
294
407
1657
Brindle
433
200
None
493
Farington
1360
6
None
1780
Leyland
750
50
None
1551
Longton
None
None
None
791
43
90
22
315
Much Hoole
These figures are interesting. Families were large, and so long as at least some members
had at least some work they might muddle through. Farington was the worst affected,
nobody had full time work and only six people any work at all! Longton did not have a
mill, but was badly affected when there was no work for the home-based handloom
weavers.
The government and the mill owners were afraid that if people were paid to stay at home
they would never want to go back to the mills. So to qualify for the few shillings a week
paid to them by the Board of Guardians or the local Relief Committee everyone had to do
some work. This might be digging and building work for men and boys, sewing for women
and girls. Many factories established mill schools. Unwanted bedding, clothing and shoes
were collected from prosperous people to be given to the poor. Food was perhaps the
main item issued and soup kitchens were established to provide at least a part of the diet.
Wealthy visitors could buy strips of ‘soup tickets’ to hand out to any needy people they
saw. In short considerable ingenuity produced a great range of local schemes to help the
poor.
These are the main expenses met by the Walton-le-dale charitable committee in 1863:
Food
£3000
Clothing
£1200
Soup
£180
Clogs
£140
Paid to labourers at the church
£140
Adult school Fund
£110
Paid to attendees at the Sewing School
£105
Christmas Gifts
£70
Sewing Girl’s tea party
£6
Wine, and beef tea for the sick
£70
Coal
£50
Total
£5400
The typical payment was two shillings per person per week. This was paid in special
tickets, to be exchanged at shops for food and necessary items. The people would usually
assemble once a week in the church or school to be issued them. A tremendous row
brought out when the committee was found to have paid an unemployed man eight
shillings per week for the keep of his horse!
An eye-witness account of Bamber Bridge during the ‘famine’
In January 1863 the Preston journalist Anthony Hewitson visited the district and his
account was published in the Preston Chronicle.
‘Bamber Bridge is a small, rather irregular, and not very densely populated place.
The village is quiet, and there are the usual symptoms of distress visible, smokeless
chimneys, a house here and there to be let, young men and lads’ hanging about’ with
their hands in their pockets, and a general stillness in the streets.
At the far end of the village is the parish school (St.Saviours). A neat little building it is,
with ivy in front, and tiny little birds twittering about its eaves.
Here all the poor people meet once a week – every Wednesday morning – for relief
tickets, given out by the Charitable Committee of Bamber Bridge. The tickets are
exchanged at the different shops in the village. .
Pushing our way through the crowd at the door we found that the chairman of the
committee was addressing those present on the duties of parents towards their children
and vice versa.
The tickets, each representing a certain sum of money, were then distributed.
The names were shouted out, each person answered ‘Here’ in regular order, the tickets
were handed out, the men bowed and the women curtsied when they received them, and
in about twenty five minutes 1,536 persons were served, and all was over for that day.
The people soon hurried away and exchanged their tickets.
Distress has prevailed for twelve months in the village, and at present it seems to be as
bad in many respects as ever.
The relief given by the committee varies from 7d to 8d per head.
In regard to the operatives generally, we heard but one opinion, namely, that they were
generally well behaved and peaceable, and that they bore their trials during this season of
distress with calmness and exemplary fortitude’.
Cuerden Mill School for Females
This factory stood close by the site of the Sainsbury superstore, and was Anthony’s next
port of call:
‘When we entered the school a lady at the far end was reading allowed a pretty tale from
a book called ‘The Basket of Flowers’. Afterwards, the females sang, in succession, ‘I’d
choose to be a daisy’, ‘Wildowed Flowers’, and ‘Home, Home!’. All joined in the melodies;
every one sang them pleasantly and heartily. We commend their conduct.
The girls are taught not only sewing but washing.
Every Monday twelve girls are drafted in regular order from the school, and are that day
taught, if they are ignorant thereupon, the art and mystery of washing. A room in the mill
is used for the purpose, and the girls carry out the whole process of ‘dollying’, wringing etc
in fine style.
On Tuesdays they are initiated into the secret of drying and mangling the articles.
The girls are instructed in all those domestic ‘arts’ which are necessary in every household,
and which mingle comfort with economy and pleasure with industry in the homes of the
poor.
…A better system than that adopted at the Cuerden Mill School could not be devised for
female factory operatives’.
Hard Times in Farington
‘For a long time there has been distress here, and it prevails very severely at present.
Farington is only a small place: its staple trade is cotton manufacturing, and hence the
bulk of its population consists of factory operatives. The main manufacturers are Messrs
W.Bashall & Co. Here and at Lostock Hall they have about 250 cottages, occupied by their
operatives, and ever since the commencement of the distress they have foregone the
rents.
The occupants also receive soup and bread three times per week.
The firm has also given them fuel and clothing from time to time.
Fourteen months ago their mills commenced running short time, and four months later
they were entirely closed.
At present 1,700 people are in receipt of relief from the committee. We give a list of the
articles distributed:
100 pairs of sheets, 100 counterpaines, 350 flannel singlets, 150 petticoats, 500 shirts,
500 pairs of stockings and socks, 120 coats, vests and trousers, 120 gowns, 120 shawls,
40 boy’s suits, 200 pairs of blankets, 50 girl’s dresses, and 500 pairs of shoes. They have
also got 300 pairs of boots and shoes repaired for the poor. This is a pretty substantial list
for a place so small as Farington’.
Numbers relieved by the Preston Union in Walton & Bamber Bridge and Farington, 1861-3
(Source: David Hunt 'The Silent Mills')
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