A History of Lancashire

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.

So rapid was the result of these various means of developing the manufacture of cotton that in 1787 there were over forty cotton–mills in Lancashire, and seventeen in Yorkshire; those in other parts of England increased the aggregate to 119, whilst the value of cotton goods manufactured rose from £600,000 in 1766 to £3,304,371 in 1787, showing the increase in twenty–one years to be five and a half fold.

In the last decade of the century a stop to further progress appeared imminent, as nearly all the sites where water–power was available had been utilized to the utmost; but fortunately, while Arkwright and Crompton had been perfecting the machinery for cotton manufacture, Watts was completing his labours to render steam–power available for rotative motion.

Before 1782 steam–engines had been used exclusively for pumping water out of mines, but in 1785 Boulton and Wall erected a steam–engine to work the cotton mill of Messrs. Robinson, at Papplewick, in Nottinghamshire, and four years later Manchester had its first steam–engine applied to cotton manufacture. In 1790 in Bolton a cotton mill was turned by steam, and before the end of the century this motive power was adopted in a few other places in the county. Cotton–mills worked by horse and water power were now common enough in all the large towns where textile manufacture formed part of the trade carried on. This enormous increase in local textile manufacture led at once to a similar development of the manufacturing of machinery, the raising of coals, and of all other industries required to carry on the now staple trades.

Before closing the account of Lancashire in the eighteenth century, some reference must be made to its press, and this must always afford some clue to the character of the people. In the time of Elizabeth there was in Lancashire a secret press from which were issued a few Roman Catholic books; this was probably located at Lostock Hall, near Bolton. There was also the wandering press from which came the Martin Marprelate tracts; this press was seized by the Earl of Derby at Newton Lane, near Manchester.234 In 1719 Roger Adams was established in Manchester as a printer; from his press came “Mathematical Lectures: being the first and second that were read to the Mathematical Society at Manchester.” Adams also, in that same year, printed and published the Manchester Weekly Journal, which in 1737 became Whitworth’s Magazine; this periodical enjoyed a run of twenty years. Whitworth published a considerable number of books, some of which were of more than local interest. In 1738 a second Manchester periodical was published entitled The Lancashire Journal, of which only about sixty numbers were printed. After this date, Manchester–printed books were pretty numerous.

A newspaper called Orion Adams’ Weekly Journal was started here in 1752; it was followed by Harrop’s Manchester Mercury and Whitworth’s Manchester Advertiser. Liverpool probably began to print a year or two before Manchester; the first book known to have been issued there is a volume of “Hymns sacred to the Lord’s Table,” by Charles Owen – “Leverpoole, printed by S. Terry, for Daniel Birchall, 1712.” After this very few books can with certainty be placed to the credit of the Liverpool press, but in 1736 appeared Seacome’s “Memoirs of the House of Stanley,” and subsequently many other works bearing the imprint of Liverpool. Terry in 1712 published the Leverpoole Courant, and in 1756 appeared Williamson’s Liverpool Advertiser. Its price was originally 2d., the stamp being one halfpenny. It appears to have had a considerable circulation; on the first page of the issue for October 17, 1760, is the following announcement: “The publisher of this paper begs leave to return his grateful thanks to his friends and readers in the northern parts of Lancashire for their kind indulgence in promoting and encouraging this paper; and, as he has been at the continued expense of expresses to meet the London post, in order to be as early with the news as possible, and messengers to distribute the paper, which have entirely taken away all profits arising from the sale, he presumes that his customers in Ormskirk, Preston, Lancaster and adjacent neighbourhoods, will further indulge him by advancing the price of the paper to 2½d., as no other newspaper in England of the same size and make is sold under that price.” Its size was small folio, and it consisted of four pages; it contained no leading article, and did not report the meetings of Parliament.

In 1799 Liverpool had three weekly newspapers. The smaller towns were somewhat later in setting up the printing presses, but the following names of places, with the dates of the first issue of books with their imprint, will give some idea of the respective rate of progress in this direction: Warrington, 1731; Preston, 1740 (and probably a little earlier); Wigan about 1760; Bolton about 1761; Prescot, 1779; Lancaster, 1783; Kirkham, 1790; Blackley, 1791; Blackburn, 1792; Bury, 1793; Haslingden, 1793; Rochdale, 1796, and Burnley, 1798. At Preston several attempts were made to establish newspapers in the eighteenth century, but neither the Preston Journal, in 1744, nor the Preston Review, in 1791, proved successful.

From the literature of Lancashire we may turn to its amusements. In Liverpool, a theatre was opened in 1772. Manchester’s first theatre was built of wood, which was afterwards, in 1753, superseded by a regular theatre, which stood somewhere near the top of King Street; but this proving too small, forty gentlemen subscribed £50 each, and, having obtained an Act of Parliament, erected a larger playhouse in 1775 in Spring Gardens, which was burnt down in 1789, but was rebuilt and again opened in 1790.

Towards the close of the century Rochdale had its theatre, and probably several other towns; and where such buildings did not exist, the strolling players, during the season, acted their parts in assembly or other convenient rooms. Horse–races were now very popular, and meetings were regularly held at Manchester, Preston and Liverpool. Kersal Moor Races, near Manchester, were begun in 1730. Cock–pits were also found in nearly all our large towns, and bull–baiting was a common amusement. But there was not wanting evidence of a higher taste. Subscription libraries were being established, and few towns were without regular organized musical, literary or scientific societies.

On all sides the growth of trade was calling into existence new villages and towns, and the rapidly increasing number of wealthy families led to the formation of that now world–renowned place of resort – Blackpool. Here, in 1750, there were a few scattered clay–built cottages with thatched roofs, which could by no effort of imagination be called a village, when one Ethart Whiteside ventured to open a house of entertainment, which consisted of a long thatched building, which he subsequently converted into an inn. Nineteen years afterwards there were only in its neighbourhood twenty or thirty cottages, but not a single shop. In 1788 W. Hutton records that “about sixty houses grace the sea; it does not merit the name of a village, because they are scattered to the extent of a mile”; yet in August of that year there were 400 visitors; and for their entertainment there were bowling–greens, “butts for bow–shooting,” and many of the company “amused themselves with fine ale at number three”; and for the evening the threshing–floor of a barn was turned into a theatre, which when full held six pounds. Of bathing–machines there were but few; a bell was rung when ladies went to bathe, and if, during the time set apart for them, a gentleman was seen on the beach, he was fined a bottle of wine. The price charged for boarding at one of the hotels was 3s. 4d. a day.

From this date the progress of this town was very rapid, and it soon became the great fashionable resort (during the season) of not only Lancashire, but all the North of England.

From this period many of the towns in Lancashire date their rise from the obscurity of small villages. Oldham, in 1794, had only a population of some 10,000, and within its area were at most a dozen small mills. Middleton did not get a right to hold its market and fair until 1791, whilst Bury at that date had not more than 3,000 inhabitants. The population of the municipal borough of Blackburn in 1783 was 8,000; the four townships, on the corners of which now stands St. Helens, in 1799 did not contain more than 7,000 souls. Over Darwen had in 1790 about 3,000 inhabitants, and Lower Darwen not more than half that number. The now prosperous town of Burnley had in 1790 certainly not above 2,000 inhabitants, whilst its neighbouring towns of Colne and Accrington had even a less number. Haslingdon, Newchurch, Bacup, and other towns in the Forest of Rossendale, were at this time mere villages; indeed, the entire population of the Forest did not, in 1790, exceed 10,000.

As a guide to the varied extent of business transacted in Manchester at the end of the century, much information may be gleaned from the local directories which were published from time to time, between 1772 and 1800. The first directory, prepared by Mrs. Elizabeth Raffald, appeared in 1772, and contained a list of all the merchants, tradesmen, and principal inhabitants, “with the situation of their respective warehouses”; also a list of stage–coaches, waggons, carriers, and vessels to Liverpool “upon the old navigation and Duke of Bridgewater’s Canal.”

There were 119 country manufacturers having warehouses in Manchester. The coaches went to London in two days during the summer, but in winter they required one day more. Coaches also went to all the surrounding districts; in some cases once a week, in others thrice.

Twenty–one vessels went to Liverpool by the Mersey and Irwell navigation (“the old navigation”), and eleven by the Duke of Bridgewater’s Canal. Manchester had then one bank and one insurance office. Passing over a quarter of a century to 1797, the directory of that year gives about 5,600 names, many of whom are engaged in trades not mentioned in the earlier list, such as twist manufacturers, cotton–spinners, cotton–merchants, bleachers, and printers. The list of country manufacturers and others who attended the Manchester market gives the names of 332 individuals or firms. The names of the officers of the Infirmary and the magistrates acting in the Manchester, Rochdale, Middleton, and Bolton divisions of Salford Hundred are also furnished. The coach–service had considerably improved, as we now find that the Royal Mail, “with a guard all the way,” left Manchester every morning, and reached London in twenty–eight hours, the fare being £3 13s. 6d.

One other trait in the eighteenth–century character of the Manchester men deserves a passing notice, that is, their patriotism. In 1777, on the breaking out of the American War, they raised a fine body of volunteers, which was enrolled as “The 72nd, or Manchester Regiment,” and did some service at Gibraltar under General Elliott; they were disbanded on their return home in August, 1783, their colours being deposited with much ceremony in the collegiate church. The year following, Sir Thomas Egerton, of Heaton Park, raised “The Royal Lancashire Volunteers,” and in 1782 the inhabitants of Manchester raised another volunteer corps of 150 men to serve in the American War. Several other corps were afterwards raised in the locality and incorporated with the regular army. On August 25, 1796, there was a review on Kersal Moor of volunteers from Rochdale, Stockport, and Bolton. The end of the eighteenth century gives us a remarkable standpoint from which to glance at the then position of the county. The rebellion had passed through its midst and excited its people to a greater degree than was probably the case in any other county. The prolonged struggles between Puritan, Presbyterian, Episcopalian and Romanist had at length died out; and although war and rumours of war, ever and anon, obscured the political atmosphere, and good times and bad times followed each other in trade and commerce, yet there was an ever–increasing feeling that the days had for ever gone when tyranny and oppression could flourish in the land. New industries on every hand were being developed, and one invention followed another in rapid succession; no sooner was a want declared than someone was ready to supply the requirement, thus opening out bright prospects for the future. The highways had been vastly improved, canals cut from north to south and from east to west in the county; machinery was at work which far more than realized the hopes of its inventors, and everywhere there were signs of coming prosperity. During this century Manchester and Liverpool had enormously increased in population and in commercial importance; and some other of our towns had to a considerable extent followed in the same direction, whilst here and there little quiet villages had seen rise in their midst the one small mill which was destined to be the forerunner of many others which would in no very long period make the insignificant village into a large and prosperous town.