Sue Wilkes

The Flax Workers of Ireland

2012-01-25T09:45:00.000Z

The flax and linen industries of Ireland provided employment until modern times. Flax was used to weave linen cloth, towels and sailcloth.

Linen was not an important manufacture in Ireland until the late 1690s. Flax was grown in the 'Linen Homelands' of Ulster and many other parts of Ireland such as Clonakilty. Cookstown (County Tyrone), the centre of a large flax growing district, had the biggest market in Ireland.
For centuries flax processing, spinning and weaving was done by hand. Spinning and weaving took place in worker’s homes. The mechanization of scutching, spinning and weaving improved efficiency but moved workers into factories.
Conditions in the wet-spinning mills and scutching mills were extremely unhealthy. The machinery in the scutching mills was particularly dangerous and there were some horrific accidents.
In August 1876 thirteen-year-old John Donaghey died from his injuries at Brown’s factory at Cookstown near Belfast. This accident was partly owing to bad management. In this factory nail-bags were woven from tow (short-fibred flax used for coarse cloth), and similar machinery to that used in the flax scutching mills softened up the tow during the initial processing. Someone (it was never discovered who) turned on the water which powered the machinery without warning the workers. A ‘feeding tray’ which acted as a guard had been taken off while the machine was serviced. When the machine started up suddenly, John’s arm was dragged into the rollers.

The Children History Forgot has more children's stories from the flax mills, and discusses the factory inspectorate’s fight to bring the industry under better regulation. And my feature for the February issue of BBC Who Do You Think You Are magazine explores how to trace your Irish flax worker ancestors.

Images:
Boy scouts binding the stooks (sheaves) of flax together. Work and Workers Shown to the Children, T. C. and E. C. Jack Ltd, circa 1920.
Flax processing. After harvesting, the flax was stacked to dry in the fields. After drying the seeds were then removed, then the stalks were ‘retted’ to soften them for processing. Then the flax fibres were ‘broken’ and ‘scutched’ Then the ‘heckler’ (hackler) cleaned any remaining fragments of bark from the flax.
The silken fibres of flax could now be spun into yarn, then woven into cloth. Cassell's Book of Knowledge Vol. III (Waverley Book Co. circa 1920). Author’s collection.

The Poet's Choices

2012-01-21T21:42:00.000Z

Robert Burns faced some of the most critical choices of his life during his late twenties. Scotland’s bard was tormented by indecision. How could he best make a living: as a poet, farmer, or excise-man? Should he share his life with a lady of good birth and education, or a woman of his own class?

On 13 March 1788, Burns agreed to lease Ellisland, only a few weeks after saying he had no intention of ‘beggaring’ himself by taking a farm. Burns loved the countryside around Ellisland. As he walked by the banks of the ever-rippling River Nith, he composed some of his most famous poems, including the classic Tam O' Shanter.
You can find out more about Burns’ life at Ellisland, and about the life choices he made there, in my feature for the latest issue of Highlander magazine.

Images: Engraving of Robert Burns. Great Authors of English Literature, (Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1899).

Ellisland farmhouse © Sue and Nigel Wilkes.

Huntley & Palmers Baked Them

2012-01-11T09:30:00.001Z

I was very interested to see Michael Portillo’s Great British Railway Journeys last night. Mr Portillo visited Reading, the former home of the huge Huntley & Palmers biscuit factory, and Whitchurch silk mill. Huntley and Palmer was a famous British brand, and Captain Scott took some of their biscuits on his ill-fated Antarctic expedition.

The first Huntley & Palmer factory was built by the Kennet and Avon Canal, and canal boats were used to transport the biscuits to Bath and Bristol. A later factory was sited near the Great Western Railway, and the company built its own sidings to link to the railway.

When writer Archibald Williams visited the factory early in the twentieth century, about 6000 people were employed there. The factory workforce was mostly men, women and small boys.
Factory Inspector Robert Baker (Reports, 31 Oct 1869), said that he had often heard complaints from Reading people that the Huntley & Palmer factory was not yet covered by the factory acts, because they claimed that ‘boys have often been employed for 20 hours at a stretch, and have been carried out, owing to the heat’. Baker had not been able to visit the factory, as it was outside his remit. Joseph Huntley and George Palmer were Quakers, however, and were said to look after their workforce. Baker commented: ‘I cannot vouch for the truth of these statements, and I should think that Messrs. Palmer treat their staff with consideration’.

Images: Taking biscuits from the oven. Packing biscuits into boxes. Packing boxes of biscuits into tins at the Huntley & Palmer’s factory. Their sturdy tins were much-loved by the British public. How It’s Made, Thomas Nelson & Sons, c.1910. Author’s collection.

A New Year Walk along the River Weaver

2012-01-02T18:45:00.000Z

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all had a peaceful Christmas.

One of the nice things about living in this part of Cheshire is that we always find something interesting to see on our walks. Yesterday we explored the Weaver Parkway from Winsford. At first the path, which meanders along the River Weaver, passes by the Winsford Rock Salt Mine. Salt from the mine helps keep our roads safe in winter.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries salt from Northwich and Winsford was transported along the River Weaver and the Trent & Mersey Canal.

The River Weaver is a haven for wildlife and we saw some ducks, a heron, two swans and some shags as we walked along the path. It was far too early in the year to see any of the rare plants which live near the salt mine in flower but we did see some teasels. A variety of teasel was used in textile manufacture, to raise the nap of woollen cloth ready for shearing. So we packed hundreds of years of history into an hour’s walk!

Images: Winsford Rock Salt Mine and teasels by the Weaver Parkway © Sue Wilkes

Cheshire salt workers and a special offer

2011-12-22T10:08:00.001Z

The January issue of BBC Who Do You Think You Are? magazine includes my feature on finding out more about salt worker ancestors in Cheshire. The magazine also has a special reader offer for my latest book Tracing Your Canal Ancestors.

There’s more about the salt industry during the early nineteenth century in Regency Cheshire. The salt industry left an unhappy legacy of subsidence, particularly in the Northwich area. People, horses, salt works and houses were swallowed up by the ground when it suddenly collapsed underneath them.

Image: An interested crowd has gathered where this Northwich house has sunk from subsidence in 1892. Good Words, 1893.

Find My Past Preview: A Royal Scandal

2011-12-21T13:33:00.002Z

This week's programme is the series finale of Find My Past's series on Yesterday, which airs on Thursday at 9pm. This episode is devoted to a Victorian royal scandal: the story of Sir Charles Mordaunt and his wife Harriet Sarah Moncrieffe, daughter of a Scottish baronet. Harriet entertained a string of lovers, one of whom may have been the Prince of Wales: the future Edward VII. The shocking thing to modern eyes about this tragic marriage is the 'double standard' surrounding adultery. Men were allowed to have their 'little affairs' providing they were discreet, but women like Harriet risked losing everything.

Find My Past Preview: Tay Bridge Disaster

2011-12-14T11:07:00.000Z

This week's Find My Past episode focuses on the Tay Bridge Disaster of 28 December 1879. In this horrific accident one stormy night, many people lost their lives when the bridge collapsed during a gale. A passenger train on the bridge (which had opened just the previous year) plunged into the ice-cold waters of the Tay: no-one survived. As always, the programme, which airs on Yesterday this Thursday at 9pm, looks at the stories of some people whose ancestors were involved in this tragedy.

The Queen’s Barge

2011-12-12T10:42:00.001Z

I was very interested to see the design for the barge which will be used by the Queen to travel down the Thames during the Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

When Queen Victoria visited north-west England in 1851, she and Prince Albert travelled along the Bridgewater Canal from Patricroft station to Worsley Hall to pay a visit to the earl of Ellesmere. The Earl had two imposing state barges fitted up to carry her Majesty and her retinue during her visit to Worsley. The stern of each boat was decorated with the earl of Ellesmere’s coat of arms. The queen’s boat was painted white with gold mouldings, and was upholstered inside with crimson satin.
There was intense excitement locally, but it was all too much for the canal horses. The Times reported that the horses received special training: ‘…in order that they may not be frightened at the shouts they are destined to hear.’ This was a necessary precaution because: ‘…when the horses were first tried they jumped into the canal.’ (Times, 8 October 1851.)

You can still see the Duke of Bridgewater's Boat House at Worsley today.

Image: The state barges on the Bridgewater Canal used during Queen Victoria’s visit to Worsley. Illustrated London News, 18 October 1851.

Find My Past Preview: The Suffragettes

2011-12-05T16:58:00.001Z

This week's Find My Past episode explores the Suffragettes' heroic struggle to win votes for women. On 4 June 1913 Emily Davison stepped onto the racecourse at Epsom as a protest to help publicise the suffragette movement. She died from her injuries shortly afterwards.

In this week's programme, which airs on Yesterday at 9pm on Thursday, three people - Philippa Bilton, Katy Arnander and Matt Jopling - discover how their ancestors are linked to this famous but tragic incident in the history of women's rights.

Find My Past Preview: Firing Squad

2011-11-29T16:33:00.001Z

This week’s Find My Past programme, which airs on Yesterday at 9pm on Thursday, traces the desperately sad story of a WW1 soldier shot for desertion, and the stories of the people and their families involved. Over three hundred men were shot for desertion, even though many of them may have suffered from shell shock owing to the horrors of trench warfare. There’s a memorial in Staffordshire dedicated to these soldiers – some of whom were only teenagers.

Images supplied courtesy of Find My Past.

Was your ancestor a child worker in a factory?

2011-11-24T10:25:00.001Z

In my latest feature for the December issue of Family History Monthly, I investigate nineteenth century child workers and how to research them for your family tree.

For many centuries, the children of the poor entered the workplace from an early age. It was considered part of growing up. They helped with their parents' work at home, in workshops or on the land. Child workers played a vital role in the nation’s economy. They were employed in textile factories, down the mines, in metal manufactures, potteries, glass manufacture, on canal boats, in domestic service, as chimney sweeps: the list is almost endless.
When news broke about abuses in the early factories, this led to a reform movement in the nineteenth century to limit children’s working hours. Lord Ashley (1801–1885), later the seventh earl of Shaftesbury, helped to push factory legislation through parliament.
Parliament vetoed Lord Ashley’s proposal for a ten hour day, but the government passed the Factory Act of 1833, which children under nine years old from working in textile factories, except silk mills. Children aged nine to thirteen were limited to a eight hour working day; teenagers no more than twelve hours. Night work was banned. Children had to attend school for two hours each day. Factory inspectors were appointed to enforce the law.

The age at which children began full-time work gradually increased, thanks to Lord Shaftesbury and other reformers gradually succeeded in their fight to limit children's working hours in factories, workshops and in agriculture. The Factory Act of 1891 increased the age of beginning full-time work to eleven years.
Your local record office may have registers of children exempted from school under the factory and workshop acts in school attendance records. The factory acts said that firms must keep statutory records of children and young persons, and your ancestor’s name could be listed there.

Images from author’s collection: Anthony Ashley Cooper, seventh Earl of Shaftesbury. Engraving by unknown artist, Rev. Edward Lightwood’s The Good Earl, (London, 1886).

The factory chimneys of cotton town Manchester, 1870s. Nationally, over 43,200 children under thirteen were employed in the cotton industry alone in 1871. Cassell’s Illustrated History of England Vol. 7, (Cassell, Petter & Galpin, c.1873).

Find My Past Preview: Jack the Ripper

2011-11-22T13:12:00.001Z

I thought last week's Find My Past programme about the Mutiny on the Bounty was the most interesting of the series so far! This Thursday's programme on Yesterday is about the horrific murders committed in Victorian London by Jack the Ripper, so tune in at 9pm if you want to find out more about the family trees of three people whose ancestors were caught up in these terrible tragedies.

Reviews of Tracing Your Canal Ancestors

2011-11-15T17:01:00.001Z

‘This book is an excellent guide for those who have traced their family back to someone who worked on the boats or for canal companies. The first half is a resumé of canal history, but from the rather different perspective of the individuals involved with them: in their construction, maintenance and operation. It offers the human history of canals… It explains not only how people might have been associated with canals, but also gives ideas for sources of where information about them might be held. Even for those not involved with genealogy, it offers a different approach to canal history…
There is a short general chapter on conventional genealogical research, but it is the specific waterway sources that will be valuable… Even the seasoned canal historian will learn from the extensive catalogue of regional archive holdings… Interspersed with the practical information is a series of case studies… Although obviously of direct interest to genealogists, this is also informative reading for the more general canal historian’. Hugh Potter, Waterways World, February 2012.

‘… A clear, atmospheric history of canals and the people who built and worked them… Tracing Your Canal Ancestors is both an inspiring read and a good starting point for your investigation into your canal-faring forebears.’ BBC Who Do You Think You Are?, January 2012.

‘Social historian Sue Wilkes’ new book, Tracing Your Canal Ancestors, is an authoritative guide for those with connections to Britain’s waterways. A mixture of socio-industrial history with clear advice on how to find out more about ancestors who played a part in British canal history, Sue Wilkes’ book will be an invaluable addition to many family historians’ bookshelves’. Your Family History, Dec 2011.

‘Canal living as it was in the late 19th century is dissected here in great detail, with regular case studies, illustrations and … colourful anecdotes… Wilkes provides an in-depth practical guide to researching your own boatmen ancestors, with vast amounts of information on archives, websites and societies that could help further your genealogical research. This guide is not just for those with boatmen in their trees – it also provides often overlooked information on people who relied on the canal trade for a living, such as lock-keepers, toll collectors and canal company clerks.
The book is an excellent manual for family historians, and comes with lots of ideas about where to find further details about the personal lives of those that worked the waterways’. Family History Monthly, December 2011.

'The book is well written in a lively style; the information is comprehensive and more than enough to give a researcher a good start in their quest for a canal ancestor...The book is in two broadly equal parts. The first 100 pages are a description of the canal network, its history and development, and the lives of the people who lived and worked afloat. The second half is a series of appendices, designed to guide the researcher through the tracing process. The author addresses the basic nuts-and-bolts of family history – general registration, parish registers and censuses, underlining the particular difficulties census enumerators may have had with – literally – a floating population...The book is well indexed and has a comprehensive bibliography. Sources are cited.
The book is well illustrated with photographs, contemporary drawings, maps and copies of relevant documents that the researcher may encounter. The illustrations are a significant strength of the book. The author is an enthusiast without being an anorak; I enjoyed this book and found myself wishing I had canal ancestors, so that I could delve deeper into their long-gone world'. Federation of Family History Societies, December 2011.

‘Fresh on the heels of Sue Wilkes’s recent The Children History Forgot comes an equally superb offering on a completely different theme – the canal heritage of the British Isles. From the first truly artificial waterway in Ireland (the Newry Canal) to the massive network subsequently carved out in Britain, the author details not only the construction of the network, but the careers that depended on it. There were the navvies who built them, the lockkeepers and canal companies who operated the infrastructure, and the companies who depended on the resource to make a living. Amongst that are the classes often overlooked – families who lived their entire lives from birth to death on the waterways.

... The book is in two main parts – the first detailing the history and the second how to uncover it using key resources and archives. Whether you do or do not have a connection to the waterways, this work is an absorbing and enlightening read’. Discover My Past Scotland, January 2012.

Mutiny on the Bounty: Find My Past preview

2011-11-14T18:09:00.001Z

This week's latest offering from Find My Past, which airs on Yesterday on Thursday at 9 pm, looks at the amazing story of the mutiny on the Bounty on 28 April 1789. The mutiny was led by Fletcher Christian against the commanding officer, William Bligh. According to many accounts, the sailors were attracted to the idyllic life on the Pacific island of Tahiti and repelled by the harsh treatment of their captain. Eighteen mutineers set Lieutenant Bligh and 18 of the 22 crew loyal to him afloat in a small boat. Mutineers then settled on Pitcairn Island or in Tahiti. The Bounty was subsequently burned off Pitcairn Island to avoid detection and to prevent desertion. Descendants of some of the mutineers and Tahitians still live on Pitcairn island. The programme charts the stories of three people whose ancestors were involved in the mutiny. This could be the most interesting programme yet!

The Right Path

2011-11-10T08:48:00.001Z

During Georgian times, many people in the upper and middle classes regarded ‘the poor’ as a problem that society was lumbered with permanently, as ordained by heaven. The work ethic was all-important; idleness was frowned on. The devil ‘found work for idle hands to do.’ Families who did not use every means to support themselves, for example by making their children work, were considered improvident and a burden on the poor rates.

Educational writers such as Sarah Trimmer (1741-1810) and Hannah More (1745-1833) advocated work for young children as a good way of preventing them falling into lazy habits. Trimmer thought that schools of industry, such as the one at Lewisham (1796) which taught knitting and spinning, were a good way of setting poor children on the right path. People were more willing to take children on as apprentices if they already had some training.

This idea continued into Victorian times; often workhouses had industrial schools attached to them where children learnt skills to help them earn a living. Many charity schools, such as the ragged schools, like the Westminster Juvenile Refuge and School of Industry gave homeless children food, a safe place to sleep and training in skills such as shoe-making, tailoring, leather-gilding, wood-turning or French-polishing.

Images: Hannah More, who opened several Sunday schools in Somerset. Lady’s Monthly Museum, July 1798.

Sarah Trimmer, a keen supporter of charity and Sunday schools. Lady’s Monthly Museum, November 1798.

The Lambeth Ragged School which opened on 5 March 1851. Illustrated London News, 8 March 1851. All images from author's collection.

Desperate (Victorian) housewives - by Jen Newby

2011-11-09T16:59:00.000Z

I'm very proud to welcome the fabulous Jen Newby, editor of Family History Monthly, to my blog this week! I've often written about how hard life was for working class women, but what was life like if you couldn't earn your own living, and were doomed to a life of cosy domesticity?

Jen takes up the thread of their lives:

"If I could travel back in time to the 19th century I would rather have been anything but a middle class woman – chimney sweep, scullery maid or even a factory worker. While researching Women’s Lives, my new book on women’s social history during the 19th and early 20th century, I discovered that many relatively well-off women lived lives of quiet desperation, boredom and, frustration.

While female educational opportunities were gradually improving, and their peers were heading off to become teachers, doctors and political activists, ordinarily young ladies were stuck at home with some needlework or improving reading, waiting for marriage and the chance to escape to a house of their own. The conventional view was that women should aspire to marriage and motherhood. Even as late as 1895, novelist Grant Allen got away with writing, ‘A woman ought to be ashamed to say that she has no desire to become a wife and mother’.

So throughout the long 19th century, thousands of carefully-dressed young ladies vegetated on chaise longue. ‘Women’s business’, as novelist Sarah Stephens described in, Passages From the Life of a Daughter at Home, in 1845, was finding ‘something to pass the time…in drawing or in music or literature or worsted work…reading aloud’. Every Girl’s Book (1860) lists uninspiring entertainments open to young middle-class girls: spillikins, fancy work, embroidery, silk work, making wax flowers. For older women there were card games, bridge and sewing.
Lacking suitors and balls, jaded young women devoured romantic novels of adventure and excitement, like Edwardian bestsellers, The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Blue Lagoon. The market for women’s magazines rocketed during the second half of the 19th century, with Isabella Beeton and her husband churning out The Queen and The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine.
Not all meekly accepted a life of flower arranging and trips to church. Remembering her youth, Florence Nightingale complained: ‘Oh, weary days – Oh evenings that never seem to end – for how many years have I watched that drawing room clock and thought it would never reach the ten’. Some were pushed by their comfortable, stultifying upbringings to aspire to something more, escaping into the world to make their mark. Their stories are still capable of inspiring women today".

Jen’s wonderful new book, Women’s Lives: researching women’s social history 1800–1939 is published by Pen & Sword. You can find out more about Jen's books here.

All images from Jen Newby's collection.

Find My Past preview: D-Day

2011-11-08T14:47:00.000Z

I'm very pleased to present another preview for the Find My Past family history programme. This week's episode, which airs on Yesterday this Thursday at 9pm, follows three people who are related to those that piloted an elite glider force that spearheaded the D-Day invasion, capturing and holding Pegasus Bridge in Normandy.

Canal Ancestors

2011-11-07T08:53:00.000Z

The canals were once the lifeblood of Britain’s trade. Ireland’s Newry Canal, built in 1742, was perhaps the first truly artificial waterway in Britain. Engineer Thomas Steers (1672–1750), a Lancashire man, helped to construct it.

Britain’s canal success story really began when the pioneering Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgwater (1736-1803) proved he could make a profit transporting coal by canal.
The Bridgewater Canal, which opened in 1761, brought immense wealth to the ‘Canal Duke.’‘Canal mania’ gripped the nation, and a great network of canals was cut through the British countryside by the first canal workers: the navvies and engineers like James Brindley who transformed our landscape.
Canal boats were mostly owned by big carrying companies; only a few canal boatmen could afford to own their own boat: the ‘Number Ones’. Speedy ‘fly’ boats carried time-dependent cargoes, and these boats had four-man crews.

The ‘slow’ narrow-boats on the narrow canals of the Midlands were crewed by men or by families. The big ‘scows’ and ‘lighters’ on the Scottish and Irish canals were worked by men.
Writer John Hollingshead said the boatmen wore: ‘short fustian trousers, heavy boots, red plush jackets, waistcoats with pearl buttons and fustian sleeves, and gay silk handkerchiefs … round their necks’ (Odd Journeys In and Out of London, (1860)).

My new book Tracing Your Canal Ancestors for Pen & Sword explores the history of the canals and the boatmen’s way of life, and explains how to trace canal workers, whether they worked on the waterways or on the land.

Images: Canal engineer James Brindley (1716 – 1772). Lives of the Engineers: Brindley and the Early Engineers, (John Murray, 1874.)

A Fellows, Morton and Clayton boat, and a canal boat family in the 1920s: Cassell’s Book of Knowledge (Waverley Book Co., no date, c.1924).

‘Neptune’s Staircase’: Thomas Telford’s impressive series of eight locks at Banavie on the Caledonian Canal. Mountain Moor and Loch Illustrated by Pen and Pencil, (Sir Joseph Causton & Sons, 1894).

The Advent of Sunday Schools

2011-11-01T08:05:00.000Z

The birth of the Sunday School movement is the subject of my latest feature for Jane Austen's Regency World.

Robert Raikes is often considered the ‘founder’ of Sunday schools for working class children, but there are several candidates for the title. Almost a century earlier, the Revd. Joseph Alleine held classes at Taunton, and there are more instances recorded elsewhere: in Pennsylvania (USA) during the 1740s, at Catterick (Yorkshire) in the 1760s, and at Macclesfield in Cheshire in 1778.

Many of the pin-makers of Gloucester were small children. One day in 1780, Raikes was ‘struck with concern at seeing a groupe [sic] of children, wretchedly ragged, at play in the street’. The children worked all week; Sunday was their only day off. Raikes was worried they would turn to crime unless they were taught right from wrong.
In July 1780, Raikes and the Rev. Thomas Stock, headmaster of Gloucester Cathedral school, set up Sunday schools for the children. This initiative was immensely popular, and spread like wildfire in Britain.
You can find out more about the lives of working children, and their schools, in The Children History Forgot.

Images: Robert Raikes’ house at Gloucester, now a pub.
Memorial statue of Rev. Thomas Charles (1755–1814) at Bala. Charles founded day schools for Welsh children, promoted Sunday Schools in Wales, and was one of the founders of the British and Foreign Bible Society. © Sue Wilkes.

Find My Past preview: Battle of Britain

2011-10-31T15:14:00.000Z

This week's Find My Past programme is a 'must-see' for viewers with relatives who experienced the Battle of Britain. It looks at the stories of the relatives of musician Jamie Naden, Timothy Parsons, who lives and works in Kingston-upon-Thames, and keen cricketer Alex Sears. So check it out this Thursday at 9pm on Yesterday if your ancestors were involved in WWII!

C is for Coal

2011-10-25T16:03:00.000+01:00

In the early nineteenth century, children as young as four years old (boys and girls) worked underground in Britain’s coal mines. The working conditions for children and adults depended on how high (‘thick’) the seam was. In the Northumberland pits, ponies were used to drag along the tubs of coal, but even so, the children worked a fourteen hour day.

In the ‘thin’ seams in Lancashire, the West Riding, Derbyshire and North Wales, children dragged heavy tubs of coal on their hands and knees, using a belt and chain. Perhaps the worst conditions were in Scotland, where children and young women (bearers) carried loads of coal to the surface in baskets on their backs.

It was not until the Mines Act of 1842, thanks to Lord Shaftesbury, that all females, and boys under ten years old were banned from underground work.

Images: Coal mining (1,2) using pit ponies in north-east England. The boy helpers were called ‘foals’. In the Durham and Northumberland pits, females did not work below ground after about 1780. Charles Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts, Vol. I, c.1862.
Yorkshire children working in the mines, and Scottish coal bearers: 1842 Report on Mines.

Find My Past: Titanic preview

2011-10-25T15:27:00.000+01:00

This week's Find My Past programme looks at the famous story of the ill-fated Titanic. In this week's episode, the relatives of a wireless operator, a passenger and a steward discover what happened to their ancestors on that night to remember in 1912.

Preview of new Findmypast TV series!

2011-10-19T15:31:00.003+01:00

I'm extremely proud to present a special preview clip of the new Findmypast TV series! It will air tomorrow on Yesterday at 9pm. The series will feature people whose ancestors were caught up in exciting events in history.

The

The famous events that will feature in the series are The Battle of Britain, Mutiny on the Bounty, Jack the Ripper, Dunkirk, D Day, The Titanic, The Battle of the Somme, The Tay Bridge Disaster, A Victorian Royal Scandal and Emily Davison - the suffragette who threw herself under the King’s Horse.

It sounds like a real treat for history buffs as well as family historians!

Canal Boatwomen Guest Blog

2011-10-18T14:45:00.001+01:00

Many thanks to the lovely Jen Newby for inviting me to write a guest post on canal boatwomen on her blog! Jen's fascinating book on Women's Lives will be published by Pen & Sword very soon.

Lead Miners’ Children

2011-10-18T12:34:00.000+01:00

Compared with coal mining, relatively few children worked underground in the lead mines; most worked at washing and processing the ore, which was done outside in all weathers. Most of the ore washers were boys; only a few teenage girls were employed. They earned 4d a day. They got very cold and wet doing this job.

In the Alston Moor district, the 1842 Report on Mines found that 432 of the 5000 people employed in the area were children and ‘young persons’; only 7 child workers were under thirteen. Only 53 of the ‘bigger boys’ worked underground. In the winter months it got too cold to wash the ore. Boys usually went underground when they were fourteen years old; they earned 9d a day. The miners got ‘asthma’ from breathing in lead dust.
The children of lead miners were often far better educated than those of coal miners. Mining companies such as the London Lead Co. set up schools for the children.

I visited the Killhope Lead Mining Museum a couple of years ago, and went on an underground tour. It was a bitterly cold day, even underground, and it was easy to imagine the hardships which the miners and their children endured.
Images: Killhope Lead Mining Museum’s great waterwheel. The author kitted up ready to explore the mine (I’m more nervous than I look!). The mine entrance.

Photos © Nigel Wilkes.

Tracing Your Canal Ancestors - Out Now!

2011-10-11T18:01:00.001+01:00

I'm very pleased to announce that my new book Tracing Your Canal Ancestors is out now! You can order it here from Pen & Sword.

Parish Apprentices’ Stories

2011-10-10T11:03:00.003+01:00

For hundreds of years, orphans and poor children whose parents could not afford to feed them were cared for by the parish. They faced an uncertain future.

Parish overseers saved ratepayers’ money by apprenticing children into trades. This saved these children’s upkeep, and in theory, the children could earn a wage when grown up. In practice, the ‘skills’ they learnt were often useless for earning a living after they had served their time.
In general, children were apprenticed from around age ten, although there were reports of younger children being ‘bound’. Boys could be apprenticed until they were twenty-four (twenty-one after 1767); girls were apprenticed until they were twenty-one, or until they got married.
Parish overseers did not need parents’ consent for these apprenticeships. Children apprenticed far away from their home parish, for example, like those sent into the early textile mills, might not see their parents for many years. Families who objected had their parish relief stopped.

Children were apprenticed into many different trades: textiles, coal mining, farm labour, domestic service, the navy, etc. Some masters and mistresses treated the children well. Others treated them very cruelly, even ‘respectable’ members of society such as Mr and Mrs Sloane, who were prosecuted for their horrific treatment of parish apprentice Jane Wilbred.
You can find out more about the lives of parish apprentices and the stories of children and teenagers such as Jane Wilbred, Anne Naylor and Mary Anne Parson in The Children History Forgot. And my feature for this month’s Your Family History magazine has tips on how to use apprenticeship records to research your ancestors.

Images: The Apprentice House at Quarry Bank Mill, Styal. The Styal mill children were parish apprentices. They were treated more humanely at Styal than at many other cotton factories © Sue and Nigel Wilkes.

Police try to hold back an angry mob in Giltspur St, London, as George Sloane (accused of ‘frightful cruelty’ against his servant Jane Wilbred), is taken to appear before the magistrates. Illustrated London News, 4 January 1851. Author’s collection

The Children History Forgot Reviews and Press Comment

2011-10-03T13:30:00.002+01:00

‘Sue Wilkes’ latest book is an impressive account, both describing the exploitation of child labour at the very heart of British society, and the struggle for reform over the issue. The book starts with the collapse of the centuries-old apprenticeship system with the rapid developments of the Industrial Revolution, and shows how…children from as young as seven years old were increasingly forced to work as parish apprentices in factories, often on fifteen-hour days. Reformers such as Robert Owen in New Lanark tried to improve conditions… but progress was slow.

Wilkes skilfully describes the battles fought for reform on all fronts, in the mines, the agricultural sector, the factories and even the humble domestic chimney, in an attempt to allow children to right to simply be children once more. A powerful account recalling a forgotten workforce on which an empire was built’. Discover My Past England, September 2011.

'While we may often bemoan current health and safety regulation, just imagine what life would be like were there none... no laws regarding working with dangerous chemicals; no safety equipment... and no education, no hope of a better life but for a fortunate few. Yet this was the draconian reality of life for a silent majority... Wilkes' work is eminently fascinating, and is a necessary and valuable piece of research into an era that may have gone - at least on these shores - but should not be forgotten'. Your Family History, Issue 20.

'Sue Wilkes traces the human cost - in human and economic terms - of Britain's success... Wilkes gives graphic descriptions of the "fearful conditions" in which children worked... This book is meticulously researched with fascinating documentary evidence and excellent illustrations. It can be recommended as an informative and compelling work... it engages and educates from start to finish.' Parson Woodforde Society Quarterly Journal, Autumn 2011.

‘Sue Wilkes’ latest book tells the story of the long fight for… reform during the late Georgian and Victorian eras and takes a fascinating insight into the working lives of our ancestors’. Chester Chronicle, Flintshire Chronicle, 8 September 2011.

Britain’s tiny chimney sweeps

2011-10-03T09:43:00.001+01:00

This CBBC Horrible Histories video graphically illustrates the plight of Britain’s child chimney sweeps or ‘climbing boys’. Girls were used to clean chimneys as well as boys, but most of the child sweeps interviewed by the Children's Employment Commissions of Queen Victoria’s reign were boys.

As early as 1803, machines were invented for sweeping chimneys, and societies were set up to promote their use instead of children. Lord Shaftesbury (the 7th earl) spent many years trying to stamp out the use of child sweeps. But for decades, children died after becoming stuck in chimneys, or were burnt, or became ill from the soot, which was cancerous.

Although the Horrible Histories video mentions that using child chimney sweeps was banned in 1864, in fact this law was a ‘dead letter’ and was widely ignored. Shortly after the 1864 Act, in England there were still 2,000 climbing boys aged between five to ten years. It was not until 1875, when Lord Shaftesbury’s Act was passed, that police were given powers to properly regulate the chimney sweeping trade.

Now, humanitarians such as Jonas Hanway first tried to limit the use of child sweeps in 1788 – almost a century earlier. The Children History Forgot tells the shocking story of why it took so long for society to stop this shameful practice.

Images:
A child chimney sweep of the 1860s. John Leech, ‘Pictures of Life and Character’, Punch (Bradbury & Evans, 1863).
Oliver Twist narrowly escapes being apprenticed to a chimneysweep. Illustration by George Cruikshank, Charles Dickens’s The Adventures of Oliver Twist, (Chapman & Hall Ltd, and Henry Frowde, circa 1905).

Child Lace Workers

2011-09-27T15:03:00.000+01:00

Child labour was used in the manufacture of machine-made lace (bobbin-net) as well as hand-made lace. Young children tended the lace-making machinery. Finishing processes such as lace ‘running’, ‘dressing’ and ‘drawing’ were done by hand, mostly by women, young persons and children in large workshops or private houses. ‘Running’ was a type of embroidery which added extra decoration to the lace.

The girls who did this work suffered from increasingly poor eyesight and spinal problems because of the long hours they spent bent over the lace.

In the ‘dressing’ process, the lace was dipped in a starchy paste, then stretched over a frame. When it had dried, it was cut to size and pressed ready for sale.

Machine-made lace came off the machine in sections joined by threads, and ‘drawing’ meant removing these joining threads with a needle. An investigator in the 1840s found one Nottingham mother forcing her two year old child to work at ‘drawing’. This little girl’s older sisters worked at lace-drawing from six in the morning until darkness fell during the summer months. The machine-made lace industry was based in Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Derbyshire, the West Country and the Isle of Wight.

Images: Lace running by hand. Lace dressing at Nottingham. Charles Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts, Vol. I, c.1862.

Schools Which Weren’t Really Schools

2011-09-20T14:22:00.000+01:00

Child labour in the Victorian countryside was not confined to working on farms or in the fields. Families turned to domestic industries and handicrafts to bring in a few more pennies. Children worked for long hours in close, stuffy rooms in the straw-plaiting, shirt-button making, glove-making and pillow-lace industries. (Straw plait was used to decorate bonnets or make hats).

During the nineteenth century, thousands of women and children were employed making pillow-lace (hand-made lace) in Oxfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Devonshire.
Children as young as five years old worked in lace ‘schools’, which were really workshops.
Bedfordshire children worked an eight hour day, for which they earned just a penny or three halfpence. The children became ill and had eye problems after doing such intricate work for long hours. Sometimes the children were taught a little reading and writing, but their parents expected them to perform a minimum amount of work per day.
The ‘schoolmistress’ who supervised the children used a big stick to keep their minds on their work.

Some of the children who worked in straw-plaiting ‘schools’ were very tiny. An investigator for the Children’s Employment Commission in the 1860s found George Tompkins, aged only three and a half years old, making straw plait in a school at Houghton Regis in Bedfordshire.

There are some images of children making pillow lace, and more info on the lace schools, here.
Image: The lace on these morning dresses was almost certainly hand-made. Lady's Monthly Museum, December 1798.

Nails and Screws

2011-09-06T13:48:00.000+01:00

Children were widely used as cheap labour in the making of nails and screws. Nails could be made by hand using wrought iron (as in the Wigan area, and Black Country), and all the family joined in the manufacturing process. ‘Cut’ nails were not as strong as wrought-nails, and were made by machine, worked by a child or man.

Screw heads were also made by machines worked by children. Birmingham was the major centre for screw manufacture in the 1860s. At Hawkins’ screw factory on Princip St, thirteen year old Mary Regan worked from 8am until 7pm, with an hour for dinner. Mary first went to work when she was about six years old, in a button factory.

These child workers had little time to go to school. Charles Sidwell (age 11), when shown a picture of a bird’s nest with eggs, said he didn’t ‘know what that picture is’. He was also shown a picture of a cow being milked: ‘ that’s a lion’, he said. (Children’s Employment Commission, 3rd report, 1864, XXII, 3414-I).

Making cut nails, and making screw heads. Charles Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts, Vol. I, c.1862.

The Child Gangs of Castle Acre

2011-09-01T10:01:00.001+01:00

There were over 73,000 boys aged ten to fourteen at work in the countryside in 1851. Over ten thousand girls worked as 'live-in' farm servants. Boys were not usually considered physically strong enough to do full-time jobs such as ploughing until they were about ten years old (age fifteen for girls). However, they did odd jobs such as scaring birds from the crops, or helping to glean after the harvest. The Poor Law 'reforms' of 1834 had resulted in a large increase in child labour in the countryside; children worked in the fields or helped with hedging and ditching at far younger ages than in former times. The restriction of parish relief meant that parents were desperate to find work for their children.
In counties such as Norfolk, a system of ‘gang labour’ grew up. It was a way of getting labour-intensive jobs such as turnip harvesting done as cheaply as possible. A farmer would pay a gang master to do the job at a fixed price. The gang master recruited workers at the lowest page possible to maximise his profit. Children as young as six worked in the gangs. Because they had to travel where the work was, they often walked miles to work, and back home again after their day’s toil. The parish of Castle Acre became notorious for its use of gang child labour. You can find out more about the gang children and reformers' battle to stop the gangs in The Children History Forgot.
Image: Oxen pulling haycart. Unknown artist, c.1790.

Tobacco Manufacture

2011-08-30T13:53:00.000+01:00

In the mid-1860s, children as young as eight worked in tobacco factories in Newcastle-on-Tyne, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Sheffield, Scotland and Ireland. The tobacco was imported from Virginia plantations like this one.

In Britain, children were usually employed ‘spinning’ (making rolled tobacco), packing cut tobacco, and making ‘bunches’ of tobacco (stripping the leaves from the stem so they could be used to make cigars).
At Glasgow (Mitchell & Son’s), the youngest workers earned 1s 6d (7½d) per week; they worked from 6am-6.30pm, with two hours for mealtimes. Both boys and girls worked in the industry.
Image: A boy stripping tobacco leaves for cigar manufacture, and achild spinning a wheel to twist ‘pig-tail’ tobacco. Charles Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts, Vol. I, c.1862.

Writers Bureau Blog

2011-08-26T16:35:00.000+01:00

Many thanks to Diana Nadin for inviting me to write a guest blog post for the Writers Bureau - you can read 'Voices From the Past' here. If you are a novice writer, it's well worth checking out the Writers Bureau blog on a regular basis, as there are lots of tips to help you get published.

The Rich Child in His Castle, the Poor Child at His Gate

2011-08-25T14:38:00.000+01:00

What was life like for a child growing up in Georgian and Victorian times? While researching The Children History Forgot, I was struck by the vast gulf between rich and poor. Children like this smartly dressed boy and girl, born into a genteel family, were educated at home in their early years. Sons were sent to school, then university. Daughters were often educated at home, although some later went to school to learn accomplishments suitable for their future roles as wives and mothers.

Children born into poverty were expected to earn a living from as early an age as possible, like these ‘mudlarks’ scavenging along the banks of the Thames. They collected and sold bits of coal, scrap metal or rope to try to earn a few pennies. The only schools likely to be available to them were Sunday schools, or missions like this one.

Images: Fashion plates, Ladies’ Cabinet of Fashion, Music and Romance, Vol. XII, 1837.

Children mudlarking on the Thames, Old and New London Vol.III, (Cassell, Petter & Galpin, c.1878).

Children of the Potteries

2011-08-12T12:10:00.001+01:00

The pottery industry was heavily reliant on child labour. In 1816 in Staffordshire, Wedgwood’s Etruria works employed over 100 children aged ten to eighteen (a few children under ten also worked there).

In the 1840s, a children’s employment commission discovered that over 1500 children under thirteen worked in the Staffordshire potteries, plus over 3,700 aged thirteen to twenty-one. They usually started work when they were seven or eight years old.

Children did many different jobs in the Potteries. They worked as ‘jiggers’, ‘mould runners’, ‘oven boys’, ‘dipper’s boys’, apprentice painters and figure makers. The jiggers and mould runners helped the dish, plate and saucer makers, and they worked extremely hard. The jigger turned the potter’s wheel. The mould runners carried pots to and from the stoves. They were on their feet all day. Sometimes boys did both jobs. They walked over several miles in a day.
The children, who were directly employed by the potters, typically worked for up to thirteen or even fifteen hours daily. Plate makers’ boys worked in temperatures of up to 120ºF (48 Celsius).

Some of the pottery processes were very unhealthy because white lead, and sometimes arsenic, was used in the glazing agent. The glaze made the pots look beautiful after they had been fired in the kiln, but was highly poisonous. You can find out more about the pottery children of Staffordshire and other counties in The Children History Forgot.

Images: Pottery manufacture: Placing earthenware in the biscuit kiln, putting pots into saggars, ‘turning’ the pots on a lathe to create rims and other decoration, and transferring prints onto pots. Charles Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts Vol. I, (c.1862).
The Wedgwood works at Etruria. Engraving from Staffordshire and Warwickshire Past and Present, Vol. II, (William Mackenzie, London, no date.)

Gladstone Pottery Museum, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. © Sue and Nigel Wilkes.

Out Now!

2011-08-12T11:58:00.000+01:00

The Children History Forgot is now available to order from Amazon, or from Robert Hale at a special introductory offer price of £14.

Not long now!

2011-08-04T15:34:00.000+01:00

It's less than a month to publication day for The Children History Forgot! Over the next few weeks I'll be discussing the many different jobs done by children in Georgian and Victorian times. Children worked in a huge variety of industries, not just in cotton factories or down coal mines.

Images: Lancashire child miners - 1842 Report on Mines.

A little girl working in a cotton factory. Engraving by G.P. Jacomb Hood. (1857-1929.) Grindon’s Lancashire.

The Land of Storks

2011-08-01T14:19:00.000+01:00

We very much enjoyed our holiday in Alsace – everywhere we turned there were castles to explore. Alsace is a wine-growing area and I love to see the grapes growing on the vines – the vineyards have a characteristic fruity, earthy scent – the real essence of summer.

Many rural villages in Alsace have storks nesting on the rooftops. Storks suffered years of decline but in recent years their numbers have staged a remarkable recovery, thanks to the efforts of the stork centre at Hunawihr.

One of our most interesting days out was a visit to the Ecomusee near Colmar, where many traditional Alsatian houses from medieval times (and later) have been preserved. As always, I was fascinated to see how our ancestors lived. There were lots of storks here, too, including a very friendly one who came right up to our car in the car park!

Images: An Alsatian vineyard; storks nesting at the Parc des Cignones, Hunawihr; and traditional Alsatian houses at the Écomusée.

All photos © Sue Wilkes, Nigel Wilkes.

Back Home

2011-07-27T09:28:00.000+01:00

I've just come back from a fortnight in Alsace in France. We had a smashing holiday, although the weather wasn't very reliable. Alsace is a region with an extremely interesting history, as well as wonderful walks and wildlife, and I'll post some photos here on my blog as soon as I've sorted through them.

The Lunar Society

2011-07-07T15:30:00.000+01:00

This year marks the anniversary of the Birmingham riots in which inventor and philosopher Joseph Priestley's house was burnt down by a 'Church and King' mob.

Priestley (1733–1804) was a member of the Lunar Society, which starred some of the most eminent thinkers and men of science of its day. The Society was based in Birmingham, home of industrial pioneers Boulton and Watt and the famous Soho foundry.

You can find out more about the story of the Lunar Society members and their pivotal role in the history of freedom of thought in the July issue of Jane Austen's Regency World.

Images: Dr Joseph Priestley. Burning of Dr Priestley’s House at Fair Hill on 14 July 1791. Samuel Smiles’s Lives of the Engineers: Boulton & Watt, (John Murray, 1874).

Travelling Post-haste

2011-07-04T12:12:00.000+01:00

If you are a fan of all things Regency like me, you’ll love S4C’s recreation of the days of the Irish mailcoach in their programme ‘Y Goets Fawr’ (The Mail Coach). You can watch a a clip of the show on their website or watch the programme on CLIC here.

Once upon a time, the Irish mails went from London to Holyhead via Chester, but in 1808 the Post Office decided a new, speedier route was needed, via Shrewsbury instead of Chester. Telford’s new road, begun in 1815, meant that coaches could reach an average speed of ten and a half miles per hour. The loss of the Holyhead mail was bad news for Chester businesses, although it remained a busy centre for local coach traffic.
Images: Seeing them off. Illustration by Hugh Thomson, Coaching Days and Coaching Ways, (Macmillan, 1910.)
Through the toll-gate. Illustration by Hugh Thomson, Coaching Days and Coaching Ways, (Macmillan, 1910.)

Peckforton in Peril

2011-06-20T14:44:00.001+01:00

I was very sorry to hear about the horrific fire at Peckforton Castle yesterday. Mercifully, no-one appears to have been hurt, although one wing of the building appears to have been badly damaged. Peckforton was built by Lord Tollemache in the mid-1840s in the Gothic style; it was designed by Anthony Salvin. In Cheshire, the fad for Gothic architecture began in the early 1800s; Cholmondeley Castle was probably the first Gothic mansion, built by George Cholmondeley, the fourth earl, from 1801-4.

By the 1850s the Gothic revival was still going strong, and Peckforton Castle was featured in the Illustrated London News (26 April 1851). A reporter who explored the castle felt that it 'more than rivals Conway for its size and position'. Its apartments were 'splendid' but decorated 'in accordance with the most pure taste and refinement'. I hope Peckforton can be restored to its former glory.
Image: Peckforton Castle, Illustrated London News (26 April 1851). Author's collection.

Children History Forgot update

2011-06-14T14:10:00.000+01:00

Owing to the jacket redesign, unfortunately The Children History Forgot will be launched four weeks later than previously scheduled - it will now be available from 31 August. A little disappointing, but hopefully worth the wait as the book now has a much more exciting cover! Just to remind readers, the Robert Hale website has a special web price for the book, which will last for the first month after publication.

Health and Safety ‘Gone Mad’?

2011-06-09T11:02:00.002+01:00

My latest feature for Discover My Past is on the factory inspectorate - it has tips on finding records relating to the factory acts which can help shed light on your ancestors' lives.
‘Health and safety’ legislation is sometimes satirised today for excessive caution – the ‘nanny state’. But early factories were dirty and ill-ventilated. Unguarded machinery killed and injured thousands of workers, young and old. The first factory inspectors fought mill-owners’ hostility and public apathy to make factories safer and ensure children were not over-worked.
Mill-owners used women and children as cheap labour. Working hours were incredibly long (fourteen hours or more in Yorkshire). Children did not have time to go to day school.
The Factory Act of 1833, an educational measure, set a minimum age of nine years. It limited hours for children and young people in textile mills (with some exceptions). Night work was banned, and children must have two hours’ schooling per day. Inspectors were appointed to enforce the legislation.
But many industries were left unregulated for decades, despite calls for reform by Lord Shaftesbury and other reformers. Children and teenagers endured miserable conditions in brick-making, straw-plaiting, the metals industries, and so on.
Why did it take so long for change to come? These children’s needs were ignored or forgotten by society – the nation’s prosperity was considered too important to trifle with.
You can find out more about the bitter battle for change fought by Lord Shaftesbury, the factory inspectors, and other reformers in The Children History Forgot.

Images:

India Mill, Darwen. Cotton spinning factory built in the mid-1860s. © Sue and Nigel Wilkes.

Edward Bryon’s proposed guard (lower diagram) for steam-presses following horrific accidents in the sanitary pipe industry. Steam presses used a steam-powered piston to press out sections of earthenware pipe. Boys fed each machine with clay using a shovel or their hands. Twenty workers were injured at Ruabon between 1870-5; some workers lost a hand, including Thomas Griffiths and John George at Plas Kynaston Tile-works. They were only fourteen years old. Reports of the Inspectors of Factories for the Half-Year ending 31 October 1875 (1876).

Arkwright’s Derbyshire Mills

2011-06-01T18:05:00.003+01:00

We recently braved the uncertain weather to visit some of Sir Richard Arkwright’s mills in Derbyshire, which I’ve wanted to see for a long time. First we went to see the textile museum in the Masson Mills built by Arkwright in 1783. The museum has a very fine collection of textile machines, which was extremely interesting, especially as I hadn't seen some of them before.

Later in the day we explored Arkwright's mills at Cromford. His first mill on this site was built in 1771. When a parliamentary select committee looked into conditions for factory children in 1816, it discovered that this mill (then owned by Arkwright’s son Richard) worked a thirteen hour day, although no children younger than ten years old were employed. Over 260 children under the age of 18 worked in the mill, which ran from six in the morning until seven at night, with an hour for lunch, but no breakfast time.

The Cromford mills did not employ parish apprentices. These child workers were ‘free’ labour, and went home to their parents each night, unlike parish apprentices in mills such as those at Quarry Bank, Styal and Litton mill.

You’ll be able to find out more about the mill children’s stories in The Children History Forgot.

Images: Masson mill, Cromford mill. © Sue Wilkes

Special Offer!

2011-05-24T08:39:00.000+01:00

My new book The Children History Forgot will be available from Robert Hale at a special web price of £14 instead of £20 for the first month after the release date of 29 July, so get your orders in early if you would like to take advantage of this great offer!

Once upon a time, Britain forged a mighty industrial empire - built with the blood, sweat and tears of society's most vulnerable members. The Children History Forgot explores young people's working lives during the late Georgian and Victorian eras, when boys and girls created almost every item in our ancestors' homes: bricks, glass, cutlery, candles, lace, cotton and more. All over Britain, from the coal mines of Wales to the flax mills of Ireland, children toiled in factories and workshops, underground and on the land. A chosen few like Samuel Slater began new lives in America but thousands of others have been forgotten by history: killed by unguarded machinery or poisoned by metal or pottery dust. Many were conscript workers: pauper apprentices trapped by their poverty.

My book tells the story of the long, heartbreaking fight for reform. The story of men like Lord Shaftesbury, Richard Oastler and the tireless factory inspectors who battled, not only to improve youngsters' working conditions and opportunities for education, but also to change society's attitudes towards childhood.

Image: Two children at work on a paper cutting machine. Penny Magazine, 1833. Author's collection.

The Green Valley with a Dark Heart

2011-05-19T11:45:00.000+01:00

We recently visited the Greenfield Valley Heritage Park at Holywell (Treffynnon), north Wales. You can enjoy a lovely tranquil walk along the valley. There’s a museum of rural life and farm, replete with friendly chickens and pigs, and you can picnic by the ruins of Basingwerk Abbey. As you explore the valley, there are many more reminders of Greenfield’s past. The stream which supplied St Winefride's Well (from which Holywell derives its name) provided the power for a thriving industrial community, with lead, brass and copper works, paper mills, cotton mills, and more. Child workers (some were parish apprentices) toiled in the cotton mills, and you’ll be able to find out more about the children’s stories in The Children History Forgot.

Images: Basingwerk Abbey. The remains of the Lower Cotton Mill at Greenfield Valley where children once worked. It was later converted into a flour mill. © Sue Wilkes

New cover for the Children History Forgot!

2011-05-18T20:23:00.000+01:00

My publishers Robert Hale have come up with a lovely new cover for The Children History Forgot, which will be released in a few weeks. I think it really sums up the poverty which so many children endured, and which was a prime factor in the prevalence of child labour in Georgian and Victorian times. Children were expected to earn their keep from an early age, unless they came from an extremely affluent family.

A windy fort on the Wirral

2011-05-13T17:48:00.001+01:00

Recently we visited Fort Perch Rock, on the Wirral peninsula. A plaque on the inside proudly records that Captain Kitson of the Royal Engineers completed ‘Perch Rock Battery’ in 1829, and under the estimated cost. The fort, which was built to defend the port of Liverpool, is now a museum.

On the day of our visit it had displays devoted to WWII, and there are some very interesting mini-museums inside. There’s one dedicated to 610 (County of Chester) Squadron, which was based at Hooton Park during the Battle of Britain, an Aviation Archaeology Museum, a Marine Radio Museum, and lots more to see. The display on the horrific sinking of the submarine HMS Thetis made very sobering viewing – this was an awful tragedy in which many seamen and civilians perished very close to shore.

We found much more to see in the fort than we expected, and can thoroughly recommend it for a visit.

Photos: Fort Perch Rock, and the plaque on the fort’s wall recording the date when construction finished. © Sue Wilkes.

A lovely walk around Tatton Park

2011-05-05T17:49:00.001+01:00

I’ve been so busy recently that I haven’t had time to update my blog for several days, so it will take me a little while to catch up! We took advantage of the gorgeous weather to visit some local history and heritage sites.
It was another really hot day, and although there were lots of visitors, the gardens are so huge that we didn’t feel crowded.

We visited Tatton Park, ancestral home of the Egerton family. It was another really hot day, and although there were lots of visitors, the gardens are so huge that we didn’t feel crowded. The bluebells in the woods were really beautiful!
At the time of Regency Cheshire, The Beauties of England and Wales (1801) reported that the house was being rebuilt: ‘The building is situated in the midst of a park, containing nearly 2500 acres of arable and pasture land. It stands on an elevated spot of ground, from the front of which a lawn gradually declines to the level of Tatton-mere, a fine piece of water … The designs for the house were given by Mr (Samuel) Wyatt, and are conceived in a style of elegant simplicity, but only part of the edifice is yet finished.’ Several more years passed before the house was completed by Samuel’s nephew Lewis.

Photos: Bluebells in the gardens in Tatton, and Tatton Hall. © Sue Wilkes

Sunshine on the Mersey

2011-04-21T14:21:00.000+01:00

I had a very interesting visit to Merseyside Maritime Museum and Archives yesterday to research some articles and my latest book, Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors. It was blazingly hot and sunny, considering it is still only April. On my way back to the station I noticed St George’s Hall was open, so I popped inside for a quick look. The concert hall is very impressive, although unfortunately I wasn’t lucky enough to see its famous Minton floor tiles. I shall have to pop back for another visit sometime.

Photos: A ship on the Mersey. St George’s Hall interior. © Sue Wilkes.

Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors

2011-04-17T09:28:00.000+01:00

I'm very pleased to announce that I have a new book contract! I'm very excited about my new project for Pen & Sword books, Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors, as Lancashire is the county where I was born. The book will look at the story of Lancashire as well as giving tips and hints for tracking down your ancestors from the county.

Balmy Bala

2011-04-13T14:47:00.000+01:00

Just got back from a lovely short break in Bala, north Wales. The weather was scorchingly hot on Sunday – hope that wasn’t the only summer we’re going to get this year! We also explored the coastal town of Barmouth, where there was a nineteenth century lock-up for malefactors. The building, built c.1834, had one cell for men and another for women.

The town lock-up or ‘bridewell’ was used to contain drunk and disorderly citizens or those waiting to go before the magistrates. Several Cheshire towns such as Nantwich, Stockport and Farndon had them, too.
I hope to have some exciting news soon – watch this space!
Photo: Nineteenth century lock-up, Barmouth. © Sue Wilkes

More Narrowboat Fun

2011-03-31T11:02:00.000+01:00

It was lovely to see Macclesfield's silk museums featured on BBC1's The Boat That Guy Built last night. I was very interested to watch this episode as I explored the story of the silk industry and the growth of Cheshire's canal network in Regency Cheshire.

While Guy has brought Britain's industrial past to life each week while restoring his narrowboat, one aspect of life I don't think he's mentioned is that child workers were used in many of the trades and industries he's explored. Children were used as cheap labour in the silk and cotton industries, and metal industries, and you'll be able to read more about their stories in The Children History Forgot when it's launched later this year.
Image: Macclesfield, early 1900s. Etching by Roger Oldham (1871-1916) for Picturesque Cheshire (Sherratt & Hughes, 1903.)

Tracing Ancestors Before the Censuses

2011-03-30T09:26:00.001+01:00

Old newspapers and magazines can be a good way of tracking down your ancestors as they reported births and deaths in their columns.

The Monthly Chronicle for April 1758 (pictured left) mentions the death of Ralph Thrale on 8 April.
Ralph Thrale was the father of Henry Thrale, Dr Samuel Johnson’s friend, who succeeded to the brewing business.

After Henry Thrale's death in 1781, there was an expectation among Johnson and his friends that he would marry Mrs Thrale. Hester Lynch Thrale, however (whose first marriage was one of convenience) followed her heart. She married an Italian music teacher, Gabriel Piozzi, much to Johnson’s disgust (and that of her children, who thought she was marrying beneath her).

Humble folk are rarely mentioned in the newspapers of the day unless there was something extraordinary about their life or the way they died. Civil, military promotions, and ecclesiastical preferments (promotions) are also usually listed.

Some newspapers also included a list of bankrupts, and it’s here you are likelier to find references to ordinary people, such as Thomas Garret, a glass-seller in Bishop’s Gate St, London, and Robert Saxby, a tanner in Kent.

Images: Monthly Chronicle, April 1758. Hester Lynch Thrale, afterward Mrs Piozzi. Johnsonia, Vol. 1, (Henry G Bohn, 1859). Author’s collection.

Narrow Windows, Narrow Lives sold out again!

2011-03-23T10:33:00.000Z

Some good news today - the second print run of my book Narrow Windows, Narrow Lives has sold out! The History Press has assured me it is already in the 'reprint queue', so hopefully you won't have too long to wait before it's back in stock if you'd like to buy a copy.

Is Prof Brian Cox a helpless weakling?

2011-03-21T10:29:00.000Z

Seen in this week's TV Choice listing for BBC2's Wonders of the Universe: 'Despite being a relatively weak force, Prof Brian Cox explores the powerful effects of gravity...' But Brian Cox fans need have no fear - this is a classic example of 'the mystery of the missing pronoun or noun', or put another way, a participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject. If you miss out the pronoun or noun (which is the subject of your sentence) at the beginning, you can fall into this stylistic trap. For example, 'Being in a dilapidated condition, I was able to buy the house very cheap'. (This example is from The Elements of Style by Strunk & White).
To make perfect sense, the TV listing should read something like: 'Prof Brian Cox explores the powerful effects of gravity, which despite being a relatively weak force...'
So novice writers, please read through your work carefully and look out for stylistic traps like this.

Austen family portrait discovered?

2011-03-21T10:14:00.000Z

Can you solve the mystery behind this illustration (left)? There's a possibility it may be a long-lost portrait of the Austen family in the 1780s. You can read the story so far here on Jane Odiwe's blog. This picture has seemingly disappeared long ago, so if you know of its whereabouts, or have seen it in a sales catalogue, please contact Jane Odiwe via her blog, as she would love to hear from you.
Image supplied courtesy of Jane Odiwe.

Tracing Your Canal Ancestors update

2011-03-16T13:48:00.000Z

Here's a sneak preview of the cover for my forthcoming book 'Tracing Your Canal Ancestors' for Pen & Sword. It's provisionally scheduled for publication this autumn - I'll post an update to my blog as soon as I get a confirmed release date.

My Favourite Poems

2011-03-14T09:33:00.001Z

Recent news that a Tennyson poem will provide inspiration for the 2012 Olympic athletes set me thinking about the poems which give me most pleasure, or most inspiration. My favourite poem of all time is Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner - I never tire of reading it. Next favourite is Edward Thomas's Adlestrop. The poem which I find most inspiring, especially when I feel things are getting on top of me, is Arthur Hugh Clough's Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth. Which are your all-time favourites?
Image: Coleridge Cottage, Nether Stowey. © Sue Wilkes

Chester's Historic Legacy

2011-03-10T14:09:00.002Z

An interesting new report has just been published on Chester's use of its heritage, with some suggestions for maximising its potential, such as using the Roman Ampitheatre as part of an 'Chester History Experience Centre' and revamping the old harbour and canal to bring in more visitors to the city.
Image: The Rows on Eastgate St, Chester, Saturday Magazine, 1836.

Review of Mr Darcy's Secret

2011-03-09T21:34:00.001Z

Get ready to relive the world of Pride and Prejudice! Jane Odiwe's Mr Darcy's Secret explores life for the newly married Darcy couple. The book begins just after Lizzy's fairytale wedding at Longbourn. But it's not long before our heroine has to cope with the hostility of Lady Catherine de Bourgh and her friends. Soon Elizabeth wonders if she knows her husband as well as she thought. Who is the mysterious child allegedly linked with the Darcy family? Is her husband involved? What is the meaning of Caroline Bingley's dark hints? The bride also has her hands full with Georgiana Darcy - a rash engagement, egged on by her brother Darcy, could wreck Georgiana's happiness forever. Odiwe skilfully and lovingly recreates Austen's characters, and there are some wonderful touches of humour, too. The sizzling plot will keep readers turning the page to find out what happens next. Will Lizzy and Darcy have a happy ending after all, or will a long-hidden Pemberley scandal wreck their marriage? You'll have to read the book to find out!

Happy 50th issue, JARW!

2011-03-08T16:59:00.000Z

Many congratulations to Jane Austen's Regency World on its 50th issue! As ever, it’s packed with informative articles on Austen and her times. My feature for JARW this month contrasts the lives of George Austen and Patrick Bronte, both fathers of famous novelists. Brontë (1777-1861) was a controversial figure during his own lifetime. His children’s literary talent brought him an unwelcome taste of fame… but to find out more, you’ll have to buy a copy!

Images: Jane Austen’s Regency World March 2011 cover.
Title page from Mrs Gaskell’s controversial Life of Charlotte Brontë (Smith, Elder & Co, 1906).

Narrowboat Fun

2011-03-03T09:25:00.003Z

I very much enjoyed watching BBC1's The Boat That Guy Built last night. Guy's narrowboat sailed along the Bridgewater Canal at Worsley, and travelled through our local engineering wonder, the Anderton Boat Lift. The programme explored the world of the industrial revolution. Guy tried to make some items for his boat completely from scratch - he built a blast furnace so he could cast an iron pot to brew some tea, and visited the Wedgwood factory to create his own china mug. Can't wait for the next episode!

Image: A narrowboat leaving the Anderton Boat Lift. © Sue Wilkes.

Oxfordshire Museums

2011-02-24T22:16:00.000Z

We had a quick trip to Oxford last weekend and visited some great museums. The Oxfordshire Museum has fascinating displays on social history and a dinosaur garden. On Sunday we went to the Didoot Railway Centre - it was a 'steam day' and we had several rides on steam trains. This is a very interesting site - it was part of the Great Western Railway and has a broad gauge section of track and a replica broad gauge engine, the 'Firefly'. There's a relic of Brunel's ill-fated atmospheric railway, and a small museum with memorabilia of railway workers.

Images: Dinosaur garden at the Oxfordshire Museum. GWR engine 'Trojan' at the Didcot Railway Centre.

Coming Soon!

2011-02-23T09:35:00.000Z

The proofs for The Children History Forgot arrived yesterday for checking, so I will be very busy for the next few days. I'll do a big blog update later this week, hopefully, when I need a breather.

Nowhere To Go

2011-02-17T10:03:00.000Z

News broke last week that Manchester City Council is axing all but one of its public toilets and reducing bin collections. The council pleads it has no option owing to the savage government cuts. Now the cleanliness ofour public streets in not just a matter of civic pride, but of public health. Before the 1850s, when the first public loos appeared in Britain, city streets were ‘temples of pollution’, as the Victorians coyly put it. Granted that cuts have to be made, are there really no other areas which can be slashed without inconveniencing the elderly, infirm and people with young children? Or, if they are expensive to run, why not charge more for using them? When we go on holiday to Scotland, there is a small charge to use the public toilets, but they are usually immaculate.

Also, the north-west of England, with its important history and heritage, is marketed as a tourist destination. It’s not a great way of welcoming foreign visitors to Manchester, is it? If tourists don’t understand they can make use of café facilities, they will have nowhere to go.

Images: A corporation dustcart and the arms of Manchester. Manchester Old and New Vol.I, Cassell & Co, c.1894.

Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day

2011-02-12T20:50:00.000Z

I’ve really enjoyed watching Channel 4’s Rome Wasn't Built in a Day. For those of you who’ve missed it, English Heritage commissioned a Roman villa to be built at Wroxeter, home to some spectacular Roman remains. The catch was that the builders were only allowed to use techniques familiar to the Romans, so that the villa would be as authentic as possible. The builders are all great characters, and their wit and wisdom have made this a funny series as well as compulsive viewing for history buffs. It’s many years since I visited Wroxeter, but I must make a visit down there this summer and see the new villa in all its glory.

Save Our Libraries 2

2011-02-11T13:56:00.000Z

Check out the brilliant spoof Hitler video on the Use Libraries and Learn Stuff blog. Alan Gibbons is running a Campaign for the Book here. The Public Libraries News site is also very interesting and has updates on proposed library closures. Fortunately for us locally, apparently Cheshire West and Chester Council has no plans currently to close libraries.

Protecting Our Historic Sites

2011-02-11T08:39:00.000Z

Britain's historic sites are not just at risk from vandalism or neglect, but are being stripped of any valuable materials they contain. Some people have no pride in or respect for our heritage. I can't help wondering whether this is owing to a lack of education - the history curriculum nowadays seems far more narrow in scope than when I went to school.

The Most Dangerous Job in the World?

2011-02-09T13:28:00.001Z

I researched some really unhealthy jobs done by adults and children for The Children History Forgot, such as coal-mining, but this looks shockingly dangerous.

World Book Day countdown

2011-02-09T10:55:00.001Z

World Book Day is coming soon. School age children will be given a £1 book token, which can be used to buy some specially published £1-priced books, or use it to get money off a more expensive book. It's never been more important to celebrate the world of books and reading, now our libraries are facing the axe, so do check out your local library to see if they have any special events planned.

The Children History Forgot

2011-02-08T11:09:00.000Z

Once upon a time, Britain forged a mighty industrial empire: built with the blood, sweat and tears of society’s most vulnerable members. The Children History Forgot explores young people’s working lives during the late Georgian and Victorian eras, when boys and girls created almost every item in our ancestors’ homes: bricks, glass, cutlery, candles, lace, cotton and more.

All over Britain, from the coal mines of Wales to the flax mills of Ireland, children toiled in factories and workshops, underground and on the land. A chosen few like Samuel Slater began new lives in America but thousands of others have been forgotten by history: killed by unguarded machinery or poisoned by metal or pottery dust. Many of these were conscript workers: pauper apprentices trapped by their poverty.
My book tells the story of the long, heartbreaking fight for reform. The story of men like Lord Shaftesbury, Richard Oastler and the tireless factory inspectors who battled, not only to improve youngsters’ working conditions and opportunities for education, but also to change society’s attitudes towards childhood. The Children History Forgot takes a fresh look at the true cost of Britain’s industrial success story.

You can pre-order The Children History Forgot at Amazon UK here, or here if living in the US.

Save Our Libraries!

2011-02-07T11:08:00.000Z

When I was growing up, my local library was a real treasure trove. Books opened up a whole new world of possibilities and introduced me to the wonderful world of literature and many authors I might not otherwise have read. Now it seems libraries are seen as a soft target for councils desperate to save cash owing to the government cuts. Saturday was Save Our Libraries Day.Some argue that keeping library services means that services for vulnerable persons will suffer as a result, but are councils searching hard enough to make savings elsewhere?
Libraries are not just about being able to borrow books - they are a hub for local communities as well as a cultural haven. Parents who want to teach their children how to read find them an invaluable resource, especially if funds are tight. Once libraries in rural areas have been axed, it is most unlikely they will ever re-open.
In Cheshire, millions of pounds were wasted dismantling Cheshire County Council so it could be split up and and rebranded as two separate councils - that money could have been put to far better use for maintaining front-line services.
If you want to help keep your local libraries, there's a campaign by the Bookseller magazine supported by many eminent authors including Philip Pullman. You can also visit the Voices for the Library blog here.

Competition for Jane Austen fans!

2011-02-01T19:19:00.000Z

There's a fun competition to win a copy of Jane Odiwe's wonderful new novel Mr Darcy's Secret here! Jane's novel is a sequel to Austen's Pride and Prejudice. Hurry, because there are less than two weeks left to enter!

Schools for working-class children

2011-02-01T13:03:00.000Z

We’d hoped to see the Civil War re-enactment at Nantwich on Saturday (Holly Holy Day), but we mistook the date, so we’ll have to wait until next year for that treat. Instead we had a walk around the Styal estate, home to Quarry Bank Mill. In Regency Cheshire I looked at the Greg family business and the workers there. Nearly three quarters of the workers at Quarry Bank Mill in 1790 were parish apprentices. Greg was considered a humane employer by the standards of the time – the children ‘only’ worked six days a week from 6 a.m. until 7 p.m., with an hour and a half for meal breaks. The children were given a varied diet and had a doctor to look after them.

By contrast, children such as Robert Blincoe, who was apprenticed to Ellice Needham’s Litton Mill in Derbyshire, were sadly mistreated.

Samuel Greg also built a school for his child workers and the adult workers' children at Styal. In towns such as London, Manchester and Birmingham, there was a woeful lack of schools for working class children, and the Ragged School movement, which owed a great deal to Lord Shaftesbury’s support, helped fund schools for them. My forthcoming book The Children History Forgot will explore the horrors of the parish apprenticeship system and look at the birth of our modern education system.

Images: Styal primary school, founded by the Greg family. © Sue Wilkes.

Charter St Ragged School and Working Girls’ Home. The school was built in the Angel Meadow district in 1866 and extended in 1891. © Sue Wilkes.

A Tale of Endurance

2011-01-24T16:52:00.003Z

Yesterday we went to the Shackleton exhibition at the Merseyside Maritime Museum. Frank Hurley’s amazing photos of the Endurance expedition are beautiful artworks in their own right as well as a historic record of the exploration team’s struggle to survive.

Seeing the story of the expedition reminded me of the Cheshire-born explorer Admiral Sir George Back (1796-1878). Back sailed on an expedition to the Arctic with Sir John Franklin in 1818, visited the Polar Sea in 1819, and joined Franklin again in 1825. When food supplies ran out in the icy wastes, he was forced to eat his old leather trousers and shoes to survive.

There is a great deal of construction work at the Liverpool waterfront at present to create a new Museum of Liverpool and some other buildings.

The museum will be a very exciting new facility, but was it really a good idea to site such ultra-modern buildings slap bang in amongst the historic Victorian docks and the much-loved Liver building? Of course we will have to wait to see what they will look like when completed.

Cheshire Salt Ancestors

2011-01-14T16:36:00.001Z

A quick reminder that my latest feature for Discover My Past England this month is filled with tips on how to trace your ancestors if they worked in the Cheshire salt industry. You can also read the story of the industry during Georgian times in my book Regency Cheshire.

Image: Marston Salt Pit: The Shaft, Illustrated London News, 24 Aug 1850

Erasmus Darwin

2011-01-14T16:27:00.000Z

Yesterday we dropped our son off at university, and on the way back we stopped at Lichfield and explored Erasmus Darwin's House. Darwin (grandfather of Charles Darwin) was a very interesting character and deserves more widespread recognition for his contributions to science and literature. Darwin was a doctor with a busy practice, a member of the Lunar Society, , a philosopher, inventor and best-selling poet. His poems were an inspiration to the Romantics such as Coleridge and Shelley. He was also married twice, kept a mistress, and sired at least fourteen children over the years. One wonders how he ever found time to compose poetry!

Image: Erasmus Darwin’s house and garden © Sue Wilkes

The wonder of woollens

2011-01-10T14:07:00.000Z

It was heartening to see a BBC news item this morning that the British woollen industry is enjoying a revival. This interesting video shows wool being processed into yarn at Laxton's Specialist Yarns and includes some archive footage from the 1960s of woollen cloth being woven.

All the workers in the video are adults, but in the nineteenth century, the woollen and worsted industries were heavily reliant on child labour: a thirteen hour working day was customary in some mills, and children even worked up to eighteen hours a day in others.
Woollen fabrics (broadcloths and kerseymeres) were made from wool spun from short fibres. In worsted and ‘stuffs’ manufacture, wool was combed into long fibres before spinning. Worsted yarn was woven into blankets, flannels, and merinos.
In my forthcoming book The Children History Forgot (Robert Hale) I’ll be looking at conditions in Yorkshire woollen mills and Richard Oastler’s fight to help limit children’s hours, as well as other industries.

Image: Wheel for combing worsted. Charles Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts Vol. I, (c.1862).

Priceless Treasure

2011-01-04T13:26:00.000Z

No chance of seeing this morning's partial solar eclipse from cloudy Cheshire - we missed the recent lunar eclipse owing to the poor weather, too. We had a very interesting trip on Sunday, though. We went to the Potteries Museum and saw the Staffordshire Hoard. The craftsmanship and artistry of our Anglo-Saxon forebears is amazing, and it was a real privilege to see it. It is free admission at the museum, and well worth a visit, as the cliche goes. The museum also has a fantastic collection of Staffordshire pottery and china, and there were some lovely pieces of Regency date, including a huge Wedgwood bowl made to commemorate the Peace of Amiens.

Back Up Your Work!

2010-12-28T17:34:00.000Z

I am in deepest mourning for my external hard drive which expired on Christmas Eve. Archived on it was over 100 GB of work, photos and scanned engravings which I use for my features and books. I try to make hard back-ups on CD and DVD fairly regularly but can't be positive that I have got copies of absolutely everything. In the new year we will see if it's possible to recover some of the files, but I am not very hopeful! So a reminder to all my students - back up all your work at least once a week, more often if possible!

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-24T19:53:00.000Z

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, everyone!

Tracing Your Canal Ancestors update

2010-12-21T10:39:00.003Z

I have great pleasure in announcing that my book 'Tracing Your Canal Ancestors' for Pen & Sword books is now going through the production stages! Publication date is provisionally scheduled for the autumn of 2011, and I'll post updates on my blog as soon as I have more news.

Image: Worsley Basin and ‘starvationer' boats. Lives of the Engineers: Brindley and the Early Engineers, Samuel Smiles, (John Murray, 1874.)

Austen meets celebrity chefs

2010-12-20T11:44:00.000Z

I was very busy finishing the typescript for my book 'Tracing Your Canal Ancestors' last week, so missed a lot of the fun and frolics for Jane Austen's birthday. If you are fed up with the weather and want cheering up, the Jane Austen spoof 'Sophie' on the Impressions Show is hilarious - great fun to watch.

The Price of Coal

2010-12-16T17:26:00.001Z

Coal has long been valued as a fuel source. The industrial revolution greatly increased demand for coal. It was used to smelt iron and generate steam, and coal production in Britain rocketed from six million tons p.a. in 1770 to twenty-three million tons in 1830. By the mid-1850s production was over sixty million tons p.a. Mines were sunk ever deeper to meet the demand.

But coal’s success story had a terrific human cost: thousands of men, women and children were killed down the mines and at the pit brow. You can find out more about working conditions in the mines, and some tips on how to trace your coal-mining ancestors, in my feature for this month’s Discover My Past England.

Images from the author’s collection:
‘How are you off for coals?’ Satirical postcard from the miners’ strike of 1912.

The New Hartley Pit disaster in Northumberland on 16 January 1862 killed over two hundred men and boys. This Illustrated London News (8 February 1862) engraving shows the long, sad funeral procession at Earsdon.

At home with the Georgians

2010-12-08T08:41:00.000Z

I finally managed to catch up with Amanda Vickery's new series At Home with the Georgians, and this is a 'must-see' for all Austen fans. Vickery is one of my favourite authors on the period, and I thoroughly enjoyed the programme. When Vickery visited Chawton Cottage and sat at Jane Austen's writing desk, you could see the thrill she felt on being on such hallowed ground. Vickery also explored the other side of the marriage question through the diaries of some Georgian men - how they longed to set up home and have a soul mate to keep them company. Surely food for thought for all budding Regency novelists!

Do-Gooders

2010-11-30T08:32:00.000Z

I was very interested to see Ian Hislop's new TV series The Age of the Do-Gooders on BBC2 last night, especially as he covered Robert Owen and his mills at New Lanark which I will be discussing in my forthcoming book on child workers, 'The Children History Forgot' for Robert Hale. Next week's episode is on child labour, so I will be fascinated to see which aspects of the story of the fight to get Britain's working class children into school Hislop covers. Lord Shaftesbury will no doubt loom large, but will Hislop mention the factory inspectors such as Leonard Horner who fought so hard to encourage better education for factory and workshop children?

The Royal Engagement

2010-11-25T09:03:00.001Z

A couple of days ago, the nation was treated to the exciting news of Prince William's engagement to Kate Middleton. Things were done very differently when Prince George, son of George III, got engaged to Princess Caroline of Brunswick. The Prince was pressured into the marriage. His father wanted him to provide an heir to the throne, and the young prince was deep in debt. Prince George did not meet his royal bride until three days before the wedding; he had only seen a flattering portrait of her.
Princess Caroline of Brunswick arrived at Gravesend to begin her new life in England on Saturday 4 April 1795 and disembarked on one of the royal yachts the next day.
The lady the prince sent to accompany his new bride was his mistress, Lady Jersey. She brought some new clothes for Princess Caroline: 'a white satin gown, and very elegant turban cap of satin, trimmed with crape, and ornamented with white feathers' (New Annual Register, 1795). The clothes did not flatter the princess's somewhat florid complexion. When the prince, resplendent in his hussar uniform, went to St James's Palace to meet his future wife, he 'appeared extremely agitated'. Things did not bode well for the royal nuptials...
Image: Fashionable full dress with turban adorned with white feathers, Lady's Monthly Museum, November 1798.

Great Expectations

2010-11-20T16:26:00.000Z

Some interesting news that the Dickens Museum in London has been given lottery funding to help preserve the author's home in Doughty St. I would love to go and have a good rummage in Dicken's library!
Image: Charles Dickens, Beeton's Dictionary of Universal Biography, 1870.

Epic Journey

2010-11-13T08:56:00.000Z

I visited The National Archives at Kew on Thursday to do some research for my book on canal ancestors. I had a very interesting visit; the staff were extremely helpful. The Archives are kept in an amazing building. The British transport system rather let me down, however. The train I was booked on for my journey down was cancelled, and some of those coming back were late or cancelled, too. I was on a total of nine trains that day travelling from Cheshire to Kew Gardens and back again, and was exhausted by the time I got home.

Thank you to my family and all the Londoners and fellow travellers who helped a baffled Northerner trying to cope with the complexities of London transport!

Tom and Jerry

2010-10-31T22:40:00.001Z

The original ‘Tom’ and ‘Jerry’ were a smash hit during the reign of George IV. These famous fictional characters were created by sports journalist Pierce Egan (1772-1849). Tom and Jerry’s colourful exploits were celebrated in books, songs and on the stage.

Egan, a Londoner of Irish origin, was a prolific author. Pierce’s first claim to fame was Boxiana (1812), a series on pugilism (prize-fighting). The first monthly instalment of Life in London, priced at one shilling and illustrated by George and Robert Cruikshank, was published by Sherwood, Neely & Jones on 15 July 1821.

You can find out more about Tom and Jerry’s rollicking adventures and the way they took society by storm in my latest feature for Jane Austen's Regency World.

Images: Engravings by George and Robert Cruikshank from author’s copy of the 1869 reprint of Life in London, Pierce Egan, (John Camden Hotten, Piccadilly, 1869.
1. Tom and Jerry pay a shilling to see the exhibition at the Royal Academy. Jane Austen went to picture exhibitions at Spring Gardens and Pall Mall in 1813.

2. Peep O’ Day Boys. A Street Row. The author losing his ‘reader’ (pocket-book), Tom and Jerry showing fight and Logic floored. Pierce Egan is the figure under attack on the left having his pocket picked.

The Children History Forgot

2010-10-29T13:13:00.000+01:00

I am very pleased and excited to announce my book on child workers, 'The Children History Forgot', has been accepted by Robert Hale and is now going through the production stages!

The book was originally titled 'Stolen Childhoods', but we belatedly discovered there is another book with a very similar title by another author (with a different historical slant) due out next year.

'The Children History Forgot' will tell the stories of young workers (children and teenagers) during late Georgian and Victorian times in many different industries - from cotton manufacture to candle-making.
I will post an update on my blog as soon as publication date is confirmed.

A new Victoriana site

2010-10-27T08:59:00.000+01:00

If you are interested in Victoriana, there's a new website crammed with images and articles from the Victorian world, including features on working life, history and fashion. Do check it out - an image gallery is planned from which you can download images for greeting cards, etc.

An unexpected treat!

2010-10-26T14:17:00.000+01:00

I was in Oxford at the weekend, and wandered into the Bodleian library as they always have interesting exhibitions on. By sheer good fortune, there was a one-day Jane Austen Exhibition. The exhibition was to help launch the Jane Austen Fiction Manuscripts Digital Edition. On show was the manuscript of her short stories and plays (Volume the First) written when Jane was a teenager, and Cassandra’s fair copy of ‘Sanditon’. There was also a set of Austen first editions owned by her brother Edward Knight. I was absolutely thrilled to see them - especially ‘Volume the First’ – somehow seeing Jane’s handwriting close up makes one feel closer to the author.

The Story of England

2010-10-22T09:51:00.000+01:00

I have been greatly frustrated with my TV viewing recently as I kept missing Michael Wood's Story of England, but I caught up with episode 5 last night, which dealt with the industrial revolution. There was some very nice footage of Foxton Locks for canal fans.
I was fascinated by the item on hosiery trade in Leicester and the visit to the Framework Knitting museum, as this was the first time I have seen one of these machines in action. Wood used witness statements from the Framework Knitters Select Committee of 1844, when the trade was in an acute state of depression, to bring the workers' story to life. The select committee discovered children learned the trade from an early age; five and six year olds worked at stitching gloves or chevening (embroidering) stockings. They began learning how to use the stocking-frame when they were about nine or a little older. The story of Britain's child workers is the subject of my forthcoming book, and I hope to have some news for you soon.

A Flash of Brilliance

2010-10-14T23:40:00.000+01:00

The weather was beautiful here last Sunday, so we had a walk along the old Chester Canal at Beeston (now the Shropshire Union Canal). I have long wanted to explore this section of the canal, as I wrote about the locks at Beeston in my exploration of the county’s canal network in Regency Cheshire. The locks kept sinking because there was quicksand under their foundations, and famous engineer Thomas Telford was called in to solve this knotty problem. He rebuilt the locks in cast iron, so they were less affected by the vagaries of the weather.

This was a really memorable walk for me because I saw a kingfisher for the very first time – a flash of blue and gold swooping along the canal – I was thrilled!
I hope to have some exciting news about my next book soon, so watch this space!
Image: Beeston Iron Locks © Sue and Nigel Wilkes

Burns and Bruce

2010-10-04T10:24:00.001+01:00

We’ve just returned from a lovely holiday in Galloway. We always enjoy exploring Dumfries, which is closely associated with two of the most iconic figures in Scottish history: Robert Burns and Robert the Bruce (the subject of my latest feature for Aquila children’s magazine).

It was here that Robert the Bruce slew the Red Comyn before the high altar of Greyfriars kirk in 1306, very close to the spot where Burns’s statue now gazes down on the town.

We were lucky enough to get a guided tour inside Dumfries’s Theatre Royal as part of a special ‘open doors’ day for historic sites in Galloway. Burns was a keen supporter of the theatre, and I believe the outside of the building is still pretty much as it was in his day.