Kitabı oku: «A History of Lancashire», sayfa 16

CHAPTER XI
PROGRESS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The general appearance of the chief Lancashire towns in the early part of the eighteenth century has been graphically described by a lady who rode through England on horseback;²²³ and from this source we take our descriptions of Manchester, Liverpool, Lancaster, Wigan, Preston, and Rochdale.

Manchester consisted of not very lofty, but substantially built houses, mostly of brick and stone, the older houses being of wood; from the churchyard you could see the whole of the town. The market–place was large, and took up the length of two streets, when it was kept for the sale of the “linnen–cloth and cottontickens,” which were the chief manufactures of the place.

Liverpool was also mostly of brick and stone, but the houses were “high and even that a streete quite through looked very handsome”; in fact, the fair equestrienne describes it as “London in miniature,” and was much struck with its Exchange, standing on eight pillars, and over it “a very handsome Town–hall,” from the tower of which you could see the whole country round. Lancaster was “old and much decayed,” and some of the carved stones and figures belonging to the dissolved priory were still to be seen. The town was not much given to trade, though within it various trades were carried on; some of the streets were “well pitch’d and of good size.” Preston was a very good market–town, leather, corn, coals, butter, cheese, and garden produce being exposed for sale. At the entrance to the town was a lawyer’s house, all of stone, with fine windows in the front, and “high built, according to ye eastern buildings near London; on each side of it were neatly kept gardens. There were in some parts of the town some more of these handsome houses, and the streets were spacious and well pitch’d.” Wigan is described as another “pretty market town, built of stone and brick,” and as being the place where the “fine channell coales” are in perfection, and the writer adds, “Set the coales together with some fire, and it shall give a snap and burn up light.” The Wigan people at this time were in the habit of making salt–cellars, stand–dishes, and small boxes out of cannel, and these were sent to London as curiosities.

Rochdale is described as a “pretty neate towne, built all of stone.” The ride over Blackstone Edge is well described; the author mentions it as “noted all over England,” and, after referring to the ascent from the Yorkshire side, says, “Here I entred Lancashire; the mist began to lessen, and as I descended on this side ye fogg more and more went off, and a little raine fell, though at a little distance in our view the sun shone on ye vale, w^ch indeed is of a large extent here, and ye advantage of soe high a hill, w^ch is at least 2 mile up, discovers the grounds beneath as a fruitfull valley full of inclosures and cut hedges and trees. That w^ch adds to the formidableness of Blackstone Edge is that on ye one hand you have a vast precipice almost the whole way one ascends and descends, and in some places ye precipice is on either hand.”

Of the state of the roads in Lancashire this writer has somewhat to say; her ride from Wigan to Preston, though only twelve miles, took her four hours; and she adds, “I could have gone 20 miles in most countrys” in the same time; but she found one good thing in the county roads, which was, that at cross–roads there were posts with “hands pointing to each road, w^th ye names of ye great towns on.” Daniel Defoe, passing over Blackstone Edge in 1724, complains that the road was “very frightful narrow and deep, with a hollow precipice on the right,” and that after he had gone a short distance this hollow got deeper and deeper, and, though they led the horses, they found it “very troublesome and dangerous.” Yet this was the direct and only road to Yorkshire from the Rochdale valley. The turnpike system,²²⁴ before the advent of the nineteenth century, had not been adopted in any part of Lancashire, but, with the commencement of the new industries and commercial enterprises of the period, it soon became apparent that the old “pack and prime”²²⁵ ways were no longer adequate to carry on the business which had now to be done. Some of these old roads were little better than footpaths, which the repeated tread of long strings of pack–horses had worn deep into the soil, so that in rainy weather they served at once as roads and water–courses, and these were often crossed by rivers, which at flood–times were both deep and rapid, and a constant source of danger to travellers and their goods.

In 1753 all the roads in the county were infested with highway robbers, and to guard against them travellers went in groups. Thus, every Tuesday a gang of horsemen set off from London, and arrived at Liverpool on the Monday following. Goods were carried on stage–waggons, and were usually from ten days to a fortnight in coming to Lancashire from the Metropolis.

As late as 1770 Arthur Young passed along the road for Preston and Wigan, and thus refers to it: “I know not in the whole range of language terms sufficiently expressive to describe the infernal highway. Let me most seriously caution all travellers who may accidentally propose to travel this terrible country to avoid it as they would the devil, for a thousand to one but they break their necks or their limbs by overthrows or breakings down. They will here meet with ruts which I actually measured four feet deep and floating with mud only from a wet summer! What must it, therefore, be in winter!”

The earliest Turnpike Act was passed in 1663, and referred to the great north road through the counties of Hertford, Cambridge, and Huntingdon, and near the end of the century similar Acts were adopted for other districts, but none of them applied to Lancashire. Of the main roads through Lancashire at this period we have little information, but there was one from Chester which passed through Warrington, Manchester, Rochdale, and over Blackstone Edge to York; another from Manchester to Buxton and on to London; and a third from Lancaster to Skipton in Yorkshire. There was also one from Warrington, through Wigan, Preston, and Lancaster, to Kendal. Of course there were several other cross–roads, but these were the main trunks. The great Northern centre of these roads was Chester; between there and Liverpool was all but impassable at this time with anything like a waggon.

The first Turnpike Act for Lancashire was passed in 1724, and applied to the road from Buxton to Manchester, which is described as the nearest road from London to Manchester. Other districts soon followed this example, and Acts were obtained for turnpiking the road from Liverpool to Prescot in 1725; Wigan to Warrington and Preston in 1726; Rochdale to Elland (over Blackstone Edge) in 1734;²²⁶ Preston to Lancaster, 1750; Salford to Warrington and Bolton, 1752; Rochdale to Burnley, 1754; Manchester to Rochdale, 1754; Liverpool to Preston, 1771; Clitheroe to Blackburn, 1776; Bury, and Haslingden to Blackburn, 1789; Rochdale to Edenfield, 1794; Rochdale to Bury, 1797; and other lines of route. So that before the century closed the county was intersected²²⁷ in all directions by turnpike roads, which were maintained and formed under the regulations of their several Acts, and no longer dependent upon the uncertain measure of repair formerly reluctantly furnished by the local rates, which had often to be paid by those who used the road the least. Some of the preambles to these local Turnpike Acts furnish curious particulars as to the then state of the roads. For example, in 1750 the road from Crosford Bridge (near Sale), which passed through Stretford and Hulme to Manchester, is described as being “a common High road and part of the Post road from London to Manchester; and by reason of the nature of the soil and the many and heavy carriages passing the same, the said road is become so exceedingly deep and ruinous that in the winter season and frequently in summer it is very difficult and dangerous to pass through the greatest part thereof with waggons, carts, and other wheel carriages; and travellers cannot pass without danger and loss of time. And whereas some part of the said road lying next to Crosford Bridge is many times overflowed with water and impassable; whereby the Post is delayed, and severall persons in attempting to pass through the same have lost their lives.”

Towards the end of the century many parts of the old roads were abandoned, and shorter routes adopted, thus materially contributing to that ready access between town and town and the county with the Metropolis which was now becoming an absolute necessity. In places where the Turnpike Act had not been adopted it was now often found necessary to enforce the law as to repairs by indicting the parish at quarter sessions, where the justices ordered a fixed sum to be paid, which had to be levied by rates. The vast improvements made in the highways led to a very rapid development of the stage–coaches and stage–waggons.

An adventurous Manchester man advertised in 1754 that his flying coach, “however incredible it may appear, will actually (barring accidents) arrive in London in four days and a half after leaving Manchester.”

In 1756 the “Flying Stage” coach left Warrington on Mondays, and got to London on Wednesdays, the inside fare being two guineas, with an allowance of fourteen pounds of luggage.

It was not until 1760 that a stage–coach began to run between Liverpool and London direct.

Between Manchester and Liverpool a stage–coach was established in 1770, which ran twice a week.

But along with the improvement of roads other schemes were being developed which ultimately led to the formation of the navigable canals which now intersect the county. The first of these is the one known as the Bridgewater Canal, which was commenced in 1758, when the Duke of Bridgewater obtained power to construct a water way from Worsley to Salford and to Hollinfare (or Hollin Ferry), on the river Irwell, and also to carry his canal across that river through Stretford into the town of Manchester. This work, which was then considered a masterpiece of engineering, was carried out under the direction of James Brindley. In addition to the aqueduct over the river, which is upwards of 200 yards long, there were other difficulties to be overcome, amongst them a tunnel of three–quarters of a mile in length. The bridge over the Irwell consists of three arches, the centre one 63 feet wide and 38 feet high, thus admitting barges to go through with masts standing, and, as Baines put it (writing in 1836), affording the spectator the “extraordinary sight, never before witnessed in this country, of one vessel sailing over the top of another.” In 1761 a much bolder scheme was commenced by the Duke, which, when completed, formed a canal nearly 30 miles long, from Stretford to Runcorn on the Mersey. This took five years to construct, and it had the effect of at once lessening the cost of carriage by water between Manchester and Liverpool by at least fifty per cent. But this first Lancashire canal was not used only for the conveyance of goods; boats on the model of the Dutch trekschuyt were used daily to take passengers from Manchester to the places on the line of route. A branch from Worsley to Leigh was cut in 1795. Before the establishment of canals powers had been obtained in 1720 to render navigable the Irwell and Mersey from Liverpool to Manchester, and in 1726 the river Douglas (alias Asland), from Wigan to the Mersey. These river improvements were made at great cost, and at the best were not found to work in a very satisfactory manner, and were soon superseded by the ordinary canals. One of the first Lancashire canals was the Leeds and Liverpool, which was begun in 1770, when it was considered one of the boldest schemes which had ever been undertaken in England. Its length from Leeds to Liverpool is 107 miles. Dr. Aiken, writing near the close of the century, says of this canal: “On a cursory survey, the tract of country through which it passes will probably appear not extremely inviting to such an undertaking. It is but lightly peopled, and though the great towns at the opposite extremities abound in objects of commercial importance, yet their connection with each other is not very intimate, nor does it seem likely to be much promoted by such a circuitous communication. Coal and limestone are the chief natural products of the intermediate country; and as the districts abounding in the one often want the other, a considerable transport of these articles on the canal may be expected, as well as other useful kinds of stone found in quarries near its course.”

After the American War, which ended in 1783, Manchester showed great activity in pushing forward various schemes for the extension of the water–communication with the surrounding districts. Amongst the canals made before the end of the century were those to Bolton and Bury, Ashton–under–Lyne and Oldham; Manchester to Rochdale and Yorkshire; Kendal to Lancaster, Garstang, Preston, and West Houghton. On the latter packet boats conveying passengers to Preston went daily for many years.

The only place in the county where the maritime trade was increasing was Liverpool, where in the last decade of the century some 4,500 vessels arrived annually, their tonnage being about one–fifth that of the ships which reached London each year. The chief trade was with Africa and the West Indies, at least one–fourth of the Liverpool vessels being employed in the slave trade. From Lancaster, before the stagnation of trade set in, about forty–seven vessels were trading with foreign ports, their chief cargoes being mahogany furniture and goods made in Manchester and Glasgow. The Ribble was not much used by boats of any considerable burden.

To the cotton trade and all its developments must we look for the vast increase in the commercial prosperity of Lancashire which so strongly marked the last fifty years of the eighteenth century. The first invention which led to the present mode of spinning wool was the patent taken out in 1738 by Lewis Paul,²²⁸ of Birmingham, for spinning of wool or cotton by machinery. The preamble to this grant sets forth that the machine was “capable of being set so as instantaneously to spin wool, cotton waste and wick–yarn to any degree, size, or twist with the greatest exactness, and is to be worked without handling or fingering the matter to be wrought, after the same be once placed in the machine, and requires so little skill that anyone, after a few minutes’ teaching, will be capable of spinning therewith; and even children of five or six years of age may spin with the same, by which means the poorest of the clothiers will be enabled to supply their customers without suffering under the encumbrance of a dead stock of yarn, and the weavers may be supplied with such yarn as they shall want for their several occasions without that loss of time which often happens to them.”

The principle of this and a later patent taken out by Paul covered the invention of what is technically known as roller–spinning, but which required further improvement before it could be profitably used. John Kay, a native of Walmersly, near Bury, where he was born July 16, 1704, was the undoubted inventor of the fly–shuttle which was patented in 1733, and of several other important machines connected with the trade. His melancholy history cannot here be repeated, but his life was one long struggle against ignorance and ingratitude. The people who were most to be benefited by his invention broke up his machines and drove him homeless to France. His appeal to Government was in vain, and even those who adopted the fly–shuttle refused to pay for its use. He died an exile from his country in obscurity and poverty.

Let us take a glance at the daily work carried on by the cottagers and small farmers in Lancashire at the time when Kay made known his great invention. Samuel Bamford, of Middleton, who was well able to give testimony on this subject, writes: “The farming was generally of that kind which was soonest and most easily performed, and it was done by the husband and other males of the family, whilst the wife and daughters and maid–servants, if there were any of the latter, attended to the churning, cheese–making, and household work; and when that was finished, they busied themselves in carding, slubbing and spinning wool or cotton, as well as forming it into warps for the looms. The husband and sons would next, at times when farm labour did not call them abroad, size the warp, dry it, and beam it in the loom, and either they or the females, whichever happened to be least employed, would weave the warp down. A farmer would generally have three or four looms in his house, and then – what with the farming, easily and leisurely though it was performed, what with the house–work, and what with the carding, spinning and weaving – there was ample employment for the family. If the rent was raised from the farm, so much the better; if not, the deficiency was made up from the manufacturing profits.” William Radcliffe, himself an improver of the power loom, gives another account of the life of the hand loom weaver. In 1770, he says, “the land [in Mellor, near Manchester] was occupied by between fifty and sixty farmers … and out of these there were only six or seven who raised their rents directly from the produce of the farms; all the rest got their rents partly in some branch of trade, such as spinning and weaving woollen, linen or cotton. The cottagers were employed entirely in this manner, except for a few weeks in harvest. Being one of those cottagers, and intimately acquainted with all the rest, as well as every farmer, I am better able to relate particularly how the change from the old system of hand labour to the new one of machinery operated in raising the price of land. Cottage rents at that time, with convenient loom–shop and a small garden attached, were from one and a half to two guineas per annum. The father would earn from 8s. to half a guinea, and his sons, if he had one, two, or three alongside of him, 6s. or 8s. a week; but the great sheet–anchor of all cottagers and small farms was the labour attached to the hand–wheel; and when it is considered that it required six or eight hands to prepare and spin yarn, of any of the three materials I have mentioned, sufficient for the consumption of one weaver, this shows clearly the inexhaustible source there was for labour for every person, from the age of seven to eighty years (who retained their sight and could move their hands), to earn their bread, say from 1s. to 3s. per week, without going to the parish.”

A weaver at this date had frequently to walk many miles to collect from various spinners the quantity of weft required to keep his hand–loom going, but the invention of the fly–shuttle made matters no better for him, as, although he could now turn out with the same labour as heretofore double the amount of pieces, he found no material increase in the product of the spinning–wheel. Here, then, was a block, to get over which there was only one way, and that was a corresponding increase in the production of the weft.

Many attempts were made to bring the old spinning–wheel up to the requirements of the day, but not one of them proved efficacious.

It may be noted here en passant that, whilst most of the patents taken out at this period were intended to improve the processes in cotton manufacture, Kay’s fly–shuttle was first applied in the weaving of woollen, but was afterwards made adaptable for cotton. Another great improvement was what was known as the “drop box,” which was invented by Robert Kay (a son of John Kay) in 1769.

This difficulty in keeping the woollen and cotton looms at work was brought before the Society of Arts in 1763, when its members, fully recognising the importance of the crisis, offered a prize of £50 for “the best invention of a machine that would spin six threads of wool, flax, hemp or cotton at one time, and require but one person to work and attend to it.” This incentive caused many model spinning–wheels to be submitted for approval, none of which furnished what was required.

The solution of the difficulty was reserved for James Hargreaves, a weaver of Stanhill, near Blackburn, a town which had then about 5,000 inhabitants, many of whom were employed in making a kind of cloth known as “Blackburn gray.” Hargreaves for several years was engaged in making improvements in the carding machines, which displaced the hand–cards then in use for clearing and straightening the cotton fibres preparatory to their being spun; but in 1765 he turned his attention to the mechanical operation for spinning yarn, and having matured his ideas, he had a machine secretly made in his house, where he afterwards used it to great advantage. The machine was subsequently called the spinning–jenny, and did for the spinner even more than the fly–shuttle did for the weaver. Several of these machines were soon privately sold to some of his neighbours, who were not slow to discover the immense advantages which they furnished. Of course, an invention like this could not long be kept secret, and when it became known that here was a machine by which one spinner, instead of working with one thread, could, with equal ease, work with sixteen or even twenty threads, and that henceforth much of the female labour at the spinning–wheel would no longer be wanted, the unreasoning and ignorant populace began to rise against it and its inventor. The result was that, on a fixed day, weavers from Darwen, Mellor, Tockholes and Oswaldtwistle met in Blackburn (where their numbers were greatly augmented), and from thence made their way to Hargreaves’ house; but not finding the inventor at home, they broke to pieces the spinning–jenny, and totally destroyed the household goods and furniture. They then proceeded to a mill of Robert Peel’s, where the jenny was used, and reduced the place to ruins. After this, Hargreaves fled to Nottingham, and in 1770 took out his first patent for the machine which may almost be said to be the foundation of the cotton trade.

Like most other great inventors, Hargreaves did not make much money from his invention; but after a vain attempt to protect his patent, he settled down at Nottingham, and, in partnership with Thomas James, a joiner of the town, erected a small building which they ultimately used as a cotton factory, and which is believed to have been the first cotton mill in the world;²²⁹ it was originally 40 feet long and 20 wide, and consisted of three stories. Hargreaves died at Nottingham in the spring of 1778.²³⁰

Notwithstanding the working–man’s opposition to the spinning–jenny, before 1771 it had been adopted by nearly every spinner in Lancashire. Riots against the “jenny” continued, however, for a time to break out in the neighbourhood of Blackburn for several years after Hargreaves’ death.

Another Lancashire inventor was Richard Arkwright, a barber, who was born at Preston, December 23, 1732, and was said to have been the youngest of thirteen children. About the year 1750 he, having married a daughter of Robert Holt, of Bolton, removed to that town, where, in 1769, he so far improved upon the invention of Lewis Paul (see p. 261) for spinning cotton by rollers, as to make it not only practicable but profitable, and thus at once opened a new era in cotton manufacture. Taking warning from the treatment which Hargreaves had received, he removed to Nottingham, where he had a small mill worked by horses, which was subsequently abandoned and a new factory built at Cromford, in Derbyshire, where the river Derwent supplied the water–power. The dispute and connection between Kay and Arkwright need not here be detailed.²³¹ Arkwright was also the inventor of other mechanical improvements in the manufacture of cotton.

Amongst other mills built by Arkwright was one at Chorley, and this was one of those selected for destruction by the mobs in 1779, of the doings of which the Annual Register for October 9 in that year records: “During the week, several mobs have assembled in different parts of the neighbourhood, and have done much mischief by destroying engines for carding and spinning cotton wool (without which the trade of this country could never be carried on to any great extent). In the neighbourhood of Chorley the mob destroyed and burned the engines and buildings erected by Mr. Arkwright at a very great expense. Two thousand or upwards attacked a large building near the same place on Sunday, from which they were repulsed, two rioters killed, and eight wounded taken prisoners. They returned strongly reinforced on Monday, and destroyed a great number of buildings, with a vast quantity of machines for spinning cotton, etc. Sir George Saville arrived (with three companies of the York Militia) whilst the buildings were in flames. The report of their intention to destroy the works in this town – Manchester – brought him here yesterday noon.

“At one o’clock this morning two expresses arrived – one from Wigan and another from Blackburn – entreating immediate assistance, both declaring the violence of the insurgents, and the shocking depredations yesterday at Bolton. It is thought they will be at Blackburn this morning, and at Preston by four this afternoon. Sir George ordered the drums to beat to arms at half after one, when he consulted with the military and magistrates in town, and set off at the head of three companies soon after two o’clock for Chorley, that being centrical to this place, Blackburn and Wigan. Captain Brown, of the 24th Regiment, with 70 invalids – pensioners, presumably – and Captain Thorburn, of Colonel White’s Regiment, with about 100 recruits, remained at Preston; and for its further security, Sir George Saville offered the justices to arm 300 of the respectable house–keepers, if they would turn out to defend the town, which was immediately accepted. In consequence of these proceedings, the mob did not think it prudent to proceed to any further violence.”

These riots, which were pretty general in the district where machinery was used, arose from a temporary depression of trade, which the spinners mistook for the effects of the introduction of the recent inventions.

At Bolton £10,000 worth of mill property was destroyed. This dread of machinery was not entirely confined to the operatives, for some of the middle and upper classes connived at these appeals to brute force, if they did not actually encourage them.²³² Arkwright for many years suffered from attempts to infringe upon his patents, and his name often appeared in the law courts as plaintiff or defendant; but the details are of too complicated and technical a character to find a place in these pages, beyond stating that, notwithstanding that in 1785 his patents were declared by the Court of King’s Bench to be null and void, he amassed a large fortune, in the year following was knighted, and in 1787 was made High Sheriff of Derbyshire. He died on August 3, 1792, leaving property estimated at half a million sterling.

One other of the pioneers of the Lancashire staple trade remains to be noticed. Samuel Crompton was the son of a farmer living at Firwood, near Bolton, where he was born on December 3, 1753. Soon after the birth of his son, the elder Crompton removed to a house near Bolton, known as “Hall–in–the–Wood,” which has since become famous as the birthplace of the “mule,” which was to enable the spinner to produce a yarn out of which delicate fabrics could be woven such as heretofore had defied the skill of the English manufacturer. Crompton is said to have been five years in bringing his cherished scheme to perfection, during which time he worked secretly at his machine, and often prolonged his labour far into the night. In the memorable year when the rioters were busy destroying all the spinning–jennies they could find, Crompton completed his model, and, to hide it from the sight of doubtful visitors, he contrived to cut a hole through the ceiling of the room where he worked as well as a corresponding part of the clay floor of the room above, and had thus always ready a place in which he could hide the evidence of his patient industry. Part of Crompton’s model had been in a measure anticipated by Arkwright; but “the great and important invention of Crompton was his spindle–carriage and the principle of the thread having no strain upon it until it was completed. The carriage with the spindles could, by a movement of the hand and knee, recede just as the rollers delivered out the elongated thread in a soft state, so that it would allow of a considerable stretch before the thread had to encounter the stress of winding on the spindle. This was the corner–stone of the merits of his invention.”²³³

Crompton’s “mule” was at once a success; but instead of securing himself by a patent, he vainly endeavoured to work with it in secret, but was at length reduced, he tells us, “to the cruel necessity either of destroying my machine altogether or giving it to the public. To destroy it I could not think of; to give up that for which I had laboured so long was cruel. I had no patent, nor the means of purchasing one. In preference to destroying I gave it to the public.” In taking this step he was acting under the advice of a large manufacturer of Bolton, who was doubtless fully aware of the merits of the machine, and, in order to induce Crompton to make this valuable concession, some eighty firms and individuals of that town promised each to pay to him one guinea; but, as a matter of fact, the total sum received did not much exceed £60, or scarcely enough to cover the cost of the construction of the model, which he also gave up.

Leaving Crompton for the moment, we must note that in 1784 the Rev. Edmund Cartwright took out his first patent for the invention of a power–loom, for which he obtained a grant from Parliament of £10,000. This loom never came into general use. It was not until some years later, and after several futile attempts, that a power–loom was made adaptable. Crompton, after much trouble and anxiety, did ultimately get from the House of Commons £5,000, which he afterwards lost in the bleaching trade, which was at that time making considerable progress. When he had reached his seventy–second year, some friends raised for him an annuity of £65, which he only enjoyed for a short time, as he died in Bolton on June 26, 1827, aged seventy–four years. Thus was treated another of Lancashire’s greatest benefactors, who, whilst he lived, was left to feel that “chill penury” which “froze the genial current of his soul,” but who after his death was thought worthy of a statue in copper–bronze, which cost nearly £2,000, and now forms one of the chief monuments of the town of Bolton.