Child Candlemakers

My latest feature for Who Do You Think You Are? magazine is on candlemaker ancestors.One of the most famous candlemaking firms was Price’s Patent Candles, founded by William Wilson (1830). The firm had a two acre site by the banks of the Thames at Vauxhall Bridge, and another large works at Battersea.
Price's candles were originally made from coconut oil and tallow; they were cheap, and burnt brightly and clearly. In the 1840s the firm expanded and took over Samuel Child’s night-light works at Brompton. The night-light manufacture was moved to Vauxhall; the factory was enormous. Another night-light factory (Albert’s) at Belmont was taken over by Price’s, and moved to new premises under the arches of the South Western Railway.
By the early 1850s, Price’s switched to making candles from palm oil, which were marketed as an ‘ethical’ product. Palm oil exports were more profitable for African producers than slavery, which still thrived even though it was banned in Britain and the colonies since 1834.
The palm oil ships unloading their freight at Vauxhall were known locally as the ‘African Blockading Squadron’. Every Price’s candle burnt was said to ‘put out a slave’ (Fraser’s Magazine, July 1852).
The candle factory would find it difficult to market itself as an ‘ethical’ concern nowadays because of its heavy reliance on child labour. The children often worked nights from six p.m. until six a.m. The ‘patent’ candles were made by huge machines which processed the fat into giant ‘cakes’. The cakes were melted in vats, and the liquid poured into moulds (unlike traditional candles made by repeated dipping a wick in tallow or wax). Boys helped move the cakes of fat to the vats ready for melting. Children packed the candles in boxes.

When the firm took over Child’s night-light factory it acquired more child workers (children’s nimble fingers were well-suited to making night-lights)  A writer who visited the factory thought the production line, with its ‘little army of boys in clean blouses and caps’ and ‘long rows of girls in pinafores’ looked like a school-room. 

Boys punched out cardboard and tin components to make ‘cups’ to hold the fat in the night-lights. Some fixed the wicks in the lights, and others filled the cups with the fat or ‘stearine.’ Girls plaited cotton wicks for the night-lights.

James P. Wilson, managing director of Price’s Patent Candle Factory, was deeply religious, and wanted to look after his young workers’ health and morals.  In 1848 Wilson set up schools at his own expense for his child factory workers. Wilson's factory schools became famous, and he was swamped by letters of congratulation from well-wishers including factory inspector Robert Baker and writers Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mrs Gaskell. 

Images:

Price’s Patent Candle factory. Record of the 1862 Exhibition, (William Mackenzie, c.1863).

Mrs Gaskell. Mrs Gaskell and Knutsford, 2nd edition, Clarkson & Griffiths, Manchester, 1905. 

A Strut(t) Around Belper II

The Gangway.

After you have explored the Strutts' North Mill at Belper, you can walk under the Gangway, a stone arch which once connected the North Mill and West Mill (no longer extant). The Regency era was noted for industrial unrest during times of hardship (most famously the Luddite attacks of 1812).  If you look at the arch (built 1795) you will notice some musket holes placed there in 1810 so that the millowner and his men could fire at anyone who attacked the mill.

Crown Terrace, Belper.

When the Strutts built their mills in Derbyshire, they chose sites with fast-flowing rivers to power the machinery. However, often these rural sites did not have enough local people who could work in the mills. So millowners like the Strutts and Richard Arkwright built new houses with gardens to attract people to come and work for them, and you can see millworkers' housing on Green Lane, The Clusters, Joseph Street etc. Many of the houses have their own pigsty and privy - a vast improvement on the town housing in places like Angel Meadow in Manchester.

Belper boy Samuel Slater was one of the child workers whose stories I told in The Children History Forgot. Samuel began his career as an apprentice to Jedidiah Strutt; Slater became one of the founding fathers of the American cotton industry. 

More millworkers' housing, Belper.

The mill workers in Belper were mostly women and children (their menfolk found employment in local workshops). In 1816 the Strutts employed nearly 1500 people, including over 700 children (just 100 were younger than ten). On average the children earned 2s 6d per week.None of the children who worked at the Strutt mills were parish apprentices like those at Quarry Bank Mill; they were 'free labour' and lived with their parents.

The factory hours were from 6am until 6pm, including dinner and tea-times. Most of the children could read; the Strutts funded a Sunday school and day schools in the town, and built a Unitarian chapel (1788). 

Nail Shop, Joseph St.

The Strutts told a parliamentary select committee (1816) that their mills had benefits for local families as well as providing them with work: ‘before the establishment of these works, the inhabitants were notorious for vice and immorality, and many of the children were maintained by begging; now their industry, decorous behaviour, attendance on public worship, and general good conduct, compared with the neighbouring villages, where no manufactures are established, is very conspicuous.’ 

East Mill, Belper.

Unitarian Chapel, Belper.

Belper was a working textile town from the late 18th century until the 1980s. The town is still dominated by the huge East Mill (1912), built for the English Sewing Cotton Co., which took over the Strutts' mills fifteen years earlier. But the East Mill now stands empty and silent.
However, if you visit the Memories of the Mills website you'll discover millworkers' memories and oral histories of life in the Derwent Valley factories during the twentieth century.

A Strut(t) Around Belper I

North Mill, Belper

My poor blogs have been neglected for a little while, as I've been working hard on my new book for Pen & Sword, Regency Spies, but I hope to be posting more regular updates now. Continuing my series of blog posts on some of the fabulous places in Britain which I visited last year, today's post is on Belper, a Derbyshire town with some amazing industrial heritage.

Belper nailmaker, North Mill.

Belper was traditionally home to the framework knitting and nail-making industries. North Mill, Belper has a wonderful collection of textile machinery, so do take the time to explore it if you can. 

The museum has many more machines than I've been able to show you here, and some social history displays.

Stockings were formerly knitted from silk on machines, but the Strutt family invented an improvement to the frame so that ribbed stockings could be knitted from either silk or cotton (the Derby rib). Ribbed stockings were more elastic and easier to wear than former designs.

Spinning Jenny, North Mill.

Good quality cotton yarn was needed to knit stockings, however, so Strutt helped to bankroll Richard Arkwright's initial forays into cotton spinning - Arkwright's waterframe was a great improvement on James Hargreaves' original spinning jenny.

Arkwright's first cotton-spinning mill was built at Cromford (1771);  Jedediah Strutt's own cotton-spinning mill (the South Mill) in Belper, powered by water, was founded in about 1776; the North Mill was completed about a decade later.

Stocking frame, North Mill.

Arkwright's waterframe, North Mill.

In my next blog post, I'll take a look at conditions in the Belper mills for their women and child workers.

Birmingham Brass Founders

Brass, an alloy of copper and zinc, is a wonder material. It’s highly malleable, does not rust when exposed to air, takes a high polish, and lcan be cast into any shape. Birmingham artisans made cutlery and iron tools since at least Tudor times, and in the 18^th century the city was famous for its metal ‘toys’ (buttons, buckles, etc.). Matthew Boulton of Soho was a toy-manufacturer.

Brass casting.

Brass manufacture is said to have been introduced to Birmingham in 1740 by a Mr Turner, on Coleshill St. The growth of the city’s famous canal network made it easy to transport raw materials and finished goods. By the mid-19^th century Birmingham’s brass bolts, wire, lamps and chandeliers, nails, cabinet and gas fittings were exported worldwide. Firms like Winfield’s capitalised on the increasing popularity of brass bedsteads.

Brass strip casting.

Winfield’s exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in the Crystal Palace, Hyde Park.The royal commissioners and executive committee of the Exhibition visited Birmingham that summer: ‘At the factory of Mr Winfield, for brass-founding, a very touching scene took place...after being conducted around the interior, and having the different branches of the business explained to them...[the visitors] were ushered into a large school-room... A bell was sounded, and immediately all the work-people, male and female, came flocking into this apartment...all were dressed in their everyday attire – the paper apron and cap retained, and in most instances the shirt-sleeves turned up over the elbows. A choir was immediately formed, and a vocal performance commenced’.  A senior clerk of the firm, who gave a congratulatory address to its august visitors, had reportedly worked for Winfield’s for 25 years (Illustrated London News, 28 June 1851).

Making brass moulds.

A government investigator interviewed adults and children at Winfield’s Cambridge St works in the 1860s (3^rd Report, Children’s Employment Commission).  Brass foundries were important employers for boys (girls worked in the packing rooms). Children started work around age 7, or more usually age 9 or 10. 

The choking, poisonous fumes in the founding and casting shops affected adult and child workers. The men making ‘yellow’ brass in particular suffered from lung diseases. Henry Peel (27), a brass-caster at Timothy Smith & Sons, said that ‘you get old’ at age forty: ‘I hope to live over 40’.

You can find out more about Birmingham brass manufacture, and how to trace ancestors who worked in the industry, in the December issue of Who Do YouThink You Are? magazine. 

Illustrations of brass strip casting, the brass workers' frieze, and the canals are from the English Illustrated Magazine, 1883. Making moulds and brass casting are from the Boys' Book of Trades, c.1890s. Author's collection. 

Whiter Than White

As well as beautifully printed calicos and cottons, Georgian and Victorian customers also wanted dazzling white cloth. Bleaching employed ‘great numbers of children and Young Persons’ in places like in Bolton and  Bury, where most bleach-works and finishing works were concentrated in 1850s Lancashire.

Traditionally, to bleach cloth, it was ‘bucked’ or ‘bowked,’ i.e. soaked for several days in a strong, heated alkaline solution made from vegetable ashes in a ‘kier’ or copper vessel. Then it was ‘soured’ to neutralise the alkali by soaking it in buttermilk for at least a week.

‘Crofting’ was the next stage; the cloth was spread out across the fields (bleaching croft), and soaked repeatedly with water, so the sunlight could bleach it, which could take months. In late Georgian times, industrial methods of bleaching were introduced which greatly speeded up this process; artificial soda ash was used instead of vegetable-based alkalis, and sulphuric acid was used instead of buttermilk. The invention of dash-wheels, and later, washing machines, made it much easier to wash large quantities of cloth (formerly done by hand by womenfolk in all weathers).

At the bleachworks, the ‘grey’ cloth was first sent to the dressing-shop. The cloth was marked with the customer’s name or initials with a needle. The ends of several pieces were sewn or pasted together to form one long piece suitable for processing by machine; next, the cloth was ‘dressed’, that is, passed over a hot plate or gas jets to singe off  nwanted fibres.

After dressing, the cloth was bleached as above, then went through the finishing processes: mangling, drying and clamping (stretching), beetling, calendering (an ironing process in which the cloth passed between heated rollers to give it a glossy finish), then making up and packing.  Beetling was a special, lustrous finish for Holland cloth used for blinds, achieved by hammering the cloth

Hours were exceedingly irregular; in the 1850s fourteen year old Mary Partington’s hours varied anything between 56 hours and 76 hours per week at Ridgway Bridson Bleachworks, Bolton, which employed over 200 people.

You can find out more about the story of the industrial revolution in Lancashire here, tracing Lancashire ancestors here, and the fight to improve children’s working hours and conditions in The Children History Forgot.

Illustrations from author’s collection.

Llewenni (Lleweni) Bleachworks, Denbighshire, designed by Thomas Sandby for Thomas Fitzmaurice. Engraving by Thomas Sandby, 1792.  Possibly one of the grandest bleachworks ever built.
Dash wheels, and Calendering. Pictorial History of Lancashire, 1844.

The Fight To Save Britain's Chimney Sweeps

My latest feature for Who Do You Think You Are? magazine looks at the battle to save Britain's tiny chimney sweeps. Our ancestors’ chimneys needed sweeping regularly. When soot from a fire accumulated inside a chimney, smoke blew back unpleasantly into people’s rooms instead of going up the chimney. If too much soot built up inside the flue, the chimney could catch fire.Some chimneys were only nine inches (22.5 cm) square, so children as young as 5 years old were used to climb them and clean them. 

Although reformer Jonas Hanway campaigned about the miserable lives of child sweeps in the 1780s, it took almost a century for parliament to enact legislation tough enough to stop the use of 'climbing boys'. My feature also has tips for researching your chimney sweep ancestors.
Image from the author's collection: A child sweep carrying the brushes for his trade, illustration by Emile Bayard for Holiday Keepsake, Gall & Inglis, c.1880.

Street Children

Poor children in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were expected to work from an early age – shockingly early to modern eyes (although sadly child labour is still commonplace in many developing countries). 

 

If you strolled down a street in Georgian or Victorian England, you could hardly fail to notice the many children dressed in rags, and obviously in need of a good meal. Children helped their parents with their work at home (perhaps preparing wool or cotton for the loom), or found work in a factory, or if very poor, sold matches or gingerbread on the streets.   

Very small children were in great demand as chimney sweeps (as it was easy for them to climb chimneys), and unscrupulous parents sold their children to master sweeps for a few pounds. 

Alternatively poor children went to the poorhouse or workhouse for relief.  Children (not necessarily orphans) were often apprenticed by parish officials to ‘learn a trade’, so that they would not be a burden on the parish rates.  

Several charities grew up to look after destitute children, and I’ll look at the work of some of these institutions in my next blog post.

Images from the author’s collection:

‘The Poor Cripple Girl’ selling gingerbread, ‘The Orphans' selling matches, and ‘The Little Chimney Sweep’, from Henry Sharpe Horsley, The Affectionate Parent’s Gift, T.Kelly, 1827.