The Early Dunkerleys and the Domestic System of Cotton Working(Version of 15th January 2007)
[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].
This article explores the history of the Dunkerley family from 1548 to approximately the birth of my oldest identifiable Dunkerley ancestor, Daniel, in 1748, about twenty years before mechanical spinning came in and transformed the cotton industry.
The First Dunkerleys
The oldest reliable reference to the surname ‘Dunkerley’ of which I am aware dates from 1549 and refers to an Elizabeth Dunkerley who held tenure of property in Manchester.[1] An IGI search produced the next oldest references, the birth of two Dunkerley children at Failsworth (between Manchester and Oldham) and another Elizabeth Dunkerley in 1553, in Middleton (near Oldham).[2] Then comes a baptism in Oldham in 1565, but the spelling is ‘Donkerley’. From then until about 1600 Manchester Dunkerleys predominate, but thereafter to 1664 Oldham Dunkerleys are increasingly common; the tendency of the early Oldham Dunkerleys is to use the spelling ‘Donkerley’, as noted by Rosemary Brown,[3] whereas the Manchester spelling was almost always ‘Dunkerley’, and this prevails in Oldham too after about 1630.
Manchester and the Beginnings of Cotton Working
As there were Dunkerleys in Manchester from 1549 it is worth establishing something of the nature of the town as it then was. Baines, quoting others, asserts that ‘Manchester was a seat of the woollen manufacture as early as the reign of Edward II’ (1307-1327) when there was, about 1313, ‘a mill for the dyers on the banks of the Irk’, and in 1322 a ‘fulling mill’ on the same river.[4] However, he continues, ‘woollen manufacture was rude until the reign of Edward III (1327-1377) who married Phillippa of Hainault and brought over woollen manufacturers from Flanders, granting them letters of protection and tempting them with well-founded hopes of large profits and good livings’.[5] He states that the Flemings were settled in various areas, especially the north of England, including Manchester, Rossendale and Pendle. According to Edwin Butterworth[6] by 1414 the woollen trade was well established across these northern areas and Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann mention weaving at Crompton (near Oldham) – presumably of wool – in 1474.[7]
Wadsworth[8] has pointed out that Baines and others relied on Thomas Fuller’s "Church History", published in 1655, for the story of an important immigration of textile-working Flemings in the fourteenth century. He admits that some did come, but considers that they were not the bringers of textile know-how. He does, however, accept that there was an important immigration by Walloon and Dutch workers from the Low Countries starting about 1554 that brought ‘new manufactures’, cloths that transformed the woollen industry and may also have included cotton.[9] By 1569 there were 3,000 foreign workers at Norwich. Wadsworth asserts that the immigrant workers made an impact on Rochdale (which is near Oldham), the town of interest to him. Such a sixteenth century immigration is quite early enough to be of potential significance in our story of the early Dunkerleys.
By 1542, when Elizabeth Dunkerley was probably in Manchester, an act of Parliament graphically reveals ample evidence that the town was the seat of extensive linen and woollen manufacture, with well-developed credit and marketing functions.[10] The linen industry had as its base flax grown in west Lancashire, but some was also imported from Ireland. By 1572 the linen industry of the Manchester area was sufficiently important that a prohibition on flax exports from Ireland caused extensive difficulties among the ‘poor people’.[11] There is no good information about the size of Manchester in this period – the only estimate, from 1520, is of ‘7,000 and more "howseling peple" in the parish’,[12] which would have included Manchester proper on the south bank of the River Irwell and Salford on the north bank.
Just when true cotton came to England is unknown. Small quantities of ‘cotton wool’ had been imported for candlewicks, for example by the residents of Bolton Abbey in 1298, from the Levant (Cyrpus, Smyrna, etc.).[13] Butterworth relates that weavers of cotton fustian (a cloth with a linen warp and a cotton weft) were numerous in Barcelona in 1255,[14] and that cotton fustian manufacture existed in Flanders before 1500. Chaucer, who wrote between 1370 and 1380, clothed his knight in the prologue to the Canterbury Tales in fustian. Evidence of cotton wool imports to England is more common in the early 16th century and fustians, possibly made in Manchester, were exported from Chester by the 1560s.[15] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann accept as likely the tradition that cotton made up part of the ‘new draperies’ introduced by the Dutch and Walloon refugees to the Norwich area of England in about 1560. It is also possible that English cotton manufacture may have received a boost as Flemish Protestant artisans and workmen fled from Antwerp on the capture and ruin of that city by the duke of Parma in 1585.
Timmins noted that fustian manufacture by the Flemish immigrants in Norwich apparently had limited success. He commented: ‘This was also the case elsewhere, including York in the 1590s, Suffolk during the 1660s and Spitalfields, London, between 1730 and 1750. The indications are that Lancashire quickly emerged as the country’s major centre of fustian production. The earliest known reference to cotton in the Manchester area comes from 1570 when a 'chapman' from Bury refers to 'Cotyn woole' which he instructed his executors to buy and put out to 'ffifte howseholders within the parrish' [15A]. A petition to Parliament in 1621 noted that, during the preceding twenty years, fustians had been made by "diverse people in this Kingdome, but chiefly in the Countie of Lancaster"’ and this suggests that fustian manufacture was taking place in Manchester by about 1601. By 1607 there was a Bolton dealer in ‘cotton wool’, by 1609 fustian weavers from Blackburn and surrounding hamlets were being taken to court for non-payment of debts, and by 1610 there was a Manchester dealer in ‘cotton, cotton yarn and fustians’. The petition mentioned above makes it clear that fustian weaving had become an important trade for it says that ‘there is at least 40,000 peeces of Fustian of this kind yeerely made in England … and thousands of poore people set on working of these Fustians.’[16] From this time on there is growing evidence of a cotton industry expanding over a wide area north of Manchester.
Early Cotton Working in the Oldham Area and the Early Oldham Dunkerleys
In the Oldham area, until the first quarter of the seventeenth century wool working was the principle economic activity, the hilly pasture being suitable for raising sheep. Edwin Butterworth tells us that ‘some of the principal inhabitants were extensive proprietors of the fleecy tribes and as a consequence, large dealers in wool, whilst others became woollen manufacturers. The labouring classes, under such circumstances, were principally composed of shepherds and woollen weavers.’[17] However cotton working then began to displace wool.
The first mention I have found for the appearance of cotton in the Oldham area is 1625 – a Samuel Wild of Hollinwood was a customer for raw cotton of the Chethams of Manchester.[18] In 1630 Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann note that fustians ‘had … become firmly established in the neighbourhood of Middleton, Chadderton and Hollinwood (the present Oldham area)’[19] and in the same year Butterworth records the presence of a cotton-linen weaver named Lomas or Lomax who lived at Glodwick.[20] For the purposes of understanding the history of the Dunkerley family it is perhaps important to focus on the expansion (a process) of the cotton industry from Manchester in 1601 into the surrounding areas including Bolton, and Blackburn by 1610, and into the Oldham area no later (perhaps earlier) than 1625. However cotton displaced wool only gradually, and in the valleys of Saddleworth it retained a hold until at least the 1870s.[21]
After about 1670 IGI references to Dunkerley births and deaths practically disappear in Manchester, but are plentiful in Oldham; others occur with a certain frequency in Prestwich (Oldham has strong links with Prestwich, St. Mary’s church being a chapel of ease of Prestwich until 1406, and being dependent on it for various purposes thereafter), and Blackley. More specifically, Dunkerley birth/baptism and death/burial entries on the IGI from 1670 to 1750 total 477 for Oldham, 58 for Blackley, 44 for Prestwich, 24 for Ashton Under Lyne, 20 for Middleton and only a single entry for Manchester. This is very surprising and is discussed in detail in the article 'Geographical Spread of the Early Dunkerleys'.
In spite of the limitations of the IGI (there are several repetitions for some entries, for example) the data appear to indicate that the Dunkerley presence was weakening in Manchester but that a stronger community was developing in the Oldham area from about 1565 to 1670, with smaller communities in Blackley and other nearby villages. Whether this was due to natural waxing and waning of the male line, or to the physical movement of people, it is impossible to say. At later dates, the family begins to spread across the countryside, commonly within the Lancashire textile districts, into the neighbouring wool-working area of Huddersfield in Yorkshire (where they become Donkersleys) and eventually elsewhere, including, unsurprisingly, to London.
Rosemary Brown has studied all the available information concerning the early Dunkerleys and compiled tentative family trees. In her opinion the information suggests that the early Dunkerleys were all related.[22]
A few Dunkerleys appear in Oldham before cotton working was established in Lancashire and if they were textile workers are likely to have worked with wool; in fact they all appear to have used the surname ‘Donkerley’. The subsequent spread of cotton working to Oldham, must have happened either by woollen weavers of the area changing over to cotton, or by Manchester weavers specialized in cotton working taking their skills into the Oldham area. In later years the Dunkerleys of Oldham were highly specialised in cotton working and since the appearance in Oldham of Dunkerleys with the modern spelling of the name coincides with the spread of cotton working from Manchester to Oldham it is possible that these Dunkerleys took cotton working skills with them and were part of a wave of migration that was spreading cotton north from Manchester. It would be fascinating to know if there are other examples of Manchester-based family names appearing in the upland areas at this time.
The Success of Cotton Working in Lancashire
Many writers have discussed the factors that led to the success of the cotton industry in Lancashire when it failed to prosper in other parts of England. A lack of craft-guilds which tended to control and restrict trade is often cited as important, as is the prior existence of wool and linen industry skills – including spinning and weaving, but also the commercial skills for supplying the raw materials and working capital, and selling the finished product. A further factor that many observers have considered important is the need for high humidity in cotton working – and this is thought to have influenced the success of the industry in the uplands of Rossendale and the Pennine hills of Lancashire. Timmins quoted writers from the 1830s and 1840s who commented on the desirability of maintaining high humidity in the loom shop and he also quoted Farnie who pointed out that cotton is hygroscopic, so that it becomes more pliable and less brittle as the moisture content of the air increases.[23] There have been dissenting opinions about the importance of high humidity to cotton working, but Timmins concluded that it has not always been appreciated. He observed that the loom rooms of many purpose-built cotton weavers’ cottages were located in cellars with earthen floors to help maintain dampness. This, interestingly, contrasts with the wool-workers’ cottages of, for example, Uppermill in Saddleworth where the loom rooms seem to have been in the upper stories to take maximum advantage of the light through rows of stone-mullioned windows. In any case, the uplands of Rossendale and the Pennine Hills of Lancashire are certainly known for their damp climate[24] and the hypothesis that this was an important factor favouring cotton working in the hilly areas north and east of Manchester, and perhaps advantageous for cotton-working in places such as Oldham, seems tenable.[25]
A map in Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann[26] indicates that by about 1700 a small number of towns, including Oldham, made up part of an identifiable ‘Fustians’ zone, sandwiched between a ‘Woollens’ zone to the northeast and a ‘Linens’ zone to the west and south. Manchester was in the ‘linens’ zone and became more specialised in smallwares made of linen and worsted with declining amounts of cotton,[27] whereas Oldham (and towns such as Leigh and Bolton) concentrated on cotton preparation and weaving.
The Early Dunkerleys of Oldham
Turning to the Dunkerleys of Oldham, the first question is to try to understand where they lived and the communities of which they were part. For this the best source of information is the records of St. Mary’s parish church in which the earliest entries are from 1558. However the early entries are intermittent. We may learn that a Dunkerley was baptised in Oldham, but this does not tell us where the family was living. In fact, in rare cases, they were baptised in Prestwich or Ashton Under Lyne, perhaps an indication of non-conformism with the family trying to avoid direct links with the Established church in their own neighbourhood. For IGI information we sometimes simply know they are from ‘Oldham’, which could be the village itself – for at that time it was no more than a village – or the parish. Edwin Butterworth estimated that in 1600 Oldham had only about twenty dwellings and that as late as 1756 the village population was no more than 400. For 1714 he states that the parish included only 433 families, perhaps about 1,732 individuals, the great majority of them evidently scattered in small communities across the landscape.
During the sixteenth century we know of only four Dunkerley records from Oldham, but from 1600 they slowly increase and after1625, when we know that cotton working was established in the area, there are seven recorded births. There must then have been a thriving Dunkerley community, evidenced by a fairly regular series of births/baptisms, marriages and deaths/burials, making up several of the 433 families estimated by Edwin Butterworth in 1714.
The earliest registers from St. Mary’s church at Oldham do not record the location of the family home, or abode, but by 1654 the marriage registers begin to provide this information and the same happens to the birth records from 1681.[28]
Although there were early Dunkerleys at Glodwick (1683), Hollinwood (1688) and perhaps in Chadderton (1654), the early data show that a large majority of the early Dunkerleys of Oldham lived in a fairly restricted area extending north-east from the village along the road north towards Ripponden, later developed as the Oldham and Ripponden turnpike.[29] Today this road climbs up from Oldham to the north, cutting along the west flank of a hillside that looks down over the townships of Royton and Shaw, and thence to the hills of Rossendale. Above the road and about an hour’s walk from Oldham town centre stands the rocky crown of Besom Hill.[30] Around and below it were the old hamlets of Sholver, Barrowshaw, Broadbent, Counthill and Cleggs. Nearer to Oldham were Littlemoor, Hopkin Fold, and Horsedge practically in the village itself. These names are all closely associated with seventeenth and early eighteenth century Dunkerley families such that the area can perhaps justly be regarded as ‘Dunkerley country’.
Geology and Topography
Manchester is situated at an elevation of around one to two hundred feet above sea level along the northeast rim of a great sedimentary basin of Permo-Triassic age. The surface characteristics of the area are a wide and fairly fertile flatland known as the Cheshire plain. The rocky foundations of Manchester are red sandstones (visible near the mouth of the River Irk) formed in an ancient desert environment, although the surface carries sands, gravels and boulder clays that were dumped as the ice sheets of the recent glaciations retreated.
Almost immediately east and north of Manchester, this geology gives way through rising ground to an older and harsher substrate comprising the Coal Measures. These rocks were laid down in a coastal environment perhaps rather similar to that of the Mississippi delta, where alternating grey-brown sandstones, shales and thick beds of vegetation – that would one day form coal deposits – accumulated in repeated cycles. It is these rocks, with a local glacial veneer, that underlie Oldham. The topography is rather hilly, ranging from perhaps six- to eight-hundred feet above sea level, which explains why the area is wetter than the Manchester district.
Only a mile or two east of Oldham, where Saddleworth begins, the geology changes again. Rising from below the Coal Measures are great soaring moorlands with harsh rock edges that form the ‘backbone of England’ – the Pennine Hills – made up of the Millstone Grit series.[31] Elevations run quickly up to over 1,000 feet above sea level and the wide uplands are often covered with deep layers of brown peat. There is a hardy vegetation of heather, gorse, wimberry (bilberry), sedges and coarse grasses, including the evocative ‘cotton grass’ that, other than its name, has nothing to do with the cotton industry that became so important to the area.
Early Dunkerley Homesteads
The hamlets where the Dunkerleys settled were situated on the Coal Measures and were made up of cottages probably built of the local sandstone with thatched or stone-slab roofs and often with ‘a rustic appearance’ and ‘not regularly built’.[32] A house at Sholver was described in 1622/23 as ‘3 bays of housing, whereof 2 were of a barn and 1 of a loomhouse, with chamber over’, so special weaving facilities certainly existed in some houses at that time.[33] Samuel Bamford described weavers’ cottages from nearby Middleton at the end of the eighteenth century and these may give us a fair idea of the houses occupied by the Dunkerleys in the Oldham area one hundred years earlier:
‘My uncle's domicile, like all the others [my italics], consisted of one principal room called "the house"; on the same floor with this was a loom-shop capable of containing four looms, and in the rear of the house on the same floor, were a small kitchen and a buttery. Over the house and loom-shop were chambers; and over the kitchen and buttery was another small apartment, and a flight of stairs. The whole of the rooms were lighted by windows of small square panes, framed in lead, in good condition; those in the front being protected by shutters. The interior of this dwelling showed that cleanly and comfortable appearance which is always to be seen where a managing Englishwoman is present.’ [34]
Bamford goes on to describe the furnishings, but they were probably more elaborate than those of the seventeenth century which, however, probably included simple beds, tables and chairs, perhaps a cupboard or sideboard and cooking and other utensils. Perhaps too, there was a ‘bread fleck’ (or bread-flake) to hang dried oaten bread above the fire and in such cottages at an earlier time there would certainly have been one or more spinning wheels.
The soils of the area were not very fertile and tended to support rough pasture suitable for sheep. However, by dint of hard work and manuring they could be made to support food crops and each weaver’s cottage typically had two or three small fields where potatoes and oats were grown and hay could be made. There was probably a garden too for flowers, herbs and perhaps vegetables. Animals such as hens, pigs and perhaps a cow might be kept. The farms of the area supported a wider range of livestock – sheep on the hillsides, chickens, pigs, a few cows and horses. Narrow lanes with dry-stone walls connected the hamlets, or folds, with the main road on the hillside, or other thoroughfares along the valleys. Small coal diggings and stone quarries dotted the hillsides, and the stream valleys, especially the deeper parts – referred to as cloughs – were quite well wooded with oak, ash and other trees[35] that could be used for construction, to make looms and to provide wood for winter fuel. The area looked for its needs to Oldham and, though it must have seemed inconceivable at the time, would one day be absorbed within its urban reach.
Early Dunkerley Abodes
The first reliable indications in the parish registers for the abodes of Dunkerley families come suddenly between 1672 and 1683. In this interval we know that there were Dunkerleys at Sholver, Barrowshaw, Lower Horsedge, and Count Hill. Unsubstantiated IGI entries suggest that there were Dunkerleys at the first three of these settlements at least a generation earlier.[36] Information provided by Edwin Butterworth suggests that the Dunkerleys were probably tenants to yeoman farmers who had purchased the freehold from the Prestwich family of Hulme in Manchester.[37] It may be that an influx of weavers was placing pressure on the land north of Oldham because at some time shortly before 1655 part of Sholver Moor had been enclosed.[38]
Together with the early Dunkerleys already mentioned at Glodwick, Hollinwood and perhaps Chadderton, these families may have been largely responsible for most of the many Dunkerleys that took part in the growth of Oldham, spread across Lancashire, into Yorkshire, to London and, eventually, to North America and elsewhere.
Early Dunkerley Occupations
We have no information about the occupations followed by the Dunkerleys of Oldham before 1722, although it is reasonable to presume that most of the men were handloom weavers, supported by wives and children who did carding and spinning. They also probably carried out seasonal work in the gardens, plots of land and small fields around their cottages, particularly during the harvest.
This picture is strongly supported by the information available thereafter. From 1722 the Oldham parish registers record occupations. Using the data for fathers’ occupations at Dunkerley baptisms registered at St. Mary’s church and Shaw chapel between 1725 and 1781, out of a total of 188 records 58.0% are weavers, 25.5% do not record an occupation, 5.9% are the children of single mothers (with no recorded occupation), 5.9% are tailors; the other occupations are twister (1.1%), gardener (1.1%), clothier (0.5%), collier (0.5%), chapman (0.5%), joiner (0.5%) and labourer (0.5%).
It is unfortunate that there is such a high percentage of unrecorded fathers’ occupations in the Dunkerley records (25.5%), but by studying the data a good guess can be made at the actual occupation in most cases. For example one entry refers to a weaver called Daniel Dunkerley of Sholver Moor whose wife was called Anne or Anna and their son, James, was baptised at Shaw chapel in November 1745. Another entry where the father’s occupation is not given also refers to a Daniel Dunkerley of Sholver Moor whose wife was Anne, and their daughter, Mary, had been baptised at Shaw chapel in September of the previous year. It is reasonable to suppose that the two entries relate to the same family and therefore to infer that the occupation of the father in the second case was that of weaver. A similar exercise can be carried out of all the cases where no occupation is listed and, although some cases are more open to doubt than others, best efforts suggest that Dunkerley weavers actually comprised 79.3% and the cases where no occupation is known drops to 3.2%.
The high proportion of weavers among the working population in the cotton-working districts of eighteenth century Lancashire highlights the essentially non-agricultural nature of this part of the country and is quite startling. Timmins carried out various careful studies; using the data for bridegroom weavers he was able to show that the percentage of handloom weavers in each parish increased over time as cotton working came to dominate the economy of the area. For example in Blackburn parish the percentage of bridegroom weavers rose from 48% in 1704-07 to 61% in 1813-17.[39]
As mentioned above, wool working in Oldham co-existed alongside cotton working from the first appearance of the latter by 1625, so it is important to establish whether the Dunkerley weavers reported in the parish registers after 1722 were wool or cotton weavers, or some of each. Fortunately, in the Oldham-Saddleworth area at that time wool workers were referred to as ‘clothiers’, not ‘weavers’[40] and one (possibly three) Dunkerley father(s) fall(s) into this category. There is no reason to doubt that the rest are cotton weavers.
In assessing the place of the Dunkerley family of Oldham in the eighteenth century several lines of evidence invite consideration. Clearly most households depended on cotton handloom weaving, but the second most important occupation – by some margin – was that of ‘tailor’; to state the obvious, tailoring is a cloth-based activity and in the context of the economy of the area can be seen as closely related to cotton working – perhaps an extension of it. Occupations are not given in the case of ‘single mothers’ and it seems reasonable to infer that they too would have been dependent, one way or another, on cotton working; in fact most women and children were occupied in carding and spinning cotton for the weavers.[41] Even among the few and rare other occupations shown for Dunkerley fathers there are suggestions of yet further dependency on the rising cotton industry, namely ‘twister’ and ‘chapman’. The remaining Dunkerley entries include a single ‘joiner’ (building trade – or he might have made handlooms[42]), one ‘collier’, one ‘labourer’ and two ‘gardeners’. The ‘gardener’ entries are two baptisms in the same family. Curiously, the only ‘collier’ relates to an entry from Oldham workhouse, so he might not have had much choice in the occupation he pursued.
It is possible to compare the distribution of ‘Dunkerley’ occupations with that shown by Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann for all fathers’ occupations in all the baptisms of Oldham parish over the same period. They analysed data from four triennial periods to represent the interval 1725 to 1781. In a total of 3,250 records, 47.2% are weavers, 15.2% are ‘other occupations’, 9.5% do not record the father’s occupation, 6.0% are single mothers, 6.7% are colliers, 3.4% hatters, 3.3% labourers, 2.8% clothiers, 2.2% yeomen, 1.2% twisters and various other occupations make up the balance, none with more than 1%.
Of their 15.2% "other occupations" these were "almost entirely the ordinary village trades and handicrafts – the building group of slaters, masons, carpenters, plasterers and joiners; the food and clothing group of innholders [inn keepers], breadbakers, millers, butchers, tailors and shoemakers; and miscellaneous crafts like the smiths, blacksmiths, whitesmiths, glaziers, tanners, saddlers, millwrights, carriers and carters".
By comparison with these data it is notable how very restricted the Dunkerley occupations were; they clearly did not represent a typical cross-section of society. Even the raw data indicate that the Dunkerleys were specialised in cotton working, and if we use the figures adjusted to reduce the category of ‘no occupation’ then 79.3% were weavers and another 7.5% relied on the cotton industry for ‘their daily bread’. It is remarkable that we simply do not find among the Dunkerleys a significant number of colliers and building-trade occupations. It would be interesting to know if there were any other families in the Oldham area at the time who were similarly specialised in cotton working, the industry that was already changing, and was to transform, the whole structure of society in the local, and wider, area over the next century.
The Structure of the Early Cotton Industry and the Lifestyle of the Early Dunkerleys
Cotton was always an exotic commodity in England, but it was the most comfortable of all the fabrics available in the Middle-Ages. India was the home of fine cotton cloths, from where cotton-working technology spread slowly westwards into Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the Low Countries, France and finally to England. Pure cotton cloths – calicoes – were, however, made almost exclusively in India, and Indian colours and prints were the most appealing. The different international trading companies, particularly in the case of England the East India Company, brought calicoes to these shores and slowly began to open up the market not only for clothing but also for household use such as bedding and furnishings. This was mainly achieved by the development of a domestic printing industry that used imported plain calico and made such attractive designs that cotton started to make serious inroads into the domestic wool and silk markets.[43] Towards the end of the seventeenth century these two industries were already lobbying parliament for protection from the domestic calico printers and various acts were passed in their favour. They culminated in 1721 when, in the aftermath of the South Sea bubble fiasco, an act was passed in benefit of the silk and woollen trades and against cotton. All cloths containing cotton were banned, ‘muslins, neckcloths and fustians excepted’. The exception of fustian was very important for, in effect, the act protected the home market from Indian competition and encouraged the production of domestically produced cloth with a linen warp and cotton weft. Chapmen helped develop the market by carrying their wares by packhorse all over the country. For example a man from Hollinwood took goods to Newcastle upon Tyne where he had warehouses.[44]
Cotton remained an exotic commodity – brought by ship from afar, transported overland to the cottages of the Lancashire workers to be made into cloth for sale either for the home market or, in time, for export into Africa or the Caribbean. The early Dunkerley cotton workers of Oldham were by and large simple folk. How was it that they were able to take part in an industry of such reach and range? Very early in the seventeenth century Manchester merchants, such as the Chethams, began to bring raw cotton from London to Manchester and to market Lancashire cloth in London. They either ‘advanced cotton and [linen] yarn to an intermediate class of country manufacturers, the price being set off against the value of the woven goods when brought in or … put out materials to dependent spinners and weavers, either from [their] own warehouse, or, through a putting-out agent, to country workers perhaps a score of miles away.’[45] One such middleman might have been Samuel Wild of Hollinwood, mentioned above, who in turn put out the raw materials to weavers within his area of operation, which might have included the area north of Oldham. By 1758 ‘a small group of Manchester cotton checkmakers employed a great many of the weavers of Ashton, Oldham and Royton, and one spoke of employing 500 himself’.[46]
The raw materials were provided on credit and the length of cloth – known as a ‘piece’ or an ‘end’ – was delivered by the weaver to the middleman when completed, in what was known as a ‘bearing-home’. In the Manchester area this was normally done on foot carrying the heavy piece in a ‘wallet’ and the weaver thought nothing of walking eight miles in each direction. He would deliver his work for inspection, receive payment and more raw materials for his next piece, and often have a bit of a spree, perhaps do a little shopping and catch up on the local news before leaving for home.[47] During the early years of the cotton industry, as long as a weaver’s credit was good, he might be able to work quite independently and sell his piece in the market.[48] As time went by, however, he became more bound up in the credit system and was likely to be tied to a single putter-out, even falling under restrictions as to the length of time before he was obliged to return with his piece to the supplier. For example, ‘after 1777 wilful neglect to work for eight days successively, or the taking-in of materials for a second master "sooner than eight days before completion of the work first taken," rendered a man liable to from one to three months’ imprisonment’.[49] Such measures existed to defend the credit system, which was quite elaborate, several months passing between importation of the raw materials and sale of the finished product. Without the system of credit there would have been no domestic Lancashire cotton industry.
A first-hand description of the way of life that was developing in the area north of Oldham can probably be fairly borrowed from observations made by Daniel Defoe on his journey from Blackstone Edge to the nearby wool-working Yorkshire town of Halifax in 1724.[50] He wrote of a country ‘infinitely full of people’, and ‘the people all full of business… the clothing trade, for the convenience of which the houses are thus scattered and spread upon the sides of the hills … even from the bottom to the top; the reason is this; such has been the bounty of nature to this otherwise frightful country that two things essential to the business, as well as to the ease of the people are found here, and that in a situation which I never saw the like of in any part of England; … I mean coals and running water. … This seems to have been directed by the wise hand of Providence for the very purpose which is now served by it, namely, the manufactures, which otherwise could not be carried on; neither indeed could one fifth part of the inhabitants be supported without them, for the land could not maintain them.’ He described ‘hardly a house standing out of a speaking distance from another…’ ‘Then, as every clothier must keep a horse, perhaps two, to fetch and carry for the use of his manufacture, to fetch home his wool and his provisions from the market, to carry his yarn to the spinners, his manufacture … to the market to be sold, and the like; so every manufacturer generally keeps a cow or two, or more, for his family, and this employs the two or three or four pieces of enclosed land (fields) about his house, for they scarce sow corn enough for their cocks and hens; and this feeding their grounds still adds by the dung of the cattle, to enrich the soil.’ Defoe talks of scattered ‘cottages or small dwellings in which dwell the workmen which are employed, the women and children of whom are always busy, carding, spinning, etc., so that no hands being unemployed all can gain their bread, even from the youngest to the ancient; hardly anything above four years old, but its hands are sufficient to itself.’ He continues: ‘if we knocked at the door … we presently saw a house full of lusty fellows … some in the loom, some one thing, some another, all hard at work and full employed upon the manufacture, and all seeming to have sufficient business.’
According to Defoe, there was ‘not a beggar, not an idle person to be seen, except here and there an almshouse, where people ancient, decrepit, and past labour, might perhaps be found, for it is observable that the people here, however laborious, generally live to a great age, a certain testimony to the goodness and wholesomeness of the country, which is, without doubt, as healthy as any part of England; nor is the health of the people any lessened, but helped and established by their being constantly employed, and, as we call it, their working hard; so they find a double advantage by their being always in business’.[51]
There were differences between cotton and woollen manufacture; the latter seems to have been more centralized into larger houses, each served by a stream, where dyeing took place, whereas the former was more cottage-based around the family loom. Nevertheless the topography, the geology and the distribution of the settlements between Oldham and Besom Hill, as shown on the early maps of the two Butterworths, suggest that Defoe’s description will help give us a good idea of the way the Dunkerleys lived in this area during the eighteenth century. In particular the cotton handloom weavers of the time would have typically earned cash for their needs from weaving but produced part of their food from the small plots of land around their cottages that tended to occupy them especially during the harvest period. Another description, by Aikin, paints a similar picture from Motrram, about 7 miles SSE of Oldham: ‘The smaller [farms] are let very high; nor could the tenant pay such prices but for the industry of himself and family, who are in general weavers, hatters or cotton spinners, and sometimes all in the same house. The chief article of the farm is a roomy house, and their two or three cows produce milk and butter for family use, with a little to spare for making up the rent. Some wheat and oats are grown and potatoes are cultivated.’[52] Sometimes comments as to the poor quality of husbandry practiced on such lands indicate that weaving must have been the principle source of income, and the plots of land attached to the cottages are thought to have often been too small to support a family without an income from weaving.. ‘We may doubt whether the economic distinction between the cottager and the farmer-weaver with from 5 to 15 acres was substantial; the tending of a few cows and the cultivation of a field of oats and potatoes provided outlet for the energies of the family, and was useful in years of scarcity, but it could only be, in the main, as Aikin put it, "by way of convenience and variety," and not a genuine alternative source of livelihood.’[53]
An idea of the type of diet available to the early Dunkerleys can be gained from the description of the landholdings mentioned above. The staple food was based on oats – either eaten as porridge or as leavened oaten bread called ‘jannock’ that was hung on the breadfleck over the fire to dry. In later days Ben Brierley explained that porridge was often eaten out of a communal pot, each member of the family having their own spoon which they were not allowed to use until the signal ‘load!’ was given. In hard times porridge was about all there was to eat, and thick porridge was a luxury. Clearly there was the possibility of potatoes (the basis of the celebrated Lancashire hot-pot) and if chickens, pigs or a cow could be kept then there was the basis of a richer diet. Towards the end of our period tea was sometimes available. In general, however, there appears to be very little information about the food eaten in the area in the seventeenth and first part of the eighteenth centuries. Better descriptions come from Samuel Bamford’s writing, describing a time when he was a young boy, perhaps in about 1794. ‘At breakfast’, he says, ‘a brown earthen dish being placed on a low beaufet near the middle of the floor, a boiling of water porridge was poured into the dish, hot from the pan. A messpot of the same material as the dish was placed for each one about to partake of the breakfast, a quantity of milk and a spoon were placed in each pot, my uncle took a seat and asked a blessing, each of the children of the family standing around; we then took our several messes of milk, and helped ourselves to the steaming porridge as quickly as we chose, and mixing and eating in the manner we liked best, not a word being spoken all the time. The porridge being scraped up, which they in general were rather quickly, each would take a piece of hard oaten cake and eat it to the remainder of his milk, after which a little butter, or a small piece of cheese, with more oaten bread, would finish the meal, and in a few minutes work was resumed.’
The ‘dinners consisted generally of butcher's meat and potatoes, or potato-pie, or meat and broth, or barm dumplings, or drink porridge, or hasty pudding, and in each case the food was partaken in the same primitive manner. When we had meat and potatoes each had an allowance of the meat on a piece of oat-cake, and the potatoes being poured into a dish placed on the beaufet as before, we all stood round, and with spoon or knife, as we chose, ate from the dish so long as the potatoes lasted, after which we stole out to play, eating our remnant of butcher's meat and cake the while. There was not a word heard until we got out of doors, and then we were as noisy as others. When we had potato-pie for dinner an allowance of the crust was given to each; the potatoes were then eaten out of the dish as before, and the crust, as being the most dainty, was eaten afterwards. When we had broth each received a mess for himself, to which he added as much oaten cake as he chose; the potatoes were eaten out of the dish, and the meat being served in portions, each ate it with cake at his leisure. When we had dumplings they were set on the beaufet in the same brown dish, or one of the sort; a little dip was made from the water the dumplings had been boiled in, a lump of butter and a little sugar or treacle being added; the dip was then poured upon the dumplings, and we fell to and ate as we liked, the only restriction being that there was not to be any talking at meat.’
Bamford helpfully described other mealtimes: ‘Our bagging, or afternoon lunch, consisted of half an oaten cake, with butter, treacle, cheese, or milk, as circumstances rendered most convenient, and our supper was generally the same as breakfast. On Sunday mornings we had mint or balm tea, sweetened with treacle, and oaten cake and butter; on Sunday afternoons we had tea of the same kind, and a slice of buttered loaf was added, which was an especial dainty.’
It was the work of the women and children to card and spin the cotton wool, and they also wound the spun cotton onto bobbins for the weaver’s shuttle and may have prepared the warps for the loom. Weaving was usually done by the men (although women weavers were fairly numerous [54]), on a four-posted loom erected inside the cottage. In the early days there may have been a single loom in a room in the cottage, but later special loom-rooms were built which could accommodate more than one loom. As a matter of fact a single loom was always referred to as ‘a pair of looms’. The width and length of the pieces was variable – from time to time a source of much dissatisfaction as the putter-out would sometimes lengthen the warps, and thus the piece, while paying the same money for the work. In general, though, the pieces were about a yard wide[55] and some were 24 to 30 yards long.[56] If the materials were of poor quality, or the workmanship was poor, the cloth might be marred and the putter-out would be ready to ‘abate’ the weaver’s payment for shoddy work. Early in the seventeenth century the weaver might have a good personal relationship with his putter-out, but later the process appears to have become much more impersonal or even hostile.
At least during the early days of cotton working, the village and market of Oldham probably served to conduct much of the trade. By comparison with Rochdale at about the same time (although Rochdale was a woollen market) much of the business would have been conducted in the inns,[57] where the weaver could meet his putter-out, transact business and socialise before setting off again to his cottage with supplies for the next week’s work. There were none of the restrictions of trade of the guild towns such as Preston or Wigan and in fact ‘the Lancashire fustian industry … grew up without any trace of regulation’.[58]
The cost of setting up in business as a weaver was not too onerous. ‘Hand cards cost a few pence, a spinning wheel a shilling or so,[59] a loom from six to twelve shillings’.[60] To put this into perspective, weavers in Manchester were paid 3s to 12s a week (average about 6s to 7s) in 1769, depending on the type of cloth they were weaving, and women spinners about 2s to 5s a week.[61] Further, the half-yearly rental of a humble (widow’s) cottage in the area north of Oldham towards the end of the seventeenth century was 4s 6d.[62]
It seems that the various stages of the cotton trade were usually learned within the family and formal apprenticeships were rare.[63] Samuel Crompton, who later invented the spinning mule, said that he spent a year learning to weave at the age of 10.[64] The skills were passed down the generations, and as each child learned to weave so the number of looms operated by the family increased. When the children married and moved into their own homes they were often allowed to take their looms with them. Eventually aged parents might be left at home spinning and weaving while they could, determined to maintain their independence as long as possible and no doubt in fear of ending up in the workhouse.[65]
Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann go to some trouble to differentiate between two types of cotton goods that were woven from the first days of cotton working in Lancashire under the domestic system. Both used flax for warp and cotton for weft, so they were in fact closely related, and indeed they were often deliberately confused with each other in representations to officialdom, so as to bamboozle them in their attempts to impose excise duties on different stuffs and control imports of foreign cloths. The two types were fustians (‘a range of cloths rather heavy in type, and often of ribbed and raised surface’ or ‘of two kinds, those with a plain and those with a cut and raised surface’[66]) and ‘cotton-linens’ (‘a range more closely resembling linens in weave and finish’ and which ‘resulted from the introduction of cotton into the already established linen industry, without changing very greatly the character of the ticking and coarse linen goods produced’[67]). Fustians were characteristic of the Bolton area. For the Oldham area it is less clear what was woven, although it appears that cotton-linens, producing what were referred to as ‘checks’ and ‘stripes’, were woven initially but that the area turned more to fustians later.[68]
What is clear is that the Dunkerley (and other) cotton workers of both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did not simply continue weaving the same cloth generation after generation. They were affected continually by technological progress and the demands of fashion. Cloths could be heavier or lighter, could be woven with smaller or larger amounts of cotton in the weft, might be single or double woven, could be plain, striped or checked, might use cotton for warps as ‘twist, in the form of doubled yarn’, and so on. Equally there were many different types of cloth – such as ‘herring-bones, pillows for pockets and outside wear, strong cotton ribs and baragons, broad-raced linen thicksets and tufts, … diapers [diamond patterns], striped dimities and lining jeans. Cotton thicksets were made sometimes… Each of these types was subdivided into qualities, distinguished according to the amount of cotton weft in each piece’.[69]
At first the plain treadle loom was all that was used, but it seems that in the 1730s and 1740s the ‘drawboy’ loom was introduced, which required a boy to sit in the upper part of the loom to work an additional number of drawstrings on a harness mechanism that allowed more complex patterns to be woven. One advance that must have caused considerable interest among the early Dunkerley weavers was the advent of the fly shuttle, patented by John Kay of Bury in 1733. This could be mechanically propelled across the loom, which saved labour, and together with adaptations that Kay made to the bobbin-mechanism carried by the shuttle, and the drop-box invented by his son, Robert, in 1769 speeded up the weaving process. The fly shuttle was originally intended to improve performance of wool weaving on the broad loom, but the Lancashire cotton weavers working on the narrow loom adopted and adapted it more quickly, probably during the late 1730s and the 1740s. It was during the 1740s that the production of cotton cloth began to accelerate.
The weaver, stranded as he was at the end of a long supply- and credit-line, could never be very much in control of his own destiny. He was reliant on others for the supply of work, the quality of the materials provided to him and the credit and payment he received. To further complicate matters, the market varied from time to time, sometimes disrupted by war, competition from Indian goods, fashion and legislation, and he was also at the whim of the harvest for the supply of his food – in a way difficult for us to understand today. If business downturns happened to coincide with bad harvests real hardship could result.
Examples of events wholly beyond the control of the cotton workers, but which may well have been felt among the folds and fields north of Oldham, were imposition of excise duty on calicoes in the first two decades of the eighteenth century, a war with the Dutch in 1654 and with Spain in 1718-19, trade disruptions in 1743, financial difficulties in 1696-97 and 1721 after the collapse of the South Sea company, and food shortages in 1651, 1727-28, 1739-40 and again in 1756-57.
Other hardships arose in the work itself, for there is little doubt that the various tasks involved in cotton working often involved long, wearying hours of tedium. Much of the weaving must have been done in autumn and winter when daylight was in short supply so that work had to be carried out by candlelight, and although the Oldham weavers would have had wood or coals available to heat their cottages it is clear that for much of the time they would have worked in cold conditions and with ‘frozen hands’.[70] Then there were the problems associated with poor-quality yarn and other materials,[71] the possibility that work was not always available when needed and the hardship that could be caused through lack of savings to tide the family over a period of sickness or accident.[72]
Although the Dunkerley weavers would have been at the mercy of such events they were, nevertheless, within limits, their own masters. Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann comment: ‘The workers were still enjoying a sense of freedom, which in a large part of the cotton industry at any rate, was soon to be severely restricted. Whatever else the domestic system was, however intermittent and sweated its labour, it did allow a man a degree of personal liberty to indulge himself, a command over his time, which he was not to enjoy again. There is no need to stress the low level on which this irregular life was lived, or the brutishness of its pleasures – the bull-baiting , cock-fighting, and pitched fights between naked men shod in iron-tipped clogs, for which Lancashire was notorious. When, in 1754, we find the colliers of Oldham and the weavers of Manchester holding a three days’ cockfight in Manchester, we can well understand that employers wished to eliminate such interferences with production.’
There were also less brutish sports and pastimes, such as the annual rush-cart festival during the August wakes, perhaps occasional church-going, particularly at the time of the major festivals, and home-readings from the bible. Then they most likely took time off at a local inn to talk, tell stories, sing or quarrel with friends and neighbours. They were superstitious folk who believed in boggarts, fairies and spirits of all kinds,[73] and they undoubtedly spoke in the Lancashire dialect that had come down from the old Anglo Saxon languages that predated the Norman Conquest.[74] The young, as always, made their own entertainment – which did not always meet with the approval of their elders. Thus in 1783 one observer commented with disapproval: ‘I met a very large procession of young men and women with fiddles, garlands and other ostentation of rural finery, dancing morris dances in the highway merely to celebrate an idle anniversary, or, what they had been pleased to call for a year or two, a fair at a paltry thatched alehouse upon the neighbouring common’.[75] The eighteenth century too had its ‘Grumpy Old Men’!
There were therefore good social and practical reasons to maintain close community contacts and it seems that the Dunkerleys of Oldham were probably a close-knit family, many of whom lived in close proximity and were related. Detailed work carried out by Rosemary Brown highlights the fact that in the first part of the eighteenth century in particular several of the Dunkerley families in the area around Counthill, Barrowshaw and Cleggs had numerous offspring, moved from one area to another in tandem and intermarried.[76] However, at least in the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth century, the Dunkerleys do not seem to have been a family of much substance. No Dunkerley was ever a contributor to the Poor Ley until 1722, but several were recipients during the last two decades of the seventeenth century.[77]
Summary and Conclusions
The available information suggests that from about 1560, for reasons unknown, members of the Dunkerley family that had become established in Manchester began to migrate to the Oldham area, where they probably worked in the woollen trade and adopted (or were given) the spelling ‘Donkerley’ for their surname. The family probably did quite well at Oldham and appears to have been close knit because over the following decades more and more of them turn up in the Oldham records, and less and less in Manchester. Some time round about 1600 it may be that the Manchester Dunkerleys acquired cotton-working skills, which they then took with them to Oldham. There they established themselves mainly in the comparatively restricted area between the village of Oldham and Besom Hill to the north where they rented cottages with attached smallholdings and worked as cotton spinners and handloom weavers using materials supplied from Manchester. They appear to have been generally humble people who did not make much impact on the administration of the area during the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries, but nevertheless generally prospered and developed quite substantial families. They specialised in cotton working to such an extent that very few of them took up the other occupations that were common in the area – such as collier, artisan or worker in the building trades.
Filename: The Early Dunkerleys Jan 07
This version: Jan 2007
Written by: Philip Dunkerley
Notes and References [1] Apparently it was a messuage. From the National Archive website, Access to Archives link, Lancashire Records Office, Catalogue Ref. DDK, Stanley, Earls of Derby (of Knowsley) [DDK/1 – DDK/44].
[2] The IGI is the International Genealogical Index, created by the Mormons, available online via www.familysearch.org. Data have been provided by private individuals and from collected records, are not always accurate and rarely quote sources. They are suggestive of events, but no more than this. The earliest reference to the surname Dunkerley that I have found is actually an IGI reference of 1548, a Cicely Dunkerley in St. Pancras, Soper Lane, London; there are also other early references (1559, 1561) for Newport Pagnell and Wysall, Nottingham..
[3] Nee Dunkerley. An indefatigable Dunkerley researcher to whom I am much indebted.
[4] Baines, Edward Junior, 1835, p.100; ‘History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain’, Published in London by H. Fisher, R. Fisher and P. Jackson; ASIN B00085RV36. Available on http://www.spinningtheweb.org.uk/bookbrowse.php?page=2&book=677.1+B14&size=800x1383 . Also quoted by Edwin Butterworth on p. 80.
[5] He comments (page 100), quoting Thomas Fuller, that before this time the English knew ‘no more what to do with their wool than the sheep that weare (sic) it’!
[6] Butterworth, Edwin, 1856. ‘Historical Sketches of Oldham’, reprint of 1981 by E. J. Morten, (Publishers), Manchester. ISBN 0 85972 048 9
[7] Wadsworth, Alfred P. and Julia De Lacy Mann, 1931, ‘The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire 1600-1780’, Manchester University Press.
[8] Wadsworth, A. P., 1942, ‘The Myth of the Flemish Weavers’, Trans. of the Rochdale Literary and Scientific Society, 21, pp 52-60.
[9] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 19. The Dutch introduced ‘bombazine’ at Norwich. Bombazine was a common French and Italian word for cotton, so it may have included cotton.
[10] Quoted extensively in Baines, op. cit., p. 100.
[11] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 6.
[12] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 509.
[13] Butterworth, E., op. cit., p. 83.
[14] Butterworth says that the name of fustian is derived from the Spanish word ‘fuste’, signifying ‘substance’. However the related verb ‘fustigar’ means to beat, perhaps relating to the beating, or willowing, needed in the early part of the carding process.
[15] Timmins, Geoffrey, 1996; ‘Four Centuries of Lancashire Cotton’, Lancashire County Books, ISBN 1-871236-41-X [15A] Winterbotham, Diana, 1998, p. 24, in Roberts, Elizabeth, 'A History of Linen in the North West', University of Lancaster, ISBN 1-86220-064-5
[16] Quoted in Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., pp. 15-16.
[17] Butterworth, E., op. cit., p. 86.
[18] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 29.
[19] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 25.
[20] Butterworth, E., op. cit., p. 85.
[21] Butterworth, E., op. cit., p. 94, stated that wool ‘constituted the principal staple business of Oldham …’ until after 1750, but this is not supported by data on occupations from Oldham parish registers in the period 1725-1781 – see later.
[22] See http://www.shortal.com/parterre/TheDunkerleyFamily.html
[23] Timmins, Geoffrey, 1993; ‘The Last Shift – The Decline of Handloom Weaving in Nineteenth-Century Lancashire’; Manchester University Press, ISBN 0 7190 3725 5, p.52.
[24] A rainfall map for the years 1961-1990 published online by the Meteorological Office at http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/averages/19611990/rr/17.gif certainly supports the suggestion that the Pennine and Rossendale areas are much wetter than Manchester. The annual rainfall in the former areas was of the order of 900-1100 mm, in the latter 800-900 mm.
[25] Another factor that helped cotton-working to prosper in later times was the availability of power – water power at first, then power from local coalfields.
[26] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 79.
[27] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 113
[28] There is a rather disconcerting gap in the listing of abodes from 1656 to 1670. J. Butterworth (in Butterworth, James, 1817, ‘An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Town and Parochial Chapelry of Oldham in the County of Lancaster’, printed by J. Clarke, p. 185), referring to about this time, notes that Henry Whittaker was discharged from the duties of parish clerk of Oldham ‘having neglected to enter the births, marriages and deaths in the register-book for twelve years’!
[29] K. McPhillips, ‘Oldham, The Formative Years’, Second edition, 1997, published by Neil Richardson, ISBN 1 85216 119 1 The Ripponden-Oldham Trust was formed in 1795.
[30] It is a rocky crown now, because its northwest face has been eaten away by quarrying – apparently for clay for the production of ceramics. In the seventeenth century it would have been just a prominent steep green hillside. Incidentally, a ‘besom’ is a broom of the type favoured by witches for air travel. Edwin Waugh wrote tales about ‘Besom Ben’ of Rochdale, who earned his living making besoms of heather and sold them across the district from the back of his donkey. In Lancashire dialect ‘th’ Owd Besom’ is an endearing name for ‘the wife’. Similarly interesting names were ‘th’ Owd Stockin’ Mender’, and ‘th’ Owd Porridge Maker’.
[31] The Coal Measures and Millstone Grit also form the hills of Rossendale.
[32] J. Butterworth, op. cit., pp. 87-89.
[33] The Hopwood Manuscripts, DDHP 20/18. Lancashire Record Office. See http://www.a2a.org.uk/search/documentxsl.asp?com=1&i=0&nbKey=1&stylesheet=x... [34] Bamford, Samuel, 1843, ‘Early Days’, Chapter IX, available at http://www.gerald-massey.org.uk/bamford/index.htm. This describes life from about 1763 to after the turn of the century.
[35] http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/eh/8.2/osborn.html
[36] The community at Horsedge may have been founded by a Moses Dunkerley who, according to another unconfirmed IGI entry, was born at Greenacres (east side of Oldham) about 1630. The same entry says he married Mary, who was born at Greenacres ca. 1629, in about 1654 in Oldham; none of these details are in known official registers.
[37] See for example the description of Count Hill (p. 42) and Sholver (p. 61) in Butterworth, E., op. cit.
[38] Mentioned in the Loveden Papers in Access to Archives, file ref. D/ELV/T138, no longer available online. Date: 1655: ‘Of a messuage in Counthill, Oldham, Lancs, with an acre of ground recently inclosed from a common called Sholver Moore’
[39] Timmins, ‘The Last Shift’, op. cit.
[40] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, p. 315-6.
[41] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, p. 274.
[42] Consider, for example, the delightful folk song ‘The Bury New Loom’, from a broadsheet of 1804, in which a young man tells a young female handloom weaver ‘I am a good joiner by trade, and many a handloom and shuttle, before in my time I have made.’ Contact mark@markdowding.co.uk.
[43] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 133.
[44] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 238.
[45] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 80.
[46] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 211.
[47] Nicely described by Bamford, Samuel,‘Early Days’, op.cit. See also the hilarious account of ‘Th’ Silk Wayver’s Fust Bearin’ Whoam to Manchester’ in The Countryfield Pieces by Thomas Brierley, published by W. E. Clegg of Oldham in 1894.
[48] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 38.
[49] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 397. The authors add that the execution of such measures fortunately lagged behind their letter.
[50] Respectively about 8 and 15 miles just east of north from Oldham.
[51] The description is from www.umassd.edu/ir/Resources/TextileIndustry/t1.doc., entitled ‘Daniel Defoe on the Yorkshire cloth industry, c. 1724.
[52] In Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 318.
[53] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 319-320.
[54] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 336.
[55] A chapman from Ashton had pieces a yard, three-quarters of a yard, seven-eighths of a yard and one and one-eighth of a yard wide in 1728-1731. Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 127.
[56] As described by a Bolton manufacturer in 1738-39, Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 266. Yet in the same work on p. 350 mention is made of warps 80 yards long in 1733-38 and 86 and 96 yards long in about 1758. In this latter passage the writer quoted indicates that a good weaver might weave half one of these pieces in a week. P. 362 suggests that discontented weavers felt in 1758 that a standard piece length of 80 yards would have been acceptable.
[57] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 55.
[58] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 69.
[59] Yet ‘the necessary implements’ for spinning were quoted to ‘not exceed 15s per wheel’, according to a submittal to the Board of Trade and Plantations in 1724 by Elias Barnes, quoted in Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 121.
[60] According to Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 49.
[61] Information published by Arthur Young in Manchester, quoted in Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., pp. 401-402..
[62] Paid by the Overseers of the Poor. See http://www.shortal.com/parterre/DunkerleyFamilesOfOl.html
[63] Where formal apprenticeships did exist there is some evidence that they were for from three to seven years, perhaps depending on the complexity of the loom and type of weaving undertaken. A formal apprenticeship on the more complex Dutch loom seems to have been seven years. Information from Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 329, 333-334.
[64] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 325.
[65] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 326. See also Ben Brierley’s wonderful poem ‘The Weaver of Wellbrook’, available at http://www.shortal.com/palimpsest/The.html
[66] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., pp. vii and 113.
[67] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., pp. vii and 115.
[68] ‘The Manchester checkmakers employed the weavers in the villages encircling Manchester, and the well-populated country round Oldham and Ashton. The Manchester fustian makers cast their net wider…’ Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 251. In 1758 the Oldham weavers took part in a region-wide check-weavers’ strike (op.cit. p. 362). Yet in 1773 there were nineteen ‘fustian manufacturers’ in the Oldham and Ashton district and there was talk about the ‘growing preponderance of fustians, the interlocking between fustians and the other branches, the decline of checks and linen …’ (op.cit. p. 252).
[69] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 113.
[70] Robert Kay, discussing the use of fly shuttle, in Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 471.
[71] ‘Aw dunnot know heaw th’ piece is done; Aw’n fear’d it’s marr’d enough; Bu’ th’ warps weren’t made o’ th’ best o’ yarn, An’ th’ weft were nobbut rough. Aw’ve been some bother’d neaw an’ then Wi’ knots an’ breakin’s too; They’n hammper’d me so mich at toimes Aw’ve scarce known what do do.’ From Richard Rome Bealey’s poem ‘My Piece is O’ Bu’ Woven Eaut’, see http://www.shortal.com/palimpsest/MyPieceIsOButWovenEa.html
[72] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 350.
[73] See for example the descriptions in Bamford, Samuel, 1843, op cit., available at http://www.gerald-massey.org.uk/bamford/b_radical_index.htm.
[74] See http://www.shortal.com/palimpsest/Enquiry.html
[75] Wadsworth and De Lacy Mann, op. cit., p. 391.
[76] http://www.shortal.com/parterre/TheDunkerleyFamily.html |