Did Your Ancestor Work in Lancashire?

In my latest feature for Your Family History magazine (issue 35), I give tips for exploring occupational sources for Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors.

The county was the cradle of the industrial revolution. Faster roads, the pioneers of the canal system, and the new-fangled railways all helped to make the county the 'workhouse of the world'. Men, women and children worked in a huge variety of industries. 

The county was most famous for its cotton and coal, but it was home to other industries such as glass, transport, engineering and ship-building.   Many Lancashire products were on show at the Great Exhibition of 1851.   

 

Cotton goods were still Britain’s largest export at the turn of the twentieth century. The Manchester Ship Canal, which opened in 1894, had rejuvenated Lancashire manufacturing after a trade slump.  But two world wars, and foreign competition, led to an inexorable decline in the fortunes of Lancashire’s most famous industries: one by one, cotton mills and coal mines closed their gates for good.  

If your ancestor worked in Lancashire, then try searching local record office catalogues for accident registers, apprenticeship records, cash books, friendly society records, sick club records, staff records, pensions, wage books, trade union records etc., which are all useful sources for genealogy.

Images from author's collection:

Steam manufactory, Bolton, Lancashire Illustrated, 1832. Rothwell, Hick & Co.’s works made steam engines and industrial machinery. Horse power was still important even during  the age of steam;  horses were used to haul locomotives round the factory. 

Wigan pit brow lassies. Cassell’s Illustrated History of England Vol. IX, (Cassell, Petter and Galpin, c.1874).

Shipment of Lancashire locomotives and rolling stock at Manchester Docks, Lancashire Industrial & Commercial, 1935.

Bridgewater Foundry, Patricroft, founded by James Nasmyth. Pictorial History of the County of Lancashire, 1844.

Sacrifice in the Trenches: WWI Ancestors

This blog post is a tribute to two relatives who died in the Great War long before I was born. They made the ultimate sacrifice for King and Country.

Two of my great-uncles, Herbert and Harry (Henry) Dickman from Pendlebury, were killed in France in 1916.

Herbert Dickman (service number 15647) born c.1899, served as a private in the 8th battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, and his date of death is given by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website as 7 March 1916, aged twenty-five. He was a POW, and died of his wounds.

His brother Harry Dickman (service number 15080), who was two years younger, was a private in the 16th battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers (2nd Salford Pals); his date of death is given as 30 July 1916, during the battle of the Somme. I believe that the battalion was at Haillicourt around that time. Both soldiers are commemorated on the Loos memorial.

Brothers Harry and Herbert worked at Agecroft Colliery before the Great War, and their names can be seen on its war memorial, along with the names of many others from the pit who died in the ‘war to end all wars’. 
If you have a Lancashire ancestor who served in the armed forces, some sources for military history are included in my new book Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors, which has just been released.
Update May 2014: If you have an ancestor who served in WW1, you may like to visit the Lives of the First World War website.

Images: Agecroft Colliery War Memorial. © Sue Wilkes.
Private Harry Dickman, from an undated, unattributed news cutting in the author’s collection.

Postcards in the author’s collection, date circa 1919:
Lens (near Loos) before and after the war, Boulevard des Ecoles.
Lens before and after the war, Pit No.5.
Ypres Cloth Hall before the Great War.

Find My Past Series 2 - Gunpowder Plot

On next week's episode of Find My Past, which airs at 9pm on 6 November 2012 on the Yesterday channel , three people find out how their ancestors were involved in the infamous gunpowder plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. Miranda Barran discovers that her ancestor, Robert Catesby, was actually the mastermind behind the gunpowder plot – not Guy Fawkes.

Cordelia Mayfield, a descendant of King James I's spymaster Sir Robert Cecil, discovers how her ancestor uncovered the plot and hunted down the conspirators, including Everard Digby.   The Gunpowder Plot conspirators came to a very nasty end - being hanged, drawn and quartered. Looks like this will be a very exciting episode!

Compassion for the Poor: Thomas Bernard

Compassion is one of Austen heroine Emma Woodhouse’s nicer character traits. Society expected the upper classes to help the poor: it was their moral and Christian duty. In Austen’s day, Sir Thomas Bernard (1750–1818) was famous for his philanthropy, and he devoted much of his life to charitable causes. He was an active member of the Foundling Hospital committee. In 1796 Bernard founded the ‘Society for Bettering the Condition, and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor’.  

The Society reported on practical schemes around the country for helping the poor. Thomas disapproved of workhouses, and was keen to improve life for workhouse inmates, especially children.

Many of his ideas for reforming poor relief were ahead of their time. You can find out more about Bernard’s life and work in my latest feature in the November issue of Jane Austen's Regency World.

Images from the author’s collection: Portrait of Sir Thomas Bernard, 3rd baronet. Engraving by E. Scriven from the painting by J. Opie, The Life of Sir Thomas Bernard (John Murray, 1819).

The Foundlings. An allegory of the work of the Foundling Hospital.  Engraving by William Hogarth. John Ireland and John Nichols, Hogarth’s Works, 3rd Series, Chatto & Windus, c.1880.

Interior of the Chapel of the Foundling Hospital. Thomas Bernard was buried here. Old and New London Vol. V, (Cassell, Petter & Galpin, c. 1895).