[Note: References, in square brackets, are quoted at the end. You can go to the reference by pressing ' ctrl+f ' and input the reference you want e.g. [23] then pressing 'Enter', and return to your place in the text by simply pressing 'Enter' again].
It is reasonably certain that Daniel Dunkerley and Alice Taylor, born respectively in about 1748 and 1752 in Oldham, are my ancestors
[1]. I have no information about the origins of Alice Taylor, but ‘Taylor’ is one of about twenty surnames common in the Oldham parish registers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
[2].
Daniel was probably brought up on one of the smallholdings at Sholver, a couple of miles north of Oldham along what must then have been the packhorse road to Ripponden. The local community included several Dunkerley families, almost all of whom specialized in the expanding cottage industry of cotton working. The raw materials, un-spun cotton for the weft and linen for the warps, would be obtained from an agent, known as a ‘putter-out’, working from Oldham or Manchester
[3]. When just a child Daniel would have learned to card the raw cotton to prepare it for spinning on the traditional spinning wheel, a task probably carried out mostly by his mother and any sisters. (See '
Processes in the Cotton Industry' for details). The adjacent figure, a photo from Helmshore museum, shows a boy with his sisters and mother hand-carding and hand-spinning wool (in the same manner as cotton)
[4].
The linen warp would have been prepared and set up in the loom by his father, who then set to work weaving the length of cloth, known as a ‘
piece’ (also sometimes called a '
cut'). On completion of the work Daniel’s father probably took his piece in a ‘
wallet’ (to keep it clean and dry), either on foot or by horse or donkey, to receive payment from the putter-out. Assuming there was work available he would also collect new cotton and warps for the next job. This procedure was known as ‘
bearing home’ and according to later accounts, the putter-out would examine the piece closely for defects and discount or ‘
bate’ (abate) the pay if he was not satisfied. On the way home, by tradition, the hand-loom weaver would stop at the local alehouse for ‘
a bit of a spree’ to catch up with the local news and gossip.
After learning how to card, young Daniel might have learned to spin, for when he was a lad there was always a shortage of yarn for the weaver. ‘
It was no uncommon thing for a weaver to walk three or four miles in a morning, and call on five or six spinners, before he could collect weft to serve him for the remainder of the day’
[5].
The main output of Oldham at that time was ‘
fustian’, a fairly cheap and coarse cloth with linen warp and cotton weft, but other cloths were also made. Although pieces seem to have varied in size, information I have seen indicates that they might typically have been three-quarters of a yard wide and about 22 yards long, but varying somewhat according to thickness. Depending on the fineness of the cloth a weaver might weave several yards per day.
As he grew older and stronger, Daniel would have been put to work warping and in the hand loom - see picture
[4]. The sound of the foot treddles and batten, and the rat-a-tat of the shuttle, must have been the constant music and rhythm of his life. As a boy, outside the house Daniel would have enjoyed the clean air of the rolling hillsides, playing in local streams, bird-nesting in the hawthorn hedges, climbing trees and throwing stones with other lads of his age. It would not all have been fun, however for besides his duties about the loom he also perhaps had to help with food production in the family garden and small fields that surrounded the home. Daniel probably also had a little schooling, perhaps via a local non-conformist church, for we know that when he married he was able to sign his name.
Though Daniel probably enjoyed generally good health, he would have been aware that, in those days before much knowledge of medicine, people were at the mercy of puzzling illnesses and accidents, and though life might have been enjoyable in the summer, the winters could present much hardship, bitter cold and a shortage of food when the harvest was poor
[6]. At least the land underlying Daniel’s home bore good quality coal that was won from shallow local pits – a hazard for the unwary wanderer – and provided a source of heating during the long dark months of winter.
Daniel’s lifestyle might have been similar to that of nearly all of the previous Dunkerleys of Oldham – for over four-fifths of them had driven ‘
the chirping songstress across the silvery threads’ and waited on ‘
the circumvolutions of the mechanic wheel’[7]. But the winds of change were stirring. While he was still a young man someone in his family would very likely have been trying out the revolutionary ‘
fly shuttle’ and ‘
drop box’
[8], which made weaving quicker, but put additional pressure on the carders and spinners, and he may have heard of the ‘
carding engine’
[9] that was supposed to ease and quicken that laborious process too. Heavens! Next there would be a ‘
spinning engine’!
The Dunkerleys would have been aware that there was an increasing demand for their fustians. In 1721 a lobby from the woollen industry succeeded in persuading Parliament to impose a ban on the use, wear and sale in Britain of most types of cotton cloth
[10], but not fustian. From that time, growth in demand for fustians took off, rising throughout the 1730s and continuing thereafter
[11].
It is likely that Alice was a local lass from a neighbouring fold
[12]. Perhaps Daniel met her at one of the social occasions of the area, such as the Maypole dances, the Rush Cart festivals held each August, or during hay-making. Or perhaps she was from one of the nearby cottages that he visited when looking for yarn for the family looms. In any case they were married when Alice was about 21 years old and Daniel was probably about 25.
The marriage took place on June 13th 1773 at Prestwich parish church
[13]. One possible exp
lanation as to why the marriage was not carried out at St. Mary’s in Oldham is that Daniel and Alice may have been non-conformists. Under Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753 only marriages performed under the rites of the established church were recognized by law
[14], so if non-conformists wanted recognition of the legitimacy of their children they were obliged to marry in the Church of England. In protest, many non-conformists would travel some distance to avoid their local church and this could explain why Daniel and Alice married away from Oldham.
An alternative, or additional, reason why the couple married at Prestwich is that Alice was already pregnant. Their first child, John, was baptised on 6th January 1774 at Shaw chapel (part of the Anglican church), at which time the couple were living at Sholvermoor and Daniel’s occupation was given as weaver
[15].
It has been difficult to find information about Daniel and Alice – but there are a number of indications that they lived at Sholver Slack on Sholver Moor at least until 1793. Evidence mentioned below suggests that they may have had other children after Joseph was born, but we cannot be wholly certain.
Joseph, was born nine years after John, in 1783. He was baptized at the Greenacres Independent chapel in Oldham, founded in 1662 by the local parish priest who had been ejected from his living after disagreeing with the form of worship prescribed in the Established church. His new church’s first meeting place was a thatched cottage at Greenacres, but a larger house was used from 1699, and it would have been in this building that Joseph was baptised (see photo below). The cause was thriving and a purpose-built church opened just two years later.
The Independent churches believed that each congregation was autonomous
[16]. Non-conformism often appealed to poorer people who felt excluded from the Established church where local eminent citizens, such as the squire or magistrate, held sway and in which the local parson tended to preach a message designed more to reinforce ideas of social stability than to encourage care for the needy.
The baptismal record for Joseph states that he was the son of Daniel and Alice Dunkerley of Sholver Slack, and that Daniel was still a weaver.
The name ‘
Sholver’ is reputed to date back at least to 1250 and applies to an area more than a mile wide lying immediately south of Besom Hill. The qualifying noun ‘
slack’ is quite common in parts of northern England and appears to mean either a ‘
stream in a valley’ or ‘
valley or small shallow dell’; it is said to derive from a Viking word, confirming the idea that occupation of the Sholver area is ancient
[17].
The oldest map on which I have been able to find Sholver Slack is the Ordnance Survey map of 1848
[18] which places it a few yards east of the River Medlock within a couple of hundred yards of the source of that river (see map below). A visit to the site in 2006 found remnants of a sandstone building (with ruins of later additions) in what is still a charming location. The Medlock tinkles by on its southward journey and its valley opens up a prospect even now of rolling green hills, Counthill to the right, with a distant vista of Manchester and the Cheshire plain (
see photo and read a short poem). A spring seeps from the adjacent hillside of Roebuck Low (the 'slack' from which the place takes its name) and may have provided Daniel and his family with water for domestic use. The northern horizon is marked by Besom Hill to the left and Wotherhead Hill to the right, now surmounted by an obelisk. This is the oldest place with which my branch of the Dunkerley family can identify; it is where Joseph was born to Daniel and Alice; it is home ground.
Oldham is lucky enough to have quite a range of records, originally kept in the parish chest, that were compied onto microfilms made by the Mormon Church. The Oldham
Church Ley records for 1785 and 1786 list just one Daniel Dunkerley in the Sholver Moor/Besom Hill area, and he was successively charged 7d and 9½d for upkeep of the church (non-conformist or not!). The
Militia List for 1788, which records all males between the ages of 18 and 45, mentions a Daniel Dunkerley at Sholver Slack, described as ‘
Poor’ and with five children. Two of these would have been John and Joseph, and a third would have been their sister Mary, who was born in November 1786 and baptised at another non-conformist chapel, Ogden chapel. This had been founded only the previous year and was situated about an hours walk north of Sholver Slack, where the family still lived, in the adjacent township of Rochdale.
Another daughter, Sally, was born early in 1793, and this time the baptism took place at West Street Baptist Chapel, close to the centre of Rochdale, and about seven miles from Sholver Slack. Life for the family of perhaps six children cannot have been easy, but at least they were contributors to, not recipients from, the
Poor Ley. The listing for 1793 shows that Daniel was expected to contribute 12s 5d for the benefit of the less fortunate, but he was only able to find 10s 6d. Another listing, for 1793-94, of ‘
Inhabitants Liable to Repair Roads’ shows a Daniel Dunkerley in the Sholver Division who was required to pay 3s 10d, and he is bracketed together with a John Dunkerley, probably his son, now about 20 years old, who was required to pay 1s 4d.
This is the last information I have found that appears to relate to Daniel Dunkerley. The indications are that he and Alice survived at least until 1793, when Sally was born, and may well have lived a good deal longer. They were probably non-conformists but not, apparently, strongly attached to any particular church. This has made it difficult to find information about the family, which has also not been helped by the fact that they clearly travelled into both Oldham and Rochdale. They also lived within a few yards of the boundary with the parish of Saddleworth, which is actually in Yorkshire. I continue to hope that it will eventually be possible to detect some further trace of them.
By the time that Daniel got married he was probably using the spinning machine of which he had long dreamed. The spinning jenny, which was well suited to domestic use, had been invented in 1764 and was so successful that its use spread rapidly across the cotton districts
[19]. From about 1770 ‘
the hand-wheels were all thrown into lumber rooms’ to be replaced by ‘
common jennies’
[20], built in their thousands by local joiners
[21]. The original machine probably had about eight spindles, which would have allowed eight threads to be spun at one time, a huge advance on the single spindle of the traditional spinning wheel. The jenny required considerable skill and some strength, circumstances that led to men becoming significantly involved in spinning for the first time. However, here, finally, was a way to overcome the serious shortage of yarn that had been holding back the handloom weaver. Once the principle of the jenny had been discovered the design was rapidly improved and the number of spindles greatly increased. By the 1770s jennies had 16 spindles but by the time that Sally was born in 1793 there were jennies with over 100 spindles, these larger models generally being located in specialized premises known as '
jenny shops' or factories.
Daniel would also have heard about the '
water frame' or '
throstle'
[22], a rather different type of spinning machine that came along soon after the jenny. It was invented, or at least made into a useful machine and patented, in 1768 by Richard Arkwright
[23]. The jenny made a soft and ‘
lofty’ yarn that was in great demand for weft
[24], but the throstle could make a firm yarn strong enough to serve as warp
[25], which had the hugely important consequence of making it possible to produce all-cotton cloth, known as ‘
calico’. Arkwright also perfected the carding engine, essential to providing his throstles with cotton prepared for spinning.
The jenny remained hand powered but the throstle was a heavier machine, unsuited to domestic use and Arkwright soon attached it to the mechanism of the water mill, in the manner that fulling hammers had been powered for hundreds of years in the woollen industry. This proved successful and gave rise to the more usual name for the throstle, the '
water frame'. The streams of the Pennines and the Rossendale valleys, among them the River Medlock, were now harnessed to the growing cotton industry and workshops were set up along them. By 1778 six small mills had been erected in Oldham, three powered by horses, but three driven by water power. They probably housed water frames, used to make cotton warps, and small carding engines. Those who attended the new machines were doing something that was completely new in cotton manufacture, they were working in factories
[26]. These were some of the first steps along the road to industrialization of the cotton industry of Lancashire, the application of capital to increase output – the world’s first industrial revolution – and Daniel and Alice Dunkerley would have seen much of its beginnings
[27].
As if the appearance of the jenny and water frame were not enough, a third spinning machine was becoming known. This combined the principles of the two earlier inventions and was therefore called the '
mule'. Invented in 1779 by Samuel Crompton of Bolton
[28], it could spin yarn strong enough to serve as warp yet finer than that produced by the water frame. Furthermore, unlike the latter, it was never protected by patents and was rapidly improved and enlarged so that it soon came to out-compete the water frame in the newly emerging factories. The appearance of the jenny, the water frame and the mule was revolutionary. For literally thousands of years all spinning of yarn for clothing had been carried out using a single spindle, yet now, in a small part of Lancashire, three functional multi-spindle machines appeared within the space of a few years. The consequences were huge.
Daniel’s father came from a generation that produced large families, perhaps a consequence of the slowly rising prosperity of the cotton industry
during the course of the eighteenth century. Towards the end of this period, as the shortage of yarn was removed by the new spinning machines, the industry boomed. Butterworth wrote: ‘
The mule twist now coming into vogue for the warp as well as weft added to the water frame twist and common jenny yarns…’. He continues ‘
… the old loom shops being insufficient, every lumber room, even old barns, cart houses, and outbuildings of any description were repaired, windows broke through the old blank walls, and all fitted up for loom shops. This source of making room being at length exhausted, new weavers’ cottages, with loom shops, rose up in every direction, all immediately filled, and when in full work, the weekly circulation of money, as the price of labour only, rose to five times the amount ever before experienced in this district, every family bringing home forty, sixty, eighty, one-hundred, or even one-hundred and twenty shillings per week!’
[29]. This was the golden age of the handloom weaver
[30] and their numbers began to rise dramatically. Like almost every economic boom before or since, however, it was to be short lived and the aftermath was to prove painful. (You can find more information on developments in cotton working
here).
The occupations of spinning and weaving that Daniel’s family had followed for several generations were certainly going through a revolution. But those of his generation must have become increasingly aware of two other revolutions. The first was that of American Independence in the 1770s, which precipitated wars for England and may have taken men away from Oldham to join the army. But very much more important was the tumultuous French Revolution that suddenly broke out in 1789 and that was to have longer-lasting, and much more bitter, effects in England than Oldhamers could ever have imagined.
We are uncertain how long Daniel and Alice lived after 1793 because their deaths cannot be found in the Oldham registers, so perhaps they were omitted or the records have been lost
[31]. During the years 1787 to 1799 William Rowbotham of Oldham chronicled events in the town from the viewpoint of a typical inhabitant. Daniel and Alice probably saw the world more as he did than as Edwin Butterworth, writing for publication in the Manchester and provincial press. Besides noting the ups and downs of the cotton industry, Rowbottom was always concerned with the vagaries of the weather, the harvest, and the price and availability of food.
Rowbottom’s first specific mention of the French Revolution was on 14th July 1791, and from September of the following year, and especially from December, he was progressively more concerned about its effects on political stability. France declared war on England at the start of Feburary 1793 and England reciprocated ten days later. Recruitment and conscription began to take away significant numbers of the men-folk of the area. In the following years disruptions to trade caused by the French wars, and perhaps as a reaction to the previous boom, led Rowbottom to make many comments on the difficulties that the handloom weavers, particularly those still working with fustians, were experiencing.
In his introduction to Rowbottom, Winstanley
[32] said of the 1790s:
References[1] The years of birth for Daniel and Alice come from IGI (the International Genealogical Index of the Mormon church) that also lists their marriage. These data are the best available, and seem reasonable, but they cannot be considered as certain.
[2] As shown in the Parish Records, researched and explained by Rosemary Brown at
http://dunkerley-brown.co.uk/dunkerley1617C.aspx [3] Chapman, Sidney J.,
The Lancashire Cotton Industry, 1973 ed., first printed 1904, Augustus M. Kelley, Publishers. ISBN 0-678-00896-5. See, for example, Chapman p. 16.
[4] Taken at the excellent Helmshore Textile Museum, near Accrington in Lancashire. Definitely worth visiting. See
http://www.lancashire.gov.uk/education/museums/helmshore/index.asp [5] Guest,
History of the Cotton Trade, p. 12, quoted in Chapman, op. cit., pp. 58-59.
[6] As described in William Rowbottom’s Diary,
The Most Dismal Times, published in 1996 by Oldham Education and Leisure Arts and Heritage Publications, ISBN 0 902809 29 6. It covers the period from 1787 to 1799.
[7] This is James Butterworth’s romantic description of the handloom weaver – the ‘
chirping songstress’ being the shuttle, the ‘
silvery threads’ the warp and the ‘
mechanic wheel’ the spinning wheel. In
An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Town and Parochial Chapelry of Oldham in the County of Lancaster by Butterworth, J., printed by J. Clarke, 1817.
[8] The former invented in 1738 by John Kay of Bury, but not much used until his son invented the latter in 1760. Bury lies 8 miles northwest of Oldham.
[9] Patented by Lewis Paul in 1748, but probably not a commercial proposition until Richard Arkwright gave it his attention in the 1770s.
[10] Imported from India and therefore competing with Yorkshire-made woollens.
[11] Timmins shows that cotton imports to Great Britain increased by over 10% in the 1730s, by over 20% in the 1740s, over 25% in the 1750s and over 30% in the 1760s, with respect to the previous decade. Timmins, Geoffrey,
Four Centuries of Lancashire Cotton, Lancashire County Books, 1996, ISBN 1-871236-41-X.
[12] Fold is the local term for a hamlet or group of cottages – pronounced in the Lancashire dialect of the day as ‘
fowt’.
[13] Prestwich is located about 15 miles west of Oldham, in Manchester, and in fact St. Mary’s church of Oldham was technically a chapelry of Prestwich. The records show: 1773, June 13th, Daniel Dunkerley and Alice Taylor both of Oldham in this Parish were married in this Church by Banns by me L. Harris Rect (last word not absolutely clear). Daniel signed his name, Alice made her mark.
[14] As explained in
Using Birth, Marriage and Death Records, Pocket Guides to Family History, Public Records Office publication, ed. 2002.
[15] This information was unearthed in early in 2006 by Rosemary Brown and provides the first definite statement of Daniel’s occupation. However, we would in any case have expected Daniel to be a weaver and to have been brought up in a handloom weaver’s cottage for reasons explained in the article ‘
Ancestors of Daniel Dunkerley’. An IGI record also records the baptism of John.
[16] In the 19th century they became known as the Congregational church.
[17] The former definition and Viking attribution comes from
www.domesdaybook.co.uk/places.html the latter is from
www.dictionary.net/slack which attributes it to an Icelandic word ‘
slakki’ meaning a slope on a mountain edge, taken from Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary of 1913.
[18] See
www.old-maps.co.uk searching under ‘Sholver, Lancashire’.
[19] The jenny was invented by James Hargreaves of Oswaldtwistle near Blackburn, a town located about 25 miles NNW of Oldham, set to become a major force in cotton weaving.
[20] Quotation from p. 14 of Butterworth, Edwin,
Historical Sketches of Oldham, 1856, reprint of 1981 by E. J. Morten, (Publishers), Manchester. ISBN 0 85972 048 9.
[21] From Benson, Anna P.,
Textile Machines, Shire Publications Ltd.,
www.shirebooks.co.uk [22] Called throstle because a number of the machines working together emitted a sound reminiscent of the song thrush, or throstle.
[23] Arkwright originally came from Preston, a town 10 miles west of Blackburn, destined to become Lancashire’s westernmost great cotton town.
[24] Benson, op. cit.
[25] Often referred to as ‘
twist’.
[26] However other factories were established to centralize weaving activities. These had several advantages. One was that they were able to use the more complex looms that were appearing, and facilitated the production of more complex patterned (and valuable) cloths. Another was that closer supervision of the workers and increased productivity was possible.
[27] The tendency towards centralization became unstoppable when the power of the steam engine began to take over, from 1794 in Oldham.
[28] Bolton is about 20 miles west of Oldham. It also became a great cotton town, noted for its fine spinning, weaving and an active market.
[29] Butterworth, Edwin, op. cit., pp. 130-131. Twenty shillings was one pound.
[30] See p. 9 in Benson Anna and Neil Warburton,
Looms and Weaving, Shire Books,
www.shirebooks.co.uk [31] According to
Using birth, marriage and death records, op. cit., very few non-conformist chapels had burial grounds attached to them so their faithful continued to be buried in the parish churchyards, but in many cases the event would be unrecorded.
[32] Winstanley Michael, introduction to
The Most Dismal Times, op. cit. The enclosed quotes are from Rowbottom.
[33] See, for example, Wrigley, Ammon,
Rakings Up (autobiographical notes) 1949, E. Wrigley & Sons, Rochdale. He writes about handloom weavers and jenny spinners in Saddleworth in about the 1850s.