James Dunkerley (1854 - 1898) and Emma Coop (1854 - 1922)
[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]. James was born on October 19th, 1854 at Sugar Meadow, off Glodwick Road, in Oldham. Although ‘James’ is a good Dunkerley name, it is unclear why William chose to use it for his second son – the names of all James’ siblings can easily be traced back to other family members. Emma was born a few weeks earlier, on 8th September 1854 in Bloom Street, Oldham below Town, the daughter of Edmund Coop, a spinner, and Nanny Coop, formerly Whittaker. So far as we know, both James and Emma spent their entire lives in Oldham.
Sugar Meadow was probably a small old settlement of the type generally known in Lancashire as a fold or ‘fowt’ and I have discussed it more fully in the section on James’ parents, William and Sophia. The area was at that time still very rural although development was rapidly encroaching from the north, and even if life would have been without many comforts it might not have been unpleasant. The adjacent map, where Sugar Meadow is marked, from 1863 gives a good feel for the area.
At the time of the 1861 census, William and Sophia, James’ parents, had moved a short distance to Greenfield Gate, to accommodation that is likely to have been rather similar to that at Sugar Meadow. Greenfield Gate is on the curve of Glodwick Lane, and appears to have been the 'gate' to the driveway that ran southwest from Glodwick Lane to two or three mansions, known as 'Green Hill', that had been built some time before 1841. They were occupied in that year (and probably built) by James Collinge and John Lancaster, owners of the Commercial Mill complex that stood opposite the Greenbank Mill complex (see map). James’ father was then a house painter, probably benefiting from the boom that had started in 1858 and led to the construction of 28 new cotton mills, and innumerable terraced houses for the workers. Sophia was apparently then a housewife, looking after her three boys, Joseph aged 10, James aged 6 and John William aged 4.
The good times did not last. The boom, as usual, went too far; markets became oversupplied, profits fell away and short time working was already in evidence at the time of the Census. Then, from 1861 to 1865, the American Civil War broke out and, with the North blockading the cotton-producing South, frenzied speculation disrupted prices and trade, and serious shortages developed. Oldham avoided the worst of the suffering that resulted in actual starvation in the weaving districts of west Lancashire, but it was nevertheless seriously affected. The town did what it could to find cotton elsewhere, such as from the Surat area of India, and from Brazil, and it developed a healthy trade in spinning cotton from waste, but mill construction had dried up by 1861. The worst year was 1862, when massive intervention by the Poor Law Guardians was needed in Oldham. It is likely that James’ family were among those that felt the pinch although by 1864 when their first daughter, Harriet, was born William was at least working – as a machine painter.
Slowly trade began to recover, and there were other hopeful signs, such as the opening of a railway link between Oldham and Rochdale, and the expansion of the cooperative movements in the town, and by the end of the decade there were as many people working in cotton as there had been at its start. This did not help William, however, for in 1869, when James was only fourteen years, old his father had died at the young age of forty one. Sophia was left to cope with five children, the youngest of whom, Sarah Hannah, was only a month old.
It is hard to think that circumstances were other than very difficult for the family. At least Joseph and James were both old enough to be working, although it is likely that neither earned very much.
By the time of the 1871 census, the two older boys and their younger brother were all employed in the cotton industry, while Sophia looked after her two small daughters at home. Also living with them was Sophia’s sister, Melina Barrat, a single lady aged 50 who brought in another wage from her work as a card-room operator in a cotton mill. The family had again moved a short distance and now lived at Burton Street in Glodwick, likely to have been poor housing that was soon to disappear during a massive house-building programme in the area. James was then 16 years old and working as a ‘Warehouseman’, an occupation he appears to have maintained for the whole of his working life. It has not been easy to discover the duties of a warehouseman in the last part of the nineteenth century. Samuel Bamford [1] described his own duties as a warehouseman in Manchester, but that was in about 1808 and offers relatively few clues. A more relevant description indicates that James would have received the spun yarn cops from the doffer plus any bobbins, 'cheeses', 'chains' and other specialist output from the winding room plus any warps or wound beams from the beaming room, and packed them into cases, skips or as otherwise appropriate ready for onward despach to the weaving mills. He would have had to make sure that the yarn products were properly packed and that the correct amount of moisture was added to improve the profitability of the sale - about 7 to 10%[2]. If the mill where James worked did its own weaving, then he might have needed to compare samples of textiles with the stock books to make certain that orders were filled by the exact pattern and colour intended'.  Evidently every productive cotton unit had a warehouse and the duties would vary enormously. Based on what I have been able to find out it may be that James needed to be both literate and numerate so he might have had a relatively good education - perhaps the first of my Dunkerley line to have done so. The 1871 Census also tells us that James’ older brother, Joseph and his younger brother, John, were ‘cotton piecers’, which means they were assistants to the mule spinners. Piecers hoped in time to become mule spinners, who were skilled workers and therefore relatively well paid.Close to Burton Street were several rows of back-to-back terraced houses constructed for their mill workers by the owners of the Greenbank Mill complex on Glodwick Road. In one of these, number 7 Mount Street, lived Edmund Coop, his wife, Nanny, and a family of six children. Edmund was a mule spinner in the mill and three of the children were piecers – probably in the same place – so the family may have been quite comfortably off. Perhaps James worked in the same mill as Emma, for at some time the two met and began 'walking out'. On June 20th 1874 James and Emma were married at Glodwick parish church, after banns, when both were a mere 19 years old; there was probably some haste as at the time of the wedding a baby had already been ordered! James was then living in Glodwick Road (probably with his mother) and Emma in nearby Nugget Street. The witnesses were a Joseph Travis and a Sarah Taylor. James signed the register, Emma made her mark.
The pre-ordered baby, a boy, was born the following December 12th at number 10, Mount Street. He was baptised ‘William', but in later life was usually called Billy (and later 'Uncle Bill'), and was my grandfather. His story can be found by here. James probably rented the house at 10 Mount  Street, which means he would have worked at the Greenbank Mill complex, because he is listed as an elector there in the 1874 Register of Electors. Therefore, although events had probably not gone to plan, it seems James and Emma would have had reasonable income and were managing. In fact this may have been a good time to be starting a family because there was another boom underway in cotton mill and housing construction. In all, James and Emma had at least seven children over a 22-year period, with several large gaps that may indicate there were other children who did not survive.
By 1879 the Electoral Register shows that James and Emma had moved out of the tiny back-to-back house in Mount Street to a new more roomy terraced house nearby in Nugget Street. This would have been a brick-built property typical of the time, probably with two rooms downstairs and two upstairs bedrooms. The front door would have opened directly onto the street, but, unlike at Mount Street, there was also a back door that opened onto a yard which gave access to a back-entry paved with stone sets[3]. No doubt it seemed a good move. However another move soon followed, this time across Oldham to the newly developing area of Busk in the Chadderton district. This is shown in the 1881 Census, where James continues as a warehouseman, and Emma was working as a reeler – a job that involved winding reels of cotton from the spun yarn. She was then expecting her second child, Alice Ann, who was born at the end of August.
The family continued at 76 Busk Street at least until 1882. Maps of the time indicate that the properties in Busk Street were through-terraced houses, broadly similar to the house at Nugget Street, but they have since been knocked down and the area redeveloped.
By January 1884 when their second daughter, Sarah Hannah (who later came to be called 'Auntie Burt'), was born James and Emma had moved back to Glodwick, at 2, Mount Street, just four houses away from where Billy had been born. It would appear that James had returned to work again at Greenbank Mills, but he continued, as always, to be a warehouseman. By September 1885 James and Emma were off again, this time about thee miles north of Oldham to 6, Rudding Street, Royton where their son, Edmund (later called Ned), was born. Royton, like Busk, was one of the areas where new cotton mills were being built.
Yet another move, and probably another change of employer, soon followed for in September 1888 Emma gave birth to a daughter who was to share her name (Emma), at 404 Lees Road, near to Glodwick (see photo). Their last daughter, Elizabeth was also born there in 1891, and they were still there the following April when the 1891 census was taken and also in 1893, according to the Electoral Register. Two adults and six children were living in four rooms, supported by James’ pay as a Warehouseman and a contribution from Billy, the oldest child, who had then started work. No doubt the family finances by this time were rather tight.
What was practically a final move took them by 1894 to a terraced house at 455 Lees Road, where James (who often called himself Jim), the youngest member of the family, was born. This Lees Road terrace was broadly similar to many other terraces that were then being built across the Oldham landscape. 455 Lees Road was constructed during the cotton boom of 1873 to 1875 east of Glodwick, where Oldham falls away to the valley of Lees Brook, a tributary of the River Medlock. On the stream stands Lees Brook cotton mill, built of sandstone in 1884 on the site of an even earlier mill, the Springside mill built in 1800 to harness the available waterpower.
 In 1895 455 Lees Road was therefore a modern property and it still stands in 2003 (see photo). It has two downstairs rooms and seems to have benefited from a back kitchen with a small third bedroom above. It’s front door opens almost directly onto the pavement and at the back is a yard, where the toilet was probably located, with a gate opening onto a ‘backings’, just wide enough to get a modern car down and paved with coarse stone sets. James enjoyed only three years at 455 Lees Road, for on 26th February 1898 he died there, struck down by a bout of pneumonia, perhaps brought on by dirty air and severe winter weather. Emma nursed him, but to no avail. James was only 43 years old, and lived therefore only two years longer than had his father. Rather like his father, he left a very young child – James (Jim), about two years old – for his widow. Emma reported the death but was unable to sign her name, and instead made her mark. James was buried in a new grave in the nearby cemetery at Greenacres, close to his parents. Perhaps this means he was paying into a burial club.
 Emma’s future was suddenly looking bleak. Her family then consisted of seven children, three of whom would have been working. Billy, her oldest son, would have been twenty-three years old and would have assumed a position of responsibility for the family. Alice Ann, sixteen, and Sarah Hannah, just fourteen, would both have been earning a wage. Based on later information, all three would have been working in the cotton industry and their combined wages would have comprised the whole family income.
About this time Billy was courting but put off getting married until his next younger brother Edmund (Ned) was old enough to bring in a wage. The wedding eventually took place on January 1st 1901 at St. Thomas’ church in Leesfield and Billy and his wife, Selina, rented a house close by at 30, Quail Street. Months later, the census of that year shows Emma as the head of the family, with six children, three of whom were working.
In my experience, when most people reach old age the things in their lives that they regard as most important are their families. If this is how Emma felt, then there was plenty for her to be happy about during her last two decades, and hopefully this helped offset the difficulties that she would have experienced as a widow with a decreasing number of children at home. On December 3rd 1901 she became a grandmother for the first time when Gladys was born to Billy and Selina. Her first grandson followed on June 6th 1903, Albert, a brother for Gladys.
The next year, on August 21st, Alice Ann married Arthur Sykes, a local boy who worked as a baker in his father’s confectionary business at 586 Lees Road. At the time Alice was a cotton weaver. The marriage took place at Salem Moravian chapel, only a few yards up from 455 Lees Road, a church where the family were evidently well integrated, for eventually four of the siblings were to plight their troth there. It was probably in the following year that Alice and Arthur’s first son, George, was born. About the same time, Billy and Selina’s second son, Lewis, was born, on February 25th, 1905.
The next happy event for Emma was the birth of Billy and Selina’s third son, James Leslie, almost certainly named after his paternal grandfather, on January 27th 1907. Then followed the wedding of Sarah Hannah, to John Butterworth, an iron fitter, of 314 Lees Road. Again the wedding took place at the Salem Moravian chapel, on June 1st 1909. Sarah Hannah was a cotton yarn twister – that is she worked in the production of cotton warp. Three years later it was the turn of Sarah Hannah’s sister, Emma, to wed, once more at the Moravian chapel. She married John Stott, a flyer maker in an iron spindle works, and she was working as a cotton reeler.
February 2nd 1913 saw the birth of Billy and Selina’s last child, Clare. The following year Ned married Mary Hannah ('Molly') Street, on March 17th – at the Moravian chapel. Mary was a cotton beamer – probably working with the warp beams that were loaded into the factory looms. It was probably in 1915 that Alice Ann and Arthur Sykes’ second boy, Arthur – Emma’s last grandchild – was born.
Three years later Emma attended the wedding, on August 18th at the Moravian chapel, of her last daughter, Elizabeth who married Joseph Oates, a motor driver.
Emma continued living at 455 Lees Road, probably with her youngest son, Jim, and, it seems, with a Fred Coop, presumably a relative from her own family. She eventually died there, aged 67, on 20th May 1922 of chronic bronchitis and other lung and heart problems. Her son, Jim, was there when she died and registered the death on the same day. Bronchitis was a huge killer at that time, aggravated by the smoke of the many factories and innumerable domestic fires. She was buried with her husband.
James and Emma saw great changes during their lifetimes. Albeit alternating between want and plenty, Oldham lurched upwards to prominence as the principal cotton spinning town of Lancashire, much aided by the appearance of the ‘Limiteds’. James and Emma married and started their family during the first flotation mania and experienced the second distinctly more speculative episode in the 1880s. Working hours continued to improve during their lifetimes and from the 1870s they must have enjoyed the reduction in the working week to ‘only’ 56½ hours with Saturday working ending at 1 pm.
It has been possible to follow some of James’ movements by reference to the Registers of Electors, and in fact James was the first of his family to be able to vote following the Electoral Reform Act of 1867. This gave the vote to tenants from 1868 onwards and we hope that James discussed politics with his friends and eventually put his cross on nine parliamentary voting slips before he died. James had a say in how the country was run!
In James’ and Emma’s time, things improved financially too. As machines became faster and more productive, so the gains were shared with the workers. Another benign influence resulted from the workings of Free Trade and the availability of new supplies of food from the prairies, brought to Lancashire by steam ships and railways. The consequences were falling food and other prices so that real wages improved and some money began to be left over for saving or leisure. James and Emma may not have been members of the growing lower middle class, but at least James seems to have had steady employment and an apparently well-defined occupation as a warehouseman.
How James and Emma must have appreciated the general appearance of mains water across Oldham in the 1860s and 1870s, the start of gas lighting in homes in substitution of paraffin lamps and candles, and even the appearance of the sanitary pail in the 1870s! They probably also thought that the rows of through terraced houses, built under the regulations of Oldham council, such as those at Lees Road, represented real progress. And they must have been pleased as services such as police, the fire brigade, waste disposal, libraries and public cemeteries began to be provided. Perhaps Emma shopped at the Co-op and examined with interest the new foods that were becoming available to supplement the traditional Oldham diet.
No doubt there were still hard times to be coped with. Both James and Emma would have experienced the difficulties of the Cotton Famine in 1861 to 1862, and Emma is likely to have struggled after James died young in 1898. Fortunately Billy took over responsibility for the household finances until Ned was 14, and then it seems that Emma’s son Jim continued living with her until she died in 1922.
Emma lived long enough to see the death of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII. She must have wondered as trams and cars passed her door travelling between Lees and Oldham. She also lived to know of the horrors of the First World War and died just as the Lancashire cotton industry embarked on its road of terminal decline.
In spite of the problems, during her later years Emma had modest reason to feel considerable satisfaction. She saw all but one of her children marry and Jim, the youngest, is likely to have been courting the young lady he was to marry soon after she died. She had at least seven grandchildren and her oldest son, Billy, had bettered himself to such an extent that he was a cotton mill overlooker, chairman of his local council and a magistrate. All these events must have given Emma a great deal to be thankful for after she became a young widow.
My father, Leslie, never met the grandfather after whom he was named (James Leslie), although he knew his name. However he must have known his grandmother, as he was 15 years old when she died. He called her ‘Granny Dunkerley’ and was unable to tell me her real name. How it would have thrilled me if I could have told him it was Emma!
Notes
[2} The part of this paragraph relating to warehouse duties in a spinning mill come from personal communication by Peter Brocklehurst, whom I very much thank. [3]. The houses have now been demolished.
Filename: James and Emma Dunkerley
Written by: Philip Dunkerley
This version: 10th June 2006
This page was last modified on Monday, October 06, 2008 |